Troy Swope
Troy Swope is one of Footprint’s founders and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and a director since 2013. Prior to co-founding Footprint, Mr. Swope served as the sustainability director of Sprig Technologies, a product research firm, a senior vice president of Unisource Worldwide, Inc., an industrial products distributor and logistics provider, and in a variety of roles at Intel Corporation, starting as an intern, spending significant time in Asia, and ending as an Engineering Manager. Mr. Swope completed the Global Executive Leadership Program at the Yale School of Management in 2020.
In the past two years as CEO Mr. Swope was named to Newsweek’s 2021 Greatest Disruptors list, a Business Intelligence Group Sustainability Hero of the Year, Phoenix InBusiness people who are making a difference 2021, and a Mountain Desert Finalist for E&Y’s 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year. Additionally, Footprint was selected as a 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 company, won Conagra’s 2021 Supplier Excellence Award in the sustainability category, was named a Fortune 2020 Change the World company, and named one of Fast Company’s World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.
Episode Transcription
Guiding Growth. Conversations with Community Leaders. In this podcast, we'll explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks, and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, providing resources, connections, and belonging for business professionals and rocket space, an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full-service for-person podcast studio from Silicon Valley to Gilbert Arizona, this father of four, grew increasingly concerned about the health effects of plastic food packaging.
In 2012, he teamed up with his best friend to change the food packaging industry as we know it by eliminating single-use plastics. What started as a personal passion has become a publicly traded company with more than 1500 employees. Our guest was named to Newsweek's 2021 Greatest Disrupters List and his company footprint was named one of the world's 50 most innovative companies. Welcome, Troy Swope. Here we go. Welcome, Troy. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yes, we're glad to have you here. We're gonna start off with what we call.
Would you rather sing in public or dance in public dance for sure. Alright. What's one of your nicknames swoop ironically or when I was younger it was tea, they were just shorten it to troy swope. Yeah, so long that all four letters. Right. So yeah, T was was common or just using my last name and then using it wrong. Right. Would your 12 year old self think you were cool. Absolutely. Yeah, I think about that frequently. I worried so much less at 12 or 13 or 14 if I knew this, you know, this is the outcome, right?
Was really short and kind of fat and dorky and I was like, if I knew I was gonna be 65 and so that would help too. Right. There have been a lot less stress. But uh, I was glad I grew out of it. Right. I actually get to tell my, my boys that all the time. I'm like, I've seen this movie, you're going to be okay when they're 12 years old. Have you ever won a contest? Yeah. You know, when I was younger, ironically I'd win a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to like, you know, like cakes like, you know, like, yeah, those kind of things like that.
But um, you know, a lot of sports contests for sure. I've won a lot of those. Um and then I think just everything that we were talking about earlier, what we want is a company, right? That, that we've won a lot. So yeah, I've won some, but when I was younger, ironically I'd win a lot of stuff that I didn't want, I was afraid to go up on stage or something like that and I'd win, I think I'd be like manifesting it through fear like I don't want to win this, I don't want to go up there and you know, I'd go up there was calling you on the stage, would you ever skydive?
I bungee jumped a lot. So yeah, I would skydive. I don't think my, my insurance for the company now would allow me to like, I just, you know, my business partner of reading it about a couple of months ago and were like, hey, you know, we're not allowed to own a motorcycle or flying a helicopter and we didn't know that until recently. Yeah, yeah. And I actually have a motorcycle, so I was like, am I supposed to give it away? I know a nonprofit, if you need to just let me know what's your favorite breakfast?
I'm very simple. So I like, I like a really good like oatmeal, but, and that's not, that's not me. Like I love all foods, but for some reason at breakfast, I love oatmeal, but I would say I've spent a lot of time in europe and was in paris recently and I say crepes are 10 times better than Yeah, sure. It's just not good for me. What is one thing you wish you enjoyed more of? I wish I, you know, to be honest with, I wish I wasn't so ambitious sometimes.
I think it's, I wish I didn't like constantly, we get asked a lot. Like, you know, we have almost two million square feet in Mexico in the factory in Mexico and you mentioned 1500 points. I think we're closer to 4000 employees now and we're building a factory in Poland. We have an R and D headquarters now in Netherlands, our european headquarters in Netherlands. And people go, hey, do you ever stop and just go a lot, look what we built and um, no, and, and it's, I never stop and go, wow, this is great, look where we're at, because I constantly think about how much work is left and where we're really going.
