And welcome, everybody, to another smart money circle show. I'm Adam Sarhan. With me today is Tom Logan, who's the founder and CEO of Marion. Ticker symbol is Mir. Tom, thank you so much for taking the time. And I'm very excited about today's show. Adam, it's a sincere pleasure to be with you today. Thank you. So Tom, I always like to begin. Can you tell us your story and how you got to where you are today, please? Yeah, I'd be. I'd be happy to.
My story is is probably a little bit atypical and probably a little bit too circuitous. But I did my education at Cornell undergrad and MBA and as I left Cornell, I I moved out to San Francisco and began my career with Chevron Large, obviously one of the global leading global oil producers. Yeah, it was a great experience for me, you know, very strong
opportunity to see the world. I had expatriate assignments in the UK and then in Kazakhstan did a lot of things that really help me to understand and really create kind of a framework as to my particular view of the world at least in terms of how business should be conducted. And that was informed in part by by both positive experiences there as well as negative
experiences there. I love Chevron and joined a privately owned family owned enterprise that was focused principally in the in the food industry. Ultimately becoming CFO of of one of their food ingredient businesses and also President of a cogeneration business they had where they ran a small power plant in the Central Valley of California. Exited both businesses selling them to to the food business to a a major food ingredient or packaged a food producer the the power plant to a a major
independent power producer. And at that point I joined my first private equity backed company which was a roll up of contract manufacturing of businesses. I joined a CFOA very operational CFO and that was a business that was focused large largely on the the global tech community.
And the timing was perfect in that I joined the company right as we went through theother.com collapse and it led to a very stressful couple of years since we figured out how to how to deal with a essentially a demand equation that had collapsed and ultimately to gain the the maximum possible value for the business, which ultimately did, we did.
We ended up taking the company through Chapter 11, selling it out of Chapter 11. But in many respects it was a successful failure and something that that was an enormously useful learning experience for me overall.
But on the on the heels of a couple of good exits for me personally I decided to take a swing at the at the startup world and was involved for a period of a couple of years with three different early stage companies in the in the San Francisco Bay area which is my my my primary domicile and again
tremendous learning experience. Did a lot of things had the opportunity to really I think creatively and and generate some IP particularly in the in the financial world relating to financial trade credit disintermediation and just kind of the evolving payment space overall.
And then randomly I was approached by a one of the one of the top tier recruiters to enter into enter into a dialogue with a financial sponsor that was interested in rolling up three very different small companies into a more unified play that could gain them in a fairly rapid fashion, a scale multiple expansion. And it was, it was really playing off what at the time was a lot of talk about a nuclear
renaissance. And this had been spurred on by principally by the sale of of Westinghouse, the leading reactor designer in the world, from the British government to Toshiba, which sold at a record multiple. And it was, you know, again just emblematic of a very frothy environment overall. And the hook for me is that they, they offered me a seat on the Piper aircraft board. I'm a lifelong pilot to me that was particularly intriguing. So I agreed to do it. And shortly thereafter Miriam
was born. You know, we worked very hard to to integrate these three initial, three initial companies and get them into a position where again we could do a relatively quick exit. But as we thought about it, as we as we learned the market and as the macro picture evolved ultimately we concluded that there was more value to be gained by by doing a deeper integration fundamentally reorienting the strategic vectors that we were focused on.
And and ultimately what was intended to be kind of a quick three-year round trip turned into my life's work. You know this is now I'm now on my 21st year at at at Mariana. It's been an incredible adventure. You know we've we've built I think a a great company. I I have great affection for the people that I that I work with on a day-to-day basis and I think what we're doing is truly making the world a better place. And by the way we've also
created a lot of value. Our first sponsor got nearly A7X cash on cash return, which by private equity standards is is pretty good. Our second sponsor was better than 2 1/2. And I think the, I think the metric, Adam, you know I reserve on this a little bit is that if you had invested a dollar and in Miriam back in 03, it would be worth more than $21.00 today. We can talk more later about the kind of environment that that we've had to deal with through
much of that history. But fundamentally that's my story. And in many respects, I feel like we're just hitting our stride and, you know, I can't wait to see what we do over the next 5 to 10 years. Oh, I absolutely love it. That's a phenomenal story. So let's talk about the company, please. Marion, what exactly you do and then some of your competitive
advantages, please. So Marian is the global leader in ionizing radiation detection and measurement and I know that strikes people on on 1st hearing as being very esoteric and and and you know very technically complex field in some respects it is. But the starting point is to note that the the overall addressable market that we're playing in is about an 18 or $19 billion addressable market. It's huge and our currently served market you know where we are playing today is about 4 billion.
