Leadership, Risk, and Financial Discipline

I'm your ultimate risk taker. Jumping off mountains, out of planes, dove out of submarines in the middle of the Pacific. I said, well, you know, I don't like the way we're running this war. I'm going to go talk to the terrorists. He looked at me and he goes, you can't talk to terrorists. I said, yes, I can. I can negotiate. I mean, that's where I live. Now, a lot of people don't like to do that because their hearts can't take it. That's what makes it exciting for me. In the middle of battles, I would still be calling people back here for business stuff, and people would go, Well, how can you do that, run the battle? I said, because there's 24 hours in the day. And by the way, what's wrong with you? You need to go sleep.

Welcome to The Deal Table. My name is Ryan Harper.

I'm Lane Carrick.

And today on this episode, we spoke with General Jim Williams, a 2-star general in the Marine Corps, 38 years of experience in the Marines, a businessman Harvard.

Yale, but an incredible gentleman, a Renaissance man, fought on the front lines with his troops, survived multiple helicopter crashes, hand grenades, very impressive gentleman.

Really excited to share this with you. Check it out.

Well, I would tell you just for your own edification, me as a personality, so I like to live at the leading edge of technology. And so as a risk taker, I'm your ultimate risk taker. Jumping off mountains, out of planes, you know, dove out of submarines in the middle of the Pacific. So at the end of the day, I mean, that's where I live. Now, a lot of people don't like to do that because their hearts can't take it. You know, I mean, that's what makes it exciting for me.

So were you that way before you became a Marine or is that a result of being a Marine?

Oh, no. No. In fact, the Marines just kind of— as I used to say, I got to do all the fun things I wanted to do for free and got paid for it.

It's interesting because that's one of the questions I have for you is navigating combat versus peace. And what are the lessons you learn in combat and then how do they affect peacetime? But then how do you take that and apply it to the boardroom?

Well, I would say there's no difference. And I used to prove this to my guys. So in the middle of battles, I would still be calling people back here for business stuff. And people would go, well, how can you do that? Run the battle. I said, because there's 24 hours in the day. And I said, and by the way, what's wrong with you? You need to go sleep? And it was a retort to say, you have the opportunity to do as much as you want to do. It depends on what you want to do. And so if you risk— everything that you think you can risk, then, you know, like I said, that's where I like to live. Because at the end of the day, it does a couple of things. Number one, for me, it's a, it's a discipline issue. And the other part is it's how much pain you can tolerate. Because what I see in business is those who are successful are the most disciplined. They have a vision, they know their mission, and at the end of the day They're persistent and they continue to do what they need to do to be successful. And at the end of the day, it's no different on the battlefield. Now, the question is, like I used to tell guys, you know, when I came back from one of my tours or going back to one of my tours in Iraq, I told General Casey, who was the overall commander of the battlefield, I said, well, you know, I don't like the way we're running this war. I'm going to go talk to the terrorists. He looked at me and he goes, you can't talk to terrorists. I said, yes, I can. I can't negotiate. See, that's a fine point. Because negotiation is what's illegal. But here's the problem. So we fought this war for 2 years at that point. And I said, and so what are we getting for it? What's the outcome? And just my portion of the war, I was spending $12 billion a month. Think about that. Most people would be happy with that for a year, right?

For a long time.

A year? What are you talking about? And so my return to my staff would be, you know, we'd brief whatever our military operation was. And then I'd kind of take my hat off, put it back on. I said, now I'm a taxpayer. So what are you doing with my money? And I said, that's really part of the responsibility, right? So if you go do things, you know, there's a military mission. But there's a macro mission. What is the outcome of the war? And at the start of the Afghan War, I made a comment to our guys before we left. And I said, so you guys don't really understand the history. There's 50,000 years' worth of history that you're going to get ready to walk into. But you're going to bring the Burger King mentality in. You want to have it now. And you want to have it your way. And at the end of the day, OK, you do that. And so what's your outcome? So you can use a hammer. And so you just keep hitting people. And I use the metaphor of over time, pest control have been trying to get rid of roaches for millions of years, right? Well, we haven't been successful. And so at the end of the day, you've got to understand in Afghanistan, that 50,000-year history is a history of oral history that they know better than you do. And at the end of the day, there's not a good history here. I said, at some point, the American people will get weak because the history of colonial powers and conquering powers in this area— we're now the 6th empire that's come here. Remember, all the 5 before us have all left. And we now have left. So I tell people, you've got to understand what end state you want. And are you willing to stick there? And that's where the discipline is. And so in the United States, our discipline wasn't there because we're spending money, losing lives, and nobody really knew what the political outcome was. And so— and I'm sure we could have many, many debates about that. When you equate that to business, it's like, well, if I'm doing something that generates no income, why am I in business? And do I need to do something different? Do I need to plan better? Do I need to bring some different talent to the table? Do I need to reevaluate my mission? All of those things, same thing that's always done in the military.

Just to jump in there because when we're talking about, you know, if I'm doing this, I'm not making the income, you should stop. Because like in economics, if you just looked at, you know, the cold science, if it's not working out, you should jump ship. But that's in direct contradiction of, you know, you don't— you can't fail if you don't quit, you know?

That's right. Well, that's where persistence comes in, right? Right. So, but again, it's reevaluating, you know. Like I tell military guys all the time, I wouldn't take you to war if I didn't have at least 5 plans. And, you know, today when I talk to people about building wealth and all that, I say, look, why are you going through life without your plan? If you don't have a plan, it's like a blueprint. I wouldn't build a house or a building without a blueprint because I might miss something. And the same way in life. And, you know, as I've mentioned to Ryan in the past with some of his cohorts at SMU, the, Thing is, if you look at the Department of Labor, if the Department of Labor is right, 98% of all Americans in the richest country in the world will not have enough money to retire on. And you go, what's wrong with that picture? And so if you look at it from a geometric standpoint, that pyramid is upside down. And so the 2% are going to support the 98% is basically what that says to me. And so you've got to recalculate and recalibrate where you're going. And then there's lots of gnashing of teeth that goes on in that, lots of planning, a lot of conversation, a lot of consulting maybe. But at the end of the day, that's the exercise you have to go through to say, what I'm doing today, do I have the right mission? Do I have the right vehicle? Do I have the right team? Do I have the right plan? And am I on target?

Financial planning, financial literacy is a passion of yours. And I read recently the 2024 trustees report on Social Security says Social Security will be gone by, in 9 years, by 2033, if there's not a significant change to the funding. Two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, two-thirds. 50% of Americans that make $100,000 a year or more live paycheck to paycheck.

