Why the Most Successful Brands Feel Like People | Anatomy of a Brand Ep. 10

22:11I think the thing that's most interesting there is I want people, and I'm going to come back and finish that conference room story in just a moment, but I think what I want people to feel, like I don't need credit for being able to build a table. A lot of people can build a table, right? It's wood and metal, and at the end of the day, it's not profoundly difficult. What is difficult is to, when you're a young company or you're a startup and you're looking around, it's difficult to find people who have actually walked the same path and who are relatable. So when I've got a company in who, who is, who's trying to build an agency or trying to build a real estate company, everything in their life is build and scrap and kind of one man show.

22:50They can walk into Harbor and Union and maybe not relate to that immediately because we do have a premium space. We've worked very hard to invest in this thing and, um, and, and make it look a certain way. But what building our own tables does is says, Hey, I've been right where you are. And I'm actually not that far removed from right where you are right now. Uh, because this happened in my garage, like three months ago, six months ago, eight months ago, whatever it is. And so, um, so it gives us a way to almost subconsciously relate to people where it's like, we know how to weld and, and, and cut and sand and things like that.

23:24We're not ahead.

23:25Chris Cruz:We're not too, we're not even in that we're not too um full of ourselves to do the do the work correct like you're gonna see us stocking the snacks you're gonna see like even you like we're like you we're gonna see you putting that stuff in there that's that's a that's a tone setter when you've got the plunger and you're cleaning the the clogged toilet not the maintenance crew that can come through an x amount of hours our president is unclogging the toilet it sends a message to the rest of us as we do it yeah yeah and i mean and there's and there's balance there and i can i can take that too far you know if you look in my office, I actually, actually you can't now, uh, because for the first year and a half, uh, or almost two, what are we two years in June?

24:04So for the first year and a half plus, you would walk in my office and you would see this, this stack of like DeWalt bags and all these tools. You probably remember them, the yellow and black bags. And I finally took them home because I needed to send a message to myself that like, I can't always stop and hang a white board or be the, be the resident maintenance guy. But there is an element of, uh, of wanting to stay tethered to that reality that like none of us are that far removed no matter how successful or not we are from uh from needing to scrap and kind of make it on our own right like i don't want to just be a place where other people can come and build the dream i'm building dreams as well like we're doing this kind of together yeah um so back to the conference it actually gives me it actually gives me a weird and wild sense of joy when i'm looking in a conference room and our our our our walls are glass and so you can see through them and i'm watching this group of group of people come in from the cold and they're looking for a place to hang their coat.

24:56And so one of them's got it draped over a trash can. One of them's got it draped over a chair. Um, and so immediately, like I walked out of another meeting that I was in, went and got one of the Z racks that we use for events with hangers and things and walk in, grab all their coats, put it outside the office. And now their coats are on hangers, not getting wrinkled or, you know, dirty from the trash. And so it's like, for me, that seems so simple, but it's, it's just, you have to be paying attention yeah and you have to be uh you have to be motivated by trying to meet those very basic needs for people and that's the what you're seeing that what you're saying there

25:31Chris Cruz:i see us do just specifically at harbour and union is we're we're we're kind of that's where we are trying to disrupt a way of thinking about workspaces growth hubs business growth hubs where we're it's not like it's not simply just coming in going okay you can throw your laptop down and work here. There's an element to this, that this is for a certain type of person. And we, not in a bad way, a certain type of person, the right kind of person who's building a business, trying to build a, either scale their business or work at it as a business executive. And this growth hub is there to be catalytic to them.

26:07Chris Cruz:It's to help push them, to help them kind of be, even as one of the phrases in that article that came out about us that we had done was a harbor for those pioneers. There's people who are pushing the envelope, building that dream, a space that gets them in that same kind of energy. So I think that bleeds into everything we do from like we've got these different types of member events that are not your quintessential like networking events or things like that. We've got the round, which is a free business, a free gathering for small business and entrepreneur owners to connect to each other. But there's some learned knowledge moments.