To parse the the, the components to a little bit, you know firstly when we talk about ionizing radiation we are talking about radiation that can knock an electron out of its orbit or you know maybe on a more relatable fashion that can cause tissue damage in in human beings. We're not talking about microwaves.
We are talking about alpha, beta, gamma, X-ray and neutron radiation and we make instruments and provide software solutions and highly tech enabled services that allow for again the detection, the measurement, the analysis and ultimately the harness of of this energy for for beneficial purposes. So that's kind of who we are. In a in a nutshell, we are the the global leader by far.
We are #1 in, in 17 of 19 product categories on A on a global basis, we are by far the largest player in this space that that we have defined our largest competitors, our Thermo Fisher, AMETEK and and Affordive and we are on a like for like basis many, many times larger than any of those individual competitors. And it's a great space, has tremendous dynamics. Again, I'm happy to unpack those deeper in the conversation, but that's essentially who we are.
I love that. So basically for the audience, there's radiation that comes out from nuclear power plants or from heavy duty medical devices, things of that nature that could hurt people or could damage tissue. So what you do is you ionize the radiation, so you help reduce the harmful effects from that radiation as it's emitted. Yeah, let me, let me let me reorient that just a little bit. Firstly, ionizing radiation is everywhere. It comes from the ground that comes from your body emits
ionizing radiation. It comes from extraterrestrial sources but it also comes from man made sources like commercial nuclear power, medical applications defense applications and and other things. And our capabilities set really is to be able to to detect with incredible sophistication in any of those vertical markets this type of radiation. Let me let me put some flesh on
that bone. Overall, one of the areas that we, we, we, we don't tend to highlight enough simply because it's not a huge component of our overall revenue mix is the work that we do in the big science community And some of the the talking points that engender enormous pride in in internally Ed Maran would include the fact that our instrumentation was used for the discovery of the last nine elements on the periodic table. We have been on most significant
interplanetary space probes. Our our instruments literally confirm the presence of water on Mars. We recently launched on the European Space Agency a Jupiter mission. We are involved with the Artemis project for the Mars mission and the next movement mission with NASA. We're on the International Space Station. We are deeply, deeply involved
with the global space community. But we're also at the opposite end of the spectrum really the go to firm for the kind of instrumentation that's used to better understand dark matter and sub particle physics. And so our technological capabilities are second to none. Our innovation experience and
record is second to none. And the important thing, maybe the coolest thing about our business is that the things that we learn in those big science applications have immediate and direct relevance in commercial nuclear power, in cancer care, medical treatment writ large in the life sciences space, in the
defense space. And we have a very strong track record of taking innovation out of that science lab, particularly as it relates to detector design, material science, signal chain management, software applications that support all of that and figuring out how to repurpose them into commercially viable form factors and producing them at industrial scale.
And that's really the magic behind Marion, because fundamentally what that allows us to do is to grow within this rather large total addressable market without ever having to be a conglomerate. You know most of the, the great industrial tech firms and even even some of the the hybrid industrial tech and Med tech firms, which is more what we are ultimately end up conglomerating. They buy companies and enter into markets that really have no connection with their historical presence.
And they really make their living by being great operators, by being very sophisticated financially. But again, the great thing about Miriam is that we have the ability to grow within this enormous Tam without ever having to conglomerate and continuing to apply that fundamental technological leverage that really drives our ecosystem today. No, that makes perfect sense. So I'm curious here for a second because you mentioned roll up. Let's go back to your story for a second.