And so I wish I could enjoy the moment more, you know, better smelling the roses. I'm not so good at it. My business business partners. Even worse. He can't, he doesn't, he's push, push, push, Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? I think I'm somewhat down the middle, ironically, I get up in front of hundreds of people and speak all the time and I'm comfortable with that. But if you ask me to go into a crowd and just network and meet people, I would, I would never do it.
Yeah, I don't mind now getting up in front and speaking and telling the story of footprint, but I don't want to go meet, you know, one on one. I think there's still, you know, kind of, uh, an apprehension there. I don't know where it comes from, but you know, and I mean, an example of this is my team goes to conferences all the time. And they're trying to meet people and they're like, hey, this is so and so from Pepsi or this is so and so from coke, let's go talk to them.
I hate that. But if you ask me to get up in front of everybody, I'd have no problem doing that. But one on one. So I think I have introverted tendencies, but you know, because of my job, I have to be an extrovert extrovert. Alright, do you have a favorite book? Oh, I love books, You know, I don't know if I have a favorite book. The first book that I remember just being obsessed was was a Time to Kill. So john Grisham's a Time to Kill. But more more recently I'm reading things on like quantum physics and stuff like that just because there's things that I'm afraid of, what I don't know.
In fact I tell my kids all the time that the whole world secrets or in a book, I don't know which books to read them. All right. So, but I love reading, you know, biography. So I loved Obama's I loved his a lot. I really like listening to him and his leadership style and what he went through uh George W Bush President 43. I thought his was fantastic too. And then most recently I think it's Eddie Jack you The happiest Happiest Man Alive. So it's the story of an Auschwitz Survivor, that book is awesome.
That book is Fear of what I don't know, I just can't, it's and actually, as I got older, it's become like, insatiable, my family laughs, there's books delivered to our house every week, so I'm just afraid of what I don't know. And I'm actually deep into quantum physics right now, because I'm just going, this is fascinating to me, I need to understand this, and somehow it ties to spirituality to me. Yeah, so I don't, for me, a lot of people are saying it's just the opposite, it proves that, you know, that there is no creator, and I'm like, are you kidding me?
It proves that there is one because he keeps messing with us, right, showing that we can't figure out how everything exists. So, I love it. I just the love of of learning, if you will, last question, I think I know the answer, but Glass half full or half empty, I think I'm as I get older, it gets harder and harder to be half full, right? You get more and more pragmatic, but I was once called, you know, during this process of, you know, as we're growing the company as called in optimist.
And it was funny when I got called it before I even heard the word like, you're you're an optimist. It just the tone made me be like, are you kidding me? Like, screw you, I'm not an optimal, what are you talking? And then as I was thinking, I was like, well, of course I'm an optimist, right? I'm building a company that's out to save the planet. I gotta be optimistic that we can't do it. I mean, how do you get people to, you know, leave great jobs like intel and google and Apple and say, come, help us save the planet, but I don't know if it's gonna work right, You know?
So I'm definitely half full. But with data, okay, Gilbert City lifestyles is a locally owned publication whose mission is to find and share great stories in our community and help build a stronger, more vibrant local experience, become a digital subscriber at city lifestyles dot com forward slash gilbert. So I remember not too long ago um footprint opened their doors and walking in and it was an empty warehouse basically as what it was. And I look now and it's, it blows me away what you are accomplishing. And I wonder you have to you have to be an optimistic care enough to do something and to put your passion into action and then build it into this incredible business.
Tell us about the origins of this company and how you got to where you are now. Well, well, thank you for Yeah, and actually, ironically, when I left here to come here today, there's a we have a group of 30 people and some architects and everything designing our new corporate headquarters, like, you know, what are we gonna do next? Is we're busting at the seams as as you've seen now. Um So we didn't plan for the growth, I guess if we thought we had a 10 year building, I think we have a four year building.
Um But so the origin is, you know, I spent 15 years at Intel uh and I loved intel and absolutely loved it. I was in intel in the nineties, so I started, I was 19 years old, right? So I had a teacher in high school that would did summer work at Intel and he was like, hey, you want a summer job, you should go down to this company and Chandler, I was from Mesa and like, way out in the middle of nowhere at the time. And I was like, you know what?
And do what he's like, yeah, you, you could help them and I was really good like a standardized test student, but I was a horrible student, Does that make sense? You know, it's great if you give me an s a T, I'm fine, but you know, make me sit in the classroom all day. I was, I was horrible. Right? So um and this teacher saw something, I mean it was like, hey you should go down there and so I went out and applied, got a job and got promoted really quick, Just kept getting promoted shipped all over the world and loved it.
