Former American Idol CMO On Building Billion Dollar Brands

I was hired by Sony Music. I didn't wake up one morning and have a fire to, to become an executive coach. It was ego and money that was driving me. It led me to kind of wonder why I was making the decisions I was making. What did I really value and what kind of legacy did I want to leave? Leaders that do demonstrate some vulnerability, it's not a weakness, it's humanity.

Today we welcome Chris Gannett to The Deal Table. Chris is the CEO and founder of Gannett Partners, a firm dedicated to unlocking sustainable progress and superior returns by combining coaching science, company building expertise, and capital.

Over the years, he has raised millions in funding, contributed to over $500 million in M&A value, and invested in more than 50 startups. His leadership roles as CMO and GM with major brands like Sony, American Idol, and Elvis Presley Enterprises have earned him multiple Grammy and Emmy Awards, Guinness Records, and successful exits.

Since 2022, Gannett Partners has supported clients across 10 countries, driving growth and achieving remarkable success across startups, Fortune 500s, nonprofits, and family offices. We look forward to learning from his vast experience and unique approach to business and leadership.

We hope you enjoy the episode. Chris, thank you so much for being here. Yeah. I think the best place to start on this conversation is good old Memphis and Elvis because, because I know we just had about a 30-minute conversation that was off camera. But I feel like I cut you guys off because y'all were just in it. So I'd like to just wrap up whatever we need to do.

Chris is a— was chief marketing officer for Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Yeah.

And the parent company.

Yeah. And, you know, I was born and raised in Memphis and Elvis was a phenomenon, of course, a global phenomenon. But certainly in Memphis, somebody did a study of the economic impact of tourism in Memphis affected and people still come from all— I don't know if the tourist volume is still growing or not. But long after he died, it was still, you know, sort of ticking up. It's, I think, the second most visited home in the United States next to the White House, beating Thomas Jefferson's, you know, home. Yeah. So, or maybe Washington's Monticello. Anyway, you know, the impact of tourists coming around and they take that dollar from a bank out of wherever they came from and stick it in a Memphis bank that then gets circulated. And so the power of that of that dollar is more than a dollar that I go to Kroger and buy groceries, right? And it's my dollar. And Elvis Presley Enterprises was created after Elvis's death. Elvis died. He had a very, very small probate estate for the career that he had. There wasn't much value left in what he owned.

You'd have to talk to the Colonel about that.

I was going to say, I was going to invoke that and say that the Colonel, I don't know what what, what happened to all that wealth. But there wasn't much left. And the estate was— the trust co-trustee, the bank in Memphis, said sell off the assets, put it in municipal bonds, clip the coupons, give them to Lisa Marie. And Priscilla had the wherewithal and the foresight to say, no, I think we should embrace the home and these assets and open it and And, and then she brought in Jack Soden, who was her money manager at the time out of Kansas City. And Jack got his hands around me. They were printing Elvis's image on anything and everything all over the world. And I think, Jack, that may have been the first case like it where they went out and basically protected the intellectual property. I believe that, that Michael Jackson's estate and others sought them out for counsel on how to, you know, to protect that name, image, likeness. And it was just now affiliated with sports, but around that. So, so Elvis Presley Enterprises was a huge contributor to Memphis, a great job of taking a small estate and turning it into something of significant value. You played a role in that. You want to tell us about your role there?

You know, I can best be described as a custodian. Yeah, I was a partner to Jack. He had a VP of marketing. Who is an exceptionally talented— is an exceptionally talented guy. And so to the extent that I can take credit for anything, it would be as a great collaborator with a bunch of really brilliant people who made their careers there. Jack was an exceptional— is an exceptional manager. And there are a lot of folks that have been a part of that organization for Couple decades. Not unusual. Yeah. But the nature, frankly, and, you know, I don't know how meandering we want to go, but the nature of that relationship between Priscilla and Jack is an interesting kind of metaphor for my relationship with the DOC. You know, in terms of a willing co-conspirator, an operating partner to a vision. That's kind of the role that we play at Canup Partners with our clients like DOC, who has a vision for elevating kind of motivated but underchampioned youth and pointing them in direction that creates real futures for them. With the Dreams Experience Academy out of Doc Cares, his nonprofit, he had shared that vision with the Dallas Regional Chamber and the city of Dallas and frankly anyone who would listen since 2021, maybe, maybe even earlier. And, and it wasn't until the end of 2023 when the DRC introduced he and I and we got to work. But my job there is, is again, drawing that vision out, packaging it and helping it go-to-market.

Yeah, I love that you brought up Doc because one thing I love about him is, well, one, he's just an awesome guy, but like one of my favorite things to do is be out in public with him because like, you know, he's a bit older, so some people have no clue who he is, but the people that recognize him lose their minds and it is the most entertaining thing in the world at least to me, to see these people fanboy, fangirl out to him. And then you have a crowd of people going, who is this?

Why?

What do y'all— what? So I took him to an SMU football game and it was like that.

And if you know, you know.

Yeah, if you know, you know, because we're just walking down the boulevard and then just like— I will say that the, the guy that freaked out the most was a middle-aged white dude who looked more like a finance bro than anything. And it was the funniest thing in the world.

That was the NWA target audience, basically, right?

Yeah.

Back in the early '90s.

Yeah.

But I love that you're working with them, and I love seeing that growth of Doc Cares and now the Dreamit Experience as well. Yeah.

Well, we can take this anywhere you want. I feel privileged to be at the table with you gentlemen.

Well, I'd love to just jump in straight into Gannett Partners and, and, because that's your latest venture, um, you know, what is that? What are you doing? And then, you know, we can kind of get how you got there, but I'd love to just start off what.

You'Re doing right now.

Yeah.

