Troy Swope

Guiding conversations with community leaders.

In this podcast, we'll explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, perhaps providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals.

And Rocket Space, an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full service four person podcast studio.

From Silicon Valley to Gilbert, Arizona, this.

Father of four grew increasingly concerned about.

The health effects of plastic food packaging. In 2012, he teamed up with his best friend to change the food packaging industry as we know it by eliminating single use plastics. What started as a personal passion has become a publicly traded company with more than 1500 employees. Our guest was named to Newsweek's 2021 greatest disruptors list and his company footprint was named one of the world's 50 most innovative companies. Welcome, Troy Swope.

Here we go. Welcome, Troy.

Well, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Yes, we're glad to have you here. We're going to start off with what we call Rapid Fire.

Would you rather sing in public or dance in public?

Dance for sure. Dance it is.

All right, what's one of your nicknames?

Swoop Ironically. Or when I was younger it was T. They would just shorten it to T. Troy Swoop. Right.

Really long.

So yeah, yeah, Troy's so long. All four letters.

Right.

So yeah, T was. Was common. Or just using my last name and then using it wrong. Right.

Would your 12 year old self think you were cool?

Absolutely. Yeah, I think about that frequently. Like I would have worried so much less at 12 or 13 or 14 if I knew this, you know, this was the outcome. Right.

Isn't that short?

I was really short and kind of fat and dorky and I was like if I knew I was gonna be 6, 5 and so that would help too. Right. There have been a lot less stress. Right. But I was glad I grew out of it. Right. I actually get to tell my boys that all the time. I'm like, I've seen this movie. You're gonna be okay when they're 12 years old.

I love that.

Yeah.

Have you ever won a contest?

Yeah, you know, when I was younger, ironically, I'd win a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to, like, you know, like cakes, like, you know, cakewalks. Yeah, cakewalk. Those kind of things like that. But you know, a lot of sports contests for sure. I've won a lot of those. And then I think just everything that we were talking about earlier, what we've won as a company. Right. That we've won a lot. So, yeah, I've won some. But when I was younger, ironically, I'd win a lot of stuff that I didn't want. I was afraid to go up on stage or something like that, and I'd win. I think I'd be, like, manifesting it through fear. Like, I don't want to win this. I don't want to go up there. And, you know, I'd go up there.

Karma was calling you on the stage. Yes.

Would you ever skydive?

I bungee jumped a lot, so, yeah, I would skydive.

Okay.

I don't think my. My insurance for the company now would allow me to, like, I just, you know, we. My business partner reading it probably about a couple months ago, and we're like, hey, do you know we're not allowed to own a motorcycle or fly in a helicopter? And we didn't know that until all the fun. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually have a motorcycle, so I was like, am I supposed to give it away?

I know a nonprofit. If you need to, just let me know.

Yeah. There you go.

What's your favorite breakfast?

I'm very simple. So I like a really good oatmeal, and that's not me. I love all foods, but for some reason, at breakfast, I love oatmeal. But I would say I've been spending a lot of time in Europe, and I was in Paris recently, and I'd say crepes are 10 times better than oatmeal. Yeah, for sure. It's just not good for me.

What is one thing you wish you enjoyed more of?

I wish I. You know, to be honest with you, I wish I wasn't so ambitious. Sometimes I think it's. I wish I didn't. I constantly. We get asked a lot, like, you know, we have a. Almost 2 million square feet in Mexico in the factory in Mexico. And you mentioned 1500 employees. I think we're, like, closer to 4000 employees now. And we're building a factory in Poland. We have an R and D headquarters now in Netherlands, our European headquarters in Netherlands. And people go, hey, do you ever stop and just go, wow, look what we built. And no. And it's. I never stop and go, oh, wow, this is great. Look where we're at. Because I constantly think about how much work's left and where we're really going. And so I wish I could enjoy the moment more, you know, better. Smelling the roses I'm not so good at it. My business partner's even worse. He can't. He doesn't. He's push, push, push. Right?

Yeah.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert?

I think I'm somewhat down the middle, ironically. I get up in front of hundreds of people and speak all the time, and I'm comfortable with that. But if you ask me to go into a crowd and just network and meet people, I would never do it.

I don't want to win a cakewalk. But you can.