What's wrong? Yeah, well, I think part of it is we didn't focus on the basics. You know, as I've said to some of our leaders at Texas Education Agency, I said, you know, when I look at the, the TEA plan that says here's 140— I'm sorry, 187 days worth of work that a teacher is supposed to do, there's nothing in there about ensuring that they have success when they leave school. Okay, you do reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and all the rest. And I said, actually, the greatest one for everybody is understanding how to read, right? Because if I can read and read for understanding and critical thinking, I can read any subject if I'm interested in it, and I'll be a master of it. But if you think about what happens in different countries, our education system is predicated on passing all these massive tests that we like to give the kids because that's the measure of success, right? And so when I look at this 98% that don't have enough money to retire on, I said, so essentially what we're doing is creating smart poor people. And I go, so is that an outcome that we want? And then if you go back to the founding documents of our country, you know, there's a clause in there that says it's about the prosperity of the nation, which means the people have to be prosperous. But who is building the skills? So, like, you know, my hero of the American Revolution is Ben Franklin because he was the most entrepreneurial of everybody. And if you look at one business he still has today operating in Philadelphia, started in 1787, is still in operation today. And so, and that's not even the oldest business in the world. You know, I think one of the Italian bell makers has that history. But I think this is the challenge. You know, what are you building for? What are you creating wealth for? You know, are you creating it just for, you know, holding it, or are you going to use it for something good? You know, I mean, I think that's why they called it currency. It has to circulate, right? And so I think, you know, people have a bad relationship with money. You know, and right now the biggest driver is go buy something. I mean, you know, you look at this season, I mean, tons of commercials, you know, every 10 seconds or more somebody's telling you to buy something but not save something.

Well, as an entrepreneur, like, you know, I'm 43 and it took till, 40-ish to realize that money is just a hammer. Yeah, because— and what I mean by that is, before I was a business owner, it's, it's just, oh, I need money to do this, I want to do this, I want to go to eat, I want to buy a TV, I want to buy stuff.

Yeah.

And then when you have a business, as a business owner— and, and I don't know if this translates to the corporate C-suites, just because one of the things I have noticed at the EMBA program at SMU is you've got these high-up, uh, VP corporate who— that's their entire life. That's right. And their solution is like, we'll just use more money. And I'm like, well, what, what money? Like, where are you going to get it if you own the business? And, and the point I'm trying to make is, before I owned a business, I— money was just this thing that you— it was elusive. You wanted it. But now it's just a hammer. It's just a tool like anything else.

Well, and, and that's right. I mean, I think the, the challenge is how that relationship with money goes. Like, you can borrow and borrow And then the question is, so what do you do? So I mean, the business solutions to overborrowing is bankruptcy, right? I mean, if you can't pay it back. And so the behavior right now is, well, I can go get other people's money to do my work. But then the question is, do I have responsibility to the money that I borrowed and I'm using effectively? And this is kind of like when you get into governance and shareholders and all of that. What is your fiduciary responsibility to make sure that you get the outcome you want?

To that point, do you think culturally, you talked about responsibility to the shareholders. There's so many examples that you see all the time of people just like either outright fraud, stealing, Do you think that's always been there, or do you think maybe there's a shift in culture that makes a little bit less, where people are a little bit more prompt to take advantage of that situation, that relationship?

I think there's a, this is part of the weakness of the human condition is that in one place you can live in the 7 virtues, right? On the other hand, you live in the 7, now I've just forgotten the term, but you're essentially on the downside, right? And so when you think about that, if you're kind of in the negative world, you're going to be full of greed and avarice and all of that. And, or I should say it's the 7 deadly sins is what I should have said. But the 7 deadly sins is where people kind of zigzag from the good side to the bad side, right? Because that's how a lot of people go through life. You know, kids do something, their parents correct them, you know, or their teachers correct them, or their friends correct them, or maybe they don't, right? If they're running with a bad crowd, they're all in that 7 deadly sins world side of things. And so I think if, if you think of it that way, where is your level of responsibility? Where is your ethics at? Right. So ethics, that ethics, discipline and focus become really part of it. So you hold everybody accountable. Now, not every CEO does that. Not every chairman of the board does that. I mean, you know, we can take all kinds of examples of people that have not been successful. Right. And so at the end of the day, I think part of our, our challenge right now is is do we want to bring up the ethical behavior of business to a level that it needs to be? Otherwise, you live somewhat on the edge of, I guess, maybe a corrupt approach to doing business. And so if you do that, then the question is, do your employees trust you? Right? So who wants to work with somebody that's a corrupt boss? You know, because eventually employees will leave. You know, they'll eventually say, well, I can support you up to a certain point, but, you know, if you do a lot of criminal things, you violate my ethics, then I'm leaving.

And historically in the military, not our military hopefully, but like, you know, I'm thinking there's probably many lessons of the British Empire where if the lieutenant or the captain was too corrupt, he would magically die in a battle. From the back. You know, I'm sure that's happened many a time, you know, because at the end of the day, soldiers figure out a way to survive.

Yeah, well, you know, and that's part of survival, right? So at the end of the day, if there's— if that person is considered so evil, you know, usually the community takes care of the evil. Now, you know, structurally we take care of it through court systems and right law enforcement and so forth. But at the end of the day in business— see, business can hide a little bit because guys can dress up in jackets, ties, and suits and look good. And, you know, hey, everybody thinks, hey, they're doing a really great job.

Well, creative financing. I mean, look at Enron. Enron was able to do what they did for years.

Oh, yeah. Well, and Enron's story is pretty interesting because I have a little history there. I had met some of those guys in Houston. And their CFO, Andy Fastow, who's, you know, been a convicted criminal under that program, if you go back and look at his history— so this gets to be, is the person qualified to be in the job that they should be in? He was running their South American operation. He wasn't a good operational manager. They promoted him to the CFO. And then he started creating all these subcompanies using the shares of Enron to finance them when there was really no money. And so what people would do is they'd sell their shares, make money. And it was a house built on sand, essentially. And eventually it collapsed. You know, and I had a little bit of experience with them. Operationally in Southern California, because at our Marine base in San Diego County, there at Camp Pendleton, we were getting power from Southern Cal Edison. Their nuclear plant, which was the San Onofre nuclear plant, was kind of right at the northwest edge of the base. Of course, I would visit them basically for security. You know, how do we protect this nuclear plant. But what was interesting was when they started playing the commodities game with power and Southern California was turning off streetlights and traffic lights because they couldn't afford to pay at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or 5 o'clock in the afternoon in the middle of a traffic jam, causing accidents and all this. It made absolutely no sense. And, of course, you know, if you go back and read the court cases and all of that, you know, it was a big joke down in Houston what they were doing to Southern California. In fact, if you go and look at why ERCOT delayed development of ERCOT here and the deregulation, because what happened in California. They said, well, we've got to wait. And I remember in the early days we had talked to ERCOT and said, look, the experience in Southern California was they had no computer systems to manage commodity movement. Right. So if you had different prices at different times of the day, you know, if that's what you were paying, you didn't know it because what they had was little paper— what would you call it— little paper tags that said, okay, 2:00, you know, the price was this. And they were putting us in a closet, literally. In the back of their office at Southern Cal Edison. And I said, well, how are you guys going to figure that out? I said, they didn't even have a spreadsheet, more or less a database to figure out what the linear regression was on what the costs were. Because they could have figured out the average cost if they understood that and done the mathematical models. But they weren't prepared for that at all.

