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Let’s go!

00:00:22,420
Welcome in to Behind the Brand Podcast. I’m Adam Hayes. To my right is my co-host, Bob Payton. In the middle is our guest today, T. Ray Phillips with Family Business Legacies. Welcome. Well, thank you guys. Appreciate that. Yeah. This is round. This is kind of what round two, if you will. Round two, two. Yeah. Round one with you, but round two with you. It’s kind of fun to be back. Fair. It’s always great to have you. Thank you. Appreciate that. So T-Ray, there’s more to T-Ray than meets the eye. Oh, gosh. Are you sure you only have an hour of a podcast for this? We’ve got as much time as you want. Is it like peeling lettuce or an onion? Well, there’s a little bit of both, right?

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It depends on whether you want flavor with a little tears. No, T-Ray is a family name. And in a granted and I’ll spell it because this is where everybody kind of gets is convinced that I’m lying. T. Ray capital R. And so he says, ‘Oh, well, the period.’ So what does the T stand for? I’m like, well, it doesn’t. It’s part of my first name. Well, but you have a period. I’m like, well, on my legal document, T. Ray, that is my first name. I have no middle name. And they’re like, ‘That can’t be. That can’t be right.’ And like, well, you’re right. The computers hate it, right? Whenever I try to put that in, they say, ‘I’m sorry, you need to enter in your legal name.’ I’m like, ‘That’s what my document says.’ It’s right here on my birthday.

00:01:44,640
Now, history behind it is my great-grandfather was Thomas Ray. His son was T-Ray, right, or his nickname was T-Ray, but he also was Thomas Ray. But the thing got around to where I guess he didn’t like you. He always went by T-Ray. And when my dad was born, so my grandfather was, you know, junior, Thomas Ray Jr., but my dad was T-Ray the third, meaning the ray got moved from the middle name to the first name, Thomas disappeared, except for the period, right? And away we go. So only make it more so. I’m the fourth. Even though technically I’m the second, right? Yes. Even though I’m the second. We’re from Oklahoma. We can do these things, right? You know, rules don’t apply to us.

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And then, so to only make it more confusing is when our son was born. We said, well, let’s move the Ray back to the middle name and bring back the Thomas. Our son is Thomas. However, well, Thomas Ray, but he is. But he’s the fifth, right? So we just said we’re going to keep the numbering only to make things better. Who’s the fourth? Well, at least you have a story behind it. We have a story behind it. What’s the most unique name that you’ve gotten called on a, you know, like a telemarketing call? Oh, well, okay. Telemarketing is a little bit different, but yeah, I mean, I get. Ray a lot. I get Trey a lot, right, if they don’t see the period or if it’s kind of close together.

00:03:11,390
But I will say, not necessarily telemarketing, what I get a lot of times is, oh, T-Rex. T-Rex. Yes, I’m a dinosaur. Can you read? Well, not just that, but there’s, well, sort of, and I kind of have fun with that. But I will tell you, this happened way back when I was a kid, right? So you call in those radio shows and say, you know, request line, and I’d say my name, like T-Rex. You know, well, evidently, you’re the musician. A musician, right? T-Rex, yeah. I don’t know who it is. I never listened to the guy, but whoever that musician was is T-Rex, and so so most will not— the dinosaur reference. They’re the ones in radio still reference the T-Rex. The musician. So I get that. That’s my most unique.

00:03:55,660
Okay. Otherwise, I’m the dinosaur. What’s the craziest name you’ve ever been called? That’s incorrect. That may not be appropriate for camera broadcast. All right. We’ll skip over that. Funny enough, my grandfather, because we’re from Oklahoma. His was Taylor A. And I think the A’s. stands for something, but I’d have to now go look it up because it makes me wonder if that’s in Oklahoma. There is a little bit of the two-name thing that was probably playing, you know, Billy Bob, you know. Yeah, Jimmy Ray, yeah, all those things right now. Let’s see, and again, I think I don’t think on T Boone Pickens, I don’t think the T stands for anything right, right? It’s a T. So we’re allowed to do that in Oklahoma.

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It just takes you longer to get things out, so you have to put letters and periods. That’s true. But here’s the other pressure it puts on me. I have a unique name. It’s one of those names like nobody forgets the name. Correct. That means I have to work three times as hard to remember everybody else’s name, right? I mean, it is a, I mean, it has been a lifelong exercise. I’ve got to remember their name. How do I, you know, so it’s. Well, I was probably better before I became a little older, right? And I started losing my brain cells, right? Maybe I’ve gotten worse at it over the years. We all had him as bearded men with hats. Yeah.

00:05:23,080
It’s still an exercise that I undertake of saying, ‘got to remember the name.’ Generally, if I don’t say that person’s name three to four times in the next first five minutes after meeting, I will have forgotten it. It’s gone. I think everybody’s got that way, but I know I’ve got the higher pressure because people will still remember me. Who was that? T-Ray. No, it’s not T-Ray. That’s me. Anyway. So family business legacy. Tell us a little bit about that. You know, we’re kind of like a restaurant where we just wait for you to take a drink or a bite of something. Did I ask that question? Here’s a sandwich. So Family Business Legacies, it was a – It started back in 1998.

