Transcript: Dan Swander on Consumer Brands, Management, and Giving Back

Good morning. Welcome back to the Late Start Show. We are here today with Mr. Dan Swander, University School Class of 1961, graduate, veteran consumer products business leader, and co-founder of Swander Pace and Company.

How are you doing today, Mr. Swander? Right side of the grass. Can't complain.

Well, Mr. Swander, thanks for joining us. I know you're all the way on the West Coast, so thanks for working with the time difference here. We just want to start at the beginning.

Could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, your family, and some of the early interests or hobbies that kind of shaped your childhood? Sure. I actually grew up literally on the back side of the playing fields at the Shanker Heights campus. We lived on Belvoir Boulevard.

I walked to our backyard, a neighbor's backyard, and across the fields to go to school. and I went to U.S. for 13 years, kindergarten through senior year. And I would tell you that the family and my grandparents were around the corner. U.S. was at least the heart of all of my activity. My parents played golf and my grandfather was a fisherman and hunter and I had an older sister and a younger sister that both went to Hathaway Brown. so we were dyed-in-the-wool shaker Heights kids and just really enjoyed it I mean it was no doors were locked he played outdoors and killed your dad what so it was time to come home for dinner and that was white it was great now obviously living so close to us kind of gives you that like natural reason to kind of go to the school but do you kind of remember some of the early days at us obviously like you started in kindergarten same here and i kind of remember some of my kindergarten memories like early on but do you remember kind of any of the lower school or maybe some just first impressions of the school charlie to be honest i remember all of it i could name every teacher from messrs schreiber in the first grade to the senior teachers.

It literally was, you know, I mean, I think I went to a pre-kindergarten at HB when, and that was the first time I was in class with a girl, and the next time was in graduate business school. And it just, I mean, US was such a part of my, you know, education and growing up and just personal life that it's absolutely memorable. We put out a 50th reunion book for the class of 61, and they had pictures. I could go in, we had fifth and sixth grade football.

I could name everybody in that picture without a list of names. It took a while on a couple of them, is that Fritz or Fred, But other than that, I mean, you know, I absolutely, you know, ate, drank and slept university school. That's awesome. And we talk a lot about with our guests, the people that really made that experience special.

Do you remember a couple of those favorite teachers or mentors who left a lasting impression on you? Yeah, that's one I did look at, Jack. And there were two. First and foremost was Don Moulton.

Don and I both started in 1948. He was a brand new coach and I was a brand new kindergartner. And over the course of 13 years, he was probably the most significant mentor in my life outside of family. And, you know, played soccer for him.

I think I was allowed to start playing soccer in the seventh grade. They had to play football up through the sixth grade. And then, you know, we had an undefeated, first undefeated soccer team in the U.S. in 1960. And he was just a close personal friend for life.

The other one would be John Knapp, who was a math professor. He was also the basketball coach, but he was the teacher who in 11th grade kind of knocked me upside of the head and said, start to get serious about academics, young man. You know, you're wasting a lot of time here with girls in sports, not that you need to cut them out, but you just need to balance better. So those would be the two.

But I would tell you, I can't remember a teacher I didn't like or think highly of. Even the foreign language teachers who yelled at you, you know, why am I so slow? But no, they were all great. But those two stood out among the best.

You know, looking at the campus then versus what you saw when you actually you've returned a couple of times. I mean, one of the things that was obviously like one of the times that we found also online was when you returned in 2021, which is definitely during kind of the end part of COVID. So it was a little bit different. But you've seen the kind of upper school campus, the Shaker campus and so many different lights. how have you kind of seen it grow and how do you kind of see us as a whole grow since you've been here well i got a couple of dimensions first of all i mean i think two two campuses always creates opportunity and challenge um and i think you know clearly my perspective was as a kindergartner i was walking around trying not to get run over by seniors that doesn't happen anymore um But, you know, in a sixth or seventh grade, I knew seniors and went and watched their sports.

So I suspect that's changed a bit. There's a core group that, you know, gets up through the eighth grade at the Shaker Campus, and then the school kind of doubles in size. So you have a brand new half a class. That's great.