So, so Gannett Partners, um, is, is a resource that, that I wanted as, as an operator. I wanted it as an entrepreneur. And I wanted it as an investor, but I couldn't find it. And so I created it. And it's a culmination of 30 years of operating and transacting businesses, not as a banker per se, but as an entrepreneur and an operator, a company builder, but also as an executive coach and as a capital allocator. And so, you know, when I thought about my life as an angel investor and ways that I could essentially de-risk my own capital in earlier growth stage companies, the lowest hanging fruit is the founder themselves and their early leadership team. And so what Gannett Partners does is brings together 3 kind of complementary components. One is certified executive coaching. The second is operating advisory or company building as we like to call it. And the third is capital. And the role that capital plays there is aligning our incentives for the long term. So when we have a client that comes in either door, the coaching or the operating advisory door, when we have conviction that they have permission to win, we want to be on the cap table in some form, whether that's small or that's more significant. We tend to be one of the more strategic partners that come in through the capital door. But what, what we do is build valuable companies and resilient leadership teams, and we do that through the coaching business, which The coaches in, in the company, uh, of which there are two right now, um, both went through the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, um, were certified there. Uh, in fact, my operating partner in Lisbon and I met there while he was an executive at Gardner. And then, uh, after coaching each other for a couple years, um, I was successful in talking him into leaping out of Gardner, um, and, uh, And we'd built up a great level of trust there. But quickly after launching the business, kind of took that mindfulness approach to executive coaching from Berkeley and married it with an affiliation with the Institute of Coaching at Harvard Medical School, where I'm a fellow, Stefan is an affiliate. We're actively involved in sort of what we call cognitive behavioral coaching. So coaching research and kind of the neurology and the physiology of building resilience in a coaching context, in a business context. And then we bring that together with 30 years of operating experience. So hits, misses, a lot of misses, a couple great hits and a couple base runs. And that's what we consider the heart and mind of business, de-risking the heart and mind. And then we bring operating advisory to the table. And we think of that in the context of value and returns. So moving from the head into the body of the business and helping our partners accelerate certain aspects of their growth, whether that's brand strategy or go-to-market or strategic growth, which tends to include M&A or channel partnerships or other ways of co-opting or catalyzing growth along with kind of building reputation and meaning for the executives that, so that their successes, that they accrue their successes to their name, but their names accrue the successes to their corporate entity. And then capital kind of speaks for itself. But Gannett Partners was launched in, at the end of 2023, or 2022 actually. When was it? We'll have to edit this. But yeah, you know, since launch we've been growing about 100% year on year. This year we're on path to meet that same growth goal if we hit our marks. And we've now served clients in 10 countries and 15 industries and have some fun announcements coming soon. And we're doing it all from Dallas because we're so bullish on this market and so happy to be in North Texas.

So you said multiple times permission to win. Yeah. Is that a common phrase from the Berkley Institute or is that something you came up with? Because I've never really heard that in the context of this before. Yeah. Can we expand on that?

I don't know where I got it, but we use it a lot and it's effectively, you know, being able to understand the signals we're getting from the market as we look at companies that give us conviction, that strengthen our conviction or diminish our conviction in a company's ability to beat its competition. Yeah, that's sort of, That's the basic concept there.

And what's the end goal with Gannett.

Partners? Man, create value and have fun. I love what I do. I absolutely love it. You know, I've been working professionally since I graduated from college in.

1995.

Well, I've been working a lot longer than that. I'll put it that way. Whether it was selling Cutco cutlery or.

Mowing lawns or— Do you remember your sales phrase?

Oh, I don't remember the sales phrase.

Can you sell me this knife?

But yeah, right. But I can still cut a penny into a corkscrew with the scissors. So yeah, put me on the spot and I'll implement it faithfully. But yeah, 30 years of, you know, building and selling and hopefully not ruining too many companies along the way and, you know, compounding all those different experiences to offer it to companies that are building or whose growth is stalled or are in need of a different direction.

So is it a cafeteria plan? Can they pick and choose among these 3 services? Coaching, operational support, and capital, or do they come in under the coaching and consume the other on the way?

The capital is invitation.

Only. Okay.

Yeah. But yes, they can choose their door in between coaching and operating advisory. And typically, you know, we have clients who it tends to start with coaching. And we tend to develop a relationship and a level of trust with our clients, starting with the C-suite. And then when we sort of help them come to certain awarenesses about their business, the question tends to be, do you know anyone who can do this? And it's not a hard sell. It's just We'll be honest if there are areas where we know that we're competitive and we'll reference or refer them to folks who we think can do the job for them based on the scope of the deliverable.

So what is a prototypical client? What's a target client look like?

Gosh.

Well, I think, you know, one way to answer that question is is to date, all of our growth has been pull, has come out of my network effectively. And so we're a known quantity to those folks and they range from seed stage to publicly traded incumbents. Now we're never competing against a McKinsey or a Bain or BCG at the boardroom level, we're solving more finite problems either with a combination of strategy and tactical execution or as a foil in terms of thinking, you know, for leadership teams. But we also do enterprise training. So we help, you know, the work that we do with senior leaders to cascade down into organizations. And the company's growing. And so we, to say that I know exactly what it's gonna look like in 5 years, I'd be kidding all of us, but we're listening to the market. Goes back to that permission to win. We're doubling down in areas where we have faith in our hypothesis and we're pulling back in areas where the market is telling us especially in the current environment, you know, it's not the right time to invest.

So it sounds like from a size standpoint, you'll take businesses, as you said, from seed stage to publicly traded to provide one of these services. But from a capital standpoint, do you have a type of business or size of business that you'll invest in?

Yeah, it tends to be, tends to be on the earlier stage where we can write a smaller check and take more ownership equity in the company. But we also participate in secondaries opportunistically when we might be working with a company that is beyond our ability to invest directly, but we want to have some exposure to them. We'll look at secondaries.

Got it. The Berkeley training program, tell me about that. What is the— me how they teach you to coach. Yeah.

Well, if I can, I'll frame it because it's not something that any of us— at least I'll speak for myself. I didn't wake up one morning and have a fire to become an executive.

Coach.

But over the course of my career, there have been certain points where I've listened to a voice in my head tell me that it might that I should look at other alternatives. For example, when after, after business school, I went into banking. I worked for Citi for 4 years in New York. And in year 2 of 4, I recognized what I loved and valued about my work in the investment corporate investment bank and what wasn't totally gratifying. I loved that I got to work on the global stage. I loved the intellectual challenge of the work itself. I loved the globality, the fact that I rotated through different pieces of the business and that offered the opportunity to live and work in different geographies. But for me, as someone who started out in marketing and is a much more kind of conceptual thinker. I missed the creativity of— I didn't miss my role as a brand manager in consumer packaged goods, but I missed exercising that side of my brain. And so I took a weekend to figure out what I really wanted to be when I grow up.

And at the time— just a weekend?

At the time, I was reminded how much I love music. And, and so, you know, I made a bet on myself and decided I wanted to transition out of banking into the music industry, even as it was collapsing on itself. This is at the dawn of Napster and, right? But if you love inefficient markets, anyway, I listened to that and took steps to find my way into the music industry. And in 2006, I was hired by Sony Music and helped form the Commercial Music Group with a bunch of incredibly talented people. And then a similar moment, but different themed, occurred in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I had just moved my career from New York to Texas because one of my children told me that I lived in New York and visited them on the weekends. And I heard that, I felt that. And so I was in the midst of, of trying to turn a business around that was an event-based business that I'd taken an equity stake.