26:41Chris Cruz:there are some opportunities where we're trying to level up the community around us all the time whether it's through how we're showing up with our hats how we're showing up with the type of events we're doing how we're showing up to the aesthetic of our space we're trying to level up everyone we're not trying to go hey look at how great we are we're literally just trying to go how do we make everybody great right now and how do we make everybody build their dream versus going hey the goal is to make us awesome and make harbor and union this really successful thing we feel really committed over and over again to the success of even to the point where we emptied out a storage closet recently found an opportunity for that storage closet to serve a very well-known photographer who needed a space for a week to lay out their photos like but we we were like come use the space like we're like our thought patterns were let's level everybody up yeah but that that comes again from the energy that you've kind of set that tone in that so i love that i love what we're doing any, any, any final thoughts in that space before I ask you another question in a little bit of a different vein.

27:39Yeah. The only thing I'll mention, and, and, and if this starts to bleed into the other vein, then you can walk me back. But, uh, you mentioned the mentality of the person who, who kind of fits and understands like what we're doing here. Um, and, and why we're doing this. I mean, I see this whole thing, really, I see business as this, this living, breathing organism. So, so a business is not a thing. It's a collection of a group of people. I mean, now with who knows, with AI and other, you know, agentic technology and things like that, maybe some of that actually starts to change and you can buy an entire business that maybe isn't operated per se by people who knows.

28:18But I think for me, most business, the way that it's done in 2025 is a collection of human beings. A business is not a thing. It's a collection of individuals. And so if it's a collection of living, breathing people with agendas and motivation and all these things, why don't we treat it like that? We still treat it as though it's this stoic entity, this sterile, cold thing, not a collection of heartbeats. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, so no wonder we have this, this huge push toward work-life balance, because people think work is the enemy. People are like, okay, I've got my life over here. And then I've got work over here.

29:09Um, and you know, we've talked a lot about this concept, Chris, you know, and the, the, the concept is not unique to us or the title. I think the way it's expressed is, is maybe a little bit unique to us, but, um, we, we don't, we don't really say work-life balance because I think that's a myth. I think it's very dangerous personally and collectively to the culture or the fabric of an organization. Instead, I like this concept of whole life integration because I think, Chris, that you are not just the work that you can provide to me. If all I'm trying to do is maximize the work product that you can produce for my gain or good that is economic, and you see how many things are already breaking down, right?

29:48Chris Cruz:If the only thing I'm chasing is economic outcomes, big trouble. If the only thing I'm looking at you for is the work product you're capable of producing, big problems. So we've got this kind of trail of problems here in the conventional way that businesses are ran. But if instead I look at you as an individual with a heartbeat, with motivation, with a soul who has a need to express creativity, who has a family that needs a certain provision from you, right? Like there's this multifaceted thing, sounds really simple as you talk about it, very tough to actually put in practice, especially when you have 1 ,200 people in your ecosystem.

30:20But it's like I can try to maximize work product from you by trying to maximize what you're doing and squeeze every bit of juice out of the working lemon, if you will. Or I can say, you know what I'd rather do is I'd rather drop a new camera on Chris's desk because this is going to help him to express what he's doing. You know what I'd rather do is give Chris this big thing to chase. I'd rather believe in what his soul and spirit and, and, and what he's motivated to do. I'd rather, I'd rather pump fuel. I'd rather gas that up as opposed to trying to like ratchet up like the assets he can create, the work product he can produce.

30:58Chris Cruz:The output here all the time. All the output. Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, if I can inspire you towards something and it sounds a little kitschy and it sounds a little cheesy and I'm not, I'm not like, that's not lost on me. But if you didn't have experience building all the companies you've built and the success you've had, I would go, yeah, maybe kitschy. But the realities of the numbers, they don't lie. Yeah. Well, and you know, the conversations we've had behind the scenes where it's like, like, cause I'm not concerned about that. Or I'm not concerned if you produce this or finish this or get to that, to that debt.

31:24What I'm really concerned is that you get to this outcome over here and yeah, it may have a rev, it will have a revenue target attached to it. It's going to have outcomes attached to it. But it, but the outcome itself is not what motivates me. What I'm motivated by is, is figuring out how can I, how can I push you toward some purpose. And when I do that, you want to run through a wall for me and for H and you and for Diakonia. And so, um, so for me, that has been such a better way. And so as a result of that, you know, we don't talk a lot about work-life balance. I talk a lot about whole life integration, because I think that there are, and this is probably another conversation for another day, but I think there are six key areas to, uh, to health.

