The Messy Beautiful Complexity of Leadership: AI, Private Equity & the Naples Dream

Unequivocally without a doubt, in my opinion, AI is going to transform how we do the business, how we do business. Now the math piece a lot is automatically computed. My opinion, I don't have a crystal ball, but if I'm looking in the future, I think it's going to allow us as humans to do more, produce more, probably with a little less human capital. So finding that balance of the right people. The beautiful thing is this country, you do that, you're willing to work hard and those that are are just born into less than advantageous situations. If we as communities can rally around that and help them out and the American dream is live and real. What do you see in this place?

And again, it's more like, yeah, but look at this place. No state income tax, sunshine, 300 plus days a year. Weather's fantastic. It's paradise, right? This can't stay deflated forever. Like people are going to figure it out. What vitamin D does to us as humans and the natural vitamin D you get from the sun. It's a wonderful thing. Just both in attitude and by my luckily and what it like how you feel as a human being. The sun is a very powerful thing. Professionally speaking, always kind of saying like, I won't interview anybody if they don't have over a 3.8 GPA. And I'm like, great, they're a test taker.

And maybe they're a super talented person, but I'll take a 3.0 with great character and hustle. And maybe they're just a terrible test taker than a 3.8. They're just going to expect the world. Like, yeah, that's a different, different person to me. And there are systems that were where person A at the 3.8 works out. There's a system where, person B in a 3.0, but has immense character and hustle works out. What makes a man walk away from the prestige of Ernst and Young and Deloitte, two of the world's biggest accounting firms to pursue work that means something?

Today's guest, Michael DeLuca, principal and head of industries and advisory at HBK CPAs and consultants, reveals the kind of wisdom that only comes from choosing substance over status, relationships over transactions and community over comfort from his daily technology free wine walks with his wife, Edie, to mentoring at risk youth through take stock and children to serving on the board of better together an organization, keeping families out of the foster care system. Michael embodies a rare blend of big four excellence and genuine human connection in this deeply personal conversation.

He shares how a CPA can change lives by showing up with empathy instead of spreadsheets. Why he'd rather hire a 3.0 student with hustle than a 3.8 test taker without character. And the profound truth that in our non binary world, the real art isn't in having all the answers. It's in helping people discover their own God given potential while walking beside them through this messy, beautiful complexity of building both businesses and lives that matter.

Get the other people get the experience too, which by the way, your wife is Edie has a day of pampering on us because you got the shaved look so you could get my hair's a little my hair's a little limited for the work that you all do.

So she has a day of pampering. So we have to make sure that we get her to come in and just be treated like a princess and get any services she wants and be part of our for taking care of. So she was a CPA too. Yeah, still is still credentials. She doesn't practice in public accounting. So how did that two CPAs together so to overly analytical minds or what is it? What how are you different in that? Yeah, I mean, both of us are very analytical, but I would also say that we complement how we think to I'm probably the more analytical one when it comes to that. Her mind thinks like an attorney. And so she that's that's always how she thought.

Yeah, that's one of the first times I ever met my wife. And she told me the same because she we were both coming out of other relationships. And we meet each other sparks flying. It's a this at school is that Ernst and Young. So it's our, it's our first real job adult job coming out of our respective master's programs. And we both started Ernst and Young in Atlanta. And so I met her there. And one of the first times that we really spent one on one time together, she said, Look, I want no funny business from you. You don't even have to like worry about making a pass or try it me. I'm going to be here two years and I'm going to law school. That's my that's my life plan.

I was like, Yes, ma'am, that sounds like a great plan. I understand where where I stand in, in your priorities or whatever this is going to go. I'd rather know where I stand now, right? Then they go down the path. But like I said, sparks flew and one thing led to another and just we immediately fell in love with one another. And again, she thinks like an attorney. And she specialized her career there for a good while and forensics and litigation support, expert witness witness testimony. So she has a completely different mind than I do, even though we share a same professional credential and see.

Okay, so there's a lot of different avenues within a company like that, that you could take the And your analytics to them and yours was what was your like specialty that you My specialty was always really strategic business consulting with a tax emphasis to so came up in the tax world, but really always try to spend a conversation leveraging my MBA and master's program. I just loved general business and trying to maximize whatever potential and whatever that owner wanted their business to be or not be right and still try to do that to this day.

And that's my whole philosophy, just try to get the most God given potential out of whatever you want in your life, meet wants needs goals. And let's see if our skill sets can vary to achieve those. When did that

Become obvious to you that was your passion? Even at a young age, I would say I don't mean that lightly, growing up through athletics and playing competitive and through division one baseball, I always loved leading people. And it wasn't from a altruistic selfish perspective, it was I just generally loved being around other talented people. And hopefully I get, they looked at me as a leader and wanted to step up and was never afraid to kind of be the voice within the huddle or voice within the field. And from that point forward, I just carried that over to my professional life whenever the academic or the athletic side started the way. Yeah, right.

And I just knew that at some point I wanted to be an owner, I wanted to lead teams of talented people, and always try to continue to maximize whatever it is and whatever abilities I had, if I could share those and had helped another human being, then I think that's my mission and purpose in life. How did that thought process what guided you to accounting in undergrad or whatever area you started in? I love math. I love math. I was a nerd at heart. Even as a competitive athlete, I was just a big nerd. Yeah. And so I just always loved math from the time I was five years old.

And I remember my mom sitting down with me and she would go to, I was in public school at the time and she would sit down and after hours and she's like my child is like getting anxious, he wants more schoolwork, something's like wrong with him almost at, a five, six year old boy that wants more schoolwork and he just says he wants more math. So the teachers would send like extra homework home even at that age just to do math and she would sit me down and I'll just do math. Was your mom a teacher too? She was not. No, no. She got her degree in public health and I'll call her just a master networker. She did everybody in town.

She worked in banking, she worked in sales, she worked in, business development. She just never met a stranger and is easy to like in the professional world. And yeah, that was her. So she has a teacher's heart, I think. Okay. Okay. But never really. I mean, she did some substitute stuff and she did teach like when she was in her twenties, but I think she always just carried that forward with us. And it's you and your brother. Yeah. Brother. And you're the older, younger, older, by six and a half years, six and a half years older brother. Okay. So you're this math, you just got to have math. Math was your thing. You're just all over math.

I remember our CPA from many years ago for our business was concerned because he was when computers, I think Peachtree software was one of the first ones. It was like this first accounting software that he was concerned that the accountants that he was hiring were just going to rely too much on the computer and not know the math behind everything that was going on in accounting. It was his big concern that he had a fear of that going into the world. And, he was getting accountants or people out of schools. They didn't know what was behind the behind all what the computer was doing at the time. This is many years ago. So, but now with the advent of AI too, how is that?

I don't want to get off track with it, but I'm AI fascinates me, especially around that. No, let's go there. What is that? What has that been like for you in your world?

Yeah, I mean, it's such a buzzword that's going on in the corporate world right now. And there is unequivocally without a doubt, in my opinion, AI is going to transform how we do business

On the commercial side. And the power of computing, so the fear of your CPA at the time, like now the math piece a lot is automatically computed, right? Whether the software that exists, even pre-AI, now you got AI and what that can do on top of that. We are as a firm, we are extremely aware of this. I think a lot of individuals in the corporate world, like what do I do with AI? I don't even know how to implement this a lot of times. And I think it will, transition to the back office operations, a lot of what people do and help out with that.

I think my opinion, I don't have a crystal ball, but if I'm looking in the future, I think it's going to allow us as humans to do more produce more, probably with a little less human capital. So finding that balance of the right people, I know we're continually trying to change our training programs internally at our firm, at least, to we got to get people back, people facing, right? So we got to get our team members, people facing relationship based, not as much of transactional, focus on numbers. And that's it.

Yeah, we got to have a different level of EQ and a different level of understanding with our clients, because I think that, in my opinion, is a little bit more AI proof. Yeah, right. Is AI going to be able to transition the nonverbal communication and EQ of us as humans and that kind of side of our brain computing power? Maybe at one point, probably a scarier thought than what people want to go down. Yeah. But to me, I think it's we are more embrace AI. And how do we leverage this to maximize production and get our people focused on probably what our clients want the most anyway, as more human interaction and in more touches? What does that look like? What does that mean?

Like, client interaction, human touches. But tell me about what that is for you. I think it's getting out from behind a computer. I just call it old school, like go to act how business was probably done. I wasn't born, but I got to imagine from stories I hear back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, when it was I'm with this person because I trust them because they show up. Yeah, like they answer my call. They show up in my business. I have a deeper relationship and trust level with them. And that's something that I feel like as as great as the advent of the internet and a lot of the other things that branched out of there with social media and other channels.

It was wonderful in one regard. But that human touch and human element, I think we have sacrificed a lot on that front to really build, especially in the professional service world that going back to like the basic human element of connection. Yeah, that's awesome. I really love that I have had in the last since COVID actually an entirely new relationship with accounting and business. I mean, I know it was always a necessity. But when I heard the term CPA, it was always just related to taxes and year end stuff and not anything operation visors calculators like kind of a little bit more nerdy. And yeah, yeah, and I had this kind of breakthrough happen during COVID.

And I'm so grateful for the YouTube algorithm. It was at the beginning of the shutdown when we knew we were going to have to shut down. And they were talking about this PPP and you know how to get it and all that was in being it was March of 2020. And I happen to be trying to get information off the internet. And there was this CPA in Oklahoma, made a video for his clients in Oklahoma, but somehow the YouTube only had 20 subscriber, the algorithm showed him to me and he was just sharing about how to go through the process of the PPP.

And, he was confident if if Pelosi passed it or the house path, he was just guiding us to his clients, not me, I wasn't his client, I happen to write start writing some comments. Because I was nervous thinking, how are we going to pay, we pay people by salary, how are we going to make payroll?, scary, it was an interesting time. Yeah, it was a few months. And he was just he responded at 2am to my messages, and we started chatting.

And he ended up making more videos, and we ended up talking more and his his guidance was a voice of comfort, it was just like, I there was some certainty and some security and some, I had faith again, like he really, I never forget the conversation I had with him at three o'clock in the morning. I was like, Thank you, God, you sent this man to me to, I wasn't his client, like he had no business talking to me, like he literally was just trying to help his own people. And he literally saved our life, the lives of all of us. I really believe that because I was just I was a mess. And I was just terrified.

And, this human, who, like you said, was, not talking to me about taxes, or he was just comforting me like, it's going to be okay. Here's the plan. Here's how it works. I'm going to help you fill it out. He just he just was guiding me as a business owner. He did some things were very interesting, because he would started doing these calls. And he would these live video

Events on YouTube. And, he just let anybody go in and watch. And he would just talk about what to do, because we're close for 56 days. Well, what to do is we'll go into your business and just walk around. It's empty. It's closed. But go in and just he just gave us little things to fill our minds with to get rid of the fear. And it really what you were sharing it was exactly it embodied that, like it was a different relationship with somebody who he took away my fear of the IRS, I've had this lifelong fear of the IRS, just any letter from the IRS, I was terrified of even if it was just a change of address thing, just whatever it was. So I love hearing that story.

And I love hearing that someone who is not even remotely here had no alternative motive to get your business or anything else just was helping a fellow human being a fellow that to get better and to work through that. And I appreciate you sharing that story, because I feel like you as a business owner, and sometimes owners get the bad rap. But I see way more especially in beautiful communities like we have here in Southwest Florida, they wear business owners wear their business, their people on their sleeve, they take that home at night, they stay up at night, they worry about these things. And that's the beauty.