So we talked about financial literacy, financial education, and individuals not being equipped to make good decisions. Are not making good decisions. And we talked about corporate greed and other issues related to that. I served as a chairman of a bank in '08-'09, and we ran that bank well, and we made good decisions on loans and how we managed the bank. Other banks made very bad decisions, made bad loans, and they were bailed out by the federal government. There were people that engaged in unquestionably criminal behavior, and yet these large institutions are being bailed out, and there's no accountability. I think that sends a terrible message.

Oh, absolutely. Well, I think 2008 is a good example. But, you know, if you look at it historically, about every 10 years we have an episode of something. And, you know, 2008 sticks in my mind a lot because I was invited back to Harvard to give a speech to the MBA class there. And I was kind of a little bit miffed at why many of the graduates of that program were down on Wall Street literally collapsing the government of the United States. So I walked into the auditorium. Of course, it's full. And I stood there for about 2 minutes in silence. And of course, that made a lot of people uncomfortable. But I was doing it for a purpose. And I said, well, now that I have your attention, so why is— why are the alumni of this program down on Wall Street trying to collapse the government of the United States. And everybody knew what I was talking about because, you know, at Harvard MBA program at that time, they had not taught ethics for over 20 years. And I said, so you can make a lot of money in the world of business, but at the end of the day, can you do it where you don't harm everybody? And, you know, the fact that when you looked at the securitized mortgages that were being created by different companies, Andrew Mozello comes to mind with Countrywide, for example, or even Citigroup. And essentially, unqualified people for mortgages were getting mortgages. And again, a house built on sand. And so eventually, it had— the underlying fundamentals were going to collapse. And I think some of the hedge fund guys I've talked to during that period A couple of them made really good money because they bet against the fact that, you know, this was really good business. And so they took out insurance policies that the mortgage industry was going to collapse. Well, it did. And of course, they made billions of dollars for their hedge fund because of that. But, you know, it's not the best way to make money, but they made money because they They manage the risk. And so, and I think this gets back to all the fundamentals. Are you fundamentally qualified to go get a loan? If you're not, are you building for it? Because everybody wants things sooner than later. And for the business guy that wants a larger amount of accounts receivables, that's an asset. So, but if it's account receivable that can't be paid, pretty much a liability. And I think that's where we were with the mortgage industry at that point. I was going to say, of course, Dodd-Frank came in. And, you know, a lot of people aren't happy with that because it requires the bank to keep a certain amount of money on hand, right, so that you can pay for loans that default and things of this nature. But it doesn't allow them to move the economy as fast as they would like to and get people involved. And right now, I think, you know, I would tell everybody that if you wanted to understand the most important number in the world, it's how many people net-net are born on this earth every year. Because that tells you, I think, what kind of business you're going to have. And right now, that's 80 million. So 80 million people every year are born on this planet, net-net deaths and whatnot. And so when you think about that, what do they need?

Everything.

Housing, appliances, food, water, etc. And you see that here in Dallas, right? Our biggest challenge right now is housing. You know, whether it's affordable housing or just housing to get people in because of the number of people that are coming. So as I've said to a couple of our county commissioners, I said, you know, we were talking about affordable housing. I said the challenge with affordable housing is that if you leave everything market rate, It will never be affordable for the people who can't afford it. So, from a policy standpoint, you either have to decide you create an affordable housing district and cap the taxes. I said, you know, the state capped it at 2%, but what happened? Everybody raised the relative market value of the house. And I said, look, you know, 2% of a bigger number is a bigger number. So at the end of the day, you know, it's gamesmanship all around. And so, you know, if you look at town, we have now more homeless people than we did in 2019. And I think it's— and we're very vigorous in evictions. And so eventually, you know, people that can't afford, you know, who's going to take care of them? How are they going to be dealt with? You know, you can't put everybody in the criminal justice system because they're poor. You know, so we kind of get into a position, so we're going to punish the poor because they're poor instead of maybe showing them a way out.

You've talked about education as being a tool that empowers people, and I watched an interaction you had with an elementary school class, and it's interesting because it's 10 years ago, You made a comment to them, and I'm quoting, if you want to be successful in the world today, you need to know 100 different cultures and 5 languages. And you referenced there are 120 different languages spoken in Dallas County. This was 10 years ago.

Absolutely.

So what is— think of the challenge that presents to be successful in the world.

People forget we are an international city, right? I mean, like, I got on a plane, went to Dubai, went to Bahrain, you know, all of that from DFW. 15 hours there, 15 hours back. And as I always say, you're one plane ride from disaster too, right? Because when Ebola came here, everybody didn't understand. Well, how did Ebola get here? I said, it's a plane ride away. And if you look at the guy that was infected who was living in an apartment somewhere up near Central and Walnut Hill, He goes into Presbyterian Hospital and, you know, the first question I always tell emergency room physicians is ask them if they went out of the country because that will tell you. And then where did you go? Look up the CDC chart. In fact, the guy that runs that for CDC, a guy named Joel Montgomery, is a friend of ours. And Joel's from the DFW area, but he runs all the deadly pathogens at CDC. And he would tell you that, yep, it's probably less than 10 hours away from any disaster. So now we know that smallpox has increased. We know monkeypox is back. And we're starting to see people infected here in the United States with that. And this is part of the global movement of people. And so, you know, health and public health is a big consideration. I know we've got lots of anti-vax people out there, but you look at what's going on right now, RSV cases. I just talked to several parents, their kids are in the hospital this past couple of 3 weeks for RSV exposure. Some of those parents will vaccinate their kids and some of them won't. So the question really for the parents is, do you want to leave your kids in a bad state. So you have to make your own decision, but at the end of the day, I think public health in that realm, especially as the population gets bigger, I think you see more exposures. And then the question is, is what are we going to do about it? And that gets back into our political system. What's your vision of public health? Is it individual or is it a community-wide requirement.