PE roll ups, you started off with Chevron, then you moved over and you did many other things. What initially attracted you to this space? Did you see problems slash solution or was there other motivating factors? Because I love your, I love the mission and I love what you're doing here. And I mentioned to you before we started recording, I'm family, my father-in-law and my wife when she first started my first met her came from the nuclear space, nuclear industry.
So I understand the problem and the Tam and the medical device side of it too. The radiation itself is just a massive thing. How did you get drawn to that and how did you figure out that you want to help solve this problem and create this business? Yeah, the the way I got drawn in Adam is that firstly when presented the, the initial opportunity again for this you know kind of quick transactional flip that that really formed the the the Colonel of of Marion. I absolutely was a believer in
the importance of nuclear power. And at the time, I should note that the the business and its original incarnation had about 70 to 75% exposure. In other words, 70 to 75% of the total revenues ultimately came from commercial power. Today, that number is about 35%. But I was a true believer that the world had to emphasize nuclear energy to a greater degree. And clearly in the 20 years it's passed, there's been a lot of bumps in the road. But today, I think that sentiment is shared more
strongly than ever. But that was the initial hook is that I thought, you know, this is a crucial component of the solution to decarbonizing the global economy, ensuring energy security across the globe. And and I think more and more people share that view today than probably we've seen since the 1970s. Yeah, and I couldn't agree with you more. Now I love that visionary component too. Think about the actual footprint. Are you globally operating? Do you have revenue from all over?
Are you more centered, centered in the US or how does that mix come into play? No. And in fact the majority of our revenues are are from outside of the US We're a we're very global enterprise today. We have about 2700 employees globally, 21 factories again across the globe and principally we are in Europe and in the US We do have a number of facilities in the in China and in Japan and and elsewhere in the world.
But it's a very, very international organization and you know tied to the the markets which in turn obviously are are very international in scope. Got it. That makes perfect sense. OK, beautiful. Thank you very much, Tom, for that overview. And and the people can learn more by going to your website for Investor Relations, it's marion.com. And then click on the Investors tab. Is that correct? For those, that's correct. OK, beautiful. So next few questions I have for
you. Let's talk about risk management, neither more timeless in nature. How do you handle risk and what mistakes do you see people make with respect to risk management? Yeah. So there are a couple of things in my background that that I think have been particularly useful to me in thinking about
risk. Firstly, you know as a as somebody that you know came up through the the various financial roles in my in my formative years where amongst other things when I was in London I was managing you know hundreds of millions of dollars of liquidity portfolios and foreign exchange exposures and things like that.
And you you learn to be very, very cognizant about about different elements of risk, you know that are driven by large scale macroeconomic factors and it also forces you to quickly become very decisive. You learn very early on as a portfolio manager running multi current, you know different multi currency portfolios that when an arbitrage opportunity comes up you have to be prepared to act on it instantaneously. You can't wait 30 seconds to pull out your calculator.
You have to go. And that decisiveness and that risk awareness has served me well throughout my career. But another very important, I guess, early experience for me, you know, again starting my career at Chevron, was to understand how careers are made at large companies that that that great careers at large companies are essentially a war
of attrition. You know, any of the leading Academy companies have incredible, you know, talent benches, They're deep, they're broad and they're very, very good. Get onboarding fresh new talent and people quickly realize that to to, you know, thrive and prosper. In my career, I can anticipate that I'm going to be in any new job for about 3 years, give or
take. And my job is to make things a little bit better incrementally to be very politically aware and and very well networked, you know, essentially to build my brand, to build my relationship capital with any enterprise and to not make a mistake. And if you can do that consistently, then your competitors overtime blow themselves up. Either they make a mistake or they leave the enterprise and go elsewhere. And essentially the people who win are the are the last men and
women standing. But part of that, and this is again kind of a crucial philosophical pillar for for Marion, given the people that we compete against, is it part of that really forces people to think of a very linear fashion, a very incremental fashion. And of course this isn't true at
every large company. This is a generalism not a I'm not calling out specific companies here but we learned early on that if we can embrace risk in a in a systematic fashion you know and understand what risks are we prepared to take. What risks are we not prepared to take. Then we can take a longer term view and we can embrace risks that we know our larger competitors simply can't face because of those career building
dynamics. And that to be clear Adam has been a major factor in in in our track record where we have systematically outrun our markets, you know not just for a couple of years but for 20 years and and done suit so in tough
markets and good markets. But part of that is again that we're very risk aware and we know what risks we're prepared to embrace and generally speaking we are prepared to take on systematic strategic risks to a greater degree than some of the people that we compete against. And you know, that's been a real, again, critical element in
our success. Yeah, I absolutely love that that systematic risk component, knowing what you're going to do and what you're not going to do before you even engage is such a big because it helps eliminate all the bad or quote UN quote lower quality decisions. So you're by definition, you're help. You're setting yourself up to win because you're focusing on the best of the best and then just making a decision within those predetermined decision range. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
OK, beautiful. Some timeless lessons, Tom, that you've learned along the way that you'd like to share with the audience. Please you know timeless lessons, I mean it's such a great topic Adam and I just wanted we could talk about for the for the duration of the podcast. But as it as it relates to you know the the business overall and just you know acting as a leader in any in any kind of role overall.