And that's exactly why I work for HPK now, not even a bigger firm, because that's our clientele, we deal with them and it means something. Yeah, when you're having those conversations, and you're having those relationships, you're hoping that it's just not a one on one as a business owner. And, a client, professional advisor type relationship, that we know, they are really taking that to heart, we're just trying to better not only their life, but really, it's all their employees, team members, everybody in their sphere network. Yeah. And that to me is a powerful tool. Yeah, right.

When you have any sort of profession that can be able to do that, and you concentrate on that, it's powerful. Yeah, I'm reaching a lot of people. I'm moved by thinking about it right now, like going back to that and just the humanity of that human like that. I love that man. He's one of my best friends now. And, he's just he's always been there and just but just that just gave me a whole new view of that whole profession and what is available and, just it was life changing for me.

And I'm grateful for that because I when you shared that it just it was like, wow, that's that's what I experienced what you're talking about, like I had to experience that side, not just sign this at your end. And this is what it means. And it was a whole different way. It was so I love hearing that's what I saw that a couple times that whatever God given talent you have, you want to bring out the best to be some I'm paraphrasing, but some version of that is your sort of your mantra. That's my personal mission. Yeah. That's why I wake up every day. And some days I fall well short of that, right? We're human beings, but doesn't change the rightful path. Yeah.

So you work with these because you were like

Top of your class, obviously, and everything you did, you were mag mag, the what is it, top 5% is that what magazine? Whatever the Latin terms they throw behind there. Yeah. So, so you go to work at the Harvard of business, like Ernst was Ernst. Yeah. So what does that mean in the world of to have that as your on your resume to be somebody who's been there? Yeah, the brand names of, I worked, with Ernst and Young, I did another stint with Deloitte. And it's two of the, four biggest accounting in financial firms in the world, right?

And to have that on your resume is just a stamp of approval of what you were, in my opinion, at that point in time in your life, but can never take that away. It just is kind of, okay, they believed in you enough, as the largest firm in the world that they gave you a job. So you got to have some chops to you, right? No matter where you go and in life, I had great experiences. They work you like a dog. It's, especially then and going through the financial recession.

When I was with those firms and working with financial institutions, nonetheless, at that time, it was it was a lot of long hours, you had to roll up your sleeves and do the work and 7080 hours almost year round was the commonplace in the norm. It's it's an unsustainable lifestyle. Yeah, junior 20s and accelerates a lot of learning path. Yeah. I said this was at a time when the world was in a major crisis, right? Major crisis, right? So I mean, my first love what I tell people, the biggest compliment, by the way, that somebody can give me is you're not like most CPA's. I appreciate that. I want to try to change that marketing around the professional CPA's.

My first love was finance. Again, I'll go back to my younger younger years where I was, I said I was a huge nerd and I keep saying it, but at the age of three and a half, I was able to read and my parents would send me down, I would literally wake myself up, I go down, fix myself a bowl of cereal, and I read the sports page, right? But on the back of the sports page in Lexington, Kentucky at the time was the was the business section, it was like a three page business section and always had the stock market movement as the last page.

So I would literally just sit there and analyze stock market movements and I would pick, I didn't know what I was looking at, but I'd pick the letters of the ticker symbols and I would just watch how they move. I was fascinated by the world of finance, even at an early age, even though I had no relative like how this applies to the real world. Yeah. And so even coming out, I wanted to go out of my MBA program and the only reason I chose public accounting was I wanted the CPA credential. My thought press all along in my early twenties was I'd get the CPA and I'd bounce back into the financial realm at some point in time.

That didn't happen, and clearly it didn't happen now.

But again, I graduated from my MBA program in April of 2008 and accepted the job with Ernst & Young in Atlanta, went down there, a lot of my talented colleagues coming out of MBA went to finance path. And we all know what happened in October of 2008, right? And the world fell out. And I see all these extremely talented people now that went to New York city or went to Chicago and the financial metros of the United States getting laid off and let go. And all of a sudden out of the job. Yeah. And that just said, I wake up constant idea, I had to really dig in on this profession and maybe my plans are going to be altered a little bit in the finance world.

But all I'm going to have, all I know how to do is when times get tough and adversity hits, you pray, you roll up your sleeves and hard work over comes. And that's what it was instilled in me with my family since a young age, right? So you just work your way through it. And that's exactly what I tried to do. And so then, I had great times, great career. And after about six years, almost within the larger firms, going back to kind of what I touched upon, I almost got bored with the clientele.

And you're talking about large financial institutions, insurance companies, publicly traded fortune 500 companies, great brands, great, great logos to have on your resume that you were able to work with. But at the day, it just felt empty. Right? Because the clientele, great people on the client side too, but they're highly paid employees. And so going back to kind of like working when it means something at the end of the night and kitchen table conversation and families, not just with owners, but downstream, I wanted to do more of that. And, at the time, he was working with HBK. And that's what made me had to move.

They had an opening and took a shot left the big firms came over to HBK and never looked back because just that element of wanting to work in a holistic fashion with people where it mattered in life. How did they pitch you on that? What was their recruiting? I think the recruitment worked. I want to believe the main partner at the time who became a dear mentor of mine has been in Naples for a long time, Barry holes. And I think the recruiting pitch was probably easy. My wife said my husband is getting restless and is looking for a new challenge and new opportunity. Would you be willing to meet with him? And he said, Sure, I'll at least have a lunch with him.

And we hit it off. I shared my like my vision, and what I wanted to do. And I think Barry saw what that in me and it was an easy hire. He was on our executive committee at the time. And more or less, I've just taken over every role he held in the firm. And he just now retired. I've stepped into market leader positions running the state of Florida, I said on our executive committee now, national head of a position that didn't even exist within the firm a few years ago. So just continue to rise to the challenge. And, whatever God blesses me with the opportunity is again, roll, push leave, work hard and yeah, tackle that. Yeah. Well, what is HBK?

So we are our bread and butter is a CPA firm. We're the 45th largest CPA firm in the country at this point in time. We've since I've joined is not just because me, it's a lot of talented professionals who joined at that time. And even before us that set the path of this, we've tripled in size over the last 12 years. So we've gone from, a much smaller firm to now we're more of a national player with over 800 employees globally, a lot here in the eastern United States. And we what we try to do is hit the middle market America small to medium sized businesses and high net worth individuals. That's it. That's our that's who we work with.

And we try to be a holistic financial services provider way beyond just tax and accounting, wealth management, IT services, HR services for business owners, valuation services, transaction advisory services, we have a pretty much full gamut at this point at this point in time, other than an outsourced marketing engine that we can help business owners on a different level. What's the smallest business? And what's the biggest business size that you would work with? I take clients, I take de novo businesses, I do a lot my professional side when it's not with, dealing with firm matters is predominantly if not almost exclusively in healthcare at this point in time.

So I work with a lot of private physician and dental practices, ambulatory surgery centers, no big hospital systems. And I work with solo dot practices and solo entrepreneur businesses, all the way through, I mean, very large and significant players in the healthcare side on the private, we're talking easy, eight figures to nine figures of revenue plus, and can run the gamut there, right and shift. And to me, the most important thing is just working with, I can't go back to a really, really good people. That's what I enjoyed doing. Life's too short at this point. Yeah. And so I just look at it.

And it's if it's the solo entrepreneur, that's like, I need help, I'm willing to invest in a different way. And we're going to grow this thing. And here's my ambitions. That's a great client for me, just because I love to see the journey, taking it from, just you. And how are we going to grow this thing into maybe something different? Yeah, for your family and a lot of other families that are going to ride that. I would imagine that I met the healthcare field has got to be just unreal to navigate right now with what with especially a doctor, where it's challenging.

Yeah, I can't imagine what, what they got to go through what you got to know to help them through what is going on in their world between. It's not what it was. I mean, when I grew up, a doctor was the thing. And they could make endless amounts of money. And they were that was top of the tier, but now they're just been relegated to just this ceiling almost, it seems like they can't, how do they grow? It's an interesting system. What we have right now, there's a lot of headline headline noise, and it mostly centers around health insurance. Yeah, when you when you're talking to the healthcare system. But again, I deal with mostly on exclusively on the private side.

So private practices, it's the doctor or the group down the street that you're seeing not affiliated with a hospital, directly or anything like that. Most unique thing in healthcare is just the business model itself. So most business owners like, owner physicians are they're accustomed to if I work hard or produce more, my business will grow my revenue will grow. Yeah, right. And not just from the bottom line, and I get to earn more, but, I'll provide and do all these other things in healthcare. It's unique. For the last three years, revenue has been cut by the by the government, CMS has cut revenue for them, certain percentage.

So now you're working harder to earn the same amount of revenue. Yeah, and expenses continue to go up to earth with crazy, crazy, right? So and you see it as a business owner as well. So that's a double edged sword in healthcare that no one else really deals with because they have zero pricing control, really everything's actually dictated. Wow. And it's been in it's been having deflationary cuts, right and pressure on their revenue and inflationary on their expenses. So it's been very challenging to navigate. I don't know where this is going to end up, it's going to be really difficult, because so much is centered around bureaucratic entities.

Yeah, I'm still to this day in large insurance carriers. And I don't mean to get off on, on that or say anything, kind of controversial. But that to me, that's, that's kind of where our healthcare industry is. Yeah. And if something doesn't change, and again, it's not just on the insurance side, although I think that's, that's right for, right for, something different. I think you're just going to see continued frustration with a lot of great people, great doctors, yeah, that truly took the Hippocratic oath for a reason and want to help people, right? They want to do the right thing.

But then they also in what, in a private setting, have to run a business at the end of the day. Yeah. And that's where their challenge is right now is how do I successfully continue to navigate running my business with these pressures? Yeah, so I feel for them, because because they don't have control over any of that, like a business does, or a solopreneur does in any other aspect, they're just locked in, and they can't move the levers around like a normal business person can to make things grow, or to at least stay even or not to go in the hole. And yeah, it's got to be difficult.

And I was thinking, maybe a dental practice, there's a lot of cosmetics now, there's so many other things they can do that, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to me that locks them into the, as a doctor, like what does a doctor do? A medical doctor, does he have to sell out to the to the big group to, does he have to become fold into one of those and become a cog? You've seen that you've seen that a lot. Yeah. Right. And especially when, private capital and private equity monies were moving a lot around the healthcare space.

And this was, you go back to just after COVID, you're talking late 21 through really 2023, you saw a lot of private equity deployment, it slowed down a little bit, but I think it's about to pick back up again. doctors just have, some, some physicians became so frustrated. They're like, just take the administration and, the business side off my plate. I just, yeah, whatever years I have left, I just want to go practice medicine. But private equity is a whole different consideration when you're talking healthcare, because it's a unique model, like we talked about in the business sense. So, a lot of times, private equity gets a terrible moniker.

And, everybody has their own thoughts on that. But a lot of times they can come into a business and in what do they do? They try to, increase pricing or increase, revenue and they are bottom line focused and there's a lot of things, but in healthcare, again, you can't just control pricing. So yeah, kind of the tried and true methods of private equity is, is a little bit of square peg around hole when it comes to healthcare because of that revenue challenge. It's my opinion. Yeah. Well, in the, is that, is that also happening in the dental world too? Yes. Yep. Absolutely. And they're making offers to guys that it's tough for them to turn down. Is that how it is?

They throw so much money. Yeah. Valuations were hot there for a while. So when you're, when you get heat evaluations in any business, you're going to have probably more activity just because it's, holy cow, you're valuing my practice work more than I ever thought it was going to be worth. Especially if, it's not centered around just one dentist, right? Cause there's so much personal goodwill built into that. Yeah. I come to see just that dentist or coming to see the practice because they know how the practice operates. Okay. The patient itself. So that would be more attractive to the, to the buyer. Yeah. Okay.