Second, I think, you know, clearly it is much more of a greater Cleveland school. than it was. No question it was kind of Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, and then further east out into Chagrin. The one thing I have poked at a couple of times when I've been back is the impact of the absence of a dorm. We had a dormitory on the Shaker campus, and some of our best friends were those, you know, kids who were there from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, And if they didn't go home, they came and stayed with either our family or other families.

So that's a lost dimension. Not bad, just different. And I think clearly the demographics, the diversity of the campus and the students and the teachers is terrific. So I don't see anything that is a distraction or a detraction from the quality. but it's two campuses.

And I know they do a lot of kind of cross-roughing to just try and connect them. But even in the tail end of Don Moulton's life, when I'd go back and see him, I think he kind of missed the one campus, K through 12. Yeah. I think you'll be happy to know we had the first home football game at the Shaker Campus under the lights on a Friday night.

And that was a really cool community moment to see everyone come down there and we ended up getting the wins. That was an awesome moment to connect. That was a great idea. I wish I'd been able to sneak a flight back and see it, but I didn't.

It was a great move. Yeah, well, one thing that stayed the same about U.S. is its commitment to learning outside of the classroom, whether that's through sports or other extracurriculars. Did you have any sports or clubs from your U.S. days that really influenced you then and perhaps later in your career? Oh, I don't think there's any question about soccer.

I mean, I and I remember my I got my I think I got glasses in like the third grade. And, you know, my parents were thrilled because they didn't think I'd be able or want to play football. Then they went to the first soccer game. We went to a varsity soccer game, and some kid broke his leg, and they were terrified that I was going to go play soccer.

Well, I loved it. I went on to Trinity, and we got into the, not the first, but one of the early national tournaments for NCAA soccer. and again the teammates that I developed relationships with both at U.S. and at Trinity some have been lifetime friends I mean again I think the value of team sports in terms of community building and trust in your classmate your teammate confidence, frustration at times. It's all a part of growing up. And it just, it sticks with you.

I mean, you lead an organization and if you don't build a team along the lines of a good basketball team or a good soccer team or a good football team, it's not about, I played tennis too, but it's not about playing tennis. That's an individual sport. sport and I don't degrade it, but it's about teamwork. And I think that's been a valuable skill and learned lesson from U.S. You know, actually speaking about kind of Trinity, you later went on to Trinity College in Hartford after university school and then studied marketing at Warren School.

Could you kind of walk us through how you choose Trinity and then Warren and how the transitions felt between all three of them. Sure. If you went back and looked at my senior page in the Maybian, you'd see that there was not one academic credit. Okay, it was all sport.

Next door neighbor to us, the Woods, the middle son had gone to Trinity and his wedding reception, we had ushers staying at our house along with their house. I remember Sunday morning after the wedding, the Trinity grads or seniors with Bloody Marys in one hand playing frisbee in the front yard of the woods in our yard. And I said, Trinity, OK, it's kind of interesting. What turns out that a number of university school soccer players had all gone to Trinity.

And so, in fact, Trinity, a couple of years before I went there, was declared the national championship without a tournament. They were the national, the NCAA champions. So I went to Trinity, part on the party reputation, part on the sports reputation. And it was kind of, you know, I know I could get a good education, but it was an all-male school.

So it was a logical continuation of U.S. I think three or four of us from the same class went to Trinity. In fact, my freshman roommate was a co-basketball player and captain, Corky Yeager. So it was a logical, easy extension going to Trinity.

It was a great school. Loved it. Played three sports my first year and then played soccer for three more, basketball for two more. Ended up graduating with honors.

Somehow the academic bug got to me. Now, actually, halfway through my senior year at Trinity, I was applying for law school. And our next door neighbor, N. Shaker, on the other side of the yard was an attorney So he invited me to his office over the Christmas break I spent two days in the office with him and I was bored to death So I stopped I said you know I just I going to grab a job So I, we had interviews on campus.

I got a job in Philadelphia with a pharmaceutical company and it sounded like a great job. Management training is going to be just superb. Would have been great for four people. They hired 14.

And we were tripping over each other. And it was boring. So I realized that I was living in Philadelphia. I'd just gotten married.