In, uh.

At the end of 2019. Oh, in New York? No, in, in, in Fort Worth. Okay. And, uh, and, you know, within 6 months, the, the industry was was crushed. Um, and my partners and I were working to, to figure out how to turn that business around. It was a turnaround we did not forecast.

Obviously.

But, um, but I also lost my dad to COVID very early in the pandemic, and that was another kind of catalytic moment where dealing with a, a crisis on the company side and managing a crisis within my family, it led me to kind of wonder why I was making the decisions I was making, you know, what, what did I really value? And what kind of legacy did I want to leave? And it was coming out of that, which was a, there's silver linings in that story. You know, we saved the company, we produced, you know, one of the first COVID-era drive-in music experiences with Garth Brooks and recapitalized. And it was, it was actually a good, a great outcome. Um, but coming out of that, I parted ways with the company and went to Berkeley, and it was as much a curiosity about becoming a better leader, having been a cheerleader and an advisor and a mentor, but never really understanding what coaching was. It was as much kind of satisfying that curiosity as it was, how can I How can I just be a better human? Kind of very sincere personal moment. And then as an angel investor, how can I help my, my, the founders I'm investing in to be more effective? Kind of the two-sided idea here. And so I went there and it was very mindfulness-driven, as you might imagine Berkeley would be. And through the course of that, I had the opportunity to do some practicums in the program, coaching executives at LinkedIn and PG&E, and got to do some, some work with Berkeley faculty and came out of it feeling a little transformed. Yeah. And realized like how useful it was. It wasn't something that I intended to make a living doing, but I realized that I was I was proficient and I wanted to do it for more than one company at a time. Bless you.

And.

So, uh, so I launched Gannett Partners on the back of that and kind of brought together the operating advisory and the capital I was already doing, but in a more informal way post the sale of the American Idol business, um, back in, uh, 2012.

One of the things I, I love about, you know, the form that you filled out for us was the, the resiliency is a muscle that can be built or, or practiced or developed. Um, do you feel that is the same similar to like leadership and just all aspects of being a human? And I guess that's just an overall umbrella of the growth mindset versus fixed mindset.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, no, that's a, that's a great, a great point, Ryan. Yeah. And I am in the stage of my life at 52, you know, I'll be 53 this year and I don't know where the time went. I remember when I was the youngest.

Guy in the.

Room, but I really don't make, I don't distinguish between, so often we as professionals and business students and, you we like to put things and people in boxes, and I really don't distinguish between leader and human. We want to be a whole person. And so the resilience, the integral resilience, as we call our methodology, is just about how do you become stronger in your convictions and recognize how a resilient mindset not only helps you emerge or bounce forward from crises or challenging scenarios, but how it can help you accelerate in times of growth to make up ground or beat your competition. And part of that is a mindful approach. Part of that is a physiological approach. And part of that is a very practical approach. And that's what we do at Gannett Partners. My operating partner, prior to his tenure at Gartner in technology, and we met at Berkeley, he was a trainer for Man City Football Club. He was a soccer player at University of Liverpool and, or football player, he would He would condescend to me if he knew that I was saying football. But yeah, his— he brings a completely different perspective and that sort of physiological orientation. It's almost as though, you know, we're thinking about, you know, as much living in a state of gratitude as we are how well you're sleeping, uh, and, um, your decision-making, you know, capacity kind of all blended together in one. And so, uh, it's, it's not unusual to see us working with athletes as well, um, and bringing, uh, an athletic mindset into a corporate environment, just vice versa.

What, what sparked you to go back to Berkeley?

Uh.

Well, I, I, it was, it was, I researched programs, um, and the programs that kind of made sense to me were, uh, there's, there's a great program at, um, at Columbia out of Teachers College. There's a great program at Emory. Uh, Brown has a program. Um, but Berkeley was accessible. I was curious about it. Um, and, uh, I talked to I talked to faculty at all those programs when I was evaluating it, and I got the best feeling.

I guess my real question is, is like, because I understand part of your motivation was just to be a better coach and learn more about your own.

Yeah.

But what sparked you going, oh, I— is it a gap? Is it a hole? Is it— did you just have more time? Like, what was the catalyst to go, hey, I need, I need help on this, let me go seek that out?

It was a curiosity.

And in more context is, is you've already had an impressive career. It would be easy to be like, look at me, I'm all that and a bag of chips. I don't need anybody else to— Yeah.

It's, it's a, I mean, I'm in a different season of life. I, I'm a, I think, you know, without trying to sound trite, I'm sort of a lifelong student. I really enjoy learning, uh, and in the same way that, you know, I look for opportunities to work with amazing people. I want to learn from the same caliber of people. So I think it just occurred to me that if I'm going to do this, I should try to do it at a higher level. And it's a great program. I can't speak highly enough. They do a great job staying connected with alumni.

The reason I was asking is like, because I'm, I'm, I'm in my own intellectual journey right now. Yeah, you are. Because I would say probably for the last 20 years, I wasn't a lifelong student. I lived in my bubble and it wasn't until mid-early last year going, I have significant gaps in my business, in my leadership, in everything that I'm doing. And as a, as a solopreneur, I don't have a business partner. I either need to, you know, learn how to drive this ship or jump off the ship or crash the ship or whatever analogy you want to use. Yeah. So, but for me, I wasn't a lifelong learner. It was just more of a, of a, a desperation of, oh, I got to figure this out, or I'm— it's not a failure thing. It's just like, I really have a passion of what I'm doing with, with my company., but clearly what I'm doing is not necessarily working. We're still here, which is a great win in itself, but how do I not be here? How do I be there?

Yeah.

So that was my personal journey. I was just curious to see if, if there was, oh, if there was similar.

I think it's a parallel structure. You had an awareness and it was the right time for you. Um, I, I was going through, you know, the same kind of moment where Prior to that, I had moved my family to Dallas for reasons of wanting to get my children closer to two sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, not because this is a hotbed for media and entertainment, though it will be.

It's growing.