00:06:05,540
So I had gotten into the financial services business in 96 after spending about four years in more of the health insurance world serving. You know, rural farming families or small businesses in the rural communities. And but I got— I wanted to be more kind of in the community here because I was always traveling, you know, more than an hour and a half outside and not really spending much time in Indianapolis. And so I got into the financial services, but two years in, you know, I looked back at the whom I was serving and who did I really enjoy doing business with. And it ended up being it was still privately held family-owned businesses. It was just, that’s who I naturally enjoy being around. Nothing against them.

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And there’s people who do really, really well serving them. I’m really not good with doctors and engineers. They need help just like anybody else, but I just, it’s just, it’s a connection. So that was a natural thing that kind of came about. And so I shifted my practice to become more intentionally concentrated on working with the owners of privately held companies. From that, it even narrowed it further down into construction, manufacturing, distribution, and some agriculture. There was some natural progression of aquaculture. And then I liked to stay within a predefined area so that I’m not, you know, again, there’s, I don’t, I don’t necessarily want to always travel. Three hours to go, see somebody. I will, but I’d rather not, because you don’t need to. Yeah, um, and so from there, I was introduced.

00:07:44,360
So I had my practice. It didn’t really— it wasn’t. It wasn’t the current name, the business of the current name that it is now, but I had been introduced while I was developing my practice to a group out of Oklahoma City. That my dad was affiliated with. My dad was a state and business planning attorney. And these guys in Oklahoma City had developed this workshop and service model to also work with family-owned businesses. And they called themselves Family Business Partners. And they spent a lot of time. Intentionally saying, how do we work with other advisors that serve owners and collaboratively work to help them through that? I’m like, well, shoot, they’re doing what I’m already doing up here. However, they just have a nice package around it.

00:08:27,760
And so I became Family Business Partners of Indiana. At first, and then I branched off from that to become family business legacies is what it is now. So I just changed the name, um, because it’s actually more descriptive. I think maybe, well, it is. Thank you, I mean, I think so too, um, but again, it was just you know, those. It’s just like all things that the brands they kind of develop and you know, you kind of kind of work through stuff it evolved, but again, family business legacies is truly what you know, what what I think represents who I like to serve. I mean, the owners we serve, because I serve the same, is they are concerned with the legacy, right? Even that becomes a challenge sometimes. That is on their mind.

00:09:15,090
Not necessarily the money is important, but the longevity of that business after they’re gone is always a discussion, whether it’s with their family or even not. Well, no, that’s true and I think you hit it very much on the head. Most would think, oh, you’re only working with businesses and the families, and wants to continue in the family. And that’s not really the case. It’s very few that actually are potentially even have the capacity to be successful to remain in the family. Right. But it is. Will the brand continue? Right. It doesn’t matter who’s running it. Will the brand continue? Right. And that really is more of the legacy piece. And then a lot of people say, well, I’m not really a family business. I don’t have any family in the business.

00:10:01,450
Family businesses are really more of the culture and the mindset of how a business will operate. And so I have found, which is, I think, to most owners Surprise, very big businesses are still very much family businesses by the way they run. By the way they interact or the culture they want for their employees, right? Family or otherwise. So anyway, yeah. Well, that’s kind of the beauty of a family-owned business as well, you know, being able to build the culture that you want your way and setting that, you know, vision. I think that’s also a lot of reasons why most family-owned businesses do not want to sell to third party. Yes, correct. And again, you’re going to make a lot of money. Of money, if you can sell to the third party, there’s gonna be no argument.

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If you’re attracted by a third party buyer, strategic or otherwise, there’s a lot of money on the table, and it’s sometimes very hard to think about walking away from. But it’s almost always the case with very, very rare exceptions. And I’m sure we all can have seen. Only those few exceptions where that culture does not massively shift when it’s a third party. Almost impossible not to in some ways. Yes. And then not just the. the company, right? It’s the impact to the community. Correct. You know, I was working with a company down in Shelbyville and it’s, it’s a third generation, you know, commercial laundering business. And it’s like, they would be a perfect candidate. I mean, Cintas is begging them to sell to them.

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But they knew immediately because they knew CentOS’s footprint and its distribution structure and its other operations. As soon as they do that, there would be 50 people. people out of a job in Shelbyville. And so that’s a pretty common scenario. I think that now that’s another element of legacy, right? Sure, I made a lot of money. I don’t mean me, but the owner. But now I’ve put 30 people out of work that are essentially I’ve always thought of as family myself. So that’s a big deal. It goes back to culture. It goes back to culture. So T-Rate, how do people come to discover they want to engage with you and use your services? What problems are they trying to solve for their businesses? Well, that’s a good question.

00:12:21,770
The most common one that I continue to see is the fact that an owner has been around. They’ve created something. It’s not like this isn’t like they started the business last year or even in the last five, maybe even 10 years, but it’s been operating now for a while. And they, they know. Um, I would call them they’re past the lucky truck stage, right? Is there still the ability of the business or the necessity of business to improve some operations and gain? Sure, that’s always the case. But there’s there’s now something there. And more often than not, they have had some peer close to them knowing to them that has had something happen now. It doesn’t have to be somebody’s physically an event. Right this could be another peer of theirs went bankrupt.