And you're involved in biotechnology, working with different technologies, biologics. I mentioned to you Ray Kurzweil's book, which I think the title is "The Singularity is Near," which is emerging technology and humanity.

Absolutely.

And the subtitle to that book is "Live long enough to live forever." And you're involved in, I think, tissue.

Regeneration or— Yeah, regenerative medicine is kind of the global heading for that. And I think, you know, everybody's looking at, you know, how can I be healthier longer, recover from injuries sooner, faster. You know, same way with the sports guys. You know, we've, in fact, you know, some of the team that I work with, we're working with the NFL Players Association on CTE and using biologics. Now, the greater NFL wasn't interested in that, but the players were because it's the players that get hurt, right? And so there's definitely success in that area. Does it need more study? Absolutely. Does it need more clinical trials? Absolutely. But is it promising? It's really promising, yeah.

Yeah, it'll extend life. And probably create some ethical dilemmas along the way as well.

Oh, yeah. Well, I think, and you know, this is kind of where all the ethicists will make their money, right? But I think the challenge when you ask yourself, what are we going to be able to do with lives that continue to live longer? And this goes back to the whole financial part, is most people are going to outlive their money. And so the question is, so if you're going to outlive your money because at some point you can't produce money for one reason or another, physical, illness, mental, what have you, then the question is, is how do you build it in the front end so that you have it on the back end? And I think that's really the challenge. I mean, and if you think about that for a second, you ask yourself, what's the biggest cost in the world today. Most of it's going to graduate school and college right now. And if you look at the cost of buying things, right, whether it's a house or goods or what have you. But I think the biggest challenge will be in healthcare because long-term care is very expensive. You know, the average long-term care ticket in this town is about $12,000 a month. If you paid it all out. Now if you, say for example, you have long-term care insurance, then you're pretty lucky. And I would tell everybody, if you're thinking about it, start thinking about it at 40, buy it by 50, because by age 60 you can't afford it, right, because the premiums are so high. But if you have an elderly parent and you know you're going to do some care with that parent, whether it's home care, whether it's in an institution, those costs are really significant. And so they'll eat into your savings, your investments, all of that if you're not prepared for that. So it's something people just need to think about. And that's part of living longer.

So speaking about healthcare in general, what role does a leader in a company or an owner or C-level or whatever have in the health of their staff. So if you look at historically, like with what Japan culturally has done with their companies where they'll have everybody outside exercising and, you know, as Americans we're like, oh, what a waste of time. And then you find out, oh, it extends their life and also makes them happier at work. What, you know, if we move forward and like, okay, all this healthcare and then also the financial literacy, how do we tie that in? What role do we have as leaders in our companies to make sure our staff can afford and don't outpace their money?

Well, I think it depends on how you look at your staff. You know, the CEOs that I talk to today, of course they wouldn't tell you this publicly, but fundamentally they're trying to get rid of people, right? Because people cost, right? They want to take vacation, they want to take time off, they want benefits. So if I have systems, automated systems, all I need is a mechanic, a software engineer, whatever. That's a lower cost of activity. And, you know, it's just like in manufacturing. You know, I hear everybody from, you know, president-elect to others saying, well, we're going to bring manufacturing back to the United States. But not the way it is today. A button. The guy pushing a button. I mean, you know, I was involved in a program for the Dallas college that was about automated manufacturing. In the first classes, we had maybe 25 kids. By the time they graduate, you maybe have 5. Either they're, you know, personality-wise, whatever, they didn't like it. But the mentality of that automated manufacturing operator today is a multi-talented person. They can design the job, cost the job, run the job, and they can program the job. In the old days, I was in the old steel industry. I used to pour ingots for steel I-beams. I loved that job. It was great. But you know what? You'd be crazy to do it today with a bunch of human beings because it's much safer if you have machines, rollers, and all that, and automated. Ingots to pour the steel and so forth.

There's no adrenaline rush now.

That's right.

Back when you did it, there was all that adrenaline.

Well, you know, of course, in the old days, you know, being football players, we all wanted to lift steel so we could, you know, do better on the football field. But, uh, but I think the, the scenario now, and I think we've talked about this in the past, is that in the United States there's only 10 steel companies, and those steel companies except for one are all owned by foreign concerns, either Turkish, Russian, or somebody else, some coalition group. United Steel is the last one. They're thinking about selling to the Japanese, which is kind of a debate now. And so you've got to ask yourself, in a core industry, which we prided ourselves we had a core industry, if we don't own that industry anymore, So what does that mean on a global scale? What does that mean for defense of the country? What does that mean for the production of ships, cars, and all the other things out there? Does that mean we're less competitive? Does that mean we're more vulnerable? I think all those questions still have to be answered. But for manufacturing, you're not going to have— like when I was in the steel industry in the '70s, I think the United Steelworkers Union was 650,000. If they've got 60,000 now, that may be one too many. But it's a much smaller organization because, you know, you don't need that many people to make steel. And I think this is true in any manufacturing, whether you're doing plastics, whether you're doing microchips. You know, I have a nephew that works for Intel and just talked to him the other day. And one of the things in Intel Intel, you know, created a $10 billion expansion in their plant. But compared to Taiwan Semiconductor, who expanded $100 billion, it's no competition. And Intel is cutting back. So what is that telling you? Now, they're trying to, I think, compete with NVIDIA on the AI chips. So, and right now they're not having a lot of success on that chip. So when you think about it, that's all automated manufacturing that really needs talented people with an eye for engineering and quality and making sure that the outcome of whatever is being produced is an excellent product.

So do you think that's a universal law from all time where you're, as a company, you're always trying to reduce costs, whether that be through staff, increasing efficiency with processes and technology.

Well, let's talk about China. OK? I have lots of experience in China. I went to China 6 months after Nixon did when I was in college. So 1972, Nixon goes to China. 6 months later, Jim Williams goes. You know, all my classmates didn't think I was coming back. But over the years, it gave me an opportunity to see how China expanded. You know, when I first went to Shenzhen and Guangzhou area, which is southeast China, the manufacturing centers, they were all kind of sleepy towns. Guangzhou was a bigger town, but it was still very sleepy. If you go to Shenzhen today, it's the biggest manufacturing hub in the world. And they did that at our request. See, everybody thinks that, well, the Chinese have done something. That we didn't want. No. Manufacturers in the United States want the lowest cost of production. You know, I walked through Walmart the other day and I said, let me see how many things are made in China. I didn't find anything that wasn't made in China.