Yeah. I don't mind now getting up in front and speaking and telling the story of Footprint, but I don't want to go meet, you know, one on one. I think there's still, you know, kind of a. An apprehension there. I don't know where it comes from, but, you know, and I mean, an example of this is my team goes to conferences all the time and they're trying to meet people, and they're like, hey, this is so and so from Pepsi, or this is so and so from Coke. Let's go talk to them. I hate that, but if you asked me to get up in front of everybody, I'd have no problem doing that. But one on one. So I think I have introverted tendencies, but because of my job, I have to be an extrovert.

Forced extrovert.

All right. Do you have a favorite book?

Oh, I love books. I don't know if I have a favorite book. The first book that I remember just being obsessed with was A Time to Kill, so John Grissom's A Time to Kill. But more recently, I'm reading things on quantum physics and stuff like that. Just because there's things that I'm afraid of. What? I don't know. In fact, I tell my kids all the time, the whole world's secrets are in a book. I don't know which book, so read them all. But I love reading, you know, biographies. So I loved Obama's. I loved his a lot. I really liked listening to him and his leadership style and what he went through. George W. Bush, President 43. I thought his was fantastic, too. And then most recently, I think it's Eddie Jacku, the Happiest Man Alive. So it's the story of an Auschwitz survivor. That book is awesome. That book is awesome.

Where does that come from, that love for reading?

Fear of what? I don't know. I just can't. It's. It's. And actually, as I got older, it's become, like, insatiable. My. My family laughs. There's books delivered to our house every week. So I. I'm just afraid of what I don't know. And I'm actually deep into quantum physics right now because I'm just going, this is fascinating to me. I need to understand this. And somehow it ties to spirituality, to me. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I don't. For me, a lot of people are saying it's just the opposite. It proves that, you know, that there is, you know, no creator. And I'm like, are you kidding me? It proves that there is one because he keeps messing with us, right? Showing that we can't figure out how everything exists. So I love it. The love of learning, if you will.

Last question. I think I know the answer, but glass half full or half empty, I think I'm.

As I get older, it gets harder and harder to be half full. Right. You get more and more pragmatic. But I was once called, during this process, as we're growing the company, I was called an optimist. And it was funny when. When I got called it before I even heard the word, like, you're an optimist. Just the tone made me be like, are you kidding me? Like, screw you, I'm not an optimist. What are you talking. And then as I was thinking, I was like, well, of course I'm an optimist, right? I'm building a company that's out to save the planet. I gotta be optimistic that we can't do it. I mean, how do you get people to leave great jobs like intel and Google and Apple and say, come help us save the planet? But I don't know if it's gonna work, right? You know, so I'm definitely half full, but with data.

Gilbert City Lifestyles is a locally owned publication whose mission is to find and share great stories in our community and help build a stronger, more vibrant local experience.

Become a digital subscriber@citylifestyles.com Gilbert.

So I remember not too long ago, Footprint opened their doors and walking in and it was an empty warehouse, basically is what it was. And I look now and it blows me away. What you are accomplishing and I wonder, you have to be an optimistic, care enough to do something and to put your passion into action and then build it into this incredible business.

Tell us about the origins of this.

Company and how you got to where you are now.