32:04Like there are six key areas of a human being. And, and, and if I'm healthy in these six areas, so physical, recreational, emotional, mental, uh, vocational is one of those, but it's one slice of a six slice pie. And so, but we put all the focus on, on that vocational element. And so for me, if, if I can help you get healthy in, or at least create an environment that's conducive to health in those six areas, um, then I can maximize you and you will in turn maximize the output that you produce. And so what that does is it causes us to do things that are really counterintuitive, that maybe seem very generous or maybe seem, and I hate to always go back to money, but that is the language, like finances are the language of business.

32:46And so you do have to speak that language. But we do some things that are very counterintuitive. We structure our organization in ways that the consultants at Accenture and Deloitte would think we were absolutely insane. But we decentralize, we duplicate resources because we need hyper-focus on, we want to give all of the organizations the resourcing that they need to be successful and to win, even if it doesn't make financial sense. And what we've seen is explosive growth as a result over the last 12 years.

33:19Chris Cruz:And so the thing that, you know, you're tying up, if I were to break down a thriving brand's outcome, it would have this clear sense of purpose, this understanding of sustainable profitability. then you have a thriving component of people are developed and cared for and nurtured like harbour and union absolutely has that and other all the other companies that you've been involved in and that i've had the pleasure of being involved in with you is that clear sense of purpose okay we've got even harbour and union right that work is the greatest vessel for human impact that we look at work differently we've talked about it in team meetings we've talked about it we have a flag banner thing in the hallway and i think one of the simple ways that i look at work being this vessel for human impact is this idea that there's a painting about called anger transference where the boss yells at the employee and the employee goes home and yells at the wife the wife then goes yells at the child the child then go yells at the cat and the idea is that your work could either destroy you in your potential or help you flourish that the reverse is true but if you go from work where you're thriving and your boss treats you like with the human dignity and yeah that you deserve and and even economically helps you meet goals that you need to meet and thinks about the way that your workplace matters, I think we're now hitting how people are taken care of and brands have cultures and how brands have these cultures that help them deliver on their promise.

34:36Chris Cruz:And these cultures take care of their people. Sometimes you hear these phrases like, we care about people over profit. And I'm like, oh, that's a misunderstanding of all of the whole system, that you need profit to take care of people in the ways that you want them to get taken care of. Those aren't at odds with each other. What you're just trying to say is that if you don't care about profit, you're operating more like a non-profit and if you don't care about people you become toxic and if you don't have a purpose yeah you become directionless so what we're seeing at harboring union as a unique case study is that we're seeing purpose be clear that work is this vessel for impact and then we're seeing how we look at profit as impactful and we've had a lot of conversations recently about that and how you handle taking care of people and having one of the great things about how we've been interacting and growing this and scaling is we're never afraid of the conversations of money money's always in front of every staff meeting we're seeing what our objectives are both as a team we're celebrating people we're doing wins which the people part we're caring about people how are they doing you sent our team to south hall which is a kind of this great hospitality resort kind of hotel restaurant experience here in uh out in leapers fork just outside of Nashville.

35:48Chris Cruz:They went and had this incredible moment that the this was primarily the women on our team went out and had this great offsite day that they enjoyed that our team is getting cared for. And then we do have the business objectives in front of everybody. That's not to the point where we talked about what we would need to hit our target this year the other day in our staff meeting. And a staff member was out of the room, came into the room, and you announced where we were at financially and how close we were to hitting our kind of our growth goal. and this person knows exactly what's going on and is amped and they're like oh my gosh guys that is so good because all of us collectively we're tied to it yeah you talk about that talk about why that's critical because i don't think brands think like that when they're growing brands when they're trying to create their ecosystems for their brand they have a purpose they're like this is what we stand for they have a great team and they care about their people but the profit component is that unique operator perspective that you bring and understand that is helping everything we're doing scale.

36:45Yeah. There's so many concepts here and, and be sure to help keep me on track here. Um, one is there's all this talk about wanting people to, um, to like, if you're talking about a team member, you're like, man, I just wish they would think like an owner or wish they would have an owner's mentality. Well, you haven't showed them a P and L or an income statement in a year. What owner of any business doesn't know their income statement. Right. So how is it possible that we have all of these organizations where the financials are off limits to the team. Do you trust them? Yes. Or do you not? If you trust them, share the numbers with them.