00:13:19,190
Another peer had suffered massively through some recession or some other event. Something major has occurred and it finally hits them. They say, ‘Oh wow! If that happened to me, how do I make sure I don’t have that outcome? Right, right. So those things become… just because that may happen doesn’t mean that they immediately say, ‘I’m going to go find somebody and start to work on this.’ And that’s sort of the, it generally takes a little bit of processing time. I would, you know, sometimes a couple of years before it eventually hits, but then they also recognize, like. I do love what I’m doing. I’m actually good at it. Or, you know, I have the energy to do this. But, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, I don’t want to be 10 years from now.

00:14:01,480
If I’m working my butt off like I am right now. I’m in trouble. This is not what I want to be. So I would say, there’s a whole lot of different ways. But those two types of scenarios— realization that one day I don’t want to be doing this, and/ or something happened to somebody else. And I don’t want that to happen to me. Those are very major catalysts. Where do I go? And a lot of times they’ll turn to their accountant or their attorney. And sure, they can put together some legal document or some accounting, some larger accounting firms have a business specialist inside of their operation. But I wouldn’t necessarily call either of those things truly. Legacy planning, business continuity planning. A comprehensive view of their life, I call it.

00:14:49,370
It’s absolutely correct. Full comprehensive succession planning, right? In a way that doesn’t look like, hey, you have to sell to a third party. Right. Right? Yes. Well, what did that make you just think of? Go on, Adam. Sorry. I just thought, oh, it’s gone. I’ll think of it later. So you’ve been doing this since 1998? Totally, yes. Yeah. So tell us about a couple of your favorite scenarios that have happened for you. And helping owners. Well, one of them is actually about to finish, like, within 30 days. And it’s not the one you and I are working on, right? Although that’s pretty fun. To. The one that’s finishing in about 30 days has been a company or a guy I’ve been working with for almost 12 years.

00:15:35,990
And I was invited in to, he was in a peer group, kind of like the ones we all have, sort of an ownership peer group. Call it like a vestige, if most people will know what that is. And I was asked to speak to the group on the subject of exit planning. And I have workshops that kind of introduce. What are the challenges and issues and what are some typical tools or processes owners should consider? Well, one guy started asking me questions, which, of course, that’s the purpose of this. Workshops right, that’s what they’re meant to be. It’s educational and, and it was. I didn’t intend it to come off this way, but it was, after, about the fifth or sixth question, I said, ‘You know what?

00:16:15,110
Here’s what you need to do: we need to go offline because you need to hire me. I didn’t plan that. I really didn’t plan that. I mean, I was not trying to be flippant. You spoke it into existence. I spoke it into existence. And to this day, he still tells that story. Like lovingly, he tells that story. Right. And so I work with. With him, and they’re actually, you know, they do, you know, it’s more of a service-based business, so it doesn’t exactly fit the construction distribution world, but it’s still a very good business. And so we worked through, and since then we’ve become very good friends. And I remember he had another advisor, more of an operational consultant, maybe more on the line. It’s kind of like what you do.

00:16:58,840
And he was convinced that his best salesperson, not salesperson, his best operating secondhand person, a woman, says there’s no way in the world she will ever be able to take over this business. And yet he had an instinct that it was. And so. So, working with them right over these last years, we have, we had, you know, she had her, she put challenge or he, he put challenges to her. Here’s what I need you to do. She met those challenges. She rose to the occasion. And they’ve had some pretty good reorganizations in their service industry model that they’re in. I mean, there’s been some tough times. And, in fact, about three years ago, they were like, ‘Are we ever going to actually get another engagement for work, right?’ I mean, it was kind of a scary time, and that’s not.

00:17:46,930
It was also 22. We all were having struggles then, but they were thinking the doors were going to be ending. And so we’re about to close on a deal, and the part I liked the most is that it wasn’t a, we told them, ‘don’t go get a bank loan.’ So if the bankers are listening out there, I’m not saying never get a bank loan, but I said this is not one where you want to get a bank loan. So we designed a very unique salary continuation model, smaller seller note, and some other incentive structures to where, and demonstrated to her financially, I’m saying, this is a better deal than a bank loan in all of these ways. And it’s a better deal in this case for the seller.

00:18:31,650
Now, granted, he could have had a – if he did get a bank loan, he’s de-risked, right? But even in his situation, he needed some other – He was going to have to carry a note. Yeah, he wanted— well, he would have— to have carried now, but he also would have probably not have been able to step away as cleanly or as easily or emotionally because he didn’t want to just be done. There was that type of stuff. So that’s a long, long answer. But I think it’s been, only because it’s recent, it has been the most enjoyable to see this come about, see her rise up. What period of time did this evolve over? 12 years, well I mean I’ve been with 12 years, but but it was it you know it was only um possible I would say in the last five because I had to work pretty hard with them to I mean You know, he was like very many other owners.

00:19:13,900
He had all of his eggs in the basket of the business. I’m saying we’re going to need to work to create wealth out of the business so that you do not. To sell for a lump sum cash. Which is highly unlikely anyway. That’s been fun. The other one is one that we’re going on to what I call stage two of the purchase. Manufacturing client up in Nobleville. He had actually reached out to me 10 years ago and we did some initial work, but he thought his daughter was going to come into the business and take it over. But that didn’t work out as well. But then I didn’t hear from him. And then, literally, four years ago, he called me back. Out of the blue.