Right.

You know, and I remember when Sam Walton was alive, everything had to be made in the USA. Well, Alice doesn't believe in that. So are the other holders of the, of the trust there. So, and it's all about lowest cost of production. And I think every CEO thinks about that. What's the lowest cost of production and the highest margin that I can get? And if it means less people, like in the service industry, probably 56% of your cost is people or more. And if you can reduce that and say, well, if I have a lower cost of production, less personnel costs, then my outcome should be bigger. So now what does that mean for the average human being that is going to get caught up in that? Retraining, reeducation, rethinking about what I need to get involved in as a business opportunity. And see, the young kids today really have to think about that. I mean, as we've talked at SMU, I said I've challenged you know, some of the leaders at SMU. I said, look, you know, here's the highest cost school in the neighborhood. So we're not going to— we're going to get more money. We're going to expand buildings. We're not going to increase the student population. We're going to charge higher tuition.

But we're 10 and 1 in football.

Well, that makes everybody feel good. Yeah. Okay. But at the end of the day, what does that do for you and your family for your own personal future, right? So it's great for the school because the school can use that as fundraising entity and, hey, look at what we're doing. Hey, Alumni Association, give a few more dollars here and there. And that's great. But at the end of the day, you got to ask yourself, when I send a kid to school, if that profession that they want to be in is worth the dollars I'm spending What is the outcome? And like I tell parents, you know, let's do a simple ROI. Let's take all the expenses, all the tuition, all the fees, everything, and then just take the Department of Labor statistics for that field. Here's the low, the mean, and the high end of the salaries. How long is it going to take them if they don't have scholarships? How long is it going to take them to pay off their debt? And what you're seeing is, right now, you're seeing a decline in enrollment in all schools. And, you know, in certain programs, they're staying up because you need that college base, you know, whether it's in technology or something. But there are areas that don't pay any salary when you go take that course, like kinesiology. So I have a— if I have a bachelor's degree in kinesiology, that's not an end-state degree. I either have to be a physical therapist or a physician. So now you've got other costs. So you've got to look at the total package. So that's something that I don't think families really look at. Because kids go, Mom, hey, I want to go to the University of Oklahoma. Or I want to go to Stanford. OK, how are we paying for it? You got scholarships? Yes, no. Do I have money? Do I have a 529 plan? Have I saved anything? What am I— how am I going to do that?

One thing I just want to point out, because I've heard for years, I mean, I think we've heard it. I don't know if it translates to your world as much as my world, which was you have to work on your business, not in your business. On your business, not in your business. Heard that ad nauseam. But just talking about how the role of a CEO is to, you know, Maybe not so much reduce labor, but reduce overall costs, increase efficiency through processes. The epiphany I just had— and again, I've heard work on your business, not in your business, for 15 years straight. It just now clicked what that means. And I mean, obviously I know what that means in theory, but it's interesting how conversations like this will just click, that trigger that one little thing, because— and again, that's such a simple statement. But what does that mean? And then I just want to thank you because realizing that, hey, the reason why you're working on the processes, why you're trying to feed technology, and why you're doing it is so you can stay in business because overall that's the whole mission.

Well, and you also have to give the, the people in your business an opportunity to excel, right? If you're in a business as an employee, now you may just be doing it because you got to put food on the table. But the question is, if you want a long-term employee, that has lower cost to it than a short-term employee, right? Because at the end of the day, I mean, if you have to get some talent from across the country, okay, you got to move them here or whatever. And if that's a cost that you allow in your business, it's a cost you pay for, right? And, you know, if you're in a town like this where you have a lot of talent, you can sort of churn a little bit, but you take a longer time to evaluate whether this is the person I want to have come work for me. Because at the end of the day, when you make that hire, you want to make sure that person sticks because there is that cost to bring that, that person on, whether it's training or actual cost. I mean, all of those things go into that.

And to that point, it's funny because like, you know, being at SMU, you— I do interact with some some younger people who are going to so many interviews, and what I've told them is like, you need to understand that whoever you're interviewing with, they want you to be the right guy. They want you to be the right gal because hiring is such a pain in the rear. It's such a— it's a time suck and it's so expensive. So if you can walk through the door and be everything they want, they want that. And I think too many people, at least on the employee mindset, they think it's an adversarial thing and it's really not.

Well, I think the challenge with acquisition of human talent has a downside to it. So when I look at the process today, everybody says, okay, put your resume in the resume mill, right? And then we're going to do the keyword search.

The AI picks you out of that.

Yeah. And my bet is that you don't get the best You get the person that wrote the best resume with the right keywords. And because I see this with military people, you know, when I talk to CEOs about hiring military people, first question they always ask me, well, they don't have experience in our business. I said, I got news for you. My talent pool in the military is a whole lot smarter than your talent pool. My average GPA of my officer class was 3.95. And I said, I'll challenge that in your institution. Pull down everybody's GPA. So now, OK. So let's say we're equal. OK. Well, my guys have done planning. They've worked on global missions. They've done a lot of things. And to know your business ain't going to take them that long. Because first of all, they're going to figure out your vision, your mission. Your execution, and the rest of it's experience. But here's what they're going to do. They're going to show up every day. They're going to be disciplined. And they're going to do the work. And if you're committed to them, they're committed to you. And I said, there's a lot of people that aren't committed to you because they're all looking for the dollar because that's the satisfier. They think it is. To me, I think money is the dissatisfier because at some point, you're probably not going to give them enough money to satisfy them. So it's got to be the work environment. It's got to be the emotional paycheck. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be things that will keep them there that says, hey, I am valued, and I'm valued at this work, and I can bring value. If they don't have that, I think you, you're going to have turnover. So I look at every business. If you're have a turnover of more than 30%, then you've got a problem because you're not stabilizing. Now, you want some turnover just to refresh ideas, but how do you build their future in that business? I mean, is there any upside movement? Is there any lateral movement that you can do? What can you do to make them better to provide a better service for you? And I'm sure it's like in banking. I've watched banking over the years, right? All of a sudden there's 2 tellers when there used to be 27 tellers. It's all about self-serve. And everybody like the new— I don't know if you've seen the new carts for shopping. They already have the scanners in there. They've got your card swipe and everything. And so you can scan your item, put it in the basket, pay. You don't have to talk to anybody. That's the new card.

I want to go back to the beginning of your career.

Sure.

You grew up, as you said, 400 meters from the location where the Marine Corps was founded.

Right.

And you spent a 38-year career in the Marine Corps. Are those two things inextricably tied? Were you fated to be a Marine?

