Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Welcome to infinite human, where we explore our limitless potential through conversations with guests who have achieved greatness, overcome challenges, and worked to find their purpose. We aim to share and inspire you to do the same.
I'm your host, Shona Kerr. I'm a college coach, professor and businesswoman who is eager to learn from and sharing the wisdom of others with you and on to the show.
Today's guest is Rich Gibbons. Rich is the president of Speak, Inc. One of the largest speaker bureaus in the US, where they find and recommend the best fit speakers for a wide variety of events. Rich is an alum of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, which is where I work, and was a member of the men's squash team when he was there.
Rich will talk about what a speakers bureau does, how his path led him there, and the changes in the field of public speaking that he has seen. He'll also talk about the influence that a really great speaker can have and onto the show. Welcome, Rich. Great to have you here today. I am thrilled and excited to talk to you about your journey to becoming president of Speak Inc. And our connection has been a wonderful one through Wesleyan University and Wesleyan squash, of which you're an alum and you played on the varsity team there. And I'm dying to know how one goes. Firstly, one gets to Wesleyan and that path, and then having worked with the students, I'm always very intrigued to know people's path to the career that they find themselves in and how that's evolved. So I cannot wait to dive in.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me and given all of my sort of industry connections for this kind of invite. It's really fun to be invited by a fellow wesleyan connection. So thank you for inviting me.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: With no further ado, let's dive in. I would love to know, what did your childhood look like? Where are you from? How did it all start?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I wasn't there when it all started, but I am from the middletown area and had the honor of attending Wesleyan and really, really enjoyed my time there and of course, really enjoyed playing on the squash team. And, you know, you and I have had some sidebar conversations on how the, you know, the athletes you're working with now that sort of those high pressure, close matches serve as a crucible for learning about how you're wired and sort of testing your metal. And that was a super fun time for me. And I think a lot of people learn a great deal about themselves and how they can get more out of themselves through competition than being thrust into those pressure situations. So yeah, after graduating from Wesleyan, I spent some time in New York City and spent maybe three or four years there and woke up one day and thought, boy, everything I like to do is outside.
And whether it's skiing, cycling, playing, our shared love of pickleball, it's all outside. So in 1990, after graduating from Wesleyan in 1987, I moved to San Diego, California and have never looked back.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: It's perfect. I'm envious in that regard. Now, you touched upon your experience at Wesleyans, specifically on the squash team, preparing you for things after. Can you dig more into that? Are there any specific qualities about being a student athlete that have really served you?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's so much about, given my vocation and sort of my just the content that I bathe in sort of all day, every day, authorship, podcasts, articles, I stumble across a lot of great quotes and one of the quotes I love is the more you sweat during peace, the less you bleed during war. And I think that's probably apropos for any athlete, not the least of which would be a collegiate athlete. When it comes to fitness, mental stamina, preparation, the more you can sort of pressure test yourself before when the heat's not on, the better you perform. And I didn't always perform perfectly, but that was a lesson that I think carried into the years and decades after in terms of how do you prepare for any event where you've got to bring your a game?
[00:06:07] Speaker A: A fellow coach of mine, Paul Aseante at Trinity would say the very same thing. His quote would be, we should cry during practice and laugh during the matches. I also think it's sport is this wonderful thing. You can't google it and become a better player. No shortcut. And in such a fast paced world, I do hope that some of that gets relayed to some of the students that I'm working with, and that's amazing to hear that you still hold on to that. You're well established in your career and that's still relevant. Before we get into the weeds of Speak Inc. Of which I have a lot of questions, what were maybe some of your favorite moments on the wesleyan squash team just to share? I'm sure the students I have would love to hear that.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say probably. And having heard your students talk about some of the road trips, there is a real camaraderie when traveling to a remote site. I think of some of the trips we took up to Boston to Williams.
We went to West Point.
Speaking of West Point, that was one of the more fun experiences I had being able to sit down with all the cadets. Is that what they are? I think they're cadets at West Point and dine in very. It just felt like a very historic setting. So I would say the.