00:19:57,370
And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, you know, how are you?’ And then he told me his story. And of course, unfortunately, and since that time his wife had died, the business had gone through its own. He had to step back in, you know, inject a lot of capital. But he had found two internal guys who really had stepped up to become really good, a good team. One was an operations guy, really operations and finance. And the other one was sales. And a great, great, great combination. And granted, massively different risk profiles. But that’s exactly what you need, right? I mean, you need these different risk profiles. And so. He was my client. The owner was convinced he needed to offer ownership to both of them and both of them had to accept the offer.

00:20:45,760
And so to have walked through with. He said, ‘I think if we go down that path, you’re going to lose one of the two and you need both. Right.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Why wouldn’t he want ownership?’ I’m like, ‘Because I don’t think you.’ You recognize the risk profile. That is not what he wants. And I had barely met the guy, right? I mean, I don’t mean the owner, but I just knew in certain conversations, like. He was not going to take it. And sure enough, what came out in the discussions was, if he had even hinted at it, his wife would divorce him, not support it. Any structure you’re just not doing that just not doing it right.

00:21:20,710
And and he said, ‘I just want to. I want to be paid well. I love doing what I’m doing. It’s really fun to be.’ And he really He changed internal operations, found all of the best improvements, and has allowed now the sales guy to just, I’m going to go sell crap out of this. And then we can process it through, and they’ve made themselves an extremely, extremely focused niche in the industrial manufacturing space. And to this day, what’s going on is they went from, literally, when I first started working with them, again, four years ago, they were maybe making $200,000 a year. They’ll hit over a million and a half in EBITDA, or in actual cash flow, not EBITDA, this year.

00:22:03,380
And so the fun part is now: how do we go through this next tranche? This next tranche will be the older. 75-year-old owner, how is he going to now truly start selling off his interest? Right. And so it’s, those have been super fun. To see those things come about, especially another demonstration internal purchases can work. Right, they have to be structured well. You have to have, you know, patient parties on all sides and don’t always listen to your advisors who say you need to go get a cash deal, yeah right, or go get a bank loan. Right. Because the bank and that bank, in that instance, when they were telling my client and the two guys. Even though only one was buying, we could 100% SBA finance this deal.

00:22:54,150
And I said, well, okay, let’s do the math. Maybe you can. I said, but here’s the problem. The minute something goes wrong, correct you’re done. Right everyone’s done right and you know my client would be done financially and all the other stuff sure enough, nine months after the first tranche was purchased by the one of the two guys, they went, oh, that’s right, it was COVID. No. So all of the supply chains. stuff post-COVID. It wasn’t 20. It was 21. But all the supply chain disaster. I mean, their business went near flat, which means, if it had been owned by the bank? The bank would have come knocking. Debt service coverage is out of whack. We wouldn’t, yeah. I’m like, guys, maybe you could, but it’s not a lot of credit.

00:23:37,300
Call your loan. Right. So I love— I mean, again, there’s always a place for a bank loan, but it was just more of in this discussion. It’s like there needs to be some level of flexibility, a lot of other options. We have to come to the table and be patient in the conversation. Right. Right. So I remember what I was going to ask you. Do you think owners go through? I don’t want to call them phases, but a timeline. where they are so heads down. And just cranking away, right? Doing good work, you know, making product, whatever it is. But they kind of just wake up one morning, I’ll call it. And one, they start thinking about an exit, you know, some future thing.

00:24:15,850
Um, where they truly just come to the realization that, holy moly, this isn’t a million-dollar or a half-a-million-dollar business anymore. It’s a five or ten or fifteen. And the weight of that kind of hits them. Do you see that? Happening as well was only because they all, almost all of them, are always heads down. Yeah, right. I mean, again, I mean, most, you know, I’m dealing, I’ve, I have. Of all of my clients, I’d say 30% are multi-generation type of places, right? But almost all the others are first generation. So therefore, every single one of them, we’re nose down, right? And when everyone starts out as chief cook and bottle washer, it’s a challenge. For them to say, how do I take off a hat? Right. Right.

00:25:02,810
And not just, it’s not, they don’t, it’s not, there’s some roles they don’t want to be doing, but it’s like their thought process is, I’m the best one at this. Right. I can’t take that hat off and watch somebody else struggle or whatever. Cause I can just do it better myself. Yep. And so it’s how do you take the hat off and allow that other thing to develop so you can keep stepping back. So, yeah, I see it all the time. Confirms my thought. That’s good. It’s fixable, but this is where. Delegation is not the same as abdication. And yet I think they have confused those terminologies that they think if they delegate something that they’re abdicating the responsibility.

00:25:45,540
Responsibility for it is right, and those are the barriers common almost always the barriers to where the reason the owner’s pretty good at it is they got to make mistakes now granted they they took they took risks they didn’t know they were taking risks right they didn’t see those risks in a moment you know I work with like you all do all the time and they’re they’re worth business-wise, millions and millions of dollars. But if we, let’s say, we mention the stock market, oh, that’s too risky. 90% of your wealth is the business. That’s riskier than what you’d be normally seeing in a stock portfolio type of thing. But, again, this is what they know. And so, therefore, what they know. for is no longer really risky to them in that same way.