Well, you know, I think originally When I didn't know what a Marine was, I probably knew I was probably destined to be that. And of course, I think when I saw the first Marine uniform that I knew, I said, well, that sure looks a lot better than the Air Force uniform. But I think it was a little bit of friends and say, oh, you're going to be a Marine or whatever. And then of course, my cousin who's now deceased, was 17 years my senior. And he had been in the Army, so he went to Vietnam probably the year after Dien Bien Phu fell, when the French got defeated there in Indochina. And so he was part of the first advisor group, the special forces guy, all of that. And over the years, everybody said, oh, yeah, Jim's going to follow Donald into the Army. And of course, when I was in college, he was completing his Army War College program. So then he was assigned to the Pentagon in manpower. So I would call him up and say, hey, Don, when are the guys coming by to, you know, give me the ROTC scholarship? Oh yeah, they'll be there. So he and I messed around with that for about 18 months. Nobody ever showed up. And one of my friends had just come back from Vietnam. He goes, ah man, you should be a Marine. I said, Well, look, from now on I'm going to be a Marine because, you know, I'm now considered Army reject. So, so my cousin and I did that all the way up until the time I got promoted to general. And I said, just remember, I'm an Army reject. And so that became the kind of the joke of the family. But, uh, and he should have been the first general in the family, but he ended up retiring as a colonel. And so I had the distinction to become the first general in the family.

So impressive. Can you imagine yourself without being a Marine if you followed a different path?

Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I would, you know, being the adventurer I was, I would probably have been somewhere in the military, partly because, you know, I always had this global outlook. And so being an adventurer, you know, I've now traveled over my life to every country on the planet except for Antarctica.

Okay.

And I'm not sure the penguins need to see me at this point, but although I've driven by on a naval ship in Antarctica, but I think, you know, for me, I think it's always been an interesting experience. I mean, When I look back at it, I mean, I've probably been in situations where other people would have gotten killed. And people say, well, how did you get through all of that? I said, well, look, there's divine intervention. I said, in my case, I said, there's no doubt. I said, because I'd been in 2 helicopter crashes and plane crash and fell off a— well, even before I went to the Marine Corps. I was trying to be the great Walenda, you know, walking on this thing on a 2-story building. And then I slipped and I fell 2 stories. I landed on my back and I thought maybe I broke my back. I didn't even get bruised.

Wow.

And so— And you also said that you had a wanted poster in Afghanistan.

And— Well, no, actually in Iraq, in the city of Ramadi. One day my Intelligence officer said, well, sir, we did this intercept on this phone. And they said they want to kill that general that comes in the Ramadi every day. I said, well, tell them good luck. So that was my retort. And I said, yeah, they tried to blow me up 4 or 5 times. And I said, look, you don't walk away from that unless there's some divine intervention. Because in that first helicopter crash, 35 guys died. And I walked away without a scratch. So I looked at it as, hey, I've got a greater mission here. So the man upstairs has something that he wants me to do. So I'm going to keep going forward to figuring out what that is.

How did you decide to retire after 38 years?

Well, it was kind of interesting. I was up for a third star. And then I think from my perspective, it came down to what you wanted to do with family and then what I wanted to do from a business perspective. So a third star wouldn't have been much different than a second star, although some people say, well, you would have had this, you would have had that. And I said, well, look, I only ever wanted to be a captain. Everything else, everything else was icing on the cake.

So, well, going to your adrenaline junkiness, they probably would have limited your ability to, uh, do what you were pursuing.

Well, with an extra star, well, that's kind of funny. Our, our commandant at the time, uh, General Mike Hagy, uh, he, uh, he came into Iraq to see me and he goes, hey, have you been out there with the troops? I said I said, sir, you caught me. He said, I've been throwing hand grenades and this and that. And he goes, oh, now you know you're not supposed to do that. I said, sir, nobody else here in Iraq, so who's going to stop me? But I think for the guys like me that live with the troops at the edge, they knew that when I got out on the battlefield with them, it wasn't just going to be on the sidelines. It was going to be in the field with them.

And do you think that makes the troops fight harder when they see a strong leadership hand in hand with them?

Well, you know, for the CEO, or in the case of general, you empower the troops. So for example, my most junior troops— and I had everybody. I had Army, Air Force, coalition forces. I had special ops. Everybody. In our command. And I would tell them, I said, look, when I get out on the battlefield with you, I said, I will be out there at the craziest times, at the quietest times, whatever. But what I would tell them is that I said, this operation, the military is like the human body. I said, the command center is the brains, is the head, if you will. I said, the infantry and the air power is essentially your arms. And your logistics essentially are your legs. So I said, that's the simplest way to understand a military and how it functions. So it functions like a human body. And they got that. And I said, so if you're out here and somebody's putting pressure on you, think of this like you're index finger. You touch the hot stove, sends a message to the brain, I'm getting burned. So if you don't tell me you're getting burned, I can't send you the relief. So, you know, one trick I always wanted to do is be like David Copperfield, to read brains, or the Great Kreskin, right? I never learned that. So if you don't tell me, I don't know. And so the troops got really good at that. And, you know, because You'd be surprised how fast information flows across a battlefield. I'm not just talking about us. I'm talking about the enemy. I remember I was at a meeting on the Syrian border, for example. And I get back 2 hours by helicopter ride to Baghdad. They already had the information that I was at the meeting. And I said— and that meant somebody got in their vehicle, drove like hell to get to Baghdad. Before I got there to tell them, hey, this is what went on. And so the, the lesson there is that information is going to flow however it flows, and you have to understand that in preparation to deal with that, you need to be ahead of the information. And so the lesson for me was that I would tell all my commanders, if I'm here, make sure we're having conversation with our adjacent commanders, whether it's Army Marines coalition of what's going on so they understand. Because what would happen with some of the bad guys, they would figure out how to slip in between units when they were next to each other. So if they had a little gap in there, they would kind of figure it out. And so to do that, you anticipate their movement. And then eventually, we were able to stop things or capture people or what have you. But part of that's passing information around in a timely way. And business is the same thing. I mean, if only one person knows all the information, probably you're going to fail.

So when it comes to empowerment, empowering your team, one of the things that I've really tried to do with my business is make sure that people are empowered. Like Naomi specifically, it's like, hey, make a decision. It's like, you want me to fire this person? I was like, I don't— I want you to make the decision. And it's like, so sometimes it's that give and take of, you know, how do you, how do you teach or instill that, hey, when I say you're empowered, I really want you to be empowered. It is not— it's not a test. It's like, literally, here's the key.

Part of that's the conversation of reasoning, right? So what is your reason that this person needs to be terminated.