It was a very intense environment and um but so when I eventually I started running this materials group at intel. Uh and until we're having problems where we're having to clean the intel's products coming in from Japan and we're gonna have to clean it every time we used it before we started processing worldwide and they're going troy something's happening with your materials like in process in shipping like that, it's not working, it's not airtight, it's not sealing uh that were contaminating the product and we have to clean it.
We like to save money like eliminate this. And so I'm doing, we're doing material science and advanced palmer development basically. We're trying to see what we found out is the packaging itself. This really expensive plastic container looks like a yeti cooler, right? Um That's holding our product was actually outgassing. Outgassing is like you know your new car smell right? Was outgassing on the product. It was actually plastic on our product that was contaminating it. So we're trying to develop a palmer or plastic that doesn't out guess what, We couldn't do it, we ended up it was gonna be super expensive and we really couldn't stop it from from outgassing.
But as we're investigating this, I'm just thinking about Everything in foods in plastic and this was in 24 hours. So it would get packed in a clean room in Japan shipped to Israel Oregon Arizona Wherever Ireland et cetera and it was 24 hours later it's contaminated, I'm going well foods in there for weeks. So I started taking things like cut fruits and macaroni and cheese to, to an intel lab in santa claus, which is just totally told them No, no, and I take just out of just pure engineering curiosity going, tell me what's on the food and the data is coming back.
It was alarming way more plastic in the food than there was on our contaminating intel's wafers. And so I started going to every engineer at Intel, do you believe this? Like we eat this and this is 2004, right? Nobody would listen to me really, but I knew that we had to develop to get plastic out of food. This was a disaster. We didn't know the human health impacts in 2004, but we knew it was a disaster. So I just started rounding up, you know, top engineers and scientist from Intel and the smartest person I knew was yoke chung was our business partner And I just begged him and said, Hey Let's go develop an alternative to plastic.
And then we knew we were gonna have to develop everything how to make it not only the material science, but the equipment to make it in scale and um, but I said this was gonna be a disaster and actually last year was like the first time we started seeing rolling stone came out with an article in 2020, I think that said we ingest about credit cards worth of plastic a week and then Bloomberg this year, I think came back and supported it maybe even more than a credit card.
So it's about 5 5. 5 g of plastic a week we eat. And then we, when we started seeing that data, we connected with dr Leo Cosandey, which is a Harvard professor who said it's killing us, right? It's it's it's in our it's in our bodies, it's killing us. It's in our brains, It's in babies, pre utero were born, babies are born polluted with plastic, right? Um so that was kind of the, but the aha moment was at intel when I was going, If we can contaminate Intel products in 24 hours, what are we doing to food?
Yeah. No, but so I just want to dig a little deeper because it's one thing to have this information, it's another thing to do something about it. What is it what makes that spark and gives you the courage to step out from something? I mean, I'm assuming you're really comfortable in your position, right? And this is providing the life that you want to provide? Something bigger is happening. Yeah, I think um it's bigger than just, you know, a means for like making sure my kids can go to college, right?
So um for me it was there's just drive to do something bigger and part of that comes from, and I know this part of the podcast today, but Is that Intel, there was this kind of, you know, in the 90s, this kind of vibe that you're changing the world and that they're going to teach you how to solve problems. And they gave us an unbelievable amount of training on how to serve as an R. And D. And so they gave us an unbelievable amount of training on how to solve a problem.
So I think it started there and then just surrounding myself with just there was brilliant people all around intel and so you felt like you could do anything in just that you could use this engineering discipline to solve any problems. So I think that gave me confidence and then, you know, I'm a type a personality. So I always thought big and, and I don't think we would have ever left intel unless we thought we could do something massive for the planet and have real disruption and feel something we could feel extremely proud about.
And I think that's one thing that everybody at footprint does is that when we stop and smell the roses, um it's a lot of work that is that we are very proud. I mean it's it's when we see people's reaction to what we're doing, um it gives us a lot of pride. So let's back up a bit because I love that we're talking about what you're doing today and where you've gone and all those things you've been okay, but the whole point of the show is to talk about how you got there, and so let's back up to the very beginnings and tell me a little bit about your family when you were growing up and and how some of those influences got you to where you are today.