37:18You don't have to share your salary. You don't have to share ownership distributions on a 10K. You don't have to do that. But open the hood and show them how the engine works. Otherwise, all they're going to do is what they're told to do the next time you tell them to do it. If you want an owner, show them how the engine works. and then now maybe they can think about what preventative maintenance looks like maybe they can think about what changing the oil or they can fill up the washer fluid without you next time right it's like they can figure out how to operate this thing with without you so small business owners wondering why they can't scale well no one knows what to do when you're not around small business owners even larger business owners thinking about why is no one thinking like an owner well because you've got a bunch of sheep who are just shepherded around the pasture yeah at your direction.

38:07Have some trust, have some, some flexibility and give them ownership. And I think that starts with showing them the financials. I think another thing you mentioned purpose in work. And I think we get a little, I think we get a little carried away with this and I have some hot takes that probably are for another conversation. I love all of the start with why and the purpose, mission, vision, all of those things. That stuff is so meaningful. And I don't think you can build a sustainable brand without them. And yet I don't start a lot of the brands that I start with. Why? Yeah. Well dive into that.

38:44Go, go, go. So, so it matters. It matters to me. Yeah. So I have a personal why. So we start, you know, I was, I was actually talking with a member at H and you, um, yesterday, uh, Harbor and union. We were, um, we were at lunch and we were talking about, she was asking me about sort of my heart for starting this place. And, and in a lot of ways, I think she was expecting this really sort of affective qualitative fuzzy thing. And that is absolutely there. And I'll get to that in a minute, but, but essentially, you know, I told her, I was like, Kylie, we're, we were looking for a works. We were looking for our own workspace.

39:20I didn't want to go into a sterile environment, uh, like, you know, corporate center six or one of these places in Cool Springs, these sort of ubiquitous office buildings where you're sharing it with a bunch of mortgage brokers and people like that, insurance companies. I said, I wanted to do something that I thought was, was a, an environment where I could be really creative. And I don't mean working Photoshop. I just mean thinking about business and people and architecting culture and all of these things and what's next. I needed, I needed a more creative environment to do that in. And also selfishly, I just wanted to create my dream office as well.

39:55And so we had 16 people at the time who needed an office. And I found 27 ,000 square feet.

40:00Chris Cruz:I was going to say, you had 16 people and we got 27 ,000 square feet. That math doesn't math. And so I immediately needed to think about a way selfishly to justify moving into the factory here. I believed in what the campus was doing. We were very early here as one of the largest leaseholders on the factory campus. And for people wondering about the factory who are listening to the show and watching, the factory is literally a old oven factory and some other appliance factory. Like a stove factory. Yeah, stove factory. And in Franklin, Tennessee, it had some retail experience and it had some vendors in there.

40:35Chris Cruz:But it was bought for about$55 million. Do you know that number? Yeah, it may be somewhere in there. And then they renovated it and it's amazing. There's tons of dining experiences and retail experiences and we're nestled right up against that, which is now becoming the heart of kind of Franklin, I would say. And it's this beautiful, and we have kind of a beautiful symbiotic relationship with them because we're feeding them because of the ecosystem we're building. Correct. And they're massively feeding us as well. And so it's just been this, and that was sort of the thought that I had is, you know, this campus is absolutely going to grow.

41:09I believed in their vision. I met with their ownership group. And so we signed a lease that probably didn't make a lot of sense financially because I wanted to create this thing. And so it actually started with a felt need, our own need. So good. It didn't start with, hey, there's this really fuzzy thing that I want to do in the world. Now, what happened is...

41:27Chris Cruz:And there's plenty of co-working spaces. There are, yeah. Two up the road from us, I think. Yeah. And we're not that. And the vision was bigger than co-working. Exactly. But ultimately, I think the point that I'm trying to make here is I didn't start with some really fuzzy, qualitative, TED talk type thing where I'm captivating the hearts of people. What I did was I said, hey, people need a space to work. I selfishly really want to build a community that's not the grindy kind of startup community, that's not a stuffy corporate networking community. I want it to be super authentic. I want it to be people who think like us, whether it's from a faith alignment standpoint or from just kind of lead with, really, I would call it a culture-first, brand-first mentality.