Coming soon.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the work that DOC and I are doing, we are trying to be one of many catalysts to bring that community together in North Texas. But I was continuing to commute to New York. I commuted to New York every week for 2 years. I worked out of 4 World Trade Center, and that was what precipitated one of my sons to say, you, you live in New York and visit us on the weekends. So for me it was, you know, why, why am I choosing to live this life? And ultimately, you know, I'm comfortable enough today saying it was ego and money that was driving me. And I got to a point at that moment we just talked about, you know, when the pandemic kind of crushed the industry that I just bought into and, and, and took my dad's life that I, I I realized, you know, sort of Jerry Maguire moment number 2, um, where, uh, you know, this isn't sustainable for me and I really better answer these questions or I'm going to wake up 10 years later and nothing will have changed. Um, and I just, you know, I guess a way to think about it is I commercialized the outcome versus just kind of, uh, enjoying it personally. If that makes sense. 100%.

Yeah. You've talked, you've used the term mindfulness, and that's used a lot these days. I'm like you, I'm sort of a student of life, and Ryan's a pretty voracious reader, as am I, and I suspect you are as well. And going through events in my life as you two have, I started reading a lot of Stoic literature, Marcus Aurelius. Yes.. And so, you know, and as somebody who carried a lot of stress in the financial services world and lived deal to deal and, you know, trade to trade, the philosophy of don't live in the past, don't project into the future, live in the moment was very clarifying for me. And it changed who I am fundamentally, although it's a work in progress, right? It's progress over perfection every day. Exactly. But you're talking about integrating mindfulness into leadership growth and executive coaching. So is my definition of mindfulness and.

The Stoic tradition the same as yours? That maps directly to the way I live my life.

Okay.

Absolutely. And it inevitably seeps into kind of a mindset that we like to.

Coach.

Because ultimately, to the Aurelius literature, it's we've got to focus on what we can control and let the rest go, which is very finite, right? It's true. It's absolutely true. And as leaders, the more clarity we can bring to what we can promise to deliver and what we have to step back from, the more effective we'll be and the happier we'll be and the happier our people will be. Because ultimately what that is, is demonstrating some vulnerability. And we find that leaders that do demonstrate some vulnerability, it's not a weakness, it's humanity and it's purpose in some cases. And that's attractive. And so if you really look at the best leaders, over time, the most effective leaders, I should say, best is subjective. The most effective leaders based on outcomes, they tend to operate with a sort of modest orientation and they recognize that they're not the smartest in the room and they don't want to be. There's plenty of quotes of leaders that say, "I just hire the right people and get out of the way." And it's obviously not that straightforward and not that easy, but You know, they understand where they end and the people they hire begin.

You're a family man. You referenced your children. Mine are in their 30s now, so I can't call them children anymore. But we live in a world where people are tremendously impacted by other people's opinions of them on social media and these platforms. And communication is text messaging. And my daughter, one of my daughters told me the other day I shouldn't call people. You know, that that's rude to actually call someone on the phone, right? Thought, well.

I'm, you know, I, I, so I'm, I'm there, but I'm saying no, not anymore, because I got called out the other day. It's like, how many sales calls you last week? Why do emails and text messages? Like, did you make reply back? Yeah. And it's funny because, and I don't know if it's a fear or just we get so used to texting that like if you just pick up that phone and just call, like you can have a much quicker, like the emotion, the whatever somebody's actually thinking is right there in the call. And then you also have access to people like, uh, uh, we'll have, uh, Tucker Bridwell. He'll be a future guest. He's a big donor for, he offices here, big donor for SMU. We'll, we'll never answer an email. We'll never respond to a text.

But he answers his phone.

Yeah, you know, and it's just like, it was that easy just to call him? Yeah, well, obviously I had his number, but whatever, that's a different story. But, but you just like— but the overall point is you just got to pick up that phone.

Yeah. And, uh, and I guess I was circling back— sorry, no, no, in your embracement of, uh, embracing, uh, mindfulness, um, how do you as a parent maybe a little too personal, but how do you as a parent address that with your children where they live in a world where if somebody doesn't like enough— it may not be your children— but get enough affirmation on social media to feel.

Comfortable with themselves? Uh, it's a great question. It's a heavy question. It's a great question. And, um, it's definitely— there's definitely a generational shift here. Um, I know too much about social media. I remember in, when was it, 2006, 2007, former brief employee of Epic Records launched the Facebook New York office and we got to see what this was about firsthand. And I recognized immediately the power of this kind of transparency. Um, I had no idea. I was looking at it from an advertiser's perspective at first, but then, you know, I had no idea where it was going to go. Um, but having kind of observed the evolution of social media just specifically, let alone, you know, the channels of communication and how that's changed the way we interact as humans. To your point about texting versus calling, my kids are not on social media. They're 14, and as far as I can tell, they don't resent us really yet.

No, I've never talked to a parent who said their children at that age.

Are not on social media. They are not.

We use— you lock them up in a cell at night?

Is there— yeah, yeah, we do.

We do.

No, we don't. They're, they're, they're, they're really good kids. And that's amazing. They're for now, I'm also kind of okay.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm, I don't think I'm cool, but I'm okay. But, um, yeah. And we use, you know, Gannett Partners is a, is invested in a company called Bark, um, which is a phenomenal, you know, software and hardware provider that protects kids from being bullied online. And, um, you know, depending on the permissions you set up, you know, may not be internet connected. In the phone, maybe internet connected, may allow third-party downloads, may not. You have a great view into their digital lives, but we have a very open and honest relationship with our kids, and they know our view of.

Snapchat.

For example, and so far it's, you know, phones are not that big a part of their lives, You know, it may be that, you know, we're, we're squarely in the nerd herd. Uh, but you know, we have, we have twins and one is a mathlete and one's an athlete. And, uh, they're definitely two sides of the coin, but they, they're sort of united in, you know, their commitment to their friends in person and, um, or online, you know, Roblox is a thing. Um, and, uh, Minecraft and everything else, but. For the mathlete in the family. And, you know, the other one is just super engaged in sports. And I don't know how we've done it. We're probably a little bit of a hippie family that way, but we don't make a big deal out of it. But we also— it's just not part of what we do. You know, it's not part of our family routine.

If you decide you want to add another service to your business, I would say coaching parents would— we certainly have the credibility with me to do that. What a challenging thing. You know, I'm blessed that my children are healthy adults. Yeah. But, you know, there is no manual for that.

One of the points though is like, you know, pre-social media, boys would fight. Yeah. They maybe they bully each other, maybe fight, And then I think this boggles the mind of, of a lot of women out there, but you could fast forward 2 years and then they're best friends. But if there's a social media component, maybe that bullying persists and they never become friends.

That beef is never addressed, right?

But like with, you know, exactly, you address the beef, you move on. And I, I don't think— I think social media is just perpetual, it just.

Perpetuates it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Which obviously, you know, for companies like BART, it was a— that was a greenfield for product innovation.