Well, thank you for that. Yeah. And actually, ironically, when I left here to come here today, there's a. We have a group of 30 people and some architects and everything designing our new Corporate headquarters. Like, you know, what are we going to do next? As we're busting at the seams as you've seen now. So we didn't plan for the growth. I guess if you. We thought we had a 10 year building. I think we have a four year building. But so the origin is, you know, I spent 15 years at intel and I loved intel and absolutely loved it. I was in intel in the 90s. So I started. I was 19 years old, right? So I had a teacher in high school that did summer work at intel and he was like, hey, you want a summer job, you should go down to this company in Chandler. I was from Mesa and like way out in the middle of nowhere at the duo. And I was like, you know what, in dy, he's like, yeah, you could help them. And I was really good, like a standardized test student, but I was a horrible student. Does that make sense? You know, I was. If you give me an sat, I know that I'm fine, but you know, make me sit in the classroom all day. I was, I was horrible, right? So. And this teacher saw something, I mean, was like, hey, you should go down there. And so I went out and applied, got a job and got promoted really quick. Just kept getting promoted, shipped all over the world and loved it. It was a very intense environment and. But so when I was. Eventually I started running this materials group at intel and intel, we were having problems where we were having to clean the Intel's products coming in from Japan. And we were going to have to clean it every time we used it before we started processing worldwide. And they're going, troy, something's happening with your materials, like in process, in shipping, like that. It's not working. It's not airtight, it's not sealing that. We're contaminating the product and we have to clean it. We like to save money, like eliminate this. And so I'm doing. We're doing material science and advanced polymer development. And basically we're trying to. What we found out is the packaging itself. This really expensive plastic container looks like a Yeti cooler, right? That's holding. Our product was actually outgassing. So outgassing is like, you know your new car smell, right? Was outgassing on the product. So it was actually plastic on our product that was contaminating it. So we're trying to develop a Palmer or plastic that doesn't outgass. We couldn't do it. We ended up. It was gonna be super expensive and we really couldn't stop it from from outgassing. But as we're investigating this, I'm just thinking about everything in foods and plastic. And this was in 24 hours. So it would get packed in a clean room in Japan, shipped to Israel, Oregon, Arizona, wherever, Ireland, et cetera. And it was 24 hours later, it's contaminated. I'm going, well, food's in there for weeks. So I started taking things like cut fruits and macaroni and cheese to an intel lab in Santa Clara, which is just total. No, no. And I take just out of just pure engineering curiosity going, tell me what's on the food? And the data was coming back, and it was alarming. Way more plastic in the food than there was on our contaminating Intel's wafers. And so I started going to every engineer at Intel I can see and say, do you believe this? Like, we eat this, and this is 2004. Right? Nobody would listen to me, really. But I knew that we had to develop to get plastic out of food. This was a disaster. We didn't know the human health impacts in 2004, 2005, but we knew it was a disaster. So I just started rounding up, you know, top engineers and scientists from Intel. And the smartest person I knew was Yoke Chung, who's our business partner. And I just begged him and said, hey, let's go develop an alternative to plastic. And that we knew we were gonna have to develop everything, how to make it, not only the material science, but the equipment to make it in scale. And. But I said this was gonna be a disaster. And actually, last year was like the first time we started seeing Rolling Stone. Came out with an article in 2020, I think, that said we ingest about a credit card's worth of plastic a week. And then Bloomberg this year, I think, came back and supported it maybe even more than a credit card. So it's about five, five and a half grams of plastic a week. We eat. And then we. When we started seeing that data, we connected with Dr. Leo Trezande, which is a Harvard professor who said, it's killing us, right? It's. It's. It's in our. It's in our bodies. It's killing us. It's in our brains. It's in babies. Pre utero, we're born. Babies are born polluted with plastic, right? So that was kind of the. But the aha moment was at intel when I was going, if we can contaminate intel products in 24 hours, what are we doing to food? Yeah, see, I told you. I like to Talk?

No, but. So I just want to dig a little deeper because it's one thing to have this information, it's another thing to do something about it. What is it? What makes that spark and gives you the courage to step out from something? I mean, I'm assuming you're really comfortable in your position. Right. And this is providing the life that you want to provide. Something bigger is happening.

Yeah. I think it's bigger than just, you know, a means for, like, making sure my kids can go to college. Right. So for me, it was there's just drive to do something bigger. And part of that comes from. And I know this part of the podcast today, but is that Intel? There was this kind of, you know, in the 90s, this kind of ide that you're changing the world and that they were going to teach you how to solve problems. And they gave us an unbelievable amount of training on how to. As an R and D. And so they gave us an unbelievable amount of training on how to solve a problem. So I think it started there and then just surrounding myself with just the. There was brilliant people all around Intel. And so you felt like you could do anything in just that you could use this engineering discipline to solve any problem. So I think that gave me confidence. And then, you know, I'm a type A personality, so I always thought big. And I don't think we would have ever left intel unless we thought we could do something massive for the planet and have real disruption and something we could feel extremely proud about. And I think that's one thing that everybody at Footprint does, is that when we stop and smell the roses, it's a lot of work, is that we are very proud. I mean, when we see people's reaction to what we're doing, it gives us a lot of pride.

Yeah.

So let's back up a bit because I love that we're talking about what you're doing today and where you've gone and all those things you've been. Okay. But the whole point of the show is to talk about how you got there. And so let's back up to the very beginnings and tell me a little bit about your family when you were growing up and how some of those influences got you to where you are today.

Yeah. So a unique family environment. So my mom is a single mom and she got. We get married and divorced a lot until I was about 14. So it was a bit disruptive. But my mom was unbelievably hard working and I had this great. My mom has great family so her parents and her brothers and sisters were amazing, and they really helped participate in raising me. So there's multiple influences. So my grandparents were unbelievably hardworking. They ran a church camp in Goleta, California, which is up near Santa Barbara. And it's seven miles up in these hills, and I think it's about 300 acres overlooking the ocean. And it was unbelievable. So I spent most of my summer there.