42:10Absolutely. Because we've got people that do all kinds of, there's all kinds of diversity in what people do in our space. But the one kind of common thread is we're all kind of aligned on this culture-first, brand-first mentality. And whether we're doing it well or not, any of us, we all recognize the need for that and we're all moving toward that. And so I think that's been really fun, but it didn't start with why. I didn't read Simon's book and say, oh, here's this thing that I want to do in the world. But what it started was with a felt need in the community here, a felt need in us. And then what I started doing is all the things that have been important to me throughout my whole career started to kind of come up to the surface.

42:51And now I'm wrapping a practical, pragmatic solution that the world needs. Now I'm wrapping that in a why. And so I don't think we would have Harbor and Union today the way that it is if I had started with the why. I started with a felt need. And then I wrapped it and cushioned it and couched it. And we're continuing to build it out around and on a solid foundation. That is why you have to have that. I just don't know if you always start with that. Because I think what I find is when I'm working with young brands, whether it's a startup or just a couple of years in, if we're not careful, we'll lose five or six days in a conference room talking about our core values.

43:30and I'm just not actually sure at the startup phase or at the infant phase of a business, I'm not sure you even know what you value. I think some of that needs to be dictated to you by the market. Some of that, you got to get some reps in to understand where your boundaries and where your principles are. And so I'm not suggesting that the last 15 years of sort of the cultural movement, the Jim Collins and Simon Sinek's of the world and all of these guys are, I'm not suggesting it's wrong. It's just not the playbook that's worked for me. I value those things. Yeah, which is so good. But I think you start with a felt need, a pragmatic purpose.

44:10There's something you're trying to accomplish. And with one of the things, we've had so many conversations around kind of this holistic brand perspective where all of these things are taken into account.

44:21Chris Cruz:Like that felt need, that understanding of your mission and vision and values, but then also the experience, the five senses. How are people experiencing our space? how are they experiencing our team how does our team show up and i think when people think about brand right now when you if you if you were to search in the explorer on instagram brand hashtags and look at them you're going to see almost always it's going to be around visual identities it's going to be around looking at companies from a content strategy standpoint what are they doing on social media what are they doing on marketing on social media what's the short form content strategy and a lot of the brand conversations and marketing conversations end up being around that where they're like, okay, what's their content strategy?

44:59Chris Cruz:What's their marketing strategy? Or what's their visual identity and their tagline? Or here's how they don't sell this, they sell this. Rolex doesn't sell this, they sell this. And you have all of that, but they don't have a holistic approach that understands the operating of it altogether. Like, how does this promise? Cool, you've got a great promise. You got to deliver on that promise, bro, or it's gone. It doesn't matter that you've made that promise. I don't care if you got a conference room and articulated that promise so well, the way your team is run, the culture on your team, the way your team shows up the way leadership handles responsibilities all of that is how your promise is delivered it's the zappos person hearing on the other line that they're the person went through a funeral and that's why they couldn't return the item and all of a sudden they're sending flowers to the home has nothing to do with their business or their core business exactly but they understand that that matters in this holistic perspective of their brand and that's how they deliver on happiness which is their promise so it's going we we can have these fluffy moments where we have these anchoring statements that can be these kind of, it's aspirational.

45:59Chris Cruz:But if you don't operate, if you don't actually do anything, you're not actually making your bathroom that much cleaner. If you're not actually sending out that, like owning that mistake of a customer and going like, here, how do I make that better for you on this? How do I be hospitality forward? Or how do I make sure that when you, our visuals line up with the kind of people we are. It's like when I tell somebody, if you have a job interview, are you going in swim trunks and sandals if if you don't care probably not i know that you we get that but probably not because there's a positioning you want to have on how you quote unquote appear to the individual yeah because perceptions have an impact and your brand is all of these things together and harbour union has really been a fun case study to execute on that kind of philosophy of a holistic brand perspective that goes how are we doing marketing okay cool how are we doing our sense of hospitality and culture how are we operating as a team even down to like how's our team take vacation there's people will be shocked at how much freedom and autonomy we have but the business is working and i think the operator in you has leveled up everybody to understand brand has these things but it has these brand is not these things it has but but it has all these other things to it.

47:14Cause you have a deep value for visuals, aesthetic,

47:18Chris Cruz:how things look, feel, taste, all that kind of stuff. But you also know that like at the end of the day, like we're running a business, but those things are in a unique ecosystem where they feed each other. Do you, when you're thinking about whether you're investing in a company or what, what are some of the ways that like you're looking at it when you're looking at investing that are like green lights for you, the things that you're like, they're doing well, or maybe a couple of red flags. You're like, this is a red flag for me if they're not doing this. And it could be some like, it could be on financials or things like that.