And Wharton was in Philadelphia. So I went to the Wharton school to see if I could apply. And they said, yeah, you can start in January. So I quit my job after three months and went back to school at Wharton simply because I didn't think I was going to get any great education out of SmithKline in France, nothing against the company, but I knew it was going to be kind of, you know, what do we do with all these people?

So I went to Wharton, but Trinity was for sports and Wharton was, you know, to get a business education. And the natural fit for me was marketing, although it's a strong finance school. People say you to Wharton and studied marketing, not finance? Yeah.

And that's the entire logic. Well, you described your career path as unplanned. That phrase resonates. Could you unpack really what you mean by that and how that mindset affected you early on?

Because I can imagine how that can create some stress, but also excitement at the same time. Yeah, I mean, Jack, for example, I mean, and again, I've got a number of kids that have gone through college and then they, I think they, as they get to college and I get older, they seem more focused on having to pick a very specific path to go to college or college and then on. And I don't disagree with that, but you got to be willing to change your mind when the time or the circumstances require it. So, you know, my going to Wharton was, you know, frustration over what I was doing and where I could likely go in that corporate world.

When I was at Wharton, it was one of these oddities. and there was a Friday night gathering with McKinsey and Company, consulting firm, and they were recruiting. So I went to it, and I met some people, and they said, you ought to come up, sign up for an interview the next time we're down here on campus. Okay. So I get signed up, and I was the last one on a Friday afternoon talking to a guy who said, gee, I really only have about 10 minutes, you know, before I have to go catch my train back to New York.

I said, well, that's kind of a sham and a waste of my time. He said, well, let's talk, and then we'll have you come up to New York. So the opportunity went up to New York, sitting there for a day and a half of interviews, and they send you off to a psychologist for screening. And I'm sitting there with the psychologist, and this is one of these things that comes up, and he said, do you believe in reincarnation?

I said, no. He said, well, if you did, and if you could come back as any animal, what would it be? I said, well, I don't believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I'd come back as an otter. And he looked at me and said, what?

I said, an otter. He said, why? I said, have you ever watched an otter on a film? You know, they're monogamous.

They thrive in the winter. They lie on their backs and open, you know, shameful shelves. I mean, what better life? But that's a stupid question.

So I go back to the McKinsey office. I'm sitting there with the head of HR, and his phone rings. And he turns around. He's on the phone.

He says, hmm, what'd you make of that? Hmm. He turned around. He said, no one has ever said otter.

I said, well, it's a dumb question. And if the answer matters, I don't want the job. I got the job. So, you know, and with McKinsey, I spent 11 years there, four coming back to Cleveland, traveled all over the world, worked in Japan, Europe, Canada, Argentina.

And it was all opportunities to learn and, you know, impact business and exposure to different ways and opportunities to think. And then in Cleveland, we had this offsite for the office and that office manager went through the entire office strategy, which was the industrial heartland, Cleveland government business, et cetera. And the largest single client in the Cleveland office at the time was the Kellogg Company. And that was the client that I served.

So the consumer practice in Cleveland was ignored. I said, what the hell am I doing here? Well, they said, you can go to Chicago or New York. I said, yeah, I could go run a food company.

So I ended up going to run a restaurant company back in California. But that was totally unplanned, but the opportunity arose and it said, let's just go do it. Now, see what happens. Now, I managed to get fired two years later, but just opened another door.

You know, go ahead. Sorry, you know, reflecting on all these transitions from kind of consulting to all these different types of jobs that you had, what kind of personal qualities do you look at yourself and go, yes, this is the job. This is what kind of keeps me going. This is kind of what I'm going to do next.

I mean, obviously, you kind of worked in such a large multitude of so many different jobs and roles. What kind of feeds you to kind of keep on going with all those different transitions and keep on keeping on? Look, Terry, the one common thing was consumer product. I mean, I think in 11 years at McKinsey, I remember doing one project for an industrial company. other than that for some reason I was either in you know food or hard goods or some retail but all consumer businesses so everything I did you know in terms of looking at opportunities or when opportunities came my way if it didn't fit that the consumer background or the consumer industry I wasn't going to be interested I mean I wasn't going to go work for a defense contractor or a bank or, you know, it just wasn't either who I was or what I thought I knew.