Yeah, so a unique family environment. So my, my mom was a single mom and she got, she would, she would get married and divorced a lot until I was about 14. So it was, it was a bit disruptive, but my mom was unbelievably hard working and I had this great, my mom has a great family. So her parents and her brothers and sisters were amazing and they really help participate in raising me. So they There's multiple influences. So my grandparents were unbelievably hard working and they ran a church camp in Goleta California, which is up near Santa Barbara, and it's seven miles up in these hills and I think it's about 300 acres overlooking the ocean.
Uh and it was unbelievable. So I spent most of my summer there. Yeah, it was, and I would clear fire breaks, you know, at, you know, starting at nine years old. So, I think my grandpa, a funny story told not too long ago about courage, but I remember my grandpa, like when I was like 10 years old, giving me a chain socks saying, can you hold this out and okay, good, like, if I could hold it straight out, he goes, we're good and we're gonna go clear some brush.
So if you're from California, you know, California California has two seasons, anything now, maybe just one, but they had two seasons, which was the green season, but you get a lot of rain, everything turns green and then the brown season where it dries out and now we have fire season, right? So, so all summer we'd spend clearing fire breaks around in the camp. And it was really, really hard work, but it was a tremendous value to me because you know, today I still think um one of my assets is, I feel like I can always outwork you.
And so that's, that's one influence I think in other influences. I had an uncle, my mom's brother, uh, that runs a steel company here in the valley and they're all over the country, They do a lot of steel placement for intel's facilities and bridges and everything for, for Arizona and I think they're in Alaska, they're all over the country. And he always gave me a vision of what, you know, it was in our blood, you could do this right? And and his in similar approach, it was, you know, through hard work, but he also had a big vision of, you know, you could accomplish great things and he's got tremendous leadership skills and he's always honing them and he's very, very religious person.
Um, especially now that he's old, uh, he's very religious and he had a huge influence on me of what I felt could be possible, what we could achieve. So I was never really afraid of anything. I'm, I'm going to jump around a little bit just because all these thoughts are coming to remind and I'm so curious um, in all of these, um, all of the recent success that you've had. Yeah, you're a humble guy. How do you stay focused on remaining in touch with your roots and staying humble and grateful the way you are.
Well, thanks for saying, I'm humble. I think my kids humble my kids. There's nothing if my, when I just said earlier that I would dance instead of saying my kids would be so embarrassed right? Either one of them, they would be embarrassed. Um, and I think they humble me. I, you know, when I get some accolades all the time, I think my kids just think I'm a big dork. Right? So I think that that helps in the reality is um, I don't think we've done anything yet.
I mean we've had, we're on our way. Um, but there's still so much work to be done and footprint and then I said this that I was in Arizona business league the other day. I said the most environmentally impactful company on the planet is from Arizona, it's here. It's now it's footprint and um, I mean because of the disaster that is plastic. Not only is plastic in our bodies and it's killing us? You know um Plastics, number one polluter in the ocean. It's also like the top five C. 02 emitter from an industry perspective, I think in his own country would be number five, right?
Just behind Russia and china. So it's a disaster. Plastics are an absolute disaster. And we have the technology to eliminate plastic but not only do we have the technology to eliminate plastic. We are developing technologies to capture our our waste heat. Uh We're working with a group at A. S. U. To actually produce our own water. Um So not only is are we have this really really unique you know product um The way we manufacture it is hugely impactful to the planet. Um And uh there's innovations in that, so there's other parts that we could take to other companies uh in addition to just eliminating plastic.
So footprint is and we know it I think we already being recognized at all the things that you mentioned and we opened up but we're being recognized for it, but we are the most environmentally impactful, you know, business on the planet. And so for me that just seems like we have so much work to do, like we got to get this out to every where do you keep your kids in this process? Do you involve them or do they have their own passions and how do you spark their their interests?
They all have their own passions. Um My oldest son's going to issue now, he played football Arizona christian, finishing up at the issue and he's wants to be a coach so he could care less about, you know, kind of this, I think he thinks it's neat, but uh he's driven by teaching and um but my second son is an entrepreneur uh and so he's got a real interest in it and he's going to issue as well. Uh I'm I'm gonna probably pull him into it, make him do some real work and and see if he likes it, but he's got a real creative brain, so I think he'll do something creative.
I'm not for sure if it's going to be in the footprint space, but he'll do something unique and creative. And then my two younger ones are in high school, so they haven't quite defined what they want to do. If you asked me in high school, I had no idea what, what what would you have told yourself in high school, if you knew what you knew today, what would you tell yourself back then? Um I would have really been happy if, if, if I had known my career have been, go to intel, I loved every minute at intel.