47:51Chris Cruz:Because I think when we're talking about the anatomy of a brand, we're looking at all of that. Because I think some people have, like I said before, reduced brand to X, Y, and Z versus thinking all of this plays together. All of it plays together as brand. So when you're looking at investing in companies or when you're looking at scaling companies, what are the green flags or red flags that you spot? Is there anything that comes to your mind? Yeah, I mean, social media helps with this. Thinking about especially consumer brands, you want to see the financials, you want to look at valuation models, all of these things are important.

48:23Are we looking at discounted cash flow? Are we looking at built up EBITDA? If you're going to invest in a company, you're looking at, you know, you're doing these valuation models and looking at, you know, what are the entry points? You have to do that. And before we go there, just to tie a bow around another thing that you said, I think that did you get your license when you were 16? Oh, gosh, what is it in New Jersey? I forget. Okay. I forget what it was, guys. Probably 16, yeah. So I was 15. I got my permit the day I was 15. You're the unicorn that's lived in Nashville and Tennessee before anybody moved here, born and raised.

48:58You're the unicorn. So I got my permit the day I turned 15. I got my license the day I turned 16. I was so hell bent on, on, on just being on my own, like getting, getting behind the wheel of the truck that I had, that I bought and, uh, like counting down the days and I wasn't going to miss a minute or an hour of freedom that I could have. So like we were there at the DMV the moment it opened and I'm just like, I'm ready. I'm ready for this freedom. Um, and, and so I didn't want a license, I wanted freedom. Like I wanted the car. I wanted the, I wanted the road. I wanted to be able to drive to the beach when I wanted, I wanted to be able to, to, to go see my friends or leave the house or just take a drive and turn the music on.

49:39Like what, what I wanted were all of these feelings, all of these experiences, uh, all of these destinations, but I can't have any of that without a license. So for me, business works the same way. Nobody, because in your own personal life. Money is not an end point. Money is a means. It's the same way for business. And so I think this is the disconnect. It's, it's like companies that exist only to make money and have no soul either, either flame out or they lose their people or it's this turnover engine. And it's like they're, they're, they're useful from a utility standpoint because they've got a certain position in the market or they've got a certain segment of the market cornered, but they don't have a soul.

50:19They don't have relevance. They don't have identity. No one's speaking positively. You use it because you need them. Or you have other brands who focus too much on what people are saying, how people are feeling. You're not paying enough attention to the numbers. So you're all about the destination, but you didn't go get a license or your license expired. And so for me, when I think about how do financials play, what role do financials play? Well, it's the license you have to go do what you're actually trying to do as an organization, which is, which is, which is build and grow a culture, which is take care of a team.

50:57Maybe you want to, uh, maybe there's a philanthropic intent. Uh, maybe there's none of that. Maybe there's just more market share. Maybe, maybe you have no heart for the, and I'm not even saying this is a bad thing, but maybe you're not necessarily interested in personal development and whether somebody buys their first home and all those things. Maybe you're just obsessed with engineering and you want to own more patents than anyone else on a helicopter, you know, or you want to, you want to be the company that helps, that helps take SpaceX to space or supplies the parts. Like you've got this thing that's interesting to you.

51:27Well, at the end of the day, the financials are not the vehicle. The financials are not the destination. They're the license. They're what give you agency to then go get in the car and go to those places. And so, but you have to have both. And so, so I just, I want to, I want to mention that because that's why we, that's why we start with, we start with the license. That's why we start with financials in every meeting that we have, because we do have to orient ourselves to, are we winning or are we losing? If we're not making money, then we're just a social club and we should all probably just go hang out and then go work somewhere that's actually going to pay our bills and be sustainable.

52:04And if it's all about money, then at that point, we're just alive. We're just an equity account that we're all investing in and showing up to every day.

52:14Chris Cruz:And it's going to be pushed to go, how do we do it cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. Yeah. We're going to lose our soul in the process. Um, and so I just, I think those things are important, but so, so yeah, when we're looking at companies, when we're looking at what to build, what to buy, we absolutely want to see a hole in the market. We absolutely, you know, us internally, when we're looking at what we build next, we're like, where are we hemorrhaging cash on the income statement? How could we, um, plug the hole in the boat by, uh, adding a resource or two or 10 to do this, uh, ourselves find a, a, a simple pragmatic way to disrupt it or do it different, leverage that as an unfair competitive advantage.