Sounds awesome.

Yeah, it was. And I would clear firebreaks, you know, at, you know, starting at, you know, nine years old. So I think my grandpa, a funny story I told not too long ago about courage, but I remember my grandpa, like, when I was like 10 years old, giving me a chain sock, saying, can you hold this out? And okay, good. Like, if I could hold it straight out, he goes, we're good, and we're going to go clear some brush. So if you're from California, you know, California. California has two seasons. Anything now? Maybe just one, but they had two seasons, which was the green season, but you get a lot of rain, everything turns green. And then the brown season, where it dries out. And now we have fire season. Right. So. So all summer we'd spend clearing fire breaks around in the camp. And it was really, really hard work, but it was a tremendous value to me because, you know, today I still think one of my assets is I feel like I can always outwork you. And so that's. That's one influence. I think another influence is I had an uncle, my mom's brother, that runs a steel company here in the valley. And they're all over the country. They do a lot of steel placement for intel facilities and bridges and everything for Arizona, and I think they're in Alaska. They're all over the country. And he always gave me a vision of what, you know, it was in our blood. You could do this. Right. And his in similar approach, it was, you know, through hard work. But he also had a big vision of, you know, you could accomplish, you know, great things. And he's got tremendous leadership skills and he's always honing them. And he's very, very religious person. Especially now that he's older, he's very religious, and he had a huge influence on me of what I felt could be possible, what we could achieve. So I was never really afraid of anything.

Yeah, I'm going to jump around a little bit just because all these thoughts are coming to my mind. And I'm so curious in all of these, all of the recent success that you've had. Yet you're a humble guy. How do you stay focused on remaining in touch with your roots and staying humble and grateful the way you are?

Well, thanks for saying I'm humble. I think my kids humble me. My kids. There's nothing. When I just said earlier that I would dance instead of sing, my kids would be so embarrassed, right? Either one of them, they'd be embarrassed. And I think they humble me. You know, when I get some accolades all the time, I think my kids just think I'm a big dork, right? So I think that that helps. And the reality is, I don't think we've done anything yet. I mean, we've had a. We're on our way, but there's still so much work to be done. And footprint. And I said this. I was in Arizona Business League the other day. I said, the most environmentally impactful company on the planet is from Arizona. It's here. It's now its footprint. And I mean, because of the disaster that is plastic. Not only is plastic in our bodies and it's killing us. You know, plastic's number one polluter in the ocean. It's also like the top five CO2 emitter. From an industry perspective, I think if his own country, it'd be number five, right? Just behind Russia and China. So it's a disaster. Plastics are an absolute disaster. And we have the technology to eliminate plastic. But not only do we have the technology to eliminate plastic, we are developing technologies to capture our waste heat. We're working with a group at ASU to actually produce our own water. So not only we have this really, really unique product, the way we manufacture it is hugely impactful to the planet. And there's innovations in that. So there's other parts that we could take to other companies in addition to just eliminating plastic. So footprint is. And we know it. I think we're already being recognized at all the things that you mentioned when we opened up, but we're being recognized for it. But we are the most environmentally impactful business on the planet. And so for me, that just seems like we have so much work to do. Like, we gotta get this out to everywhere.

Do you keep your kids in this process? Do you involve them, or do they have their own passions and how do you spark their interest?

They all have their own passions. My oldest son's going to ASU now. He played football at Arizona Christian. He's going finishing up at asu. And he's. He wants to be a coach so he could care less about, you know, kind of this. I Think he thinks it's neat, but he's driven by teaching and. But my second son is an entrepreneur and so he's got a real interest in it and he's going to issue as well. I'm, I'm going to probably pull him into it, make him do some real grunt work and, and see if he likes it. But he's got a real creative brain, so I think he'll do something creative. I'm not for sure if it's going to be in the footprint space, but he'll do something unique and creative. And then my two younger ones are in high school, so they haven't quite defined what they want to do.

Sure.

If you asked me in high school, I'd had no idea.

What would you have told yourself in high school if you knew what you knew today? What would you tell yourself back then?

I would have really been happy if I had known my career to go to Intel. I loved every minute at intel and that I was going to go innovate and create and learn so much and then be able to come do what I'm doing today, I'd have been really happy with that career path. But as a high school student, I think I wanted to just be an athlete.

Okay.

Yeah, I just wanted to be, you know, I was like, you know, play sports. But that quickly changed when I saw that I can make money.