I will tell you the things that that are are most meaningful to me in terms of how you should manage a business would would include these firstly that. The I'm a huge believer in delegating power and authority as deeply and as broadly into the organization as as possible and that's something that's very hard to do. A lot of people will talk about you know having a federalist type governance structure and
and and taking this approach. But if you are very disciplined about it to the to the point where you allow people to fail in a contained fashion, you're not kind of hovering over them like a helicopter parent guarding them for making mistakes, you allow them to make mistakes.
Ultimately that creates an entrepreneurial dynamic and it gives you the ability to manage a a, an enterprise like this that does have a very far-flung geographic footprint, is involved in many different businesses, different verticals etcetera in a much more effective fashion than you ever could and in in more of a conventional command and control a basis overall. Every time I have sprayed from that philosophy, I have lived to regret it.
And so it is a, it is a bedrock principle within our company that we will do this. We will take a federalist approach. We will have, you know, the flattest possible organization. We will delegate power deeply and importantly what has to happen to make that work is that you have to be eyes open about boundary level issues and you have to be very explicit about who has the ball in every
circumstance. You know I mentioned earlier that I'm a I'm a pilot and one of the things that you learn early on in in flight training is that there has to be clarity as to who is flying the airplane. When you're first a student pilot, you can feel your instructor coming out of the controls to nudge them in One Direction or another and you think, OK, I'm not he's flying the airplane or she's flying the airplane.
I'm not really in charge to the point where as you evolve up through a jet type ratings and things like that. There's much more of an emphasis on crew resource management where you're very, very clear that Adam, if you and I were sitting up front on the flight deck of a of a jet and I was handing over the controls to you, I'd say Adam, you have the flight controls and you would repeat, I have the flight controls and then I would say one more time you have the
flight controls. And the reason for that is that it is clarifying and this is a lesson learned in blood. It is clarifying that ambiguity is dangerous and that if both of us think we're flying or if neither of us thinks we're flying, then that's the recipe for disaster in a corporate
setting. The same thing applies that when you have boundary levels either between operating groups or between corporate functions and operating groups, there has to be absolute clarity as to who has the ball, who is flying the airplane at any given time. And that is a critically, critically important lesson for, you know, NEC level executive to make sure that the organizational is or the organization overall is 3 of that ambiguity.
You know, beyond that, you know the other timeless lessons would relate to leadership and and envision a whole host of other things. But in terms of you know, running a business, to me, I would start with those and then get into just the clarity as to what really matters and and how you're you're establishing a clear eyed vision and how ultimately you're creating coherence from the C-Suite down
to the shop floor. To make sure that everybody is aligned and everybody is focused on the things that matter most, obviously is a critically important life lesson. And I guess piece of wisdom that that just works and it always works. You know, this is absolutely wonderful. So I'm taking notes as you're speaking, and that clarity matters and ambiguity is dangerous. Is phenomenal. I love get. I love doing the show because I
get Nuggets of wisdom. Everyone's got a different flavor and how you word things and how you process information. To me, it's just it's brilliant. It's absolutely fantastic. I love that clarity matters and ambiguity is dangerous. Wow, that's fantastic. All right. Next question for you. Timeless mistakes. What are some and then how do you avoid them?