00:26:29,910
That’s a great point. And the roles that exist comes in the same way. How do I take this? How do I allow somebody else to do it? And if I don’t allow them to do it without always fixing it for them, they don’t learn from those mistakes that the owner got to learn from. Correct. Huge benefit. That’s awesome so you’re you’re obviously very passionate about helping business owners, you know, whatever a legacy means to them, helping them create that outcome for them and their business. What do you do outside of that? I know you spend a lot of time running several miles a week. Tell us about that. The one that I got back into, so I was – the direct answer to that one is I’m a soccer referee. Right.

00:27:09,300
And that was a passion that I had to – I had to go back and feed after having hung up my cleats back after high school. I played soccer in high school. Well, actually, I played soccer. I played soccer all the way from sixth grade or six years old all the way up until high school, but then hung up the cleats— both playing soccer and refereeing soccer— as I got into college. Wow. And then fortunately, my kids loved sports, right? My son loves soccer, soccer, baseball. My daughter was softball. Well, mostly softball. She was not a soccer player. And so I got a chance to not only watch them, but then also coach them both, right? Sure. Coach my son in baseball. I could not be a soccer coach, right?

00:27:57,580
That’s the one thing I couldn’t do. I could play it. I just couldn’t coach it. Baseball I could coach. Softball I could coach. I got to do all of that. But obviously that amount of time growing up, you know, on top of everything else we’re doing. Oh, yeah. I couldn’t also now go spend, you know, on the weekends five or six hours refereeing soccer games, right? So as I saw my son’s, you know, sort of soccer career coming to an end, I’m like, I have got to get back. I said that all the time. I’m going to get back into refereeing. I’m going to get back into refereeing. What was the drive? What was pulling you to it? I missed it. Yeah, um, I mean, I missed doing it. I really did.

00:28:31,610
You know, it’d been high school. I loved doing it. Yeah, um, I mean, it really wasn’t the money it pays. Well, but it wasn’t the money. Maybe in high school it was. It is now. But the other one is being back and watching youth soccer. I love watching it. I mean, I love today watching these young kids play. And there’s some really bad talent and there’s some really good talent. And I don’t mean the MLS next or those high-level academies. I just love watching soccer. And if I can be in it, I mean, in many ways it is coaching too. And even though it’s not direct coaching, it is coaching. It is that relation because it’s community. communication. And I have many times in refereeing soccer, I’ve failed at communication, not only with a coach, but with players, right?

00:29:13,710
But then also it’s taught me a tremendous amount of how to even better communicate. Translates back into life, it turns back into communicating even with kids or my own kids and as well as even into the business world. Right there’s a paid exercise and there’s so yes. Now I get paid to go exercise. That’s it. Because it’s literally, especially if it’s a high-level game, even if it’s a U13 game, all the way up to UCF. If it’s a high-level game, I’m going to be in – if I’m running center, each game will be three to four miles, right? That’s the steps that I’ll put. I’m not always sprinting that much, but that’s the steps I’m going to – an A game.

00:29:48,120
Now, if I’m the AR, which is the sideline reps, those will be anywhere from two miles to two and a half to maybe almost three miles. I take, while I run more as a center ref, I hurt more as an AR. Because it’s constant use of the same muscles. It is, and you’re running at angle. Right, because you have to be, you know, you’re running this way and you’re looking this way, right? And again, you get to these, especially these 16, 17, and 18-year-old kids. Yeah. You’ve got to keep ahead. And I’ve got to keep with them, right? I mean, so some of it’s also a challenge, right? It’s kind of like skiing. I mean, that’s the other kind of thing. I love snow skiing and water skiing.

00:30:29,630
And, you know, I fortunately grew up, I got to ski a lot. So black diamonds, double black diamonds, let me at them, right? So today it’s more of a, do I still? Got this okay and so even in soccer when I’m running, whether it’s the ars or the center, it’s there’s still a bit of do I still got this? Can I keep up with these kids? I mean, granted. Trust me, I was never known as a fast. I’m an athlete, but I was not a fast athlete, right? But it has been somewhat of a joy to not only watch soccer, but say. I could keep up with that kid. That was pretty cool, right? Yeah. He’s still fast for me. If I had to do that all game, I’m dead.

00:31:06,300
Don’t put me on defense. Put me in goal. Yeah. So those are the kind of – that’s the pull. That’s the challenge, the excitement, and, you know, the ability to be known. And granted, I’ve also met a whole new community. One of the greatest things, because I’m from Oklahoma, so when I got here and then worked many years outside of Indianapolis, I realized in 1995, before I started my business. Financial services business like you don’t know anybody right, I don’t know anybody, sure. So some of my greatest friends and families that we’ve all connected with came from Little League, right? Little League Baseball, Little League Softball. Had it not been for Little League, as Broderick will have it, had it not been for that, I wouldn’t have known half of the people.

00:31:49,670
Than I know now in Indianapolis. And so all of those types of things. And now, so fast forward a little bit, the soccer community is now a different one. We knew a bunch of them. We got to know a bunch when our kids were playing. In the travel soccer community. Now it’s a whole different set of individuals on the referee side and the coaches. So knowing now a lot more ADs at high schools. The head coaches at some of these high schools who also sometimes coach travel soccer and then the referees— the camaraderie of the referees. I mean, I have four or five referees who are always asking, ‘If there’s a tournament and T-Rays on it, can we be assigned to go be together on a game?’ And it’s fun.