The fun and adventure and camaraderie of being on the road with your teammates. We always had a lot of fun.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: What kind of student were you?
[00:07:51] Speaker B: I was. There's a technical term for this.
I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. I like it.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I tried. I tried, but I was in.
I had some pretty challenging natural science courses, so it probably stands to reason I'm in the industry. I am now.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Well, what were your aspirations growing up? I mean, did you say, hey, I want to be president of the speakers bureau? Speaking and assigning speakers to events is where it's at. Or was it something else?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: You know, it was probably somewhat ill defined. I remember vividly as a yemenite, a senior, being a senior at Wesleyan, and wondering, gosh, and it's probably not. It's probably in the minority that people say, okay, this is the path I want to be on.
But the thing that probably in the first several years out of school, there were some experiences I had where I felt like, boy, this is not something I enjoy. I don't feel particularly good at it. I wish I could do more of this or more of that. And I tell a lot of young adults in my orbit that your job, as soon as you're out in the world and I trying to navigate and figure out, well, what is that? How do I want to invest my time and energy as I sort of embark into the working world? Those jobs which feel like crawling through broken glass are so informative to helping you better understand what am I good at?
What comes easy to me, what excites me, what interests me. And I feel so fortunate that as a. I think I was.
I think I was 26 years old when I was in San Diego, and I was going by.
It was my fraternity brother's wife that started this company, and I was going by her office. This was back a long time ago. This was 34 years ago, and I was going by her office borrowing books and audio cassettes and VHS tapes to expose myself to authorship, new ideas. Back then, there weren't such things as TED talks, but that's ostensibly what they were. And I just found it endlessly fascinating.
It was a real door opening for me because I found that it was the kind of thing I was interested in and would engage in my free time. So the fact that I get to do this, and I'm exposed to so many incredibly engaging ideas and people and experiences, and it's my primary vocation. I feel very, very lucky that I get to do something which is intellectually engaging every single day.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: I think you're pretty lucky too. It's pretty cool.
And it's interesting that that was your turning point. 26 years old. And I agree that I think it's really hard right out of university, and I see it and people are lost and searching and what were some of the things you did that were like walking through glass? What were those experiences?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Well, there was one in particular. It was in New York City. It was essentially consulting in commercial real estate, and there was a lot of being out in the field, and one of the epiphanies I had in that role was I was very socially isolated. And I realized that being connected to other people and frankly, other people that I enjoy and respect and can learn from. So in this industry, I'm around people all the time. I'm around customers, I'm around speakers, I'm around my colleagues, and I feel very fortunate that all of those people I genuinely appreciate and like. And that was one of the things that I felt really informed my view of. So, you know, who am I and how am I wired? And that was a real gift when I realized, boy, I have to be, you know, I'm a real people person. My wife jokes that if we both show up at a party and our social battery is at 75%, I leave the party three, 4 hours later and my battery is 100% and her battery is at like 6% and blinking red. And she finds it exhausting. So that was certainly one, and that I was wired to be around and connected to people. And another one is really just one of the roles I had right out of college was in the legal realm on Wall street. And I found the content, the documents, it was just mountains of paperwork and mind numbing, frankly, mind numbing content that I didn't find remotely interesting. And you've had that experience. Your listeners have had that experience where when you find something truly interesting, reading it and absorbing it and really digging in deep, it doesn't feel like work because it's naturally interesting to you. So that was another thing that really informed what I wanted to do because it really felt like heavy lifting. When what I had to sort of study or examine or figure out, I just was not interested in. So being able to swim in a water column of unbelievably interesting people and ideas and authorship is. I just feel very, very lucky.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: So how did they scoop you up? Or did you say, you know, I need in, I need in on this, this company. How exactly did they say, you're perfect?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: You know what? It was such a. It was such a happenstance thing when, in related news, when my wife and I, she was my girlfriend at the time, but we moved from New York, and I'm pointing this direction because that's easy.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: That's New York.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: We moved out to California and we landed in San Diego with really not a lot of money, no contacts, no job, really no nothing. And I went to Wesleyan and went to the alumni office and looked in the directory and geez, who's in southern California that I might be able to connect with? Lo and behold, one of my fraternity brothers was working for a bank here in San Diego. Connected with him, met his wife. She had just started this bureau.