Well, I'm just— I'm just using— I.

Know, but I'm saying, but in terms of the conversation, so if you empower somebody, see, the question is they need to know whether when they take that action, was it appropriate and/or are you going to support them? See, if they turn— if you turn around, not support them, because, you know, there's leaders that won't support their people and say, well, I didn't tell you to do that.

Got it.

All right. So they're going to— then that's a trust factor. They're going to want to know, can I trust you?

So how do you instill that? Like, hey, I absolutely trust you.

It's all about behavior. So the words can be there, but it's your action that says, I trust you because you allowed me to do it. You supported me and you gave me the tools to do what I needed to do. Now, if it's a termination, then was the person counseled properly? Were they given an opportunity to change their behavior? You know, or was it so egregious that it's an immediate termination? So those are kind of questions. And, you know, some of that's tied up in policy, right? So if you have policy that's clear and written and everybody understands it, then that's good. So like in a right-to-work state like Texas, You know, if you don't have an employment contract, you know, pretty much, you know, you say, well, I don't want to work with you anymore. You know, you can leave, you can take your stuff, and you'll be supported legally. But it's not really good behavior, right? You know, because at the end of the day, people will pass around all the bad information about that event, and eventually that could cause your business to collapse.

Well, I will say one of the coolest things about starting a business or having a business and building a team is when I first started, I was on the front lines per se, always carrying stuff, sweating my rear off, and almost like having to prove to myself and everyone that I am just in it as much as everybody else is. And then as the team has built and has, you know, a little bit longer place, I don't feel as necessary to be in the trenches all the time. Yeah, I'm still going to pick up a sandbag and move it if the— if, if it's needed. But hopefully by now, at least my perception is, if Ryan's not here, it's because he's in a more important meeting or situation, and that's why he's not here helping. Um, and, and that's one of the coolest things about, uh, developing a team is having that trust that, hey, I trust that you will be able to do this thing without me But also you trust me that the reason I'm not there helping is I'm doing something else.

Here's the way you can do that, because this is what I used to do with my commanders. And, you know, of course, as a Marine, you're familiar with the 5-paragraph order, right? It's been 20 years. Situation, mission, execution, administration, command, and signal, right? So at the end of the day, that's a planning process. And so If your brain is organized, you can do that without putting it on paper. But then how do you communicate? So what I used to tell my guys is say, OK, well, your mission is this. This is the end state. This is what I want to have happen. So John, you got this sector. George, you got this sector. Bob, you got this sector. OK, so here's what you guys need to do to coordinate. Blah, blah, blah. And so now you go create your mission for your people. So I have them go off, do their mission planning. And I said, OK, we're going to have an update on your mission planning. So what I would tell them— now, of course, some of my enterprising guys would say, sir, I got 3,600 slides here to show you. I only need 3. And so the point was narrow down your focus. So you don't have to tell me all the intricate details because I've already made the study myself. So at the end of the day, if you lay out what you want to do and you understand what you want to do, I would tell them, okay, I don't want any notes. I don't want you to put any slides up on the screen. Just talk to me. Tell me what your vision is. Because you know what? If you don't believe it, you don't remember it. So my vision is this. My mission is this. This is how we're going to execute. This unit's going to do that. This unit's going to do this, blah, blah, blah. Here's how we're going to be supported. This is the additional support I need, either that's coming from me or that's coming from somebody else. And here's how we're going to control it. Boom. All of a sudden, OK, go back and execute. See, because if they have it in their brain, it's already there. And they know they can do the mission. Because if you— let's say you lost your laptop on the battlefield. And I had a few of those guys. But I said, if you lost your notes, how are you going to execute? And if the people under you lost their notes, how are they going to execute? Now, in business, of course, we have IT networks, databases, spreadsheets, all that, and PowerPoint. And so you can kind of review that stuff. So it's a little less tenuous in that situation. But at the end of the day, if they understand that they've been empowered to go execute, they'll always execute.

So as we're wrapping up, I'd like to shift to more of what, what Lane's most interested in, which is the mergers and acquisitions, exits.

Tagging on with that conversation, I decided to get into helping small to mid-sized business owners sell their business. The math in that industry is terrible. Only 2 out of 10 business owners in those size businesses get a transaction when they go to market. A lot of the reasons dovetail into what you two we're talking about. They don't have a plan. They don't have systems and processes. And the business is owner-dependent. And the business being owner-dependent is probably the biggest problem and weakness. And I think it's ego and it's fear and all of that that wraps up where I can't delegate. I can't let somebody else do that. I have to control. But it prevents them from being able to monetize the value of what they've built. Or grow it beyond a certain level. So that kind of goes back to financial literacy, financial education. You know, there are over 20 million small to mid-sized businesses.

Of course, it's also a personality weakness, right? Because if you can't give up the reins, then you're right. I mean, you kind of go down with the ship, right? And that's what happens with a lot of businesses. You know, I think back Bill Gates, and I first met him years ago back in the '80s. And we were talking about when he had the DOS operating system and the guy that he bought it from had developed it in his kitchen. And I think he paid the guy $30,000 for a billion-dollar business. You know, it's a difference of vision, right? And so you're right. When you start talking about the plan, see, that guy was He was the canary in the cave, so to speak, working on his technology, but he didn't have the greater vision of where it could have gone. And so a guy like Gates comes in and does that, and Microsoft and history, it's all there. But I think if you're owner-dependent in any merger, I think that, like you said, that's a weakness. And I'll give you an example. I was helping a technology company prior to COVID who was on the leading edge of payment system. And it would have done extremely well, but the owner, again, owner-dependent, couldn't get out of his own way. Unfortunately, also at the early part of COVID got COVID and passed away. So, he had no legacy to hand to his kids. But we had brought a whole bunch of people to the table, including First Data. Now, and First Data is really interesting. I don't know if you know them that well, but First Data is the muscle behind every transaction pretty much on the planet. Of course, it's now Fiserv First Data. And people ask me a lot of times, said, well, how did PayPal do it? I said, well, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel figured it out. They got the muscle guy and slapped their front end called PayPal on and was able to sell PayPal. But all the transactions went through First Data. And of course, everybody got a fee for every transaction that went through, right? And so they could sell the front end, but First Data is still the master in the back end. And, you know, so you got to know where to do what you need to do and then cut away. So if your business is to just continue to run it until the end of time, that's one thing. I mean, you can be the Procter Gamble of the world, 140 years worth of business, or you're going to sell it, package it, and move on. And so in the mergers and acquisition world, depends on how it bolts on. You can either make the going to look like the Michelangelo masterpiece or it's going to look like, as my wife would say, the Frankenstein monster, you know, depending on how you bolt this together. And so, I mean, I think in mergers and acquisitions for the small business, if you're prepared, like I'm working through a couple businesses right now that we're going to take public through NASDAQ. And those businesses, the first one was not prepared. It was chaos. It was chaos. And it's a great technology company here in town. This other one actually is one outside the country with a base here. But we'll do an offshore scenario, bring it in through NASDAQ. And it's a much easier scenario to take them public. So, and then, but they also have the right leadership. The challenge you have, like in this previous business I was talking about, they had co-CEOs but didn't have good objectives on where they wanted to take the business. Then they brought a young guy in to be the president. And he had some history in technology, a lot of lawsuits, done a lot of stuff with Google and all of this. But he had no idea of how to run this business. And the business was in chaos. And it has a great product. In fact, the US government wants this product, but they can't deliver. And it has automated manufacturing component to it. And so our group that was doing the acquisition to take them public said, look, we just got to leave them because they're like an anchor. They're not going to come up to the top of the water here. And, you know, at some point you just have to let them go, you know.