And very often it was because of relationships I built along the way. When I had left the restaurant company, Victoria Station, I actually spent about 11 months in executive recruiting with Russell Reynolds. And that was the only job I should never have taken on the one hand, because my sense was you called 100 people looking for somebody to be interested in a job. You found five or six that were qualified.

You presented them to a company. They hired one. But 99 other people began to have misgivings about where they were or what their career was going to be. I thought you created more disruption than success.

So I went back and joined another consulting firm. Well, first client that came to us was the Kellogg Company. Why? Because I'd spent seven years there with McKinsey.

So the network of people, met, businesses, looked at, geography covered, just fit back into consulting again. And then three or four years later, we started our own Swander Pace and Company. Two of us who had worked at this other consulting firm, but their focus was financial services, banks, savings and loans, corporate finance. So the two of us went off and first client Kellogg Company, second client Schreiber Foods in Green Bay, Wisconsin, cheese manufacturer and it built from there we went from four people to 50 in about four years um and it was just it was natural so the the consumer foundation is at the heart of all of it but a lot of it was truly unblanned we came up by surprise or opportunity does that help yep Yep.

And can you take us through that transition from a swander pacing company into swander pace capital and how that happened? Yep. When we had our office in San Francisco, one of our senior associates left swander pacing company and joined a local private equity firm. They're about two years.

And he came back to us with another fellow and said, we want to start a private equity fund, and we'd like to call it Swander Pace Capital. We said, you are out of your cotton-picking minds. I said, you know, we're not going to go in and compete with our clients. I mean, you know, we work with Kellogg, Heinz, Del Monte, you know, major food retailers.

No. So they went away and they came back a couple of times and said, no, you really ought to think about this because the swander pace name in private equity with a focus on consumer products would be compelling. They said, I tell you what, we're going to go talk to all of our major clients. And if one of them says, if you do that, you will not work here again.

Conversation is over. We're not going to, you know, it's not going to do this. So we went and every client but one said, well, why wouldn't you do that? In fact, maybe we ought to put some money in the fund.

So we did. We started Swander Pace Capital 27 years ago. The partners in the consulting firm had a very small interest in the private equity fund. But we did all the early or operational due diligence on the businesses at full fare. there was no you know you scratch my back i'll scratch yours it had to be because we couldn't ask our employees to do anything at a discount wasn't fair to them wasn't fair to us economically and i think we were in the active in the first three funds and then it got big enough and the We ended up selling Swander Pace and company to another consulting firm in 2004.

I'd left, I'd gone back to Minneapolis to run a company. That was a former client. But it just, it seemed a logical extension. And as I said, in 20, right today, we own 13 companies, all now in the consumer space, food, vitamins, related businesses so that consumer underlying is throughout you know you've spoken about a lot of different leadership in so many different kind of contacts how would you kind of define leadership in like your kind of modern day perspective obviously you've had a lot of experience with leadership at so many different levels so how do you kind of look at it today I draw the organization chart upside down because people out in the field are doing the work The sales force the plant manufacturing the distribution the leader you know likes to think they at the top I think you're at the bottom, first and foremost, because everybody else is enabling you to be successful.

That's first. Second, it's all about a team. I've seen so many businesses where the leader tried to control everything, hub and spoke everything had to come into them and go back out to another function or something um and that's i think that's the wrong way to run a business now you there you have to make tough decisions you know but you want people who are bringing you their perspective their facts and then when you decide you can address why it wasn't exactly what you thought or they thought you were going to do. Let me give you an example.

I was asked to take over a company that wanted to pay its capital. I was on the verge of literally giving the keys back to the bank. And I said, Ben, go down to Phoenix and take a look at this market share. It was a food manufacturing company.

So I went down for a couple of days and talked to all the top guys and went out to a plant in Salt Lake City and then one back in Virginia. Came back and I said, guys, the problem is this business is way too complex. You got a few lines of business that are making money and all the others cost. There's way too much.

Everybody has to come in as the CEO and then tell somebody else what to do. So there's no teamwork. work. And I think you need to put together a very quick shrink to succeed. And the CEO said, that's very interesting.