And that as I was chairing ten minutes ago, I was going by her office all the time borrowing stuff, and I sort of had sticky fingers in her office. I was, oh, yeah, hey, can I borrow this? I'll bring it back. And I was treating her office almost like the public library.
And about nine months later, after I was sort of going by her office all the time and borrowing things, she and her husband were energized to expand the operation. And I was a known commodity and we put something together. But they certainly didn't recruit me, track me down. It was really a function of right place, right time. And I was interested and engaged with the industry just at a time when they wanted to expand and grow the operation. And that was 33 years ago and we are now 1617 people. So it just kept getting, kept getting bigger and bigger and we just kept adding more and more great people. So it was a very. I think if there's any lesson that comes out of that is that if we're speaking to a young adult, that they should just have their antenna up.
I was lucky in that some of the experiences I had in New York were so abhorrent to me that I didn't languish, I didn't linger. I was like, boy, if I have to do this for five more minutes, I think I'm going to jump into traffic. That was a gift in that it really helped to inform, well, if I hate this, what's the opposite of this? And I was sort of liberated to go to the next thing. I think probably there are those individuals who they.
Maybe they're in a situation where it's good, but it's not great.
And they're staying because there's nothing that's really impelling them out the door. So the young adults that I talked to, I was talking with one of my good friend's daughter, who is 23 and working in, working for a marketing company, and there are certain aspects of it that she really doesn't like. And I was sharing with her that is, think of that at this stage of your career, almost like a gift, because it's really helping you to become intimate with, well, if you really don't, if you really don't appreciate that or like it, that's informing what you do want to do.
So I look back on those experiences as really super helpful and helping me appreciate what I'm doing now. And there really was, as a 26 year old, I felt like, boy, this really plays to my strengths. I find it pretty easy, interesting, natural, and it might be hard to arrive at that decision if you haven't skinned your knee previously. So for the young adults out there that are thinking, what the heck do I want to do with my life? Just to have your antenna up and really trust your gut and your instinct.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: I was fortunate enough to have those gifts, too, and have that moment where you say, right, what am I passionate about? What am I good at? What am I drawn to? And here we are. I couldn't agree more. It's almost a detriment. You land your first job, and it's amazing. How do you know? You've got nothing to compare to.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: You articulated it much more succinctly than I did. But, yeah, you land that first job and maybe it's sort of.
It's b. B.
It's not a total washout, but it's good enough that you stay in it. And then you sort of wake up at age whatever and think, boy, I really haven't found my jam. This isn't really what.
And it's sort of like running with a stitch. Like, I'm just not. I'm not really enjoying this. I'm not going full pace.
So, yeah, that could be a detriment to find something that's close but not quite, because then you're. I don't want to say trapped, but kind of you almost want to just.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Explore something just to. Maybe you go back to it, because then you realize it's the a plus job, but how would you know? So you get to 26, you've had your sticky fingers in all the audio tapes. They've said, okay, come on board. We're expanding. Come on board. Actually, for those, for those who don't understand, and me included, how does a speakers bureau work exactly?
[00:21:00] Speaker B: I'm glad you asked.
So the customers that we serve are typically corporations, and they have obviously a wide variety of types of events. We also work with a lot of trade groups, so think of National association of fill in the blank, and there's thousands of them. If you're in Washington, DC, walking down the street, every other door is the frontage of a national association. So all of those huge conferences that happen in places like Orlando and Scottsdale and San Antonio, big conference destinations, they typically have 501,000, 1500 people in the audience, and they oftentimes want some voice.
The trade associations, frankly, use name recognition and celebrity to try and draw attendees to their event.
So that will, that will oftentimes drive the selection process. For corporate groups. It can be much more bespoke in that they really don't care about name recognition, but they want to get into driving certain leadership principles, fostering a culture of innovation, driving teamwork across global teams.