And that's in a state of what now for, for dental practice, is that happening now or is it still happening? I think it's still happening. I think you had major rollups happening, like I said, in recent history, but I truly believe and I still see it. There's still a lot of what I'll call tuck in mergers, in the private equity space, they always try to find their flagship. If a new fund is being put together and want to invest in a dental organization or something like that, they'll find their flagship practice and that's going to be their platform. Once you have the platform, you're looking for add-on practices to tuck in with that platform.

I think we're about to see a lot of tuck in type activity, pick up again here in the coming years. What do you look for when you get a new client or when you look at a prospective client or just when you look at any business, what do you see? Cause you see it from a different angle with your experience and your background. What does it like for you? Cause every time I like a new client approaches me and again, I may or may not be different. I try to see the person and like the story behind the business.

Like I get down to like before we start talking taxes and strategy and we can deliver that if you want to, if someone's coming in from the more technical side, but I want to know like you, are we going to be able to, or to have a relationship here on a professional sciences? Am I the right fit as much as you may be? And, okay, you're going to pay our firm to do a service and I'm going to deliver that service, but are we just going to be a right fit for one another? I want to hear us. Let's get to know one another. Right? So that's, I think that's incredibly important.

I don't think all CPAs do that per se, but I think that's incredibly important for me for us to get to know one another. And a lot of times I've been very blessed. My clients who have kind of already gone through that and I consider friends are recommending me. So if it comes through a trusted channel, I already know by association, you're probably going to be pretty good ilk as well. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then from that point, it's okay, what do you have going on and trying to provide a very bespoke boutique type of service to them that not just here's, here's another idea right off the shelf.

There's common ones we use, but like, it's really just what's going to work for you and your life. Cause you're one of one, right? And your dynamics are one of one. So how does that work? We have a lot of ideas. We can do a lot of things, but if it doesn't work for you, I'm not going to beat it down your throat and say, well, if you don't listen to me, you're gone. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just don't hold it against me. If you say, why aren't you doing more for me? And we're bringing that to the table, but, but in the same breath, it's, it's, we're continuing to try to strive and maximize again for you and offering that level of bespoke service.

So how do you deal with it when you, there's something very obvious going on in the business. You could see it, whether it's they're overpaying or some area of expenses or something like that. And you've got somebody who's maybe a little bit egotistical or a little bit tougher to coach than the average person. Cause that's why they're that person. Yeah. What's that like? It's tough., some people will throw their hands up. I think there's a way to do it too. we internally in externally with our clients, we try to adhere to a no jerk policy at HPC. So again, life's too short to work with jerks and there's no reason to, to be that way.

People have egos and we can work with egos and look, I deal with healthcare and this is not directed to any physician I deal with or anything, but usually, physicians get to where they are. They, they have, they have an ego. I have an ego, right? And it's how you approach that. And if you balance that with humility, like you can, you can go down the path and be extremely good and confident in your abilities. If it is borderline purely arrogant to a disrespectful tune, more than likely we're probably not going to be working together for very much. Not that I can't handle it. I got tough skin. Yeah.

But mostly again, it goes back to, but why, why is that necessary in the, in the course of business? And oftentimes again, it's going to, I want to work with people who are helping people in, making a bigger impact in, in lives. And if you're like that with me, how are you like with your people too? Yeah. On the internal side. So that's more of a really indication of maybe we're just not a right fit. If you're overly ogotistical to the tune of disrespect and especially if they were trying to disrespect one of our team members at HPC, I draw the line there pretty well.

What would you say our business and so many other businesses, these last five years have been just so hard and the costs of everything are just like, I mean, our hair color alone that we buy has had five, just at a six price increase in two years. And that's what passing those increases on is so tough in a service business because they're one-on-one and they want to negotiate with you. What do you have for people that are in those positions? Because everybody's got rising costs now and that's killing balance, killing income statements. And just it's been tough. It's tough. And it really comes down to like what you have such a great salon.

It has a brand like you got to lean into your brand and it may not be that every customer is for you. And that's really hard for business owners, especially one with a service heart that clearly you have too. It's like, I want to help everybody. I want to make everybody look the best. And then you just have to know if you have that, I think it's a wonderful mission that may just not be your highest margin. And is that important to you or not? So maybe I'm not making as much on certain services or certain clientele. You have to be okay with that as a business owner too. You can never run in the red because if businesses are running the red, clearly you're done.

What's the point? You're working for free at that point. No one wants to work for free. Even employees, no one's going to work for free. So why should a business owner do the same? But really it's like leaning in, in my opinion, to who you are and what makes you special. And it's really hard to do. And it's very easy to say and hard to execute. But the people that can try to figure out that balance and then really concentrate on, okay, these are the services and I'm not pushing anything. I'm seeing the market, I have higher cost here and sometimes you just got to pass those through. And that's what's happened a lot. And I encourage the same.

It's cost of stuff has just gone up. And us as consumers are going to make choices of that's worth it to me or not. And if it's not, it's either you kind of go to a different service and a brand level and more than likely it's going to resemble not the experience they have at Roberta Philadelphia. They go, can I say great clips here? Like they go to a great clips, different price, different service, right? You're going to get what you pay for. And especially in the service world, like you're in, like I'm in, I truly believe you more often than not, you get what you pay for.

And it's up to us as the business owner to make sure us and everybody who falls under our brand names are delivering that level of service and that level of experience for our clients or customers or patients or whatever it may be. If we're trying to charge a premium. Yeah. And that's, it's less than perfect, but that's what we try to instill in our team. Yeah. Because we don't want to be the cheapest in town. We've leaned into our brand. This is who we are. This is the type of client we want to serve both on a personality perspective and clearly a financial component too.

But our people have to know that when we do that, we got to lean into, you've got to differentiate yourself. And we feel like we have what we think is a differentiator, but we got to execute on that every day. And that's the hardest part. Yeah. Making sure our people execute. It can't be all things to all people. Yeah. That's it. That's all right. Like sometimes business owners, again, I go back to it with service hearts and great people. They just want that. That's when the heart takes over. Yeah. But it's really difficult to be all things to all people. Yeah. And it's, we're not profitable.

We're not going to be there for people., if we, if we're not making money, we're going to be, we're not going to be able to do what we do. We won't be able to have that. It's going to be worse than, running skinny margins, right? Yeah. Profitable. The business is going to go away. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My father who started the business in 1980, but he had been in the business for a while before that he, eighth, eighth grade school, eighth grade dropout, didn't have a formal education, but just a hustler, man, a Philly hustler, gonna just do, did whatever he needed to do to make it happen. And he was a damn good haircutter. I mean, that was his passion.

He loved cutting hair. He loved making women look beautiful was his thing. And, he, he was, he was that person who had the ego, which somebody has to have that, he had that, but he, he earned it. He definitely earned it. little Philly guy who with a, with a charm and an attitude and a great gift of style. he, I haircuts at the time, I think we're 25, the average high end haircut was $25 and he made his price $50. And he was so proud of that. Like, listen, if you want to go, you're going to get the best haircut. And some people were annoyed by it. Like, wait a minute. It was 25 that's 50 this week, but it's, it's a 50.

I'm going to give you a $50 haircut and I'm not for everybody. And what he would do is he would do the haircut and then he would have somebody else in the salon, maybe do the next two haircuts. They would follow his line and do the 25 or $35 haircut. And then it would go back to him for the third haircut for the $50 haircut. But he was, he was never ashamed or never apologized about his pricing. He was just like, it has to be, this is what it has to be., we're going to be, if I'm going to be Robert and do it the right way, this is what the price is. I can't do all of you. I can only do so many haircuts a day and, proud of that. So he was always his, his thing.

He had that in a lot of stylists get this, they get this real close relationship with their guests. And when it comes time to raise a price, the person's almost like insulted like, Oh, we're friends. Why are you raising your price? I mean, how could you do that to me? But it's like to stay in business. We have to do that. We won't be here. If you really love us, you'll respect the fact that I have a mortgage too. And, I have to pay that. Yeah., that, that we had this thing we did a couple of years ago. We did this membership for, for blowouts where you could pay, it was a slow summer, usually slower in the summer, as it always is here in Naples.

And we did these memberships for $99 a month. They got five blowouts, which comes to $20 each where our blowouts are normally 70. So it was like a crazy deal for people. And we had people, a lot of people that took advantage of it. And then we realized, it was kind of a loss leader. We just give, given this benefit out, we had our lower levels doing it. Well, over time, we made allowances for a higher level stylist to do those. And it got to the point where this past year we realized we are losing our, we are losing so much with this. It's killing us. And, we made the change to say, well, we can't do that anymore. We were giving it away.

When you give somebody something for that long and then you go, we can't have it anymore., it's like this major disruption of, yeah, but we won't be, if we keep doing that, it's really going to hurt., it's not, we're not going to be able to sustain it. So people are now, I won't come here anymore. Well, we understand that, but we won't be here anymore. If we keep charging that price, right? You wouldn't have the option. So it's a, it's such a, such a fine line because, because they're all givers, a stylist hairstylist is like somebody who not only have the artistic ability, but they have huge hearts.

They love to give, they love to serve, they're all about people and that's kind of our culture. So when there's that line of, listen, it's, it's necessary. You have to feed your kids peanut butter is $9 a jar. Now it was five, a couple of years ago. It's just, everything is so much more expensive. Yes. It's just tough and Naples marketeers. It's a different world. So great to hear that from you anyway., there's a, when they have confidence in a place to stand, they know that they're, because they're working in the top, we're ranking the top 5% of salon. So when you're there, you gotta, Louis Vuitton raises their price and they don't apologize for it. And it's right.

Can't negotiate with them. That's right. There's no sales or discounts or anything you're getting from Luke. Yeah. And don't get me wrong. Louie has great products and, I certainly puts out the cache and the backs it up with, with the quality. But, to your point, it goes into a big corporation too, a little bit, not the small business owner. Right. Going back to it's like, yeah, if they raise it, you won't complain about it. We raise it. We feel like in the salon world, you have it to back it up., we're the same, like, yeah, the same cache and the same level. And that's what we're striving to provide. And why beat us up? And it's that personal thing.

And I always think you were talking there just made me smile internally. Cause I was like, you know what? We have to bring this back, but, a lot of oftentimes people think like the trusted confidant and advisors or financial people and CPAs and attorneys and all that. I'm telling you right now, what your people do, like the trusted confidant a lot of times is, is, is there a hairdresser and it's the salon. Yeah. I, it baffles me. It's just, you walk in and you're hearing people's life stories and it's between that and not the same product, the shoeshine person. And you're just, it's a comfortable environment. And if you provide that, that's value.

I mean, that's a, yeah, that's a service in and of itself. And just because it's intangible doesn't mean it doesn't carry. Yeah. So it's so true. Cause there's really nowhere else where you're going to sit and talk to another person for an hour, one-on-one, unless it's a therapy session that you're paying for. And this is a version of that. Absolutely. Yeah. Cause in life, yeah, you're not doing that., you go to the doctor, you go to the dentist, it's, it's not, you can't talk to the dentist really. And the doctor, they, they're bound by their times or wherever you just not with a person for that amount of time. And that one-on-one, those moments together.

So yeah, that's, that's a valid point too. And, if that's not working too, we have a lot of Prosecco we give to people too. So that helps a lot. That helps again. Plus one.