How about if we get some of that information and get back to you in a couple of months? I said, I was thinking about a couple of days. So I went back to Swander Pages Capital. I said, here's what needs to happen.

So they said, okay, down there and do it. So I commuted to Phoenix. The first thing I did was take off all the office doors. They said, what are you doing?

I said, why are you hiding? As a team, you don't need a door. I'll give you one door in a conference room if you have to go in there and have a serious conversation with somebody in the company or some customer or supplier or whatever. But you're not going to spend your days behind a closed door.

The other thing I did was get rid of the two parking spaces for the CEO and the CFO. They said, you want that parking place, just be first in the office. Cut this hierarchy stuff out. Within three months, we turned it around.

We ended up having to close the plant in Phoenix and move that facility to Salt Lake City and ultimately just had the headquarters there. But turn it around and I think in 11 months, we ended up selling the business. not closing it. But I didn't do anything. I mean, my job was not to make the decisions, but embolden that team to work together.

And they knew what to do right away. They saw the problems. They just didn't know how to turn them into opportunities because the structure and the style was wrong. They changed it.

And nothing you talked about there had anything to do with the data, the financials, and in a world that's so driven by those things today, when you're facing these challenging business decisions, how do you balance instincts and just human skills versus data in those moments? My experience has been most of the data, most of the information that you need to really understand the business and figure out what is or isn't making money is available. It's there, but it may not be being looked at correctly. Let me give you a classic example in the grocery industry.

People talk about percentage margins, right? I have 36% gross margin. I said, what do you get paid in? So we get paid in dollar.

Well, let's talk about dollar margin. Let's look at each product or each customer and look about the dollars of contribution that we get from them. The percentage is a simple way to consolidate everything. The fact is that sometimes the highest cost product is also the highest dollar margin item.

So don't confuse yourself on the P&L. I get it. Yeah, you're right. That's the percentage.

But you don't take percentages to the bank. It's all dollars. then the minute you start looking at that same data the right way and it's there you all of a sudden see oh i got five products that make 89 of our total dollars i got 27 that make up 11 what am i going to do well i'm going to stop making the stuff that we lose money on i'll consider the stuff that we make a little money on after we've made as much as we can of the stuff we make all the money on. I mean, it's not brilliant. It's just logical.

But you get an organization thinking that way, and it changes very quickly. You know, from your vantage point, how has the mindset of entrepreneurs changed from when you began your career to what you're kind of seeing now in our era, or kind of this next generation of entrepreneurs? If I have my biggest concern in general is short-term focus, quarterly earnings, how quickly you get up to where you think you can take the company public or you can find a buyer. I mean, 27 years.

I like buying businesses. I like fixing them. I always feel bad when you have to sell them and sometimes i don't dispute that that's that's the private equity game um but um this quarter over quarter mindset i think leads people to lose perspective on the business it's kind of you know too short term not enough long term um It's hard to fix. I mean, I think in many instances, that's probably where a board can at least try and ensure that management stops looking down at the table and at least looks out over a year or a couple of years to see what's really going to have to change in the nature of the business.

And I think that's at least as we've tried to focus our private equity skills, the analysis, the focus, and the plans, it's, yeah, we know you got to make money for the quarter. You got to achieve certain guidelines or hurdles. but don't lose a perspective on where this business can and needs to go and how to get there. And I think, and again, everything gets moving so fast, it's hard to not get caught up in that, and at least that's my perspective. Now, it's easier in consumer products, I think, than maybe other kinds of longer-term manufacturing.

I mean, they're manufacturing missiles. i'm going to call them um but that's right they're not consumer products so i i don't care that help yeah yes thank you and you've seen multiple business cycles the boom and the bust um how have you managed you know that psychological side of business and downturns that may help you know you take that long-term approach versus just focusing on the short term Well, again, you know, the consumer industry as a whole is a little less volatile on the downside or the explosive side. Let me give you an example. We own a business called purely elizabeth which is in the uh granola and oatmeal business um now yeah that business is growing like crazy but it's growing at the expense of quaker oats and other brands who kind of sat back and done nothing so in the consumer environment you could look at a stalled category and there's somebody winning. I just got off the board of Idahoan Foods, which is the instant mashed potato company.