Each event stakeholder has a different north star that they're trying to navigate to. And for the speaker, bureau, community, the lecture circuit, we can listen with an unfettered ear and understand audience, demographic, the event sort of backdrop, industry landscape, and not the least of which is budget. If you're suggesting people that are double what the customer has to spend, you're not really helping them out. So if we can sit with them and listen for, you know, sometimes these descriptions go on for 510, sometimes 15 minutes, what they're hunting for, sometimes there's a diversity component. We have customers that say, boy, if I hire one more white guy, or as the, as the joke and the industry goes male, pale and stale, the middle aged white guy, I'm going to get run out of town. Sometimes there's a diversity component. Gender, racial, and because we sit in a place where we see a whole host of different industries, different venues, we know what speakers are doing a really great job and leaning into their trade craft. And to a great degree, past is prologue. If a speaker has done phenomenal work the last two, three dozen times we've sent them out the door, odds are they're going to do a good job at the event we're proposing them for. So, back to your question, what on earth does the speakers bureau do?
We have a vested interest in making keynote candidate recommendations that are going to deliver on game day, because we don't want it to be. We don't want the relationship to be one and done. We want to work with that customer again and again and again. And sometimes they have maybe not a meeting once a year, maybe they'll have two meetings, four meetings. And we want to earn that loyalty such that they keep coming back to us. So we have skin in the game too, in that we want to be recommending practitioners that do really great work.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Where do you find your speakers?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: A lot of them are essentially known commodities.
But there are times when we listen to the event owner and we make recommendations. And sometimes it's like any business development landscape, sometimes our recommendation doesn't get selected and they describe a speaker that maybe we haven't heard of and we follow up and we learn about them. And I, it ends up being a function of, boy, their reputation is really strong. They're doing all the right things. And that's probably the best way that we learn of the best talent is networking within the industry. But to put it bluntly, if you're a professional speaker, you use speakers bureaus as a distribution channel to the market. So we have, figuratively speaking, we have dozens, hundreds of eager speakers kicking in our door and filling up our email inboxes because they want to use us as that portal to this landscape of corporate customers and trade association buyers. And then of course, there are those luminary athletes, people in media, retired politicians. Their reputation precedes them. For instance, you don't need to hunt for the likes of Barack Obama. We know exactly who handles Barack and Michelle in New York, and we are well networked with all the different managers and agencies that have exclusive talent. Finding the speakers is not the hard part. The hard part is finding the people with the money.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: I see. My follow up question was, if somebody wanted to become a speaker, what do they have to do? How, how do they do that? Other than sending emails, knocking on your door, hoping, how do you get out on the circuit and work your way up?
[00:27:41] Speaker B: There are a lot of different realms in which you have to excel in terms of content, platform tradecraft, energy, audience chemistry, charisma. There's a lot in it.
When I first got into the business, there was a lot of sort of starry eyed wonder at the, and the names now are so, they're so passe and dated. You know, a name like a zig, Ziglar. I think there were people that looked at that kind of presenter and they just had this fascination and wonder and, well, if they're the one on the platform and they have the microphone, they must have legitimacy and bona fides to deliver messaging in this realm of expertise. I would say about ten years after that, there were so many.
I don't want to say charlatans, but there were so many people that just woke up one day and they decided, you know what? I'm going to become a speaker.
That, as a backdrop, may not have been a really good reason for them to be on a platform. So I think there were the audiences probably 20 years ago, 25 years ago, there was a little bit of a shift in that. There was probably a healthy level of circumspection and cynicism on the part of audiences, and they were a little bit more arms folded. Butter wasn't melting in their mouth. Like, what are you possibly going to tell me that I don't already know? Right. So that starry eyed wonder left the building, and there needed to be something in the. Are you, were you successful in whatever that endeavor was, whether it was athletic, business politics, you achieved something, you did something, you led a group of people. And one name that comes to mind is Alan Mullally, the former CEO of Boeing and Ford.
He was a turnaround virtuoso.