It's important. Yeah. So you, talked about your mother and how she kind of nurtured that, that gift that you had in you, how would your mom's alive? Yes. And she's where she's up. Lexington. She's still in. Her and my father both. So what do you do for the holiday? You go back there. They've been, they've been coming down here. They just love that Florida Christmas weather. Awesome. Especially in winters like they're already experiencing. So, most of the time and again this year, they'll, they'll come down here for, for at least a weekend and your brother in Nashville, he's in Nashville and his wife and son are in Nashville. Okay. So your parents will are they here now?

Are they coming in right after, right after Christmas? So how would mom describe you? I lost one. She'd probably fight back tears, but just, again, my mom is a wonderful soul. She's always been very proud of us almost, to a fault sometimes, even when maybe she shouldn't have been. but we're both, we felt like pretty good kids. she would have to describe me as independent from the start. very bullheaded probably at times and stubborn. but my parents both, kind of just never really got in the way of that or like discouraged it and tried and did their best of just kind of nurturing that to the best of their abilities. And I have no doubt they did. They did.

I always say, we financially speaking, it's, we were solidly middle-class in the eighties and nineties, right? Just, really lower middle-class and, the American story, you bring it up and, my dad's father and parents, they came, when they get married, they had 16 cents to their name, not a lie in Philadelphia. And so, that's the starting point of really our family. And in my mom's side were really tobacco farmers in a small town in Kentucky. So pretty humble means. And I was blessed and it's just a good American story. And that's why I think this country is so beautiful, right?

Where else in this world, there's not a lot of places, no matter our faults in this country and what may or may not have happened over the course of history and time. And we are where we are in a sense of place. And if we don't lose that, I mean, the beautiful thing is this country, you do that. You're willing to work hard. You're willing to make good decisions. And, and those that are, are just born into less than advantageous situations. If we as communities can rally around that and help them out and the American dream is live and real.

And I know a lot of people say you came from a, a two-parent household and, even though financially it wasn't that I had a very loving home. That's all I cared about. You didn't have to worry about the shelter over your head, even though my parents scraped and you didn't have to worry about food on the table, even though they were both working, constantly. That in and of itself is great. And that's a, that's a really big blessing that I was afforded with. Right. Amen. So just having those bare necessities.

And I feel like that's where with not again, not to be political here, but without government intervention, if we have communities can rally around families that may not have that same. And again, it's not just to, to provide the feel good moment for donating your time, treasure and talent, but really of how do we make that person's situation better? Yeah. Work with the willing. But if they're willing, how do we rally around that? Yeah. Yeah. Amen. And get them along the same path because they may just not have the same deck of cards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And that's what I find about Naples. It's so special.

And I love about it because there's so many people who care about the people that are here. We don't need to call government up and say, let's go help these people. There's so many people here that are willing to help the people who are willing that and need have needs that, there's somebody here to provide. Absolutely. And this community is like you said, it is incredibly special. Yeah. Edie and I have always had philanthropic hearts, even when we, really didn't or shouldn't from as a financial person, like, but we always, we always believed in the concept of tithing, right?

And so quietly or, out there and making more public donations, whatever it may be, we just always felt like we had to give back, the treasures and the Bible calls us to do the same. So yeah, we do that each and every year. And we sit down and we strategically like kind of think through and the organizations, but this community of itself, take that aside is just, it blows my mind each and every year, the generosity and the level of philanthropy, and especially for a community that, is seasonal. Yeah. And, people split time and have a whole other community or home base.

And so when you have that too, and you come here, it's just the beauty of this town in this area, Naples, Fort Myers, just up and down the coast, even in Sarasota, I see it a lot of times. It's just a, it's, I hope this community never takes that for granted. Yeah. And there's just wonderful organizations trying to do the same. And it's just a great place. Yeah. A lot of generous hearts and good souls here. And that's what I get to do just through this is just talk to some of those people, like who's, who are the hearts and who are the people making stuff happen? But there's more people coming in that continue to have share that same spirit with people., it's neat.

It's a great thing. Cause I, there's, there's no greater, therapy than making a difference in somebody else's life in whatever way possible. When you're, when my attention is on giving to somebody else, I love that one of the schools that we get to visit is in Immokalee, one of the hair schools. And it's the deal. Yeah. Runs a great program out there. It is the premier program. People will drive to her school and Immokalee itech to go to that hair school. Cause she runs such a great, puts out such good students. She puts her heart into it and she's just really great.

But I love when we take that trip out there, we have, it's, it's, it's, first of all, it's fascinating to me that within the same County, there can be that the top 0.1% of wealth and then Immokalee like within 30 miles of each other and going out there. But when we take that trip out there, it's one of the most rewarding and because the people there, I just, I just love everybody I run into out there. Just, they're just so smart. Everybody just

When, when hurricane Irma happened, the first one in 17, I've had a lot of them over the years in my life here, but that was the first one that was a disruptor before Ian, which was really the worst. But we went out there to bring some, we shut the salons down. We took a bus out there, went out there to help them with supplies. They were getting supplies driven in from all over the country and they needed help distributing them through the cosmetology school. And we made so many wonderful friends from the community out there. And a couple of the people ended up coming to work here. The girl who drives from LaBelle actually lives, was in school at the time.

She became one of our senior leaders now too, but, but going there and being a part of that community, seeing that community, doing whatever we can to make a difference in that community, hiring the people from that community. It's just, I love their souls. They're just really, just the heart of that community is really special. You think of people who have nothing and we saw, we delivered to people who have nothing, like literally their, their one thing they did have, which they had a mortgage on was their mobile home, which was leaking and, torn apart, but they were happy, they were happy without anything.

And to be able to make a difference and to do that on a regular basis is, is, is why I like

To do what we do in our business. Like when we're successful, we can do more for people who need and provide more for people. That's more important to me than, like what the bottom line is. Yeah. I want to have a good bottom line so we can do more for more people. So we can hire more people and make a difference in the community and the world. So I, it's great to, share your, hearts and stories about, what, what is your up to? Cause I know you're involved in a lot. There's a, there's a teen, what's the program that you're involved with teen, the name of it, maybe it's not teen, it's a youth program that

First of all, you went to Lexi, you went to a Catholic high school. I forgot about that part too, right? Did you go to, yeah, I mean, I was a little bit scholarship money there, but I was able to, I was Catholic educated from middle school to high school. Then Dayton's at Catholic school and not many people know that. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. They're a Catholic college too. So definitely was raised in, in kind of the Catholic education parochial system., I just a church of Christ Christian at this, at this point in time, my life had been for a long time, but always have that Christ centered.

And I was very blessed in, in, to be able to have that educational base, mostly for this discipline and structure that it provides. Yeah. at the time, well, in our area up there, you either went, my parents both went to Catholic school in this West Philadelphia, what the hell, and my father got kicked out of Catholic school. That's why, that's why he stopped at eighth grade. But going back to what you were saying about the American dream and the American way, he so loved this country. I mean, he's in heaven now, but man, I'll tell you, he just, he knew he could have in this country, he'd have whatever he wanted.

He could, he could with an eighth grade, he didn't even need an education. He knew if he, if he hustled, he would have whatever he could get, whatever he wanted at any level. If he wanted to work, he could do it. Yeah. Just love that about this country. Such a Patriot. Loved it., the men in service, the men who serve the just, just such a

Had so much passion for, and it lives on through my children, like he got a piece of that in them where they really know that we have the best place and people who complain about or think that we don't live in the best place. We have a couple people, one, two that are from a three that are from, Cuba and lived in Cuba up until the last 10, 15 years. And some of them just moved from there in the last few years and share about what that's like and try to educate the people that are here in our company, what it's like, what any form of any other form of government besides ours, like there's whatever they call it, socialists or communists or whatever it is.

It's, it's not what people think. And, they are very good at educating our young people who are coming up now to teach them. Like, listen, it might sound good on paper, but in reality, we had free healthcare and we had free education in Cuba, but we couldn't get anything done. We couldn't get any services done. Marina, who's from, Russia and her mother's still in Russia. Sadly, they can't see each other and see each other for four years needs surgery and she can't get it there. It's free, but you can't get it., they don't have a surgeon trained for it. There's such a lineup for it that she can't get it.

So, I appreciate that they're in our culture, educating people that, we got it good. We got it really good. We have a really good, yeah. Again, it's no, I don't think any governmental system is perfect, but man, you go through the echoes of time and what the founding fathers did and yeah, the late 18th century and what they put together in those decades and had to fight for and shed blood for and lose loved ones for. And still to this day, we have warriors that are doing the same and they, they risk it all on the line. It's a system that is very unique and special. They drew on history and put together what they felt like was a very, very solid system.

And it has been, and it has led us, led the world really through dark times and wow, how the world would be different if World War II didn't have a hundred percent. It ended up right. We're not, we're not probably having the ability to sit here and talk freely over a mic system and be able to publish this kind of stuff. If that greatest generation didn't do what they did and the generations before and after them. And people take that for granted. They don't realize that's, that's, yeah, it's not free. Like it's, I know it's somewhat cliche, but that, that freedom is not free. No. And, that's why Edie and I were getting into a little bit of the philanthropic side.

I mean, we are insanely passionate, whatever we did near, clearly, neither one of us served and we do have some extended family members and one, one sister of Edie's did serve, but men and women who serve our veterans causes is near and dear to our heart. Yeah., in addition to what we do around children and education and really children trying to keep them out of the foster care system. Like that's, that's our passion is you align that with trying to help the next generation as much as you can through education and not fall into a terrible situation. And certainly everybody who protects what we able to do on a daily basis, that to us is the ultimate. Yeah.

We had the blessing and opportunity to have, to honor the gold star wives of Florida. There was an event that came out and we got to give them some pampering gold star wives or the widows of the, of the servicemen who were killed in action or killed in serving. And, they gave the ultimate sacrifices, their wives. I mean, they're still here, they're still here suffering. They lost their loved one. They really sacrifice. They sacrifice their husband, their, their wife or whoever it was. And I never forget the day was right over here at Bayfront.

We had them here and I was, I was in tears the whole day, just in honor of who these women are, who gave sacrifice, their families for us. Just made me, even in this moment, get moved by it because I am so grateful that they were willing to do that for us and for what we have. And we don't see that every day. We don't hear that every day. We don't think about it every day., we think about our own problems with traffic and, like most of our problems, you and I both probably, and you frame the reference around something else and you have to be willing to expose yourself to that and take that in. Man, your problems become trivial in a grand scheme. Yeah.

It's more often than not. Yeah. There's challenges. Everybody deals with them, but a lot of times if you really expose yourself and bring in a broader network and get to know people and get to know their souls, your, your problems are probably something that one humanity has absolutely dealt with before. Yeah. Right. Find that support system, but to probably aren't as great as, as some of the others were that kind of stuff happens. Yeah. That, that to me, and I always tell them, and they don't, most of the time military spouses and, gold star widows and, children who've lost their mother or father because of that and all that, I mean, they don't even want to hear it.