00:32:24,350
It’s like, ‘Hey, I know who that is. We can trust each other.’ And therefore, you know, some of them are not as. Some of them were faster than me and some of them were not as fast as me. But I know how to trust them because we’ve worked with each other enough. So that’s been the fun part. Nice. And if it’s not those types of exercise things—skiing, snow, or water skiing—I’m pheasant hunting. Okay, yeah. If I can find, if I could find quail up here, I’d go quail hunting too because that’s what that’s what all there was in Oklahoma. I love quail hunting, but there’s just not as many. But pheasant hunting, where there’s some good preserves, and I don’t mean to, you know, twist their head and shove it under the wing and throw it.

00:32:59,720
Underneath the bush, type of plant and hunt, but there’s some good preserves you know. About two hours from here, towards Ohio, and then down south, I haven’t been to the there’s a newer one down south in Indiana, I haven’t been to yet, but I’ve heard it’s great. Or I go up to Wisconsin, and some other friends, but my trip that I mostly enjoy the most is going out to South Dakota in a town. Near an Indian reservation, but essentially it’s about an hour and a half south of Pierre, South Dakota. It’s called Winter. Winter is the town. And so we are on a family, we go hunt on this. Families Farm, who they’ve created this all-inclusive three-day pheasant wild bird operation. Wild. There’s no planting here. This is all wild birds.

00:33:44,220
With dogs and a whole bit. So how did you discover you liked pheasants? Hunting so much, well, um, there was, you know, granted, whenever we would go, um, my dad had, in his world of estate and business planning, he. He was an owner of a part, really small owner, but he was part owner of a bank. He got into it because of the legal side he was in. And the bank was in Buffalo, Oklahoma. Buffalo, Oklahoma is within like three miles of the Kansas border. And so we’d go up and see the president of the bank, and then he’d take us all hunting. You know, we’d go quail hunting because that’s still mostly quail out there. But if you get just over the Kansas border, there’s pheasant, right? There’s some pheasant, right?

00:34:24,389
And so I got exposed to pheasant hunting through all of that. Those are big birds. Those are pretty cool, right? Not as many as [ the quail but there’s [because] as well there’s more if you go farther in Kansas or you go into you go into] North Dakota or South Dakota, there’s a lot more. Well, to me at that point, South Dakota sounded like oh you might as well take me to like you know Alaska, I mean that sounds so far type of thing. But my dad finally got, with all of his buddies, he went to this Jergensen family farm in winter, South Dakota. Through his accountant. So his accountant had all these doctors, and these doctors took him, the accountant, up and then invited my dad to go hunting one year.

00:35:03,080
And when my dad went to go hunting in South Dakota at this place, he came back and said, ‘T-Rag,’ guess what? You are joining me next year. So the legacy started under that side. And I happen to go probably at the prime, the absolute prime of any. Bird hatching population of pheasants there was um whenever we’d go quail hunting in Oklahoma you know of course you either have the quail or the metal larks because the metal larks look a little like or most a lot like quail the difference is they have some yellow color and they don’t flap their wings in the same way but it’s very easy to get confused Well there was a series of time in quail hunting I got to love quail hunting without the stories that my dad always told me about how many

00:35:49,940
quail he would find in Oklahoma and we’d go out we’d say one or two coveys in a in a morning right maybe 30 birds total right but it was a great walk but we’d always see meadowlarks I’m like these darn meadowlarks Can I just shoot these? Well they’re songbirds You can’t shoot songbirds Therefore the impatience of learning and all this other stuff I never got spoiled in quail or even pheasant hunting I just didn’t know what I didn’t know I heard stories but I never experienced it. That took me up that first year to South Dakota. And I have never seen more birds fly that I could actually shoot in my life. Right. I mean, they were just all over the place. In fact, there were a couple of drives that were, I mean, when I say drive.

00:36:30,400
or you’re driving or walking through corn or maize or whatever. There’s a couple drives. I was so overwhelmed because I’m like, I don’t know where to shoot because they’re all over the place. Oh, and by the way, you can’t shoot the hens. Quail, you can shoot both male and female quail. In pheasant country, you can only shoot, they call them cocks or roosters, but you can only shoot the males. Yeah, right. When you see hundreds of birds flying, you don’t know what you’re shooting at. Well, the good news is you can’t idiot. I had not had that much experience at that point. That’s why it’s so overwhelming. The roosters, the cocks, when they get up, they have a certain. Call right. So there’s a garbly call and it’s it’s very distinct.

00:37:14,230
They also have nine times out of ten they have a longer tail and so by recognition you and you do it but you have to see a lot of them at first to recognize it because these, I mean, quail get up and it’s you know it’s a you know it’s that pattern and if you get 10 or 50 of them it’s kind of startling because it sounds like a machine gun going off under your feet when you have a pheasant going up which is 10 times the size of a quail. Oh really. They flap in the same way as a quail does, but they’re bigger wings. So now it’s a really big machine gun. Right, it’s like a helicopter, but there’s five or six of them going off underneath your feet, right?