Money changes at all. Talk to me now. So when you were starting this out, you mentioned a little bit about Yoka already. It sounds like you had to do some influencing to get him to join you. What was that journey like?

Yeah, so we were, we were at intel together and he's more pragmatic than me. Right. So he's got a much bigger brain. But, you know, he needs the data and information and he also knows, you know, he needs. So he needs to see the steps, like, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? And so in. It had to be hard, right? So when you, when you first, when I'm telling him, hey, we're going to make, you know, bowls for, you know, conagra and new macaroni and cheese cups. And you look at it, you're like, I'm going to make. Go from making semiconductors to that. The technology itself, when you look at it, isn't really sexy. The problem is sexy. And in the science, to deliver a solution that works and competes with plastic is really exciting. But the actual product itself, when you look at it's not that exciting. At least what we chose to Tackle and eliminate plastic. So I had to convince him that it was going to be hard. I had to convince him because he wanted it to be hard. Right. And then once I convinced him it's going to be hard, I had to convince him that we were going to do this globally, we were going to create a multi billion dollar business or we weren't going to do it because it wasn't worth it. We were doing that at Intel. So why leave, you know, why leave intel to go do, you know, do something that, you know is going to be on a minor scale? We had to think, you know, massive scale. And from day one, you know, I think if we told board members from day one what was actually in our head, we were going to do what we were going, what we're doing today. But I think if we told them that, that they would have been like, oh, that you guys are crazy. But we've always had a vision that, you know, we're again, to reiterate where we're at, we're, we have almost 2 million square feet in Mexico. We're working on securing another million square feet in Mexico. We have two factories in the United States. We're building two factories right now in Poland. Factory number one will be online into this year. And then we're looking at Spain and Thailand right now as well. So if we told them that we were going to this is the scale, we thought from day one, our board would have been nuts, but. So back to your question. I had to convince him, this is the scale. This is what we are going to do. Because if it wasn't hard for him, he's disruptive. If he gets bored, he's disruptive. So I had to make sure. I had to tell him he wasn't gonna be bored. Yeah.

Did you ever have those moments, either one of you, where you second guessed this for a minute?

No, I don't think we ever have. So I've known him since I was 23, so 27 years. And we've had one argument. 27 years. And so, and it was early on in this, we were arguing about one of our investors was kind of a pain in the ass. And it lasted like 20 minutes. And we went to lunch. It was completely over. And I think we laughed about it. But no, I don't think we ever second guessed it. There's certainly times where you're frustrated. I mean, the market today is frustrating. Right. And we're Ipoing right now. Right. So we're going out right now. And so that's Frustrating. It's out of our control, but I don't think we've ever second guessed it.

Also very cool that you guys show up every day in flip flops and shorts. As cool as you are. Dan Henderson and I talk about that all the time. We're like, man, what did we do wrong that you guys get to show up and flip flops and shorts?

Create your own company. You set the rules, right?

That's right.

So when we go on the factory floor in the labs, we have to put shoes on.

Sure.

So I got shoes in my office, but yeah, it's Arizona. It's hot. Right. We don't want to constrict your brain by making you wear shoes or I'm.

All there with you. I like that.

I'm from California too. Right, Right. So, I mean, I moved here when I was 14, but in California, we never wear shoes. We were barefoot everywhere.

Well, what caused you to move here from California?

My parents got divorced and moved. I had an uncle that lived here, and so my mom wanted to be close to her brother. And we came out and actually we were in Mission Viejo, so we were right near the beach in all, you know, just from an environmental perspective, you're like, wow, leaving the beach and then coming to Arizona. But the people in Arizona, my classmates, my friends, everything were far better people than when I was going to school. It was a great move for me. I love the people. I went to Mesa High School, and the people were amazing. My friends were amazing, great kids. California at the time, when I was 14 years old, was really hung up on material things, and kids here weren't. In fact, I tell people all the time, the kids here, you know, if they had money, they're like, that's my parents money. I didn't earn it. And that was a different approach in California. It was like, you know, you know, if they had money, it's their parents money, but they act like it was theirs.

Right.

Like, Arizona kids were like, you didn't do anything. You know, you got. You go on your own money. Right. And I thought it was awesome. I. It took me no time. I didn't miss California. The kids here were unbelievable.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I love looking to the future. So what's your future look like? What do you got ahead of you?