He came into Fordhouse when Ford was hemorrhaging money. And through a lot of leadership principles and common sense management approaches and getting people to work together, he's largely credited with turning that company around. So if you are a leader, a manager, a business owner, an entrepreneur, and you're sitting in the audience with your arms folded, you'll unfold your arms, because the person, you know, somebody like Alan Mullally, well, he's actually got the street cred to talk about these topics because he actually did it. And we hear a lot, gosh, this candidate is interesting, or this suggestion is getting some traction with us. But what did they do before they became a speaker? And it's always a little cringy if the answer to that question is they wrote a book and they woke up one day and they decided, I really want to. I want to speak.
There's a bit more credibility when there's something in the speaker's background and the arc of their experience that speaks to the fact that they have credibility in this realm because they achieved something in their background.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yes, the expertise leads.
I can see how that validates from sitting there. I want to know that they have done it. They are the expert.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: And your buddy Paul up at Trinity is exhibit a in that regard.
His achievements with that program and his track record, he can speak to discipline and a whole host of different topics that relate to drawing the best out of yourself, out of a team, and leading that. So when you have that kind of record in your past, I think audiences, by and large, audience members think to themselves, well, this coach must know something about how to get the best out of people. And because his track record is pretty.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Amazing, it makes sense. Versus the person that wakes up and says, I'm going to be a speaker, and they have nothing to say. It's about the, the expertise and the experience and passing that on. And what was the secret sauce? We want to know. Then we're intrigued. I can completely see that. Exactly what were some of the most memorable matches that you've made between a speaker and an organization or the most powerful matches that you can remember in your experience?
[00:33:16] Speaker B: There's a nuance to energy and intellect and really understanding the audience and knowing, okay, we're talking about more of a salt of the earth, pragmatic audience versus, oh, okay, this is a bunch of software engineers who are wired a little differently and the getting that marriage between the amount of energy, how kinetic a presenter might be. I think you said matchmaking match content to the right audience.
There is an astronaut we do some work with, and he does a lot in the operational excellence and safety space. And I always find it fascinating when we do work with him in nuclear power generation, petrochemical, heavy construction, mining, places where when you make a mistake, you're not talking about a paper cut or a sprained ankle, you're talking about people getting killed.
And the thing I always find amazing is when you'll hear from somebody, it might be 8910 years later, they're able to quote whole passages or stories from an event that they had heard a decade earlier and say, hey, I've been promoted. I got recruited.
I'm in a different state, working for a different company. But when I was working for ExxonMobil ten years ago, I saw the speaker and its culture. It's watching. It's having the personal courage to see something, say something. That kind of messaging, when it has that level of, for lack of a better description, staying power. And individuals who saw it a decade earlier can rattle off a whole line of the architecture of their message and say, hey, that was so impactful on me and our whole team. And we went years and years and years quoting directly these little catchphrases that he uses in the program that sort of package up the idea. And there you are ten years later, and that person saying, I was in the audience back then, but now I am the director of operations for this massive entity, and I want to bring that messaging into this team and infuse those ideas into our culture. That is an incredibly validating. To have somebody say, this stayed with me for ten years, and it really affected the way we worked as a team.
That's a very roundabout way of answering a question, but that's very, very validating. And especially when an event owner comes and says, hey, this is the demographic of the group, this is our budget, this is what we're trying to wrestle down. This is what, these are some of our opportunities, some of our challenges.
What do you think? And then when we present those ideas and they essentially say who, you realize that you're like the Rosetta stone between the universe of talent that's out there and these people that are trying to optimize around systems and operations that they would never know about otherwise is incredibly fun and validating to what we do.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: I mean, I think that's powerful, right? And to me it seems like that's the purpose of it in many ways. To, and if I, if I, if there's a speaker, I want to learn something, I want to be enlightened or find some way I can be personally better or improve. To be that conduit seems very powerful.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Actually, I was just going to say it was probably six, seven years ago my wife and I refinanced our home. I remember after that I would get these letters in the mail and the letter would say something about title insurance. Like, oh, you need title insurance. Please contact us immediately. And I contacted my mortgage broker and I said, I just got like seven of these things in the last ten days.