00:37:52,420
I mean, so it’s extremely startling, but it’s very thrilling. Oh, it’s all with a shotgun, so it’s all safe, right? It’s all really safe. I think I’ll stand back. What was it? Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney. So, yeah, that whole Dick Cheney story. Trust me, there’s been a lot. In fact, I even technically, I did shoot my dad in this exact pheasant hunt. No kidding. No kidding. No kidding. Not intentional. Sorry. So we’re in this particular field, and in this field, at the end, it kind of rose up, the hill went up. I’m at this back end and we’re called blockers, right? So we’re stationary and they are all spread out in a kind of a semicircle and they’re pushing their walkers there, but they’re.

00:38:41,370
Pushing all the birds here and so, as we it’s far away at first, I mean it’s you know, they start out half a mile away and they kind of walk through, but when you get to the to the end and we’re up here, and they’re down over here, the birds going up. You even if you’re shooting into the sky, they have to fall, you know. The bullets are supposed to keep traveling, they they’re falling. So I didn’t necessarily recognize, maybe, how close they were. And so when I pulled the shot, you know, again, you know, I heard this call from it. Ow! Shoot and sure enough, dad had some little red mark here, a little red mark here, you know. Corinne, outside the glasses, you always wear glasses, and he’s like, ‘But you know he had these pellet marks in here.

00:39:21,050
Not it didn’t it it it was a it was a scrape that’s a little close for company. It was. So, so therefore, I have to get the tweezers. No, it didn’t. He didn’t. Right. But I pulled the Dick Cheney. So I didn’t have any, nobody would go to the hospital. Waterfowl. No, I used, I mean, I have hunted waterfowl, you know, and the same as with like, you know, geese. Here’s what I don’t like. I’m going to call it deer or turkey. I mean, all these things, right? Because I know this is big deer land, right? A lot of people love deer and even turkey. Here’s what I don’t like. I don’t like going somewhere. And sitting in the absolute darkness in 30-degree weather or water, right?

00:40:05,620
You’re sitting in water, cold, when you can’t talk. Nope, right. And you have to just wait. You can’t move. Right. So again, I was where I was raised, quail hunting. You’re walking. I mean, you. You have to walk. I mean, I could go out and, good in 10 or 15 degree weather, pheasant hunting can be the same way. Sure. You’re bundled up at first. You go a couple of walks. You’re starting to shed clothes. I mean, you’re shedding as you’re walking. And you can talk. You can engage. You can see country. You see the dogs work. You see the birds fly. I mean, all this other stuff that is just cool. Right. And, and, and, and the, and the interactions amongst your other hunters, like, ‘Hey, don’t get up in front.’ So I don’t shoot you.

00:40:46,210
Right. Those types of things or stay back, or here’s how we want to navigate this stuff. Again, a lot more camaraderie people love duck hunting. I’m not going to say they love goose hunting. My one of the reasons I never will goose hunt again is the time I went as a kid. We went out to a farm in western Oklahoma and they had this concrete basin. Right. Again, concrete basin. Right. And so they had to stick it. And so they said, ‘Here’s. You know, bundle up and go sit here, lay down in this concrete basin to stick it over you and stay quiet. Right? And it’s again 25 degrees and it’s dark. I’m like, ‘This isn’t fun. No.’ And it’s cold. And it’s cold. So, again, that’s the main reason I don’t.

00:41:27,650
If somebody invited me, would I go? Sure. But it is not something I’m going to go plan a trip to do. Right. That’s just me. Switch gears a little bit. Okay. Family. Yeah. You got a DePaul legacy. I do, which I didn’t expect us to have a DePaul legacy. It’s definitely not a Wabash legacy. It is definitely not a Wabash legacy. We’ve made sure of that one, right? And nobody is also marrying others. There we go. I love that commercial. What is it, Geico, where the kid shows up at the door? Yes, with the dude. I should have paid attention, which I love it, too. It’s classic. So I grew up in, again, small town Oklahoma City or small school in Oklahoma City, but I’d gone to school with the same kids.

00:42:15,759
It literally sounds like preschool, right? I mean, same group of kids. And so your world’s a little small. And so when I got to graduation, our counselor said, ‘Where do you want to go to school?’ And I said, ‘Well, out of state.’ And when I say ‘out of state,’ I mean somewhere else. Somewhere where I can’t drive home in three hours, right? I mean, I just want to say I don’t want to. You look at the statistics today, most kids, when I say most, probably 90%, 95% or more will go to school within four hours of where they grew up. Another word for that, that’s just what happens. Happens. I knew I don’t know how. I knew I’m like— if I live, if I’m at school anywhere inside of that four-hour window, I’ll come home.

00:42:53,300
Yeah, right. Too often and I’ll miss the experience of crisis. So, out of state, liberal arts— where hardly anyone has ever gone to school— there from my high school, especially recently. And I could play sports. And our counselor says, ‘Well, of course, then you should go look at DePaul.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, sure, the Blue Demons in Chicago.’ He says, ‘No, which, of course, is what everybody is.’ I said, ‘So my joke now is, no, we are the winners, not the losers.’ So DePauw in Greencastle, Indiana. And, of course, I said, ‘Where? Where’s Indiana?’ And yet, which is really fascinating because one of my most favorite things to do as a kid growing up in the summertime was watch the Indianapolis 500. We’d go to the lake.