When we started 17 years ago, or I started with them, they had a 10% share of the market. Today they have a 90% share of the market. They are the market. And systematically took over at the expense of General Mills and Basic American, the retail branded business.

Why? Because they were focused on it and General Mills could have cared less about what happened to dehydrated mashed potatoes in their line of business. So what I see in consumer is, you know, you make your own growth cycles and I don't see, you know, it seems to me that the downsides hurt the established brands that aren't doing anything innovative and aren't looking for any way to capture the next generation of consumers, if you will. I've seen that so many times that, you know, do I want to see a depression?

No. Do I want to see a slowdown? No. But I look at our portfolio and Swander Pays capital and i i only see a couple of businesses that are truly sensitive to those kinds of swings and they tend to be um personal care can can have that impact or be impacted by that um but other parts of the consumer product industry i don't i don't think so i mean uh guys familiar with method the hand soap at all that was a company that i got on the board of and then we ended up having to exit the ceo so i ran for nine what i and supposed to run it for three months while we found a new ceo but it took nine and so i was there for a year um and it was classic we had invented a laundry soap concentrate that was eight times tied not just in terms of concentrate so we wanted to come out with a very small bottle that would be equal to the big tide tub and they're having trouble with the with the packaging so the the top guy running the business said well let's just bring it out in a bigger tub and a bottle.

And then when we get this bottle with a pump fixed, well, I said, you're nuts. The pump is to control. That's how you get the consumer to realize that you need two, four, or six pumps, depending on the size of the load. You give them a cup, they're going to do what they do with Tide.

They always overfill. So no, we're going to wait for for the pump. Well, they thought I was nuts till we got the pump. Now all of a sudden Tide was in a panic because Method was hand soap, laundry soap, dish soap.

And it was never gonna be on the makeup table in the master bedroom, but it was always gonna be in the kitchen, in the guest bathroom in the house And that true today It a leading brand but it was by making the right decision at the time to go to market In terms of values, what does success mean to you now compared to when you thought of it when you first started out? Is there a difference in what that means to you? I started with waking up. um no it you know it uh again i don't i mean i don't have hands-on responsibility i might my measure of success today is um helping the businesses i'm involved in got six kids and nine grandchildren and they all seem to be doing okay um and and uh i'm um probably you know content in a you know personal sense just enjoying being of counsel or of advice or you know sometimes a reasonable parent um sometimes maybe not but but um i'm not i'm not looking for any more success i'm looking for enjoyment you know what do you kind of think in our current world this role of technology whether it's data analytics the kind of rise of ai supply chain digitization will play in this next wave kind of consumer business growth and just overall business growth well i think you know i think it will probably do both you know positive and have negative impacts I mean, it'll replace repetitive jobs, no question, between robotics and AI in manufacturing or distribution. I don't think it will...

Well, you can do it now. You can go to the grocery store and not deal with a clerk to check out if you want, but then you can't buy the produce. You can't buy the... You know, there's certain things you can't buy because you can't scan it.

Or they'll package it so you think you can, but then the consumer loses the choice. So I don't think it'll be total. Again, I mean, I think there'll be a transition where people will figure out AI-related jobs. And I think some skilled jobs are already in short, high demand, short supply.

I mean, I don't know about Cleveland area or Ohio, but we are desperate to get some of the funk, the trade skills back and education, you know, shop, mechanics, welding, electrician. they're going to be around. There's going to be a demand, and we don't have them. We got people we know whose kids are going off to a 15-week, you know, electrical training program, and they're going to end up being well-paid by PG&E to maintain lines and equipment and networks and the like. So I think it will change, like the internet began to change.

AI will have a change. But I don't think that – I think it creates as much opportunity as it changes where the opportunity lies. I hope. I mean, I don't plan to be around to see all of it.

So I might. You never know. Well, you've built this extremely successful career. Moving into some of the more reflective questions, you've built a successful career, but you also mentioned you have six children.

I believe you're involved with your church. And what role does this work-life balance play in your life? And how have you managed to try to balance both your work, which seems very hands-on, with also the rest of life and enjoying that? Well, Jack, I'd be irresponsible if I didn't say I regret not having enough time with kids and family and wife and life while I was building, you know, businesses that were personal service.