What's the deal? Do I need to be buying title? And they said, no, that's a scam. You already have title insurance when you close through process in escrow. And I don't know a whole lot about it, but I remember holding these letters, thinking, if I had to go to work and scam people all day long, I think my soul would rot in about a year. I can't imagine a more meaningless existence. Back in December, we had a holiday party and I was talking with a colleague of mine and said, when you address your team, what do you talk about? And he gave me this idea that I sort of plagiarized and that was to look at our systems, our CRM, and figure out, well, how many contracts did we write, how many venues did we touch? The answer was almost 1000. And then you could figure out sort of the average size of the audience. And I think by the time you turned the crank, it was something like 1000 events, something like 600,000 people. It was crazy. The number of people that essentially your ideas have a ripple effect out on the world. And when they're productive and they're, as opposed to the, hey, you need title insurance, and it turns out you don't even need it. It's an enormously validating and satisfying enterprise to contribute to people sharing ideas that are socially progressive and push the puck forward.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: I think that's incredible. What has been the most recent idea that's been shared by a speaker that stuck with you?
[00:40:07] Speaker B: There are some really, really interesting entrepreneurs that share their, probably that notion of fail fasten that. You need to innovate. The world is not standing still. It's constantly changing. And we as individuals and as operations and enterprises, we need to change as well. As one of them says, if the rate of change outside an organization is faster than the rate of change inside an organization, the end is nigh, right? That you have to constantly evolve and sort of think differently about what you're doing. So that, that idea of iterative testing and trying new approaches and trying new ideas, and of course they're not, they're not all going to, they're not all going to be a home run, but you just never know which approach, which initiative, which idea is going to get traction, and you'll never know until you actually try it. So again, long witted answer to your question, but I think the idea would be that we have to be essentially reinventing ourselves all the time, because the world is certainly not standing still. And as an example, practically every single customer we have is hand wringing and anxious about artificial intelligence and the way in which AI is going to change the way we, our personal lives, our professional lives. And probably one of the, the most powerful ideas that I heard was from somebody who was the former head of revenue for OpenAI, which is the pioneer of chat, GPT. And the observation was, artificial intelligence won't necessarily take your job, but someone who masters AI and can use it as an effective tool, they'll take your job. So there's a lot of those at the coal face observations which kind of change the way you think about your practice.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: It must be continuously fascinating to watch it evolve. And for you guys to stay current, you have to be ahead of current.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah, anything that is just in the zeitgeist and top of mind, if we don't know about it, we're probably going to know about it tomorrow or next week, because our customers are going to be asking.
In the halls of corporate America and trade groups, we always get sucked into that conversation because the landscape and the medium of meetings and speakers and program content, it's always at that cutting edge. So that's one of the things I love, love, love about it. One of my business partners says, it's great. It's like going to university every day.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Right? And you were which half of the class at university.
It's funny the other way around.
Your whole life has been university.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: It really is. And I think whether it's in an academic setting, an athletic setting, I think I told you the story about clawing my way to the top of the ladder and then realizing I was the sacrificial lamb. I would go out and we would play the likes of Trinity. And I thought, this is like a lamb to slaughter. But I always learn something. And, you know, for me to be in a cohort of people that were unbelievably bright, motivated, hardworking, inquisitive, that raised my game. So, yeah, I didn't light the world on fire academically, but Wesleyan definitely scaled me up to be inquisitive and a critical thinker. Once I got into the.
Into the world. And I don't want to say it didn't matter, but I feel like I was vastly improved because I was swimming in a water column with people that were very, very talented, intelligent, motivated. You can't be around all of those qualities and not have them rub off on you.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Correct. And it shows you what's possible. If you don't know what you're rising to, how do you know where you're going? And that's. That's the beauty of Wesleyan, is the. The community and the people that surround you and what you learn from that. What does rich gibbons do in his spare time? You mentioned your wife. I happen to know you have. Have kids. What do you do to kick back and balance this.
This life that you have?
[00:45:40] Speaker B: So, that was one of the things that.