52:47And then instead of creating a cost center, leverage that as a profit center, create a new business. And now we're building an ecosystem. And so I won't be able to eliminate every call center on our income statement. We're always going to have finance, HR, IT, and these other functions that are, that are call centers. But even those functions, I'm challenging them. Our IT group, I'm challenging them. why do we have an internal IT function as opposed to having an IT MSP group who is serving at arm's length on a transactional basis? All of our companies, we're paying for that service. Well, we're paying for it anyway by paying their salaries.

53:26So why don't we just pay their fee for providing that service? And now we're a customer of theirs and now they're going to go out and serve 10, 12, 30 more customers and build a business. It's how we built Aperture.

53:37Chris Cruz:I was going to say, and frankly, that's not a theory. You're seeing that on a high level scale of its success. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, multiple, multiple seven, eight figure businesses that are that are thriving. And we've got this cost basis covered because we've got this internal need already. But instead of just hanging them on the OPEX and salaries and wages, we've turned them into a profit center. And I believe that you can do that all the way up and down the income statement. I mean, that's a lot of the impetus even for some of the work we're doing here with Brandwork. And it's going, we served Harbor and Union.

54:15Chris Cruz:We did that. And now we're going like, all right, we can begin to do this for others. Yeah. And I mean, in Harbor and Union, profitability was the fifth priority when we built this. Mortgage neutrality was goal number one. So how do we eliminate the rent expense on our income statement? And so we did that. And then it was how do we create a pipeline to really great talent? we're already kind of kind of living living beside these people like doing life with them I mean you were working with another organization and and then one thing led to another and it made a lot of sense for you to join forces here and there are others that we've looked at the same way and so it's created this pipeline to talent next is you know any given day we've got a hundred companies represented in this place either through private offices hot desking or just coming in to rent a conference room or visit.

55:02Well, that's giving us a really unique pipeline to acquisition opportunities as well. And then the second, the fourth then is how do we get more rooted in our community? I mean, the mayor has his meetings offsite here, you know, and it's like the chamber and all of these organizations that are so tethered and so critical and so needed in our community, they see this as their third place or even their second office. And so, so mission accomplished there as well and then the fifth priority is let's turn a profit which we're doing thankfully um but um it didn't start there just to give you an example and that's a very that's a very intimate transparent under the hood look of like what was our strategy when we built this yeah but that's that's been our playbook yeah um at harbor and union and it's

55:47Chris Cruz:again harbor and union is one of those beautiful examples of watching a holistic brand perspective get embodied because like we you thought about the glass doors at the front we thought about the visuals the ethos as well we thought about the financials we thought about how do we get customers into this like there's so many elements that we've thought through that we we talk to other brands and they they're not they're not addressing in their company so um jordan i'm gonna ask you for any last thought you would have for someone who's going hey i'm i'm trying to figure out do i start a company or not if they're like what's a if they sat with you like hey i got I got two minutes of your time.

56:25Chris Cruz:And they're like, here's my idea. Is there anything that you're, because in two minutes you can't get anything from that. But is there anything that drives in you that you're like, this is a question I usually ask people who are either trying to scale a company, start a company. Is there a core question you tend to ask people that helps them get the right bearings that you think is worth asking? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. You hit me out of left field with that one. I know we've got time. We can, we can think through it. There's probably five bullet points. So I think it was I don't remember who said this, but I think it was Louis Lemoore.

57:00And I'm probably slaughtering that pronunciation. But they said something to the effect of the trail is not or the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. And so if you travel too fast, you'll miss all that you that you were traveling for. And so I think that really says two things. First of all, it's the whole thing, like, you know, it's about the journey, not the destination is another way of saying that. But this is just an older way in a more poetic way, I think. And first of all, you have to know what you're after. You have to have a really strong sense of what you're actually chasing.

57:36And so I think too many founders, especially in this start with why economy, especially in you think about Middle Tennessee, Franklin, Williamson County, Davidson County. There's this whole element where like you feel like you need to apologize for chasing economic outcomes. And I actually massively disagree with that. I think I think if you want to be rudderless in life, don't chase don't don't have specific financial outcomes and don't talk about them and don't tell people about them. and make sure that money is taboo. That, to me, is the quickest way to get lost.