And they just like, we just did what we did. We had to serve. We, this was our path understood, but just know, yeah, there's a support system. We can't empathize with you. We were not in your shoes, but I can only imagine the gradation of what you had to come through and the toughness and fortitude that you have to battle with each. Yeah. They were thanking me. I'm like, what are you thanking me for? You stop it. You can thank me. Thank you., like it just, just, we got to make them beautiful, feel beautiful., it was fun for it was it was unbelievable. That was Aaron, Aaron Vaughn's mother, Karen Vaughn, who Aaron Vaughn was the guy who, one of the vets who was lost in a

The Afghanistan mission from there from Florida. And she's been such an advocate and such a great spirit for our men of service. And yeah, it just brings me right back to it. My appreciation and love for that. So thanks for bringing that up for me. Yeah, it's awesome. That was your then comment. Yeah. So what is it that you guys came to Naples together, but you had family here. How did you, what was your journey from getting to get down to here in this area? Yeah. Yeah. So we were

Back in 2010, my grandparents and extremely close to them growing up, they had moved down here seasonal residents, but we're starting to spend more time down here in Southwest Florida. And we were in Atlanta and Edie and I would make long weekends whenever we could sneak one in and getting some stuff for their house and they were independent, but my grandfather started to have some health issues at the time. So, we were again, in our mid twenties, we knew where Atlanta wasn't our permanent place of where we wanted to settle down. We don't have children still to this day.

So, whether we were going to have children or not, we just knew Atlanta wasn't going to be our home., she's from Mobile, Alabama. I'm from Lexington, Kentucky, both cities, but smaller cities in Atlanta. Clearly Edie wanted to get closer to the coast at that point in life too, and just get back to that coastal lifestyle. And my grandparents were here. So we ended up and, Southwest Florida was, was as people know, who have been here, yourself included in 2010, it was not like an attractive place to live. You're, still in the tail end of the great recession and the economy was really in the toilet.

And we decided we, to build a home like crazy, at the time we were 26, 26 year olds, built a home three blocks from my grandparents to help take care of them. And I was the main driver and we were fortunate enough to have careers that were able to be transferred. And I was working remotely still with Deloitte before remote work was even a thing of COVID hated it, by the way, that's just not my personality. But anyway, we were able to have that, that ability to do so. And Edie, found HPCA when, when we moved down as well. So that was the main driver. It was a family decision, a little bit of personal in there.

And we settled and I had more rounds of golf and Sunday family dinners with my grandfather before his ultimate passing in 2019. Then I ever would have had otherwise. What a blessing. That's awesome. We just, we saw it and people were like, why are you guys moving to Southwest Florida?, like that's old people. Yeah. You guys aren't right. And you come down here and even people down here, which was the shocking thing. They were, they're like, why would you move down here? The economy's terrible at the time. Right? Like what, what do you see coming from Atlanta, with the names on your all's resumes, what do you see in this place?

And again, it's, it was the family lean, but us and what our analytical minds we do have and forward thinking, we're like, yeah, but look at this place. I mean, no state income tax sunshine, 300 plus days a year. Weather's fantastic. It's paradise, right? This can't stay deflated forever. Like people are going to figure it out. I would think, right? Whether it's next year or five years or 15 years, sure enough it happened, but you looked at all the positives and the optimistic of, nature of what Southwest Florida was. And we made the jump. That's what brought us down here. And we just never have looked back. We miss a lot of elements of the South. We make a joke.

Sometimes we move so far South. We're kind of out of the true Southern culture. Right. You move past the line. Wherever that line falls, we've moved past it. There's a lot of elements of South we miss, but we wouldn't, we would not call another place home at this point. It's just, it's just ingrained in us and it's paradise. It's a wonderful place. Great people. And you're a, you're a Naples guy all the way now, right? You're like Naples and the heart of, yeah, we're, I mean, we live in Naples or we've been, even when we move, we were blessed to find an unbelievable friend group and that's expanded since then.

And it's centered here in Collier County, although we have wonderful friends that live in Lee County too. And, coming from a bigger city and we're not both from here, eating at Bose, like it doesn't matter if you have a Fort Myers address, Naples address, like we've just met some incredible people across this whole region. And even though we're based in Naples now, we first moved down here in South Fort Myers. That's where my grandparents settled. And that's why we settled there to be close with them. But even though we're in Naples now, we just view this Southwest Florida, greater region is just, it's just a special place regardless of what the name is on the address.

Yeah. No question. It's the sunshine. People are in a good mood here because the sun's out. We have people that come down and they're like, man, everybody's happy. I'm like, how can you not be happy? Just step outside. My wife is from Michigan, her family's from Michigan. And I remember going up there

To experience what a real winter is like to visit, when we were recording each other, I went up to Michigan and felt what a real winter was like and saw the gray sky and the, just, I don't know how they do it., like it's just dark and gray and just

It's like you got a hibernate or something. This is a whole different world. Yeah. What vitamin D and I mean, not to get too medical, but what vitamin D does to us as humans and the natural vitamin D you get from the sun. Yeah. It's a wonderful thing. Just both in attitude and by my luckily and what it like, how you feel as a human being, the sun is a very powerful thing. Yeah. And it's it, when you don't have the sun, when you've had it, like you feel a change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tell people all the time. I love when I travel and come back to the Fort Myers airport.

And no matter what time of year it is, you walk off the plane and just in that jet way, that little tube, you feel the humidity hit your skin. The minute you walk out of the airplane, I love that feeling. And some people are like, Oh, it's not. No, I like to feel that wetness or the air on my skin. That's so funny. It's so funny. You say that it's described the exact same feeling. It's the same thing. I know the double doors at RSW open up and you just take that deep breath of pure humidity. Yeah. Just like it's a warm blanket of I'm home. It is a blanket. Yeah. It's like, you're right. So funny. Yeah. And people are like, Oh yeah.

Because you had to bundle up when you wherever you left from and then you come here and you feel it. Yeah. Like what about in August? I'm like, I still have the same feeling. It's just a little bit warmer. There's, the dial on the blankets turned up. Yeah. Yeah. It's it is our home. It's special. And, even our, our, our food, just everything about it. So I think a chamber of commerce lover of this community forever, and I, and we're getting more from the Northeast now too, in the last five years, because it was usually only forever. It was the Midwest. It was Ohio, Michigan

Chicago, because of 75 would take them on this coast and 95 took the East coasters down to the other coast. So, but now we've gotten our blend of fellow Philadelphians here and East coast, Northeast, New York, and getting a good blend. But it's, it's people are happy. So love that part of it. How about your Naples life when you're not doing, when you're not thinking serving your clients, what do you, what do you do outside of the professional world, which consumes a lot of our time for sure. I'd say it's probably fallen in one of two main buckets outside of eating us personal time, which is the most important thing that we do.

But, when it's community involved, it's, it's, it's either philanthropic based, especially during season, or our biggest hobby is, is we're avid wine collectors. Oh, yeah. So it's a shared passion we've had since, our early twenties and we first met. And we've just always loved in and of the wine, not from a, the alcohol perspective, anything else. I just think wine is a beautiful thing. Yeah. Created by mother nature, been with us for, centuries and centuries. And yeah, it's just a, it's a great social tool. But it's scientific. Yeah, you can totally go down rabbit holes with it. Yeah, it's just a, it's just a fun thing for us to do. Yeah.

My father was a wine collector and connoisseur, loved his reds, his Cabernets. And he used to have this couple of bottles that he always treasured, this Jordan 78 that he thought was like only came out on special occasions, Jordan 78. And

Lately, my wife, came as her favorite, she loves a Cabernet. We don't drink that much, but if she's going to have wine, that's her, that's her like go to she loves the game. And trying to remember that once we go look at houses for fun in Naples and see these wine sellers that they bought. I don't know what the wine rooms that they build into these homes now, just fascinating these beautiful rooms that they build into homes now that to see what the there's a home in our neighborhood that's been for sale for a while. And we peek in and we see this, they turned one whole room into this. It looks so cool. I mean, it just looks got that look. That's totally it.

And we don't have that in our current house. But we totally would revamp a whole room and we design homes. It's like, what do we do with? Yeah, yeah. So what are some total first world problems? Totally understand that too. What are some Cabernets that you would put on your list? We are extremely big Bordeaux fans. Okay, so what's the difference? Well, besides country and sense of place, Bordeaux for us is and we love it age Bordeaux. So, the wines making style, it's changed the napa, not to eke out too much. The California Cabernet is just because of the soil composition and everything else. And they call it to roar way different than than what it is in France.

And so with the French Bordeaux and even though it's Cabernet seven-year-old driven is on one side of the bank and truly Cabernet seven-year-old and Merlot and a little bit of Cap Franc driven with two others, but same varietal, right? Same grade. But that's where you get the specialness of you really get a sense of difference. And once you start tasting, you can pick up more and more on it just tastes different. And the ability to age and as it ages, what father time does to the composition of wine and the flavors and the depth of that, we've just explored that and been blessed enough to do so.

And it just it not an aphrodisiac, but kind of it just turns on a different side of your brain that does it. So we've just always been, it's usually lower in alcohol actually in Bordeaux than what, your American wine will be or your California wine or Washington or wherever you're getting your Cabernets. Okay. And then Italians are very similar to the Bordeaux aspect being over in Europe too and against world compositions and all that. But Italians are doing some great things with Cabernets and the Tuscany region and everything else. We've been drinking a lot of those as well. So what does the, what is the term Cabernet and Bordeaux? What does that mean?

Bordeaux is just a place, right? So that's like calling it Napa. Like we drink a lot of Bordeaux. It's like we drink a lot of Napa. It's a city there, but a region, it's just a region of France, a wine growing region of France. It's composed of different little sub areas and, but Cabernet and Merlot were their predominant grapes planted in that region, just like it basically is from Reds up in Napa Valley. Okay. So they would be considered similar, just different regions. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Different continents, different regions, but that's the beauty of it. And you say your wife likes Caymus.

And again, you need to go out to Napa, usually at least once a year we honeymooned out there. And we have great friends who are out there now and just become, again, good buddies with a lot of vendors and been blessed to do so. But, you can take a pitch and wedge from where Caymus is and where they grow and they get a lot of grapes in too. But take a pitch and wedge from Caymus and I'll show you another Cabernet or driver or wherever you want to go north or south of where their property is. And the Cabernet will taste way different.

And it's a testament to, even if it's on the other side of the road, testament to a little bit of sense of place, but even wine making style and what they do. And that's where I say it's, it's as much science and you get into it and it's just really unique. It's, it's art in a bottle.

At least it is for us. And that's how we treat it. Yeah. So it's just fun. And, get to know people and then you get to know the artists, the winemakers or the vendors and their styles and you follow them. And, for us, it's fun. We get a rock story. Well, I went to Italy many years ago and it was before Airbnb's, but they had a version of that where you would stay on somebody's property like that. And every place I visited, they each had their own wine that they either, or I guess made, they had their little wine cave where they kept it. And even my grandparents in Philadelphia, in that little row home, they had an area in their basement. Mine too.

My great grandparents had the same thing right there in Pennsylvania. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. That's yeah. That was something that always fascinated me. There's this room down there. It was, it was a crude room, but it was for, that's what it was for., to keep their wine. They shipped the grapes in from California. They went down to the street bottom, crushed their wine for the year, right. Yeah. They would make their wine. Yeah. That's what they did. And that stuff would kick ass too. Cause they were and we were allowed to taste it while we were kids., that was wine was with everything.

It was a part of the rituals like orange juice at breakfast. It was like, you grew up in Italian family and Italian meals and you get them. And it's, it's amazing how much those that culture is in, in thankfully through families continues to pass on. And I hope, yeah, please the Italian side of my heritage personally. And we, you keep doing that and it just, it's Italy's a beautiful country, but a lot of the traditions and what they do in a sense of family and it was wild and crazy as Italian families could be.

It just, that sense of, of you get around the table and the specialness and what you're sharing all about food and just everything, everything revolved around food. And it was like, it was the whole, my parents were both

Both of them great cooks. And so, we were, we watched the movie

Which, oh, the newer version of miracle on 34th street, which was, which was, came out in like the nine early nineties and the, and then we watched home alone again, the original version of the classics. Yeah. And, home alone, they have like however many five kids, six kids, whatever it was, you're like, how do they afford all that?, like that, that feed that many kids. But at the time, people didn't eat out as much too. They cooked a lot at home., people cooked meals at home and ate at home a lot more than today because, my mother was always cooking something. My father was always cooking something.