That was another takeaway when I was younger, the idea that I would sit in a car, ride a train, sit on the subway to get to and from my place of work, that's one of the things that I really cherish. You can't see it, but right over there is a mountain bike. And I rode my bike to work today. That was my commute vehicle through the canyon. So the great thing about being in southern California, what does gibbons do to unwind and have fun? Exercise. You and I are both pickleball junkies. I have a weekly knucklehead summit where I have a bunch of guys come over and we play pickleball. I'm constantly on my bike. My daughter is an avid former competitive mountain biker and road cyclist, and I've logged thousands of miles with her. My whole family skis.
We love skiing together. My boys and I will go to the dirt bike track and ride motorcycles. So pretty much anything that southern California has to offer, I'm all in.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: It sounds like a wonderful experience. Again, I'm jealous of that San Diego weather and the outdoors that you have. And I'll give you a lot of credit, too, from being on the squash team and then coming back to visit Wesleyan. You did an incredible job of jumping in and practicing with the teams.
You kept right up with them pretty much the whole way and were kind enough to speak to them as well. So I can't thank you enough for that.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: It was so. I really am. I think I've mentioned to you in the past that there are corners of my mind where I'm jealous of your role, that you get to be around these.
They're incredible young adults. And to spend the time that I did and thank you for sort of folding me into some of the practices, I was humbled to be included, similar to actually being at Wesleyan as a student, to be able to interact with both teams and spend time with them was just. It was pure delight. And I was very sore at the end of that week.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: You did incredibly well, and you are right. It is. I realize the privilege that I have. I really do. It's an honor.
Going forward, what are your hopes and dreams?
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Well, professionally, the more years that go by, the more you realize that enduring success is never a guarantee that somebody is always ready to walk up your back and continuing to move the entrepreneurial journey forward and continue to grow it, evolve it, and make it more enduring. We have seen through certainly during the pandemic, there were some companies that really took it on the chin and they had to let go half of their staff. And we were very fortunate that we're sort of built in such a way that we were able to endure it without any kind of massive layoffs. And I think my partners and I look at our business as there's responsibility in protecting people's livelihoods and making the business durable and survivable through the inevitable ups and downs of the economy. If you told somebody a month before the COVID pandemic that that was going to happen, no one would have believed you. So who knows what's going to happen a week, a month, a year, a decade from now? There's always going to be something, right? Our partners and I want to make sure that we have a really enduring company and brand. And of course, again, being able to contribute to these events and venues that change the way people think, both personally and professionally, is incredibly rewarding. So that certainly professionally, and I've had some friends whose young adult kids have had really, really tough time, and to see one's own children grow up and navigate the slings and arrows of life, but do it with some mental toughness and fortitude, but also be kind and generous with their fellow humans. I would say probably that is to know that my wife and I have a family that produced those kinds of people that go out into the world that would be, if we weren't able to do that, that would be heartbreak for me. So to see them evolve and grow and turn into productive, good humans is incredibly, incredibly gratifying.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: I can't thank you enough for spending this time with me and sharing your philosophies and yourself with people that are going to listen to this.
I love your genuineness and curiosity for the world and passion and passion to have people thinking ways to be better. Your speakers have literally impacted, when you work down the chain, probably millions. I think it's incredible. It's impressive. I love the wesleyan connection. I'm really glad it was helpful along the way, and it was really nice to hear some of the ways it has dipped into your professional life. And I hope we can do this again in another ten years and see where we're at.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. I hope I have any black left in my beard in ten years. We'll see. Thank you for inviting me. And yeah, I really cherish the wesleyan connection in so many different channels and stay in contact with friends that I have. It's really shocking to me the number of peers I have that quite literally don't stay in contact with any of their collegiate classmates, which is sort of number one, it's a little bit baffling to me. And number two, it's a testament to the fact that it was such an enriching, vibrant experience being in Middletown around people that, you know, everybody raised each other's game and we all made lifelong friends. That's something I feel very, very lucky to just have had the privilege to experience.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: May that continue. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Rich.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Thank you, Shona.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: This has been infinite humanity with me. Shona Kerr until next time, keep challenging yourself and make others better along the way.