As part of this culture, reality television, you know, plays a big role. And I, in anticipation of your coming, I was curious because I can remember the first season of American Idol and I wondered, well, how long ago was that? And I looked it up and this is the 23rd season. Of American Idol. And I was just like, oh my God, I can't believe that that's how long. I confess that our family watched it the first several seasons, but we stopped watching it after the initial cuts because what we enjoyed were the people that lacked— completely lacked self-awareness. Yeah, right. The people that could actually sing weren't of interest to us.

Yeah.

You know, it was the people that thought they could sing, whose friends told.

Them they were a good singer whose.

Mommy told them, who mommy told them.

You know, great singer.

And it was just so, you know, it was amazing. But I think there's some something behind that that people don't— that just completely lack the self-awareness.

Who was the Howard Stern person they put forward over? No, no, no, Howard Stern. Their group was just like, they kept voting the worst singer and they— he.

Kept on going through. That might have been America's Got Talent.

I don't know.

Was it? Yeah, we, we never had Stern as a judge.

No, he was a judge. He was, he was doing on his radio program. Oh, he was encouraging his entire fandom.

Oh my gosh.

I don't know.

It starts with his ears. That was probably before my time. That was probably before I inherited, uh, the show in season 10. So the, the previous winner was, was a guy, uh, a singer named Lee DeWise, and he was a very kind of folk type singer and more of a coffeehouse artist. And the thing about Idol is we sold music, we made stars. Sinja, remember that guy? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was before my time.

So that was, that was part of the economics of the show was that you, you owned, had a licensing right to the music.

Uh, yeah, historically, yeah, we, we were, we were, I mean, one of the, one of the enduring kind of characteristics of Idol versus other shows, The Voice included. I don't know if that's changed since, since I was in the arena, but, you know, we sold music and, you know, we recorded those songs during season and released those tracks, you know, while contestants were moving through the process. And then, you know, when we crowned a winner, we produced those albums with, you know, our record label partners at the time. For us, it was, uh, RCA was one year and then we moved to Universal Music Group, um, for distribution. And, uh, yeah, it was a remarkable, remarkably enduring platform. Um, But yeah, when, when I came in in season 10, we were, we were at our historically lowest ratings. Wow. But, you know, we changed a few things about kind of our positioning and how we auditioned and did our first, you know, rounds of consumer research, believe it or not, to understand kind of the, the, the changing winds of our tour audience and, and use that to produce See, season 10, we produced Scotty McCreary, who's a phenomenal, still enduring country artist who broke a couple world records for both his age and the number of albums he sold. And then the subsequent year, we produced Phillip Phillips, who you may or may not remember, but kind of had a Dave Matthews sound about him. And yeah, we tuned back into our audience. We sort of— I think the platform had somewhat forgotten who it served and, and that helped us, you know, we got 13 more years out of it so far.

Yeah.

And, you know, even, even after shifting over to ABC, you know.

Yeah.

So anyway, I wasn't aware of that change. I guess I'm so not paying enough.

Attention as a CMO. Like, what is your role at that, at that level? Because, like, you know, I've— for context, I've only been in the entrepreneur space, smaller owner-operator type positions. So marketing for us is just, you know, eyeballs on product, eyeballs on product. But for you, I mean, how big was that team? The marketing team for American Idol must have been massive. And it's like, what are you— are you just managing, or what are you doing there?

I mean, it was a combination of of ideation, execution, and management. And Idle is a very unique business. You know, they're in the 19 Entertainment business. We were a joint venture with FremantleMedia on the TV production. And so, you know, there's a lot of collaboration between Fremantle and 19, between the marketing and biz dev and licensing teams there and those on our side. Rolled up to me there, plus our broadcast partner Fox. So it was as much an exercise in kind of managing a coalition towards a unified, you know, goal as it was maximizing the value and output of your own team. But, you know, my mandate coming into that that role was a pretty clear goal to package the company for sale in really short order. So it was, for me, it was a 2-year sprint with the company. The parent company was called CKX originally. And, you know, my job working for the COO of the company was to open up, you know, opportunities for collaboration between the portfolio businesses, ramp up our sponsorship business, you know, make our operations kind of talk to each other. At the time, the business was very siloed. And so, you know, once I was able to get in there and, you know, build relationships with Jack's team at EP and Muhammad and Lonnie Ali and, you know, the management teams of, of Billy Crystal and Robin Williams and all those guys, you know, it was not unusual then for us, for you to see as the audience a Muhammad Ali night on So You Think You Can Dance, right? So floating like a butterfly and singing like a bee, you know, or the Idols turning on the Christmas lights at Graceland or, you know, lots of different ways to kind of cross-pollinate and bring our partners across all of those opportunities. And so, you know, trying to lift EBITDA a bit and, and help those assets perform a bit better, but also rebranding the corporate entity so that it frankly sheds some of the, the baggage of, of its, its first couple chapters with a somewhat controversial entrepreneur. Behind it. And it was a successful exercise. We sold it to Apollo, who was a majority debt owner of another one of the largest producers of reality TV in the world. And so their vision was to bring those together and produce content out of the underlying IP. And, you know, when that didn't work, they sold the portfolio. I think they sold Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali to, to, uh, Authentic Brands Group and, um, kind of split it up. But, um, yeah, in an ironic twist, it's now all owned by Sony again.

So it comes full circle. Yeah. So do.

You miss music? Um, I, I miss aspects of the music industry. I'm still very involved in the music industry. Um, Although I don't invest in music or music tech any longer, but I am one of those guys that spent hours in my bedroom as a teenager, you know, pouring over liner notes and just obsessing about all of these different people in the creative process and music was my baseball, right? I didn't know RBIs, but I could tell you, you know, if you showed me album artwork, I could tell you who produced the album and what session musicians were on it. And so when I had an opportunity to, you know, go through the process with Sony, it was wonderful. You know, my final interview was I'd made it through all the business interviews. I'd kind of got the stamp of the CFO who ironically hired me years later for the job that I commuted to New York for from Dallas. But yeah, my final interview was with a wonderful man who was the head of the Commercial Music Group, who for the last, you know, 15, 20 years has been the CEO of the Beatles. His name's Jeff Jones. He's an amazing guy. But our interview was 2 hours and all it was was talking about music. There was no business, there was no discussion of P&Ls and margins.

It was— Do you think he was vetting you to see if you knew about music?

It was, is this guy a music guy? You know, what are you listening to? Why do you like that? And we just went down a whole rabbit hole of, you know, the, Manchester movement, um, you know, uh, and I could geek out on you right now talking about that.

