One Thing CEO’s Have in Common is That They Worked Stupidly Hard with Chris Volk

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. I'm talking with Chris Balk. And now Chris has had one success after another in business because he took the time to get educated, to study, figure things out, and then work on a pattern. You know, follow winning patterns. That's what I kind of see with you. You know, you had a logical approach. You know, you got in a position where you could analyze companies and that's how you wound up with a value equation book. But you talk about four years at Georgia State part time going down there to get your mba. That's a slog. Driving downtown through the Atlanta traffic and going to class for four years. You were a determined young man at the time. What led you up to that point, Chris? When you, how. What got you up to that point to where now I'm going to go get my mba. This is an essential next step for me. Enough to where you did four years of putting yourself through the price.

So I just talk a little broader than that. I mean, when you interview a bunch of CEOs or business leaders, one of the things that they all have in common most likely is that they just all worked really, really hard to get where they are. I mean, actually, they almost worked stupidly hard to get where they are, you know, and you might have done exactly the same thing. And you go, what drives these people to work so stupidly hard? Like, I mean, I wasn't the guy who was sitting there waking up every day saying, what's my work life balance kind of stuff. I mean, I was, I was just working all the time. And, and so what causes somebody to do that? And I would say in my case, it's that I graduated from college in the middle of a recession, big recession. It was 1979, 1980, and which is pretty much about as bad as 2008 or 9. It was. And we were in hyper. Getting the hyperinflation. Prime rate was hitting 21%. And I had a European history and French degree and not a single business class. And what was that?

Your, what was that again?

I had a European history and French degree that was.

Yeah, that was going to prepare you for, for a lot of success in business.

Well, you know, I would, I would say for, for those people chuckling on the phone, I would say the good thing about that kind of stuff is it teaches you how to Write. And it teaches you also that the world doesn't necessarily work. Right? I mean, it's not linear, and there's a lot of ambiguity. And oftentimes I find with people that major in just business, they sometimes don't work. They sometimes don't write very well, don't present well, have a hard time convincing people of other ideas, and they somehow think the world is fairly linear, you know, and it's all going to work just perfect, you know, but it. But of course it doesn't. None of this stuff happens. So if I got something out of my liberal arts degree, that was it. But. And also an understanding of how to learn. Keep learning. But anyway, so I get out of college and I apply to companies, and back in 1979, there's no email, there's no nothing. I would go down to the public library, I would look up companies, find out who they were, you know, what they did. I would. I would send out letters to them, and I had to hand type every one of them, and then they'd have to hand type them back to me. And I basically came up with 300 rejection letters somewhere in that neighborhood. And. And so I realized that I wasn't all that important, you know, and I. 300. Wow. Yeah.

Congratulations.

Yeah, Congrats.

That's doing it big. Yeah.

Oh, no, I did it big. And the thing was that I was so desperate by the time I was getting, like, the 300th or 250th of them, that I probably would have almost taken any job like I was. You know, I just needed a job pretty badly. And I. So I ultimately decided that I was the best thing that happened to me, in a way, if I got lucky. And then one of the biggest lucky things that happened to me was that I got turned down. And I had a chance to sort of sit back and think, okay, what do I want to do? I decided that what I was going to do is I was going to work selling clothing at a men's clothing store, and I was going to start putting myself through business school, and I started taking accounting classes at night. And my goal was to work for a commercial bank, because if I could work for a commercial bank, my view was that I might like banking. But the next thing was I would learn a lot about business, and I knew nothing about business. And I came to realize I just knew nothing. My 300 rejection letters showed me I know nothing. I was able to get a bank convinced to hire me. It was a regional bank in Atlanta, Georgia. I worked there for Six years. And when I worked there, I worked stupidly hard. I went to business school at night till 10 o' clock at night. I became a financial analyst. I became a credit geek. I became really good at reading financial statements, which I'm still good at. And along the way I decided that banking had been fun, but I wanted to go do something else. And one of our customers had been a company that did real estate investing and, but they were really a finance type company, having these tenants that were fast food franchisees at the time and, and they needed to have somebody put up their money for their fast food restaurants. They just didn't have enough and they couldn't borrow the money easily. So. So this company was based in Arizona and I was 29 years old. So I packed up my bags with my wife and Hollis and I moved out to Arizona and moved there in 86. And from there I was able to ultimately help take that company public. And then I started two other public companies and I was president or CEO of all of them and on the board of directors.

And it seems like a big jump or a smooth jump to where you're working there, and then all of a sudden you're the natural CEO choice at all of these companies.

Yeah, well, you know, you know, life doesn't always work that way. But I would say with the first company that I did, we had an issue where we ran out of money to invest in the late late 80s. And so another gentleman and myself were given the opportunity to go out and raise capital from pension funds. And we didn't know really what we were doing at all, but it was a tremendous opportunity and I learned an awful lot from it. And I also gained a lot of relationships with pension fund investors and I learned what they were interested in. And as I'm doing this, I realized that perhaps the best opportunity for the company at the time was was to take our assets and list them on the New York Stock Exchange. So I went into the gentleman who's the CEO at the time, and I said, I think we should just take all of our assets and list them. And ultimately that's what we did. And it took two years and I led the process. So like a lot of CEOs, I got the job because I was the guy who had the solutions. So. And I came up with a solution for the business and then knew how to run it after that. And we ran it up until the time we sold it to GE Capital in 2001. And it was the largest US real estate investment trust that did Leased assets on real estate to middle market companies. And I was a GE for a year and a half and left to start with a gentleman from our first company. He and I started the second company and took that one public. And then later on I had a team of other folks and I started a third.