00:43:35,600
in eastern Oklahoma, and on Sunday mornings, we would flip on the Indy 500, not thinking the Indy 500’s in Indianapolis, which is, again, it’s just one. of those like how did how did I not know this is why they say kids just don’t have them they haven’t had their full frontal cortex develops how did I not know that so anyway um it was one DePaul was one of about eight schools I went to go visit, right, all out of state. And I clearly remember coming on campus with my mother, just driving on after seeing all of the other schools. And the other school that was anywhere close to it was Miami of Ohio. But I’m like, ‘Oh, this is it. I’m home.’ So my wife, I met there.

00:44:13,580
So she was a Navy brat. And so her dad retired from the Navy in 1986 and then moved from Virginia. They actually traveled all over the world. Hadn’t lived really any place very, very long because he was always being moved in the military. But they settled in Champaign, Illinois, because he was working for Illinois. Which is at Decatur, Illinois. And so she, my wife, Tia, she didn’t know of any other schools except her friend of hers or her mom’s that they had. met there and said, ‘You ought to go look at DePaul.’ And so her choices are DePaul and Bradley, right? And she loved DePaul just like I did. And so we met and we didn’t get married until two years after college. Right, so we were great friends.

00:44:58,410
I was a waiter at her sorority, right? So she married the help, right? So she married the help and then we had kids and we did stuff like we’d hosted one on telecast parties. And I still remember distinctly that we were hosting a telecast party and my wife was in the hospital having delivered our daughter, Audrey. On November the 13th. And that specific day was the Monon Telecast Party. I said, dear, are you okay? Good. So I got to go to the party because I’m hosting it, right? She says, okay. I’ll see you after. I’ll see you afterwards. And then our kids went to all these Monon parties and we took them back to go see it. And literally for probably 15 years, our kid says, ‘We’ll never go to the pub.’ We’ll never go to the pub.

00:45:41,020
And so. Both of our completely were convinced neither were going to go to DePaul. We thought Thomas was going to go to Worcester in Ohio because he enjoyed the coach out there. He was going to play soccer. Great. School, but he realized he was not. Worcester U got to be a very, it’s a very research-oriented college, which is fantastic. He and I walked through and we’re like, okay, these are not the same kids. I mean, it’s just different personalities, right? And we also thought our daughter was going to go to Wofford, which is all these W schools, right? It’s not Wabang. Anyway, so I was going to go to Wofford, which is in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And if you’ve never been there, Spartanburg is an incredible town. Sure. I’ve been there.

00:46:22,040
When all of us were like, ‘Oh, this place is spectacular,’ the town and the school, convinced Audrey was going to go there, neither of them said, ‘You know what,’ they said last minute, you know what, every time I would go look at some other school, I ended up comparing them to DePauw. And if I could pick it in my daughter’s specialist, if I could pick up DePauw and go put it in South Carolina, I would have gone there. Yeah. Right. But I just— I can’t. And so they both went to DePauw. So now we have, as of Sunday, our second child, Daudry, has graduated from DePauw, so we now have four DePauw folks. And her boyfriend, this is even funnier, this is where the small world of these schools comes into play, her boyfriend now of three years.

00:47:02,870
Is also a DePauw graduate who was a fraternity brother of mine. So he was a Phi Psi and I was a Phi Psi. However, his dad was a DePauw graduate. From our year in 1991. And his dad was a beta. So anyway, we still get along. Well, he did. We had to because, you know, his son. Um, was a five side. I mean, so, you know, he had to like me and all that stuff, but yes. And, and we love, we love both. He’s, and then my son Thomas, he’s been dating. His girlfriend did not go to Nepal, right? So that’s maybe we missed the whole legacy piece, right? But anyway. But also not Wabash. Also not. Well, it’d be hard for her to go to Wabash.

00:47:41,930
She could try to break the rule, but I’m not sure that would actually work really well. So. Anyway, long story on DePaul, but, yes, long legacy. I mean, there’s a lot of legacy families, but what I found is even more fascinating about DePaul is how many legacy families have been. Five-generation, so five generations of DePauw graduates. That’s really cool. It’s astounding. So to just be on the second generation is pretty cool, but it’s kind of like a two-time winner of the Indy 500 versus the five-time winner, right? There is a big difference. We’re getting there. We’re getting there. Well, T-Ray, thanks for joining us today. Absolutely. This has been an absolute pleasure. We can do this again whenever we want to. You guys, doing something for Memorial Day? Hopefully not.

00:48:32,200
That’s the goal. Cookout. Watch the race. Okay. I’m going to go to the race. We’re going to go to the race. No, my patio. I’m an F1 fan. I will tell you. I’ll tell you how it is. Well, that’s my son. He’s a huge F1 fan. So anyway, but thanks, you guys. I really appreciate it. This is fun. We’ll do it again. How do people get a hold of you? Oh, well, gosh, they need a hold of me. FamilyBusinessLegacies. com? Yes. So website, familybusinesslegacies, plural L-E-G-A-C-I-S, .com. Okay. That’s really the easiest way. It’s a website. It’s got my phone number on there, email on there, whatever the case may be. No, it’s not. Yeah. This whole episode thinking your name was Trey. That’s right. You’ve got to come up, you’ve got to buy the domain, t . ray. Oh, I do. Well, that’s a good idea, right? But then even the computers will still hate it. It’s got to be D-O-T. Yes. P-D-O-T. Troy Dutt, right? There is a story behind the brand, right? There you go. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. That’s awesome. Let’s go!