And then we always had this other person that showed up because they were always serving food to somebody. And every holiday we had people there who we didn't know who they were, but mom and dad always at our houses open. We have enough food for an army anyway. They always did, so much food. And it was all around food and you'd eat round one and then go watch a little football, come back and eat round two. And then it was all around the kitchen. And my mother in that row home, that my grandmother, that kitchen was, I mean, now the kitchen is like, my kitchen is probably bigger than her whole house.

And her kitchen was so little, but the food she could cook out of that kitchen was just unbelievable. Just, just heavenly, just how they

You know, I couldn't wait to go in from outside plan to you smell that my mom would lift the lid off the grate. We call it a gravy sauce. And you smell that. You could smell the garlic outside down the street at the football field. You could smell that. Yeah. Like you can pull in the driveway and be like, yeah, I smell that garlic. It's great. Yeah. Just feel it. And we go and try to steal a meatball from her, because he's cooking like that. But there was, and it was all the holidays and Christmas Eve and the seven fishes and the, but it was, in fact, the business that they opened when they opened the salon, it was literally like an extension of their home.

It was like, we're gonna, this is like a cocktail. This is like a party, but we're, going to be doing hair while we're here too. And, it's like, come on in and my mother worked the desk and greeted people and updated people on the latest gossip in Naples. When my father was cutting hair on the other corner, but it was our Italian heritage that they welcome people and, the part of it, which is special because you can go in any Italian's home. And the first thing you're going to do is try to feed you down and eat food. And a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. In fact, my mother's, one of my mother's best friend who's still alive, comes here every year.

She comes in April and she, she makes

She'll cook this incredible meal. She was a very good, she is a very good cook, very similar to my mom. So every season they come and I get to go have her, this, because there's not many that have that ability to cook at the old school way and to make the pasta and the sauce and the meatballs. So it's nice to still have it passed on. So it's nice to talk to a fellow at Pizon about

About the good, the good eats. And speaking of food, you were referred to me or Brian introduced you to me because you're a good friend of his. So how did you guys meet?, how did you end up? Cause he speaks highly of you and you're important person in his life. I'm always humbled by that. Brian, he and I just have a special relationship. We clearly, we view each other's view each other at this point, more like brothers than even friends.

Yeah. a lot of just what we've experienced and a lot, people now know his story, over the last five years, but really it started about 11 years ago is when Brian Edie and I and Nicole first met one another and it was through philanthropic endeavors. we met over that, Brian has a wonderful heart. People know that in the community. And we met through an organization that was built at the time through Naples children and education foundation who host the Naples winter wine fest. And so we served on a committee there at the time and just instantly had a connection or something different., he was in the early stages of building crave.

I, Edie and I were clearly where we were in our careers, but on the early stages of really building our practices and client responsibility and books of business within HBK and just, kind of a similar place in life. Right. And so again, hit it off, just can then continue to connect. And then, certainly, him and Nicole, clearly dating and Edie and Nicole hit it off too. And just one thing led to another. And next thing, it's, it's weddings and, we're, we're, we get together all the time and we just connect. That's all I can say.

It's just a, it's a special relationship that, that I feel he and I both never take for granted and just in a similar place in life, at the times and through it, and especially clearly haven't gone through, thank God, what, what he and Nicole have gone through and there are various chapters and what they've had to overcome, but, have certainly been there, seeing it from the side and just their family. That's all I can say. Yeah. that's how we met a little bit deeper on, how we met and who we are together. Yeah. Two of our best friends. Yeah. He spoke very highly of you, but I know you were, you've been there through with him through it all. He's been through it all.

Definitely. Him and Nicole, right? Yeah. Yeah. Their family. You go back to the, you mentioned the spousal thing within the military and again, very, very different, but a very traumatic, multiple traumatic experiences. Yeah. So, being there with, with Nicole and seeing her strength and her faith in God and just her having to lean on that so much. There's so much trial and tribulations. It's just been, it's been rewarding if you can even say it that way to watch, but, if people don't know their story, they should, Brian's, a lot on the community, but, but just to both them together, just incredibly special. Yeah. Special people. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Really good.

Good souls. Again, part of this great community that we have. Yeah. what's your, so, so you're giving when you're outside of work, what if, if you weren't doing what you're doing as a career, what would you be doing? Yeah. The lottery job. That's what we always call it. Right. So it's, it's what would you be doing if you hit the lottery or you had the windfall. Right. Yeah. I've always said it. And, I told Edie early on we always go back and forth and she would always ask that question. That's how we talk. And, I literally would be a teacher coach. That's what I would do. I don't know where or what it would look like.

I just, again, going back to that passion for leading talented groups of, of individuals and being a part of that group. And as, as a fellow team member too, if I wasn't doing what I was doing, I would absolutely go back into some sort of fashion of teaching and coaching. So that, that baseball and part of that or basketball or basketball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball growing up too. And was a decent amount of talent, but, you get to high school and you stop growing and, when you're vertically challenged and you don't see very many Italian professional basketball. Right. So, that's not the sport that Italians do very well.

They're not winning gold medals in the Olympics either. So, baseball, I just was, was a love of mine too. And just transferred into that. So it would probably be one of those two sports. I, again, I love basketball, the phone, I love the X's and O's of the game and the fast paced nature. Yeah.

Italians and, and sports, but one of the guests, a guy who grew up locally here was Carmen Cali and he was a baseball player from Naples. There's only two, people from Collier County that ever made it to the majors. he was one of them. And the other was, Chris Reesop, whose parents are my neighbor and he played for the Braves for a while too. and he was telling a story about, when he got called up and, it was when Pujols was on the team. And, that, that era of, the car, they got called up the Cardinals. Yeah. St. Louis. And it was Pujols and, he did all star lineup, whatever they had in it. And the manager was, the legend of course, I can't get his name right now.

So he, he walked into the clubhouse. They, they, they, first of all, they almost didn't let him into the, into the gate because he pulled up in whatever car he pulled up and he just, he's an Italian. So he's not the biggest guy, and he won't make a lot of money in the minor leagues too. So it's a double edged sword there for Italians. Tell us the story of, when he walked in, they had, they told him to rush to the game. He had to drive from wherever the miners were. And he got there and

He walked into the clubhouse and the game had ended by the time he walked in and they all walked out and they were just towering over him. He said, he remembers looking, but, but he was just in awe of being in the same room as these legends, like right here. And then he told the story about when he was on the twins, how he was pitching, I think in San Diego. And, he, he was, he was

He, the mound was messed up and he was trying to get the mound fixed and he didn't know he could call the crew out or whatever he needed to. And the manager came out and he said, Hey, do you think

You could fix that hole on the Mount? He said, I can't even see my picture from back here because he's so short. Five eight out there. That's my Italian buddy. He's the other Italian.

So, he had some great stories to tell, but still he had the, he's got the Italian tradition actually in the minors, he talked about how they didn't even have, this was oh four or three. They didn't even have, housing for the minor league. They stayed with families in Jersey. He wanted the minor league teams of the, I think the twins first drafted him. I'm going to say Louis first, whoever it was, their minor league team there. He stayed with a family above a bakery. Yeah. Especially the lower, the wrong, the level loss. Yeah.

Some teams have made adjustments now because they realized the value of like taking care of health of players and the road and money and time investments in these young men. Like you probably need to take care of them a little bit better. But yeah, back then it was the host families or, you're staying in not so great hotels and long bus rides. And I know baseball is not a, not a glorious path, not financially rewarding. No, no, he's brutal for him. He was some neat stories about it. But hearing his, hearing when he got called up and just what that was like and those moments.

And to think that there's only, I mean, that's how hard that sport is only two out of this whole, all the years at Collier County, only two have ever missed. That's wild to think about because of all the great baseball and, just the development that happens down here in Southwest Florida and Naples specifically to, yeah, is, is wild to think about. I would have guessed a lot higher. Yeah, I would too. And it's year round here, they play all the time. And, but, but I mean, that's how hard that sport is, like that's just, basketball, I guess the same, but there's been a lot to made it to the NFL, but not to, not to MLB anyways.

So, so your, what is your, go to music that's playing either in the car, cause we're building a playlist around the spotlight of good people. So what are the music is you're in your, I'm, I'm all over the board when it comes to music. So the first thing, like I'm not an artistic person whatsoever, but I can appreciate good or whatever form that's coming in. Yeah. music wise, like growing up was, was always country being in, central Kentucky and big country music fan to this day. if, it's probably, that's the most mainstream I'm listening to.

And it's not just like the new poppy type of country, you're getting a little bit more old school sounds and everything else. if it's not country again, or kind of top 40, I really, and as I've grew, grown and matured and continuing on really love jazz in classical music. So I've really fallen into a lot of jazz and even some in some like that jazzy blues, again, that Southern culture, you just can't get away from. And even what someone country was built on at Southern jazz blues, you put me in a dark club and a corner in live music, sacks going or anything like that. I mean, I'm, I'm in heaven at this point in time. You visit your brother in Nashville.

There were just up there for, for work reasons, but we've gone up there a few times. Our seasons co-allied. He's a, he's a division one golf coach at Belmont university. does a wonderful job. He's just, that's his calling. That's what he does. He's really good at it. Even at his age, but we get up there, we just cross paths a little bit. So they're going to come down for the holidays too, but we try to see each other at least once, maybe twice a year. Do you get to, any of the live music venues up there when you go to Nashville? Have you done any of that in the Nashville area? We do. We go downtown, when we're, when we're there, not quite my type of scene all the time.

You can, you can handle it. I haven't seen that in there. I view Nashville. It's changed so much in the last, five years too, with, with the influx of population that is settled in Tennessee, much like down here. Yeah., we forget, Oh, there's other areas of this country that, that had the same Nashville being a hotbed for California and a lot of the up-eats too, especially in around the entertainment industry. But I view it a lot like almost Las Vegas now without the gambling. Is that right? Yeah. I can handle it for a couple of days, go to live music.

I mean, nowhere in, no, very few places can you just walk a couple streets and you got live music going 24 hours a day, almost. And, multiple talented performers. It's a really cool, cool environment to be a part of, but a few days and it's enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm done with Vegas now too. That's the last time I went, I used to love going there to play cards, but a poker, but last couple of times we went man, just, they just kill you for everything. It's just too much. It's like, even if, even if I can afford whatever it is, like the bottle of water or whatever, it's still so over the top, what they hitting you with early check-in fee.

And then they, they cut the number of check-in staff at three on purpose to make you suffer. So you, if you don't, if you don't pay that early check-in fee, they're going to penalize you. It's almost seem like they did that strategically., like there was a thought process. It just drove me nuts. So we're done for that for a while and play cards in a lot of other places now too. So

What are a couple artists that we could add to the playlist that you would say either jazz or, or, one of my favorites is, Leon bridges. So really, really good. We were fortunate. We saw him live last year. He was over at the hard rock, played at the guitar. Oh, very cool. And, he's just really cool, man, especially on vinyl. Like you put Leon bridges on vinyl and it's, do you have a, do you have a player? We do. Yeah, we do. So, and again, it's a lot of times when we're home, we're playing, some Leon or we're going old school, man.