Well, most immediately, we got to get this, you know, the IPO completed. So we chose the SPAC process, which is taking a beating. But all IPOs. 88% of all IPOs in the last year underperforming. Right. Their, their initials. So, and a lot of that's their own doing, you know, so footprint's got to control their own destiny and execute on what we've told, you know, shareholders that we're going to do, which is basically we got to support our customer. So most immediate, it, it's, we're, we're focused on the obviously global expansion, you know, supporting our customer. And for me, I think, you know, as I mentioned to you, the most environmentally impactful company on the planet's footprint, we got to let the world know that that's the case. I'm super proud of that. When we say that, I believe it. I think the data supports it. It's not like I'm telling you, hey, I'm starting an EV company and you got to argue, well, aren't you guys mining lithium and you got some 12 year old kid in the Congo, you know, we don't have any of that. We are getting plastic out of your body. So it's like eliminating smoking as well as having a massive climate change impact. And none of it's debatable. Our stuff doesn't sit in the ocean and float around. It's better for you. And turtles could eat. Like there's nothing debatable about our technology and our impact on the planet. So we clearly know we're the most environmentally impactful. So the future for us is that everybody knows that. And for me, it's exciting to let everybody know that and let everybody know that that's here in Arizona. We created that here in Arizona. This didn't come from, it came from Silicon Valley origins, but it came from Arizona.

Well, and you're on the right track. So what does it take to get a naming right, the naming rights of an arena?

A lot of money. It's, it was, you know, when you think about it, you know, where we were in stages of a company is probably premature for us to do that. But when we started talking to the Suns, the idea was we wanted to help the stadium with just materials, right. And change the waste profile of an event in stadium and use them as kind of like a partner to, to do that. And as we're walking through that innovation and changing that and that becomes worse. We're a supplier, so we can make money on that, but also innovate and learn as well. And then it just turned into, hey, you know, they're having a change in naming rights, partners. And then we're thinking about, wow, we could do this. And it's, it's a very, very unique deal in Sports. We actually, you know, could make money buying, doing it and just by immediately announcing it and announcing what we're going to do for the sun. So it'll take some time because they have contracts with material suppliers, but we're going to see in the next three years some major innovations first around materials and then just around, you know, how certain what do you bring into the stadium, such as water bottles and eliminating them and different ways of getting water to consumers and, and then waste, how you manage waste and you know, you know, eliminating, you know, a lot of the. Just go into a landfill and start thinking about first changing the raw material and then changing the waste stream. Like can we do dehydration and if we dehydrate the food and you know, the footprint material together is it, can we upcycle it, can we bring it to farms? It's full of nitrates, it's rich. Right. So those innovations changes around material and then ultimately we want to change, you know, their energy source as well. Right. That's, that's what we do. So it'll take a few years to do all those things. But the Suns are unbelievable. I mean they're just unbelievable. Not only they're obviously on basketball, performance has been great, but the, the leadership team is unbelievable. It was nothing like what I expected. They are in Robert and his team are just open to footprint. Like take a shot. Take a shot.

Well, you couldn't, your timing couldn't have been better. Amazing.

Got so lucky. We got so lucky. But they have. And hats off to, to Robert. I mean, James Jones is amazing. His business team is amazing. They have real vision and they give us real freedom to innovate. I mean they have constraints from their materials contracts today and that will work around and we have constraints from ability just what materials we have available and. But they're really open to doing the right thing and taking at risk and in some cases it might mean revenue impacts to them. You know, if they eliminate water and those things and they're open to it and hats off to them. They're unbelievable. They have an unbelievable leadership team there. I was surprised as we dug in just how great in depth they have. Tons of leadership depth.

Yeah, that's good to hear.

I think they're going to have a lot of success as long as James Jones is there. They're going to have a lot of on basketball, on the basketball floor success for a while. He's in Monty. They're really, really good leaders. I think we can learn a lot from their leadership.

Yeah, I think as A spectator. You can pick up on that real quick.

Oh, yeah, you certainly can.

Absolutely.

Well, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you sharing with us and telling us your story and a little bit of your background and how you got to where you were. I've been fascinated to hear this, so thank you for that today.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. I told you I talk a lot.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for spending some time with us.

Thanks for having me.

Indeed. So this was another great episode, and thank you for being here. If you like this show, subscribe to our tribe so you can have more episodes brought to you every time we launch them. Thanks for being here today. Guiding growth conversations with community leaders.

Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast?

This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us. So I think there's many opportunities at hand. Whether you want to again be on the show. Reach out to us. Let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.