But one, one thing, I'm glad you brought up the Beatles because when you were listing off some of the stars, and I don't mean that pejorative, but of American Idol, I'm like, I have no clue who you're talking about. And it's interesting because in like the Beatle era, you had 3 or 4 mega famous groups or singular, but everybody knew Everybody. Nowadays, you have people that are extremely popular, extremely famous, that 80% of the population has no clue who they are. I went to the Post Malone concert on Friday and it was a great concert. And I'm thinking to myself, I didn't realize, and I'm a Post Malone fan, I didn't realize how he had so many songs that were hits. And then to circle back to your earlier comment about how did I get this old this quick? He's been in the business for 10 years and I'm going, wait a minute. Oh, wow. 10 years flew by quick. So I don't know what my overall point is here other than saying it's like, you know, I think with the—.

Probably that music and media more broadly.

Is so fragmented, right?

It's no longer 3 television networks that give you your news. It's no longer, you know, 3 major record labels that produce the world's content, right? It's okay. I don't take it personally. Trust me, I couldn't name one American Idol right now. I haven't watched the show since I walked away.

Well, also, like, what is fame anymore? Because, like, if you ask a 14-year-old, 15-year-old human, you know, if you— hey, who's— if you ask us who's famous, we're like, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt. Yeah, yes, them.

They're probably gonna list a social media TikToker. It's a YouTuber for sure.

Yeah, that's, that's, you know, it's the.

Weird of the demographic. My kids' generation wants to be a YouTuber or an athlete, um, you know, and it's not a high-growth industry. I like to, to share anytime I have an opportunity. Yeah, it's a boring conversation.

Music is, uh, such a powerful thing in our lives, and, um, I'm going through I had some hip surgery and I'm going through physical therapy and there was a Rolling Stones soundtrack playing in the physical therapy. And I— there's a 20-something-year-old physical therapist that's treating me. And I had this flashback in 1975, the Rolling Stones played at the Liberty Bowl. It wasn't called Liberty Bowl Stadium in Memphis. And I was 15 or 16 years old. It was the greatest single experience I'd had in my life. Up until that time, which is also— I found out it was clothing optional. I didn't get that memo. But yeah, you know, it's 1975, it's the summer, and it was like started and not— they didn't start at noon, but it started with some local blues artists, Furry Lewis and some others playing and built up to the Stones. And but I tell this girl, I go, you know, she said, I picked out this music for you. And I went, well, you know, I saw this band And I started thinking, I was like, I saw them in 1975. That was 50 years ago, right? I've seen them in concert a number of times, and they're still going. They're still going. But music is, you know, it's just a soundtrack to your life. One of my great experiences was I had a really good friend who was the chairman of Gaylord in Nashville, and they own the Grand Ole Opry. And he had his 60th birthday party on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. And I'm from Memphis. You'd think I'd know this since it was Nashville. I didn't realize it was a live radio show. Yeah, I just thought people came and played and it was a concert, but it's a live radio show. And, you know, and these country artists have mailboxes in the back where they get mail from fans. And so Minnie Pearl and these people are walking by and Vince Gill, you know, and they're saying hi to my friend who's the chairman of Gayle, you know, but the quality of the music and the sound, and I'm not a country music guy, but it was a really moving experience. So I get— I understand why music has been such an— and then being partner in B.B. King's Blues Club, which was extraordinary. Yeah. Riley B. King, Beale Street Blues Boy, and That was an exceptional experience. And it— I don't know how much you know about Memphis, but, you know, Beale Street had— was in a state of— had been in a state of decline. It was not a place that you went.

And we'll say with Graceland.

Yeah.

And we weren't— Graceland is the number one tourist attraction in the state of Tennessee. Beale Street's number two. Wow. But Beale Street was not popular at that time. And when we opened the B.B. King's Blues Club on Beale Street, it, it became an anchor that pulled other businesses to Beale Street. So I'm not sure that we were smart enough to understand that was going to happen. We just saw this opportunity to back B.B. King and, and have fun and have.

A club on, on Beale Street. But some, some other time I want to hear all the stories because that grew into a— was it company owned or franchised?

So my— there were 5 of us that started it and a couple of the partners decided they wanted to expand into Los Angeles. And they did into Universal Studios, which I thought was a terrible idea because I had kids that were Universal Studios age. They would have no idea who B.B. King was, and they'd have to pass Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood to go back there. And people wouldn't come at night from their neighborhood community to come down to the club. So I sold, I exited. It was a business decision I thought was going to be catastrophic. It proved to be that. So it ultimately tanked the clubs. It went through a series of restructuring and reorganizations and, and sort of like Sony Records or RCA, it ended up getting back to the original ownership group, not me, the original ownership group without me at the end. But B.B. was a great musician and, you know, he, he had a much bigger audience in Europe than he did in the United States, and he could command literally 10 times the fee to play a venue in Europe than he could to play a venue in the U.S. Yeah. And he hated that because he hated to fly. When he was— when he was on the ground someplace, he had a bus that would take him around to all.

The places because he was the John Madden of music.

Yeah, he was John Madden of music. But he was a— he was a compelling figure to come out of Indianola, Mississippi. And up to Beale Street. And so it was fun. It ended up being one of those investments where I was rewarded for the investment, but I think the psychic reward was greater than the financial reward.

Sure.

Yeah.

And the proximity to watching that greatness.

I went to— I went to see him. I was in Lake Tahoe on a ski trip and he was playing at one of the casinos. And I went down there with some buddies. And after the concert was over, I went backstage and I had a card that said, you know, Lane Carrick, owner, B.B. King's Blues Club. And I handed it to the, to the guy and I said, I'd like to say hi to Mr. King if he's willing to give me an audience. And so he, he brought me back in and, and, and, and he said, I, I don't remember your name, but you're the money man. And I said, I like that. I think that— let's go with that. Yeah, let's just go with that. Let's just go with the money man.

So I'd like to pivot to Texas because earlier you had alluded that the— what you're working on with DOC and you're bringing stuff to Texas. But I'd like to widen it because we had spoken earlier with Tom Leppert about how, you know, so many businesses from the East Coast, West Coast are coming to Dallas. But, you know, speaking with Doc, it's, you know, there's that culture aspect, there's that music aspect. Where do you see it I mean, I just wanted a wide open question of Texas and everything that's coming, whether it be tech, innovation, culture, arts, you.

Know, businesses, et cetera.

Yeah.