Well, you went through 300 rejections, but were you applying for positions using your history and literature degrees or just anything?

Oh, it's anything. I mean, I was applying to advertising agencies because I could write. Okay. And I had some experience with publications. I was sending money to. I mean, sending resumes to publishing shops. Time magazine, Newsweek. I was. I even had resumes going out to Ralston Purina. I mean, I'm not sure done at Ralston Purina, but I mean, so, I mean, it's 300 resumes, Larry. So it's a lot, you know, so you're covering the waterfront. And I was trying my hand at a lot of different stuff because I didn't know really what I was really interested in.

Probably was a good experience in terms of formative thing for helping you sort through, be exposed to the waterfront and see what you liked more than others, you know, that you had the most curiosity about, you know.

Yeah. And I, at the end of the day, I realized that I knew so little that I needed to go into a place where I could get some training and some guidance. And so banks almost universally had training programs at the time. And so I joined one of those kinds of training programs. And. And I was adamant on being on the commercial side.

Let me ask you this, how, you know, people will take that for granted, but a lot of people don't realize they need more training. And like you said, but the light bulb went on. You didn't just say, well, the economy's down. That was it. You realize that. Or you came to the conclusion, I need more training and I need to get in the bank credit. Because a lot of people just don't think in terms of like, I've been to school, this, that the other woe is me. What can I do? But you said I need more training. What do you think compelled you to that conclusion other than couldn't get a job?

Yeah, well, when you're writing 300 resumes and you're realizing that you don't really know how to sell yourself and you don't really understand how you can add value to the businesses you're applying to, you realize that basically you have a void of knowledge. And so at the time I went to the bank, I was getting A little bit better at selling myself. And I remember meeting with a banker and he's looking at my resume and I should tell you that like my summer job experience was also kind of interesting. So I've been bartender in Germany, I worked in a hotel in Switzerland one summer. I worked on a cargo ship going to Africa one summer. So the guy interviewing me looks at me and says, well, this is just an amazing resume. What does it have to do with banking? And I said, I said, well, you know, I said I'm perfect for banking. I said, banking is a generalist thing. I mean, most of you guys in banking know a little bit about a lot of stuff. I said, that's perfect for me. You know, I like learning about a lot of stuff and I can absolutely do this. And so that's basically probably the line helped me get the job at the time. And over the years, I'm still a little bit of a journalist, but I've kind of specialized a little bit more. I've gotten pretty deep into the finance piece of it, but I still have a broad sense of interest in all businesses.

Yeah, that, that was pretty clever, by the way. Congratulations. That probably really, if you look back on it, Chris, that opened the door, that response, you know, all of that you'd put yourself through to get to the point where you had enough confidence, had enough insight to be able to bounce back with that answer. Really set up the rest of your life, don't you think?

It did, it did. And I, I try to pay it back to the kids today. I interview kids, I try to give them assistance. Help. I interview kids that are playing to the college I attended. And we've hired, when I was leading the company, hired no end of interns just because I think it's really important. And by the way, I had a weakness for liberal arts graduates. I mean, I would hire people that didn't necessarily always major in finance or accounting, even though we were sort of a finance related company, because I found I could teach them that. What I couldn't teach them was I couldn't teach them how to write and I couldn't teach them how to think and I couldn't teach them how to solve problems. I mean, that was a more abstract skill set and I couldn't really teach that so well, but I certainly couldn't teach them a work ethic, you know, and so if I found somebody that had a work ethic and had the ability to present and write and think, I tended to have a weakness for those kinds of people.

Yeah, fantastic. Insights, thanks so much for spending your time. And that's what, you know, I'm, that's what we do here, Chris, is create a venue where people can get exposure to these kinds of behind the scenes insight that, you know, because I'm sure a lot, you know, when you're a CEO, you're in a leadership position, you can be around people for 20 years and they really don't hear these kinds of conversations or hear what you have because when you're talking to them, it's about solving a problem, launching a new project, dealing with an issue. And these kind of things don't always come up, you know, the behind the scenes attitudes. And also I appreciate you sharing. I know the book's going to do well and what's next? What's coming next? Man, you're a high energy guy and you're sitting on a boatload of information. What you gonna do?

Man, you know, I don't know. I'm gonna think about this. I'm gonna do the. I'm spending a lot of time promoting the book right now because I think it's just, it's a mission, you know, this is not something I'm making any money off of, but it's a mission, right? I'm, I think it'll help a lot of people. I think it'll improve people's understanding of business. I think it provides information to business in a way that's, that's never been provided to people. And so it'll help change the dialogue. And then, you know, I have some ideas for starting a business and it just depends on how much I want to work. I'm not sure I want to do 100 hours a week anymore, you know? You know, so I've been doing 100 hours a week a long time, you know, so, so part of this is going to be trying to figure out how I can work in a different time time bandwidth than I have been used to.

Yeah, you can do that. You can do that and you will do that. Let's face it, you will. You got too much energy to be bored or go around and look at the scene. The sights are fool with the sand on the beach. You know, it's fun to make things happen, isn't it?

I mean, you've gotten a lot of.

Enjoyment out of success. Because when you are successful, like you say, all the millionaires that were created, I mean, there's a ripple effect of positive things that happen when allowing serious people to be successful and, and that wealth goes into their lives. They usually wind up doing smart things with it and it's a ripple. It sets off a chain of positive events. You've got to feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction from the successes you've had.

I do. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to step back from working and to be able to have time to write a book like this and, and to give back. I mean, I think it's just important. I mean, I think it's, it's important that we all make a difference with our lives to the extent we can. So. So the value equation is a piece of that.

Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute. Leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whiteallonwinning.com thanks for listening.