The demographics suggest there's a silver tsunami, as they call it, which I certainly am representative of, the people my age that are exiting their businesses while I'm starting a new one. And I kind of function as an emergency room. People come when there's a crisis and they're ready to exit, but they haven't done the planning. They haven't put the systems and processes in place. The business is owner-dependent. So I guess if I were giving counsel to business owners today, I'd say start planning. Just like that consumer that's living paycheck to paycheck, you've got to start planning. You've got to look at your situation. You've got to make informed.

Decisions.

And the value that you can add by being thoughtful in that that process and then going to market when you're attractive to the buyer.

Absolutely.

Makes a huge difference.

I think to that point, Lane, is like having the mentality of starting with the exit. Yeah. You know, you see Sinek, he has that book Start With Why. But like, I think from a building, like even my business is like, oh, it'd be cool to do this. Exiting has never been a thought process. But even if it's not a thought process, if you start with those in building the right processes, the right management, the right structure, not only would you be able to exit, but you probably have a much more effective, efficient, profitable business in the first place.

Right. Well, and if you own 100% of it and, you know, and this is kind of where self-inflicted wounds come in sometimes, is that I have to own everything. And I said, well, figure out how you can share, because if you share, you're going to bring some talent. And at the end of the day, if you go public, you're going to make a lot more money anyway. And you don't have to make every dollar. I mean, that's, you know, that's what I see with some of the small businesses. They want to make every dollar and not share it with anybody.

Well, 100% of a million is a million, but 20% of $10.

Billion.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, it's just math.

Yeah. Right. Well, and it all comes down to valuations, right? So how is somebody going to evaluate your business, you know, and those are all steps that you have to go through in that. In that planning.

There's a big disconnect there from my experience as well. If you're going to sell your house, then you're going to go to a realtor and the realtor's going to say, well, there are 10 houses that sold in your zip code and here's the range per square foot.

Right.

And you're going to trade somewhere in there. You may be the best house in the neighborhood or the worst house, but here's where you're going to trade. People that own businesses, particularly small to mid-sized businesses, they just don't have an anchor. They don't have any orientation.

Exactly.

And I'll ask.

Them, you know, what.

Do you, what do you think your business is What do you think you'll transact? And they'll say, I need. So instead of saying, I think my business is worth, they'll say, I need $5 million. And I'll go, well, your need doesn't translate into a buyer's value.

Isn't there that old anecdote, need in one hand, something else in the other, see what happens?

All right. Well, and also, I mean, you know, if you're going to do a merger or acquire them, you know, the question is, is how long do you want the owner to stay in, right? 'Cause now if the owner has some knowledge and you're doing knowledge transference, that's a key part of that. So, but again, that comes down to the art of the deal, right? So does the owner stay or is the owner going?

Yeah. And a lot of the owners that approach me, you know, they're tired of the business, they're sick, there's some event that is driving them to want to sell. They don't want to stay.

Yeah.

It's very common, particularly for a private equity buyer, to want that owner to stay for a year, 2 years, maybe even 3 years. Yeah, make sure it's a smooth transition. If you wait until there's a crisis, the discount that's going to be— even if you can get a transaction, it's going to be at a deep discount.

Well, you know, I tell every business owner, start with this: we're all going to die, so get over it. And so work your plan. You know, reverse plan. Yeah. And so at some point you want to retire, you know, like a lot of people I talk to about building their personal plans, I go, when do you want to retire? Well, I hadn't thought about that. Okay, well, do you know how much money you need to retire on? See, most of them don't know their financial independence number. So I'd say, okay, well, let's back into it. So here's what you're making today, let's figure out, okay, you're going to retire 30 years from now, Okay, if I— even if I don't put inflation in here, you need at least $5 million in the bank because you're going to live off of it. Now maybe you might get Social Security, maybe it's not there, you know, we don't know. So don't count on the government to save you, you know, do your own plan.

So last question for me and then I'll let Lane have the final question. What business book do you recommend the.

Most to people and why? Well, actually the book, and this is really about getting your mind straight, it's called The Art of Worldly Wisdom by a 15th century Jesuit priest named Baltasar Gracián. And there's, I don't know, 400 or something oracles in there of wisdom. And you don't have to read it end to end. But I would tell you, start there because, you know, in the 15th century, when you read that book, you go, he really had a futurist view of what the human condition was like and what behavior should be like. In fact, he has one statement in there that always sticks in my mind. And It says leave well. So wherever you are, if you left the business, you left an organization, leave well because that's what they remember. They remember when you walk out the door. They don't remember day one, but they remember when you walk out the door.

You could probably even apply that to death.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, see, that's part of legacy, right? So when you start talking about legacy, see, then that's where business leaders ought to be thinking about. Okay, so I built this business. What have I built for my family? What have I built for the customers and community that I've served? And then ultimately, what am I leaving behind? Is my community better? Is my family better? And my neighbors better? You know, what is that legacy you want to leave behind?

I don't have a final question, I just— a comment. I think you're going to leave an outstanding legacy, and I appreciate you sharing your time and wisdom with us today. A 38-year career in the Marine Corps. Thank you for your service to our country. My pleasure. I look forward to picking up the Wall Street Journal and reading about your efforts in biotechnology.

Well, we're hoping that it will all come together. You know, as I tell people in biotech, you know, big pharma has a lot of money so they can do a lot of lobbying. So we'll see how this will all work out.

We will. I'm betting on you.

Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your mentorship and friendship. And I look forward to that continued relationship. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, General. Appreciate it.