The things that I'm— the thing that I am most excited about is the convergence of a business-friendly government, municipalities that are incredibly welcoming in putting certain incentives in place to bring businesses here or keep businesses here. The almost perpetual influx of Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies choosing to do business in a principal way in Texas, if not moving their corporate headquarters or they're opening a second headquarters here and capital staying here, right? For so many years, if you think about venture capital. We, Dallas in particular, has a history of, a very credible history of venture capital, but it ultimately left, it followed the businesses out of the state. And now this is becoming a very hospitable place to establish companies and to grow companies. And by way of that, and the Texas Stock Exchange on its way and the validation of that concept with NASDAQ and NYSE opening their presence here, liquidity and capital is not a problem. It will not be a problem here. And the cascading effects of that in the broader economy, state economy in North.

Texas.

In particular, is, you know, we, those of us who are already embedded and are preparing to support this type of growth are going to be the direct beneficiaries. And I think it's gonna be a massive opportunity. It is a massive opportunity. That said, just to kind of play back to Doc or DOC, you know, we have this philosophy that, you know, if you're a human, it's hard to ignore that our region will only meet its true potential if all boats rise with the tide. We believe in this idea of inclusive prosperity, and that's not handouts by any means, but it's providing a set of tools to everyone to have a shot at benefiting from, from the growth in this region. And that is kind of, you know, the one of the impetus for Doc Cares, for his nonprofit that I've kind of helped establish and grow and the Dreams Experience Academy, which is its flagship education initiative that's focused on and kind of bringing it back around to the entertainment community nationally, but also here in North Texas, it's recognizing that the industries that, that Doc and I know well, media, entertainment, and tech, music in particular for him as a creator, you know, together that's a $3 trillion annual opportunity. And it's interesting, you know, when you dig into this sort of empirical case, that 70% of consumers of— just to pick on Hollywood for a second— of the product coming out of Hollywood per se don't see themselves reflected in the product. They don't see their experience reflected in the product. And that's not surprising because 90% of the chairpeople and CEOs of current studios and streamers are not people of color. And so we see this, this amazing opportunity to protect the consumer spend that's at risk by those 70% of consumers not seeing themselves, which by the way is $344 billion, not insubstantial. We see the opportunity to protect that at-risk consumer spend and frankly grow the pie by giving motivated but under-championed kids in grades 7 through 12 an opportunity to flex. You know, we're closing this. We've established a platform called the Dreams Experience Academy, and we're, we're using it to essentially close the gap of— put maybe directly— the disparity between those who are consuming modern media and moving culture forward and those who are profiting from it today. And so, you know, the Dreams Experience Academy is also with Doc and me and Erykah Badu and others that are sort of in living here in this market who love Dallas and want to see Dallas become a pivotal, a more pivotal player in catalyzing the entertainment and more broadly media, entertainment, and tech community, you know, bringing together unlikely co-conspirators to help realize this goal for these young people, but also using them to train a skilled workforce that can supply a market that is doing amazing things on the national stage here, but up to this point, kind of not organized. So where you have Bosque Ranch Productions and Taylor Sheridan's organization, you know, essentially operating from Fort Worth as the highest leverage human being in Hollywood right now, you've got Southside Studios that stands to be, you know, a major player in the region for high-quality productions. You've got, you know, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, you know, campaigning in Austin for more subsidies for the industry.

Mansfield. What's that?

Mansfield. They're building a big studio in Mansfield. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, Landman is shot in Fort Worth. Right. And if you were at the launch event for which you were for the Dreams Experience Academy at the Kessler Theater, Brendan Donnelly, who's Taylor's Chief Investment Officer, was so moved by the performances by some of the kids in our program that he invited them on the spot to the set of Landman to see what a production assistant does. And so, you know, we're making real progress, taking real concrete steps to create this future for them. We're doing it here. And, And the vision is national. So we're starting in Dallas, specifically piloting this summer in southern Dallas, but we already have the next 2 sites picked out for a national rollout once we.

Prove the concept here. One thing you're talking about, the representation aspect, is, is I agree with you completely on that. But at the same time, the people that are there, it doesn't even feel like they're making it for it's almost like they're placating, you know, what they think people want to see versus what people actually want to see. Because like, even though like if you put my picture next to one of their pictures, oh, he represents me, but I don't feel like there's a lot of content that represents what I want to see. Yeah. And I think it goes that fact of like, oh, well, what, what, what are people— what's trending right now? Let's let what's— and it's just, again, you get these fringe aspects versus that core middle.

It's, to your point, it's, it's, it needs to go beyond consumer research to, you know, we're, look, we're, we're not trying to reconstruct the boardroom. We're, you know, trying to create the Terminator of entry, about entry-level employee, you know, who can create value on day one of the job. Uh, and, and that just, that's a, that's a bottom-up approach. And whether they rise to the top or they don't. Um, it's, it's that incremental approach that's.

Going to create the change. Well, yeah. And this might be out of scope of this conversation, but if you look at like, dare I say, Cosby Show, um, Family Matters, um, uh, there's a couple other ones that are just like, there were just really good shows. It never felt like you were being preached to on any level. And they were just great shows. And now it feels like every show has some— not every show, but a lot of shows that are trying to prove diversity or prove whatever. There's like a lesson or a lecture and it's just like, can I just watch a good show? Maybe I'm the bad guy here.

I don't know. No, I listen. The program that we're building is, is for Black, brown, just yellow, white, purple. You know, we're starting in an area that is experiencing that is one of the best, unfortunately, or worst examples of chronic absenteeism. And we're leveraging the opportunity to be exposed to a world-class curriculum taught by recognized experts in these areas as an inducement to get back into the classroom. The only way that— the reason that we're focused in Southern Dallas is Doc is from the region, as is Erica. And, you know, it's his opportunity to give 15-year-old him a different choice than he made. But in order to qualify for our program, you have to be enrolled in school and show evidence of regular attendance.

I love— when I heard that, I loved that. This week it was— there's no free handouts. It's Your payment to entry is go to school. That's right. I love that a lot. Yeah. One thing that talking with Doc, because one day he was on my— I mean, because he says 2 to 3 years, everybody's coming to Dallas, rappers, musicians, whatever. But then he also said until, until there's a big enough studio in Dallas, he's not going to be able to get Dre here. Dr. Dre, giant rapper. Sure. And his point was with Dre, he has million-dollar speakers where like one speaker's a million dollars. So until a studio is willing to cough up and make a high-class studio, he's unable to get like a Dre.

To— That's on the agenda for the facility.