Uh and that I was gonna go innovate and create and and learned so much and then be able to come do what I'm doing today, I have been really happy with that career path. Um, but as a high school student, I think I wanted to be an athlete. I just wanted to be, you know, I was like, you don't play sports. But that quickly changed when I saw that I could make money, Money changes at all. Talk to me now. So when you were starting this out, you mentioned a little bit about already sounds like you had to do some influencing to get him to join you.
What was that journey like? Yeah. So we were, we were at intel together and um, he's more pragmatic than me, right? So, uh, he's got a much bigger brain, but you know, he needs the data and information and he also knows, you know, he needs, so he needs to see the steps like, what are we gonna do? How are we going to do it? And um, so, and it had to be hard, Right? So when you, when you first, when I'm telling them, hey, we're gonna make, you know, bowls for, you know, conagra and new macaroni and cheese cups and you look at it, you're like, I'm gonna make go for making semiconductors too.
That the technology itself, when you look at it isn't really sexy. The problem sexy and in the science to, to, to deliver a solution that works and competes with plastic is really exciting. But the actual product itself, when you look at, it's not that exciting what we at least what we chose to tackle and eliminate plastic. So I had to convince him that it was gonna be hard. Um, I had to convince him because he wanted it to be hard, right? Uh, and then once I convinced him hard, I had to convince him that we're going to do this globally was we're going to create a multibillion dollar business.
So we weren't gonna do it, uh, because it wasn't worth it. We were doing that at intel. So why leave, uh, you know, why leave intel to go, do you know, do something that, you know, is going to be on a minor scale? We have to think, you know, massive scale. And from day one, you know, I think if we told board members from day one, what was actually in our head, we, we were gonna do what we're doing what we're doing today, but I think if we told them that, that they would have been like that, you guys are crazy, but we've always had a vision that, you know, we're again, to reiterate where we're at, we're, we have almost two million square feet in Mexico.
We're working on security, another million square feet in Mexico. We have two factories in the United States. Uh, we're building two factors right now in Poland, um, factory number one will be online into this year. And then we're looking at spain and Thailand right now as well. So if we told him that we were gonna this is a scale we thought from day one our board would have been nuts. But so back to your question I had to convince him this is the scale that this is what we're gonna do because if it wasn't hard for him he's disruptive.
So if he gets bored he's disruptive. So I had to make sure I had to tell him he wasn't gonna be bored. Did you ever have those moments either whenever you were you second guess this for a minute? No I don't think we ever have. So I've known him since I was 23. Um so 27 years and we've had one argument 27 years. Um and so and it was it was early on in this we were arguing about one of our investors was kind of a pain in the us.
Um and and it lasted like 20 minutes and we went to lunch, it was completely over and I think we laughed about it. But uh no I don't think we ever second guessed it. We there's certainly times where you're frustrated. Um I mean the market today is frustrating right? Were I. P. O. In right now? Right? So we're going out right now and so that's that's frustrating. It's out of our control. Um But I don't think we've ever second guessed it. Um Also very cool that you guys show up every day in flip flops and shorts as cool as cool as you are, dan Henderson, I talked about it all the time, We're like, man, what did we do wrong?
That you guys get to show up and create your own company? You set the rules, right? So we go on the factory floor in the labs, we have to put shoes on. So I got shoes and shoes in my office. But yeah, it's Arizona is hot, we don't want to constrict your brain, but you know, make anywhere shoes or you know, I'm all there with you like that, I'm from California to right, right, so, I mean I moved here when I was 14, but in California, we never wear shoes, we were barefoot everywhere.
Well what caused you to move here from California? My parents got divorced and I had an uncle that lived here and so my mom wanted to be close to her brother and we came out and actually were in Mission viejo, So we're right near the beach in all uh you know, just from an environmental perspective, you're like, well how leaving the beach and then come into Arizona. But the people in Arizona, My classmates, my friends were far better people than than what I was going to school, it was a great move for me, I love the people, I went to high school and the people were amazing, my friends were amazing, great kids um California at the time when I was 14 years old, really hung up on material things and kids here weren't and in fact I tell people all the time uh the kids here, you know if they had money they're like that's my parents money, I didn't earn it.
Um And that was a different approach in California. It was like you know you know if they had money as their parents money but they act like it was, there's like Arizona kids were like you didn't do anything, you know you you go on your own money, right? And I thought it was awesome. I it took me no time. I didn't miss California kids here were unbelievable. Yeah that's awesome. I love looking to the future. So what's your future look like? What do you got ahead of you?