Like we pop open a bottle of wine if we're cooking and we just feel like throwing a record on, it's, it's a lot of Louis Armstrong, a little bit Duke Ellington, getting back even if we weren't even more chill, we're going Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and more classical than even, even that jazzy blues kind of feel. So that's most of our records is going to fall in and around that lane. Wow. I wish I would have kept on my old vinyl, man. I had so much of it. I just now I'm regretting that so much because it's going back to that now. That's so cool. It just has different sounds. It does. Yeah. Call it nostalgia. Call it what you want. Just as a different feel sound. Yeah.

Even that snap or crackle that happens every now and it's a part of it, man. It's not pure. It is pure that way. It's more pure that way. It's just a good with a lot of things. I feel like there's beauty in the imperfection. So yeah, everything musically, you can get it so technically accurate and it's so pristine and clean sounding and it's great for the radio. But like, man, the beauties in the imperfection a lot of times in life and I was imperfect. It was an imperfect technology. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. What's a, any books or podcasts that are on your rotation or anything that's had an impact on you? Yeah, one consistent one.

Again, it's, it's kind of like iron sharpens iron a little bit and always trying to improve in one consistent podcast for, for gosh, a decade now, he's probably been out and he's written some books is, is, Jaco Willnick, former Navy SEAL. Yeah. Yeah. So he does his podcast and it's a lot of military base, but a lot of life lessons and it crosses over into the corporate world. So his book series of what he's done, dichotomy of leadership, extreme ownership was his number one. I, they're just, I think there's some of the best leadership books out there.

There's a lot of good people who have penned, good leadership to, but seeing the real world in different adverse high and high pressure intense. Again, we go back to like, we think our daily lives as business owners and other things is intense. Like that's not intense of, of what those type of guys face, but it having the ability to not only narrate that and then cross it over on the applicable, really human lessons from what, how they approach it may be in a militaristic or even war zone perspective, but how that corresponds and correlates to a professional and daily environment.

I think he, he and Claire never met him, but he and his company just have a unique ability and knack to be able to like cross that barrier and put it into, civilian terms, if you will. And I just find that to be really nice. It's one of my mainstays whenever I'm throwing a podcast on put that on there. Zach, we gotta get that on there. I'm going to have there are web guy make an easy portal for you so that we could just either send it to him or type it right in so that we have that running list of books, podcasts from our guests and, and music to all three, one on our Spotify list, but also because I hear so many, golden nuggets, like, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.

You got it. If I don't fill my mind with that, it gets filled with garbage and our noise or, I got to keep the good things going in my head or my own mind takes over and it's not very nice to me all the time. So it's good to hear other voices, any book that had a big impact on you in your life, I'll go back to extreme ownership. I mean, in recent ones, I would say kind of early on in my twenties, I would go to like the Carnegie type books and, how to make friends and influence people was just a classic.

And I just remember reading that book and being like, all right, this is a good foundation of how to approach, especially your early career and kind of combining with some of the things I said earlier and how I approached life and what would I want it from my professional career journey to look like anyway. I was very influential there for a while and kind of that series and coming in everything else down that stream.

And then, coming in at the time, I was very blessed to be the youngest partner ever at HBK to make that in trying to lead experienced professionals or be a part of a leadership group of experienced professionals that were, oftentimes 10, 20 years older than you comes with its own challenge, especially when you have a sense of awareness that you don't have the experience they do. And I didn't take that lightly or kind of hopefully they would agree didn't come across as too pompous and like a know it all. Right. I had a lot of learning, a lot of wisdom that's gained from experience and just experience alone because you've gone seen more in life.

There's just the cliche is true. But then extreme ownership when I picked that book up, it was like, this is this is how I want to lead. And the premise is like, the first thing you do is look in the mirror. And if something is breaking down, especially the closer to the top of the stack, you are as a leader in or whatever it is, the more you have to check it up. And so if something is going awry or not to your liking, and you have that ability to make the change, like it's on you, wherever the breakdown may have happened, it's on you, right? And you got to take that ownership.

And if you are in the seat to correct it, and it's not going to get correct, unless you just humble yourself, you're going to make your mistakes or where you screwed up or take the heat and then move forward and execute. So I'd say that book in and of itself completely changed. And that was a while ago. But it's a good one. You just keep rereading and reiterate the concepts of it all to Yeah, that's good. I haven't read it. And it's, it sounds like the time for me to read it right now. So it's really highly right. I even give it to some of our aspiring professionals. And, I'm like, Hey, look, this this work for me, right? It may not be for you.

But if you want to know and how to get better and deal with people and lead people and maybe even client relationships read this, and then followed up with the dichotomy of leadership that he wrote, because a lot of times, it's not a binary decision in business as much as we try to make it to be right. It's not one way or the other. And like, that's the simplest, simplistic form. You think it's A or B, it's binary, like, yeah, make the choice. And in a lot of what happens in our world, our political system, and to a large degree is binary choices, right? But yeah, but really, the world doesn't operate on a binary system.

It's not so how do you handle that, the binary forces that, coming down on you in a non binary world? Yeah, and trying to, again, balance that all and navigate that all, to hopefully come up with resolutions or solutions. Yeah, they're still rising all tides. Yeah, whether it's, at the expense of one or the other, all tides are still rising. So yeah, that's really a powerful insight only, because I see it more and more every day, like we have 60 people and they're all different. There's no buying it. It's not like black or white with all them. They're all different. They're all in different places. They all have different needs. They all have different wants.

They're just, and being able to adapt to that. It's not black and white. It's not everybody's not going to fit in that hole that way. They're different. And that's a life is too. Yeah, it's not. Absolutely. It's not. And I think not. And this is a broad statement I'm about to make in generalization. But I think even, as we go through generations, and especially in this country, more and more are felt in. And I think, younger people get a bad rap and all they're lazy. I don't want to work. And you probably have heard that throughout every generation. They never worked as hard as the other generation. I don't buy into that necessarily. I don't either.

I don't really buy into the generalizations, but I will say a big difference is, it's how people are educated or how they're raised in the environments of which they were grew up in has leaned itself more to kind of more individualistic right. And kind of like the benefit of me. So leading teams in an environment, I'm kind of planning your point of 60 people and they're all different, right? How do you do that in a procedural way to make it feel like I'm here for you on the individual level, but then remain consistency across the group because you're dealing with just wildly different humans. Every human is different. Yeah, yeah. It's a huge challenge for all of us. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we have, five generations of people from 17 to 70, 16 to 70, maybe 14 to 70 actually. Yeah. Just, yeah, there's a wide spectrum of people there. And same with our guests too. But yeah, it's

And I teaching, our leaders and our my kids and whoever else is around me about that because he, it's my son worked for Nabisco for a while. And it's a big corporation that has a lot of things that are black and white, but this world is our business is not that, a we're not at that scale and be, we never could be that in this world in our, in our business, because we're in a service business where people are, we have to make sure that the people on our team are happy content. They are love coming here because when they're happy and content, they love coming here and being here. They're going to be happy when they're serving guests.

They're going to love to take care of people. Peace of mind. And they're, they know their homes taken care of and their kids are taken care of and they're growing spiritually and growing physically and growing emotionally. They'll be home., there's not, there's not a manual for that. There's not, there's they can't put that into an SOP that says, do it this way for that one, but they're all different. So I like that. I got to, that's my, on my list of that book or that series of books anyway, just that we brought that up. So thanks for that. Yeah. Is there a hidden talent that you have or something that most people don't know about you that should? I don't know, man.

Like I said, I'm not artistic. I don't have any, I try to operate in what you see is what you get for a lot of times, although I kind of, a little bit more private person in some, in some elements, but really no, I mean, I've described my heart or hobbies and I hate to sound boring, but so much of my time is dedicated to professional, professional life, hidden talents, hobbies, all that, it, and wines, our thing and being able to taste is our thing. And kind of what we talked about in and around, that whole industry, but yeah, I'm just boring, man. That's what it is. I told Brian with you, Brian was like, Hey, I gave your name.

I'm like, I just don't feel like I have that interesting of a story to tell. I don't know about you. Like he knows it, but like, I just don't feel like I do. I am who I am. Sounds very much like my life Friday nights. There's not a lot going on in our life.

I, we eat out sometimes, but, but I, it, well, that's, that's what I love about this too, because you don't think, that's how you think of yourself, but me seeing you from the outside, like who you are here, this is a snapshot of your life too, which I love to capture. because this moment will be over and then, five years from now, we'll, you'll look back here and see where you were at this stage of life, but to, to hear, and you're a humble person, so you just, you're up to big things, but a humble person. So you're up to make a difference in the world, make a difference in the community and doing things, serving others. And so that's a beautiful thing.

And I love that you are a part of our community. I was telling Zach who came here, right out of school, he interned here. He's been here. I don't know. I've known you for a few already. It seems like, right? You didn't turn for three. Yeah. Yeah. He interned at his senior year of college and he just, he, he just, I love the story because it's like what I love about people who are hungry. He just showed, I had an ad for an intern on indeed, I think. And I got a lot of responses and got too many, even bother responding to it. Some point I said, it was overwhelmed by it. So I said, I'll forget it's bad idea.

And he just showed up. he was in school in, the Carolinas, you were in school and you were in school and you were in school when you came to that summer, right? North Carolina. Yeah. And he just showed up. He came to Naples and just showed up at one of the salon. So I'm here about the job and my daughter met him and said, you got to meet this guy. He's a really great guy. And, he just kept showing up and he just, was on the doorstep. And anyway, he and his now fiance moved here. And, yeah, yeah. And, it's great for me to know that Naples is in such good hands with the people are young people who are, going to continue on to make Naples great. Naples is so special. It is.

I love that. Thanks for sending that story and letting them share your stories. Ag manages. I'm again, I'll go back blessed in the professional sense to work with incredibly talented people each and every day and partners who we think alike and, we're as friends as much as we are colleagues on the professional side, but we have this, our firm it's let's, let's recruit character. Like you can teach a lot of talent and sell sports teams and it's kind of taken on the sports teams. You say like, how does this team operate so good? They don't have the best talent like on paper.

They should not be winning championships and sometimes, clearly talent can win out, but sustainability, like you need character, you need drive, you need hustle, you need ambition. And that's not just, Hey, you got to spend more time. Although there is a correlation there. Yeah. Like your hustle, Zach, you just show up and you don't take no. That's the kind of stuff. And that's just character and character in and of itself is harder to teach. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. But that's what really carries the day because character will be able to deal with adversity. Either if it's a blip of a moment or it's a time period in life, character is going to call, call you through.

And if you have that character to you, that's who we bet on, no, professionally speaking, always kind of saying like, I won't interview anybody if they don't have over a 3.8 GPA. And I'm like, great. They're a test taker and maybe they're a super talented person, but I'll take a 3.0 with great character and hustle. Yeah. And maybe they're just a terrible test taker than a 3.8 with, they're just going to expect the world like that. That's a different, different person to me. And there are systems that were person A at the 3.8 works out. And there's a system where, person B in a 3.0, but has immense character and hustle works out. Yeah. I'd like to be in the latter camp.

Yeah, that's beautiful. That's great. That's, that's, that's like the binary thing where it's not binary. You can't just go by that one metric. And, we do the same with, with, with stylists or anybody on our team that, like maybe they didn't don't have the most natural talent, but they can be taught, but they have that character. They know how to take care of another human being. Yeah. How to serve another and are going to be kind and gracious and loving and thoughtful to another human. And we'll teach them the technical part.

But if you have that heart and you, that your whatever background, whether it's Cuban, Italian, we have so many nationalities here, everyone, and they're all welcome. We love them all. We don't judge any of them. We don't have any requirements to have more of one than the other. You're just a good human. Come on over., we got space for it. We love you. Yeah. So I couldn't agree with that more. I love that. Cause it's just a open heart. I do have to ask you though, because is this what you were to work? Is this your, is this your work attire? Yeah. Yeah. We're not a tie thing. No, we're not a tie in, in like buttoned up.