Is it really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

Absolutely. So that, you know, to his point, you know, based on, based on the DOC's experience, you know, he met he was effectively discovered by Eric Wright, Eazy-E of N.W.A., who, as when N.W.A. came through on a tour before they were what they became, Eazy went into a restroom and heard Doc rapping in the restroom. Okay. And said like, that, like, why are you here? If you came to LA, we'd all be rich., and introduced him to Dr. Dre. And as it was at the time, you know, and he and I are roughly the same age, Erica, not, you know, not so much, but, you know, they had to leave Dallas to, to chase their dreams, right? And so we want to create the environment that no one has to leave Dallas. And it's happening in every other industry. It's happened in many cases in every other industry. But, you know, we've identified basically the 4 areas of, of kind of growth within this $3 trillion opportunity. And we're building the best-in-class curriculum to train kids to, to be really effective. And if they, you know, if, if, if they find their way into an entry-level job at Roblox as a result of their work with us and, then that's great. If they go to college, that's great. And if we just produce a bunch of entrepreneurs into the community, that's ultimately really amazing because that accelerates those communities'.

Path to financial independence. Where do you think the state of music is nowadays? Because I know, first of all, I'm not a music connoisseur like yourself. Like, I don't hear lyrics. There's stuff I like and there's stuff that I know I don't like, but For context, a couple years ago, one of my favorite songs of the summer, I just really enjoyed it. And it was 3 months until I realized it wasn't even in English, just because that's how much I don't listen to lyrics. But at the same time, I've heard in this day and age, like, artists are now just writing hooks for TikTok. And then the video, the TikTok that goes the most viral, that's when they develop a full song off that hook. Is that, is that a real thing.

Or is that just rumor mill? I mean, it goes back to the comment we were kind of, you know, batting around here about the fragmentation of media. The music industry is no different. Right. And so the ultimately there's a question of durable product that will withstand the test of time like a Rolling Stones. And that's fewer and farther between. Right. The age of artist development is long past us, um, versus the ones that just want to write a song to be synced into a Lexus commercial, uh, you know, or writing a hook for TikTok with the goal of being discovered by a record label, which frankly is, you know, not the right solution for a lot of artists. It's, you can be a working musician now without the traditional, you know.

Label path.

I think, you know, I'm a little bit of a cynic, but, you know, when the— when my friends who are.

Still.

At labels are saying, you know, we're flying private again, so the industry must be good, right? If that's the barometric reading, look, the industry is going through significant tumult. But it's a strong industry. It's consistently being disrupted by technology. It's slow to adopt that technology. There's usually, you know, 1 to 3 great ideas in music every year. And if you're one of those 3 ideas, you're gonna have a great year. If you're not, you.

Know.

You'Re gonna struggle. So, I think that music as an asset class is very reliable. There's plenty of players who are rolling up copyrights, music publishing, and I think that's a reliable asset class, frankly. And there's good reason that there's so many of those. And frankly, there's a handful of players based here in Dallas who are doing a fantastic job of it., who, you know, happy to introduce you to if you're interested. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a big look. I think we're back when I went into music, the industry had collapsed from $24 billion to $12 billion, right? And there were still executives walking around the hallways of, of the large recorded music industry, uh, players saying this internet thing is going to pass, you know, uh, You know, same with AI. It's gone.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Web3. I mean, AI, um, you know, but, uh, it's continuously being disrupted. And, um, and if you're, you know, if you're one of the disruptors, um.

You know, good luck. Well, it, you know, going back to the Post Malone concert, it's like, I know he's popular, but then when you go to an ATM, a sold-out AT&T Stadium, you're like, Oh yeah. So you were very popular, you know, cause, and then to your point about music as an asset class still being a viable option, you look at like a Taylor Swift and obviously a Taylor Swift, a Post Malone, those are lottery wins when in terms of success. But when like a Taylor, when the Philippines are saying, hey, I don't know if it's the Philippines or Singapore, but one of them is like, we will build you a stadium if you just come play here. Like, that's insane to me that countries, I think Germany did the same thing for Adele where they built like a stadium for 3 shows or something. Just, and you're like, wait, you're going to spend how many millions and millions and millions of dollars to build a.

Facility for 1 or 2 concerts? Well, live is, is not showing any, you know, signs of slowing. Um, so, you know, it's that, that, that is also one of the bright spots in music, but I'm not a music investor.

I know too much. So as we come to a close, like what excites you most about the.

Next 1 to 3 years? Great question. A lot excites me about the next 1 to 3 years, but I'm particularly bullish on the region and, you know, as a native Texan and a native Dallasite. I'm so gratified by the choices, generally speaking, that we're making in this region in terms of our investment in infrastructure, in sort of the financial rails, and in the way that we're welcoming entrepreneurs that I think we're, you know, we're, we're already into the next chapter of growth here. And, and I'm, I'm excited to be a part of that. If I can play a small role in helping the region kind of explode.

Its growth.

I want to do that. And I expect that, you know, my company and those who we collaborate with are going to be, you know, are going to ride that. I'm particularly interested to see, you know, our, how, how our state emerges as a competitive marketplace for energy in a world of AI that requires such a significant amount of energy. And kind of by proxy, how well we attract that segment of the economy to choose to build here. And, and I, you know, beyond that, I, I'm kind of in this season of my life where I've realized that my straightest path to joy is service. And so I'm excited about building a company that allows me to earn a living doing that. That's, you know, that's the best-case scenario for me, kind of bringing kind of purpose together with professional, you know, expertise and creating, you know, opportunity for myself and my family and the clients that we serve. So, I'm, that makes me, that gets.

Me going in the morning. Yeah. 3 years from now, you'll have 2 17-year-olds. And you'll be about to go through another life transition.

And I'll have less hair and probably— And they'll be on social media. Yeah, exactly. I'll.

Be seeking your counsel, frankly. I remember those days. But having two daughters at home as teenagers and a wife, I was very outnumbered. Yeah, you were definitely playing zone. Yeah, I spent a lot of time at the office. Yeah, with all love to my wife and daughters. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, well, you've been a great guest. We appreciate you sharing your knowledge and, and wisdom and ideas, and I love talking about music, which I don't get to do very often. B.B. King.

Thank you for having me. I know we— Elvis, Elvis— we were— we, we've meandered across a few different, you know, pastures, but I, I am It was a pleasure.

Absolutely. I mean, we could have another 30-minute conversation about energy and data centers in North Texas.

That's right. We are, we are at, you know, at Crow Holdings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being here and look forward to seeing.

What your next 3 years. Thanks.

Appreciate it.