I mean, you put your name on the door of a consulting business, you spend a lot of time with your clients. but with the kids up until about a year and a half ago half the kids were within easy driving distance now they've moved to Boston and upstate New York and Seattle and Southern California so all of a sudden we're sitting here in a big house with two of us and two calves so we need to travel to spend time with the kids And I don't do that much business travel anymore. I can deal with most of it via Zoom or off to a board meeting. We've been very active in the local Episcopal church. And right now, I'm the board president and my wife's the treasurer of a major non-profit in the county called Winter Nights Family Shelter that basically deals with homeless families with children, temporary housing. and a year-round overnight safe parking program helping homeless and unhoused and individuals couples and families living in cars it's a big problem in california i don't know how the that the numbers are in in ohio or in the cleveland area but you know the the number of homeless and and um under under sheltered folks in in the bay area is staggering so that's a passion um it can be all-consuming if you love it i can spend as much time on a three-quarters of a million dollar uh charity uh non-profit that i can spend a billion dollar company and it's no less challenging and no less rewarding.

And I would not have, if you had asked me back in high school, college, early business, would I ever get this involved in something like a nonprofit or we'd been Episcopal church goers and trying to use an Episcopal school, the church wasn't a big part of my life back then now a major part but again there's the there's the faith side and then there's the community side and they're they're inseparable in that instance but it's all about you know keeping involved that helps yeah definitely and then another reflection question um more about legacy that you're going to leave with your children, the next generation, your grandchildren, and also the companies that you've touched, when you think about the legacy that you're going to leave behind, what do you think and hope that people will remember? Wow. Well, again, I think, you know, the, the, a willingness to work hard for whatever you're trying to do, number one. probably a little better life balance than I exhibited for a long time. And, you know, find a way to give back.

And I don't necessarily mean money. I really mean find a time or ways to engage in the community in some fashion, whether it's through a church or through a community group, whether it's for a nonprofit or just a well-focused charity or activity. Enjoy it. I just wake up thinking, oh, there's got to be something more to do today. and don't discount family, but they're spread out.

Each of our sons has moved back to the area where their wives grew up. And in many instances, all the families are still in the same city. I don't know if we would have tripped over each other with six kids in Cleveland, but I wish we'd been closer. But I don't, I mean, there's nothing you can, I don't regret it because I was out here in California where my wife's family is from.

So, but then, you know, get engaged. No, don't hide. You know, finally, the question we ask every single one of our guests, you know, it's been kind of a large standing tradition. What is your why?

Why do you do what you do every day when it comes to making so many companies so much better in every step of their journey? journey and how do you kind of shape that approach every day? So Dan, what is your why? I'm going to go back and tell you, I think in a sense, it goes back to the way US kept us engaged and involved in something all day, every day. I cannot remember being bored or not challenged at U.S. by a teacher, a sport, a non-sport activity, you know, whether you were in the glee club or the players or whatever, you are encouraged and rewarded by being active.

I mean, I look at our class alumni get together with a Zoom call three times a year. And I look at the group of 15, sometimes 20, sometimes 12 to get on that call. And none of them were the guys I played sports with. All of them, they weren't there 13 years.

They're doctors, they're scientists, They run big corporations, and they are all genuinely interested in each other and in what they can learn from each other. I learn from them every four months when I get on a call with them. So I think that curiosity or interest in being engaged goes all the way back to U.S. because I think that's, and I don't know, I don't think that's changed. It's probably gotten even more complex in terms of the interest and the skills that can be developed.

But, you know, you went to school every day because it's going to be interesting. It's going to say fun, but that's probably not, that's a bit extreme. But it's going to be interesting. You know, you're going to learn something.

You're going to make some mistakes. The other thing is you're going to make mistakes. make them I mean my biggest fear is that they now talk about the average grade at Harvard is an A that's not that's nuts I mean I'm not saying A's aren't good but everybody's an A student I doubt it I mean I wasn't so um but I didn't go to Harvard so that's not fair well Dan you know It's been great having you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights, experiences, and stories with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in.

And we hope you join us next Wednesday for the next episode of the Lead Start Show. Thank you, Dan.