We, gosh, we instituted this a while ago and if I took it away from our team or our partners did or our leaders took it away from our team, I think we'd have a reeval, but we just kind of instituted like a dress for your day policy. Yeah. So gotta be professional. And but, but a lot of our team, like we're in jeans and a collared shirt for men or, something it's different for women, but, something that's professional appearance, but it doesn't have to be a silk blouse and, tie and jacket and all that. But if you're meeting with big time client and they're more formal or whatever it is like dress for your day, right.

Institute that and be around like, Hey, other people may have that in the, a more formalized meeting in the office. Just be cognizant when you're walking through common spaces and we do, yeah. And with, with physical appearance, but yeah, this me, kind of, I can walk right off the golf course into the office and kind of look is, is my deal. I guess, you don't have, you definitely have the professional golfer look to you anyway.

Your brother is similar to you in size. Your brother look like he's, he's a little bit, he's a little, he won't hit, he'll hate me saying he's a little bit bigger. So he's got a, not an inch and a half, almost two inches on me in height. And then he's just a little bit like a, of a bigger guy. Yeah. So he's not obese by, by a long shadow. I don't want to slam him there. Yeah. So you're a golfer too. I am. Yeah. I just, he, he was the, I was the baseball player. He was the golfer. So, okay. But I am a golfer. I try to hold my own. I'm usually playing about, how's your game against his, but it's nowhere near close. And he was a collegiate golfer. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've beaten him one time since he, we have, again, six and a half years apart. I think I've beaten him one time since he was 12. No, really. So even at that age, man, he was just super talented, super talented kid and loves the game and has the heart and he's a lefty and I'm a righty. And like, it's the lefty, he's a lefty too pure swing. yeah. So he played baseball too. He did growing up. he was a good little baseball player, a great basketball player too, but he, golf was his thing. Yeah. I remember my parents would drop him off at the municipal course and the summers and it was almost like the golf course babysat him and really he wouldn't want to come home.

Wow. And he just, he's never met a stranger. He has that personality and especially put him on any country club or golf atmosphere. And he's just, he's a lovable guy and just fits. Yeah. So I'm proud of him, man. I'm super proud of him. I don't tell him what up, but he's just, he's done great things. He, he, one time was the youngest division one coach when he was at Murray state and then, took the job at Belmont before that he was at army West point as an assistant coach. So he's kind of worked his way up and grinded and, again, in a sport and collegiate that it's a non-revenue generating sport. There's no glitz. There's no going out to it.

It's just, it's his calling, right? He has that kind of teacher. And again, I think it comes from our parents definitively in our, in, the grandparents and everything else that he just loves teaching and coaching. And that's what he chose as his calling in his profession. And he's going to be here for the holiday. They're going to make the trip down. Nice. Yeah. Nice. You have everybody here. We'll have everybody. That's awesome. It'll be a busy house. Good. Yeah. you just made me think of something because you'll have, so it'll be your sister-in-law, your mom, the three women of the family will be there, right? Sister-in-law, your mom and your wife. Yep. Okay.

Because maybe, if they're interested in this, I don't know how long they're going to be here. We can have the three of them in together. It'd be our gift to come in and get some pampering and a little loving and the salon will set them up and too generous of an offer. Really? Really? It's at least we can do. Yeah. Thank you very much. I know, I know they would absolutely. I hope so. I really am. I mean, be careful what you wish for too. And my mom would go berserk for that. She earned it. She did a good job on you. So not that you knew my sister-in-law wouldn't either, but they, my, I know my mom should just be a special memory. Good.

I'll have Marina get in touch with you and set it all up and you know that it works for everybody and make sure they get some good loving that they deserve. So that'd be cool. I'd be honored to have your mom here and your wife and your sister-in-law. So for sure. The question, and we'll have to revisit this in a couple of years, but at this moment in life, what do you love about your life?

I love, the most thing I love about my life right now is I have the most wonderful spouse. Right. And so our marriage and, you go through it and we've been married, it'll be 14 years next year. And our marriage gets stronger and stronger each and every year and everything we go through and every new challenge, we just, we just deal with it. And we've done something since our very early stages in our life and time together that

As many days as we can, as long as one of us isn't traveling at the end of every day, when, when now I come home, she works out of the home. But when I come home, we drop everything, no technology, and we go on a walk, usually pour a glass of wine or something. And we just go on a walk for 45 minutes at least and get it, get, a couple of miles in just at our pace. And we talk about our day and that's a moment for her and I just to, just to come together, talk about personal stuff or professional stuff or whatever. And I, those moments and what we do is just invaluable.

But what I love about my life truly is how much she supports me and everything I want to do and the idiosyncrasies of who I am and what I, what I, what I strive to be and, what I've been blessed to professionally continue to carry on and traveling across the world and building an office in India and doing all these things that were bucket list items of me, but haven't heard there along the way. And for our marriage to grow up, I love it. I just, that's the most important thing in my life. I love hearing that. It's so special and great to hear when, when a relationship works to that degree, like there's, you could just, the love gets stronger every day., I can hear it.

Cause I, I experienced that in my relationship, like where I just

When somebody loves the way she loves me for just the way I am and just the way I am not, she's not trying to change me. She has loves and I'm okay. And that just, there's nothing like that level of love. It's just, and it tusses me, we're way different animals and creatures. And, eating, I met when again, we were in our early twenties and she saw something in me and she made sure I knew that through a lot of different aspects, but she saw something in me that I didn't even see in myself personally, and made me explore depths of me and getting to who I am and my faith and true faith and beliefs and reality and everything else that I never would have had.

I shouldn't say never, but certainly in my heart, I believe like not to the extent I have today, if it, if it hadn't been for God, place in her, I get it. I get it. And when you say it's, in the South we say, we out kick your coverage. I mean, I just, I'm not even in the same stadium or university, but she's not, but I'm blessed enough that she stuck, she's stuck with me and rode this journey with me. Yeah. And I, with her for this amount of years and it just continues to get better. Yeah. Just made you more of you than you even knew you were. Amen. Well said. I get it. Extremely well said. Yeah. Cause that's, I, I know the feeling I get, I get the feeling too.

Like I didn't know who I was until she told me who I was and she keeps telling me who I am. And it's awesome. Cause it's like, really? Yeah. It's a great thing. It's a beautiful thing when you just can't wait to be with your partner like that, just every day. And I love that practice of taking a walk without, without technology. I really love that. I think that's so necessary and such a great thing to do because it only takes one text to take you out of the moment or one notification and you're gone from that moment in the middle of their sharing their breakdown of the day. And you get a text or a call or I get, that just, I'm gone. I'm not there.

And, when you're out in nature, going for a walk and you got none of that with you, that's a beautiful practice. I love that. I love that. And again, because we live down here, we can do that almost year round, sometimes you got to throw a little layer on, but yeah, it's, it's wonderful. We call them our wine walks and it's just been a stable of our Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. I got a lot of good stuff out of this for me. Selfishly in a good way. Appreciate that brother. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Me too. No, I thank you for, taking time out of your life to be here with us, especially this time of year. It's always crazy for everybody this time of year, kind of a lot.

Everybody has a lot happening between the holidays and just life in general. So thank you for giving us your time and me getting an opportunity to know you and you're now in my circle forever. So I appreciate that. Likewise. I appreciate you doing this. And I know you've had some exceptional people on your podcast and following it now and just thank you for hosting and committing your time and talent to bring light to others who are doing some things in this community to continue to make it special. Yeah, I'm honored. I'm honored. And I really appreciate it. And anything that you're up to too, you should know this too.

I know you're involved in a lot of organizations and you're working on giving and supporting many others any way we can support anything you, your staff, your team, or whoever you're working with needs, we're always here for you. No questions asked. Don't ever feel

Shy about asking for something. If we can, we can donate services or, or products or whatever we can do to forward your mission. We're here for that. Oh man. Thank you. I think there's an organization I just, I'm going to step into the board chair for the community board that they have here in Southwest Florida and organization called better together. And that's the one I was thinking of better together. Yeah. It's, it's just an incredibly wonderful organization. the CEO Megan Rose is here locally and she's just an incredible human being.

Vanessa Estrada is the local executive director, another incredible human being. just the organization, if I can make a plug for them, it's just their core nucleus is really keeping families together. Megan came from the social work field. A lot of the people within the organization come from the social work field and realize that it's just not a good system, right? And it's not a good system when it comes to the bureaucracy of government. And I think even a lot of the good, good governments like the state of Florida recognize the same.

It's, it's tough to do and you're dealing with precious lives, but what is extremely important is keeping the core nucleus family together, right? And if anybody can rally in the communities can rally around because oftentimes it's probably just a string of bad luck. Right. It's, it's a medical bill. It's a loss of job temporarily and parents need or parent needs to get on their feet and they just need help with their kids. Like just let me concentrate for a week or 30 days or 60 days or whatever to be to, to get my life around and again, work with the willing.

And if you're able to do that and use the church system and the, and the Christian faith for families to temporarily bring these young men, women into their homes, they're going to a loving moral Christian based household. The parents can get on their feet and they have a better families, which is keeping the families together in a better jobs program. So it's not just keeping the core nucleus, but getting people gainfully employed as well. I think that what they're doing is just God's work. It's exploded across the state in various areas, but if, thank you for allowing me to talk about that.

The real, the real heroes and the true stars are, are the people that have better together and Megan and Vanessa and the rest of the team over there, what they're doing and really making actual, and I call it old school, man, what, what the churches used to do and, and still do to a large degree. I shouldn't take that away, but, bringing that together and the community really wrapping around the people who need it the most that really it's just temporary and it keeps it out of the system and it keeps them, off the taxpayer role and money and pressure.

And again, it's a way better outcome that the data proves that the, everything proves that keeping the family together, keeping kids with their natural biological parents, if you can, in a healthy environment, doing it and stabilizing them with employment and everything else, it works. Yeah. It works. Beautiful. I love that. It may take you up on that because I got some, you throw something out there. My mind goes a million miles an hour and yeah, certainly would be beneficial and an experience for maybe some of the men and women that are, that are there in the program, but, but also for, for you as well. Yeah.

Well, I think, one thing that comes to mind and you mull this over with them, but sometimes people going through a difficult time could use a little escape to come to the salon and get a little makeover to kind of help their, help them feel better about themselves when they're in a difficult time. And that's something that we could be available for on us that, just to give them that moment of loving kindness and warmth and to make them feel a little bit better if they're dealing with something difficult. Another connection. Clearly it'd be up to Megan and Vanessa on that decision, but I love the idea.

Especially before they host regular job fairs, stuff in, the wires today, there was an X one here next month, right? And so they have these job fairs again, as part of the better jobs program to get people gainfully employed for those families that are, that are, connected to the organization. Yeah. So getting ready for that or whatever they need, we're here. Just know that. You're awesome. You're doing what you're doing with them too. I do the work. It's just couldn't agree. Trying to get the exposure out there and awareness out there. Yeah. So we'll, we'll make sure we're on their radar. So whatever you need for that. Okay. Yeah. So, Merry Christmas to you.

God bless you. I really appreciate you. Enjoyed our discussion today. Thanks. Yeah, me too. I look forward to meeting your, your family too. Hopefully we'll be here. We'll set it up so that we give them some good pampering, some good loving for Christmas and keep the holiday spirit going. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks a lot, man.