58:10Chris Cruz:Or not the thing you're not doing this for. You know, it's not for the money. I'm like, why are you even doing this, brother? It's a piece of it. Yeah. I mean, but I mean, I guarantee you people love the culture at H &U and Diaconia. But if I took away the culture and kept paying them, they'd probably still show up. If I stopped paying them but kept the culture, guess who's not coming back? Yeah. Anybody. And so it's like we all want to live in this illusion, this kind of fairy tale, and kind of because we feel like we're greedy capitalists or we feel like we're selfish if we call out economic outcomes.

58:42We sound noble when we say we're not in for the money. Build a budget, pay yourself, make sure that whatever you're about to do can pay yourself so that you don't lose your family, so you don't treat your kids differently when you go home because you're upset or worried or scared about money. Cover your bases. Don't make it all about money, but you have absolutely got to cover your bases. And so they did a study where I think it was the equivalent of$70 ,000 as a blend in America. So it goes up in New York. It goes down in maybe some other rural areas. But they said that$70 ,000 a year, and this is probably five years ago, so it may be a little higher, is the only correlation, the direct correlation between happiness and income caps at$70 ,000.

59:27And then there's a law of diminishing returns above that. Wow.

59:29Chris Cruz:feels crazy. Yeah. But I think it just it reinforces Maslow's hierarchy of needs that if we can cover if we can cover our basic needs, food, shelter, clothing, if we can have an element of safety and if we can have some level of relational stability, the self-actualization and all of the mentorship and things that come above that, we've got to have those bases covered. And then above that, it actually doesn't take a whole lot to create happiness. That's great. And so I think just making sure that someone is built for that and calling out specifically what their outcomes are. Adjacent to that is this idea of like what is enough.

1:00:08You know, I don't know if you've heard the old story about the guy who's fishing in like a remote village, maybe outside of Greece. I don't know the back story. So this business guy comes up and he sees that this guy caught a lot of fish. and he's like, oh, you know what you need to do is you need to fish three times a day. Or he's asking him about his day, and he's like, you know, well, what I do is I go fish in the morning, and then I go into the town, and I have lunch and drink wine with my friends, and then I dance and laugh with my wife, and he's kind of describing what his day looks like.

1:00:42So essentially he's fishing for the day, and really all this speaks to contentment and what is enough in your life. and um and so he's he's living this life and so this business guy is like well if you just worked a longer day you could catch this much fish and then you could buy a bigger boat and then when you bought a bigger boat you could buy a fleet of boats and then when you did this you could actually take this company public and then you could uh you know sell the company for millions of dollars and then he the fisherman's like well what would i do then and he's like he's like well then you would you know then you could fish a little bit in the morning and then you could go hang out and have lunch with your friends and you could go drink wine with your wife and then you could go dance and sing into the evening.

1:01:18And the whole story is like, he's doing all of that for what he's already got the life that he wants now. And so it's all about perspective and contentment. And, and I'm not saying that we all want to live that way. We do have aspirations, but, but be really, be really sure what you're chasing in life and make sure that what you're chasing actually equals that outcome. Or does it compromise it? And make sure that there's more in your, there's more in your life. Like contentment is more about, is more than how much money do I have? and am I okay with that? Do I feel security? It's all of those other things.

1:01:49And so just making sure that those things are sound.

1:01:52Chris Cruz:Hit us with one more on there. Okay, when I'm looking for businesses, I'm not interested in the novel. So for me, I think novelty is dangerous. I love it. I love new technology. But I would rather put another burger joint in between three burger joints because what I know is that those three businesses are still in business. They're still making money. They're drawing traffic. a me too business that's a little bit differentiated and has its own identity is very very attractive to me and from there we can create all kinds of novelty Harbor and Union doesn't do anything novel at this point there are branding agencies there are co-working facilities there are event venues what I don't know of is someone who's doing all of that so the novelty is in our approach and in our hospitality and the way we take care of people not necessarily in what we do So it's a series of Me Too businesses that are pulled together to create an outcome that feels differentiated.

1:02:46Love that.

1:02:48Chris Cruz:Man, and Jordan, we need a part two. Let's get part two. Thanks for being with part one at least. Yeah, it's been fun.