Well most immediately we got to get this, you know the I. P. O. Completed. So we chose a SPAC process which um is taking a beating but all IPO's 88% of all I. P. O. S in the last year. Underperforming write their initials. So um and a lot of that's their own doing, you know, so footprints got to control our own destiny and execute on what we've told you know shareholders that we're going to do which is basically we got to support our customer. So most immediate it's um we're focused on obviously global expansion.
You know supporting our customer. Uh And for me I think you know as I mentioned to you the most environmentally impactful company, the planet's footprint, um, we gotta let the world know that that's the case. I'm super proud of that. When we say that, I believe it, I think the data supports it. It's not like I'm telling you, hey, I'm starting a tv company and you got to argue, well, aren't you guys mining lithium and you've got some 12 year old kid in the congo. You know, we don't have any of that.
We are getting plastic out of your body. So it's like eliminating smoking as well as having a massive climate change impact and none of it's debatable. Our stuff doesn't sit in the ocean and float around. It's better for you turtles could eat. Like there's nothing debatable about our technology and our impact on the planet. So we clearly know were the most environmentally impactful. So the future for us is that everybody knows that. Um, and for me, it's exciting to let everybody know that. Never let everybody know that that's here in Arizona.
We created that here in Arizona. This didn't come from, it came from Silicon Valley origins, but it came from Arizona. Well, and you're on the right track. So what does it take to get a naming right? The naming rights of an arena a lot of money. Um, it's probably was, you know, when you think about it, you know, where we were in the stage of a company is probably premature for us to do that. But when we started talking to the sons, um, the idea was we wanted to help the stadium with just materials, right?
And change the waste profile of an event and stadium and use them as kind of like a partner to do that. Um, and as we're walking through that innovation and changing that, and that becomes, we're, we're a supplier so we can make money on that. Um, but also innovate and learn as well. Uh, and then it just turned into, hey, you know, they're having a change in the naming rights partners and then we're thinking about, wow, we could do this and it's, it's a very, very unique deal in sports.
We actually, you know, could make money by doing it and just by immediately announcing it and announcing what we're gonna do for the sun. So it'll take some time because they have contracts with material suppliers, but we're going to see in the next three years some major innovations first around materials and then just around, you know, how certain what do you bring into the stadium, such as water bottles and eliminating them and different ways of getting water to consumers. Um, and, and then waste, how you manage waste and, you know, you know, eliminating, you know, a lot of the, just going to a landfill and start thinking about first changing the raw material and then changing the waste stream, like can we do dehydration and if we dehydrate the food and you know, the footprint material together is that can we up cycle it, can we bring it to farms?
It's full of nitrates, It's rich, right? So those innovations changes around material and then ultimately we want to change, you know, their energy source as well, right? That's that's what we do. So it'll take a few years to do all those things. But the sons are unbelievable. I mean, they're just unbelievable. Not only they're obviously on basketball, performance has been great, but um the leadership team is unbelievable. It was nothing like what I expected. They are uh and robert and his team are just open to footprint like take a shot, take a shot.
Well you couldn't, your timing couldn't have been better. You got so lucky. We got so lucky. But they have, and hats off to robert, James jones is amazing. His business team is amazing. They have real vision and they give us real freedom to innovate. Um I mean they have constraints from their materials contracts today and that will work around and we have constraints from ability just what materials are available. Um and but they're they're really open to doing the right thing. Uh and taking a risk and in some cases it might mean you know revenue impacts to them.
You know, if they eliminate water and those things and they're open to it and hats off to him uh thereon believe they have an unbelievable leadership team there. I was surprised as we dug in, uh just how great in depth they have tons of leadership death. I think they're gonna have a lot of success. As long as James jones there, they're gonna they're gonna have a lot of on basketball, on the basketball floor success for a while. He's in monte. They're really, really good leaders and we can learn a lot from their leadership I think.
Yeah, that's a spectator. You can pick up on that real quick. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you sharing with us and telling us your story and a little bit of your background and how you got to where you were. I've been fascinated to hear this. So thank you for that today. Thank you. I told you I talk a lot. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for spending some time with us. Thanks for having me. So this is another great episode and thank you for being here.
If you like this show, subscribe to our tribe so you can have more episodes brought to you every time we launch them. Thanks for being here today, guiding growth conversations with community leaders. Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast? This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story, or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us.
So I think there's many opportunities at hand, whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you, reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.