Yeah there. I mean the the corporate world obviously is, is, is, is paved and and and mistakes that that that people would make and some of the things that would be top of mind for me would be firstly failure to act. You know that that often times maybe most of the time leaders are dealing in environments that aren't perfectly clear. You know there is the the the the fog of the battlefield that
the kind of mask. What's the right way forward in a way that some people deal with that is that they'll just analyze things to death and rather than understanding when do I have enough information to act. Their question is, do I have all of the information before I act?
And failure to act probably is is one of the, you know, one of the most critical catalysts of failure for for any business that when the dynamic is changing, whether it's positive change or negative change, you have to understand it. You have to understand again when you have sufficient data to to act, which is never 100% of the data is just enough. And then you you have to you have to move.
I think a second important lesson or you know root cause of failure is lack of environmental analysis or understanding. And again for me one of the great advantages I had as a as a young stud puppy was working in that environment of of you know managing liquidity portfolios and foreign exchange where you have to really, really understand you know the tie between interest rates and exchange rates and and and global geopolitics and things like that.
I've been a student of you know geopolitical issues for for my entire career. And one of the things that I, I, I experienced continuously is that people don't lift their heads up, don't look at the horizon, don't understand, you know, don't understand well the macro factors that impact their
business. Because most people are just kind of heads down trying to trying to deal with rights and what's right in front of them, what's in their pipeline, you know, whether it's commercial pipeline, a technical pipeline, a financial pipeline, whatever it happens to be. Most people are heads down again focused on on what drives their, you know, their immediate, you know, kind of task tyranny.
And so I think it's very, very critical for people again to understand the environment, to lift their heads, to look at the horizon periodically to step back and and take it a a a big picture view. And it's always a mistake when when people don't understand that. I think the next thing on my list would be would be lack of financial knowledge. At the end of the day leaders in any commercial enterprise are responsible for creating value and this is not some ambiguous concept.
You know value in a commercial enterprise is driven by three things. It's increasing, you know, your your, your top line volume, it's expanding margins and it's improving the velocity of your free cash flow. That's it. It's very quantitative. It's very clear. It's very objective. But many, many leaders don't don't have deep, deep knowledge of of, of finance in a way that's sufficient to understand
this. It's in many respects like having English as a foreign language where some people, you know speak it fluently and perfectly and others have a minimal vocabulary. And I think so. It is with with leaders that understanding the financial implications of what you do is such an important and critical predicate for understanding how you create value that I think that's a a real and and and fairly pervasive shortcoming of
part of many leaders. Final thing I would say is just poor leadership where you know in this, in this world that we're in right now where there is a perpetual war for talent and generational shifts in in as we move from Boomers and Gen. X to Millennials and Gen. Z. They're profound, general generational shifts in terms of what people are expecting when they join a company.
And you know it's often said that people don't leave companies because of, you know, they're not leaving bad companies, they're leaving bad managers. And so poor leadership is is obviously a perennial source of
of mistakes. And we we've all, we've all had bad bosses in our careers and we all would know how to describe them in terms of things like being controlling, volatile, short sighted, self-serving, inaccessible, not caring about them, all these things and obviously that all of that's avoidable within, you know some certain parameters but that's AI think a common root cause and in many failures. No, that's really, really wonderful.
I love what you said about just understand those 3 principles of creating value, increasing revenue, expanding margins and improve the velocity of free cash flow. That's so powerful because without that, there's no business or the business not going to grow. You're stagnant. And then if you're not growing, you die. So OK, that's fantastic. Thank you. The failure to act not having you'll never have perfect knowledge is really, really
good. Have enough knowledge to take action that's really powerful and leaders responsible for creating value. Really some great, great advice. Thank you, Tom. So far. Next constant next topic is leadership. What makes a great leader in your opinion and from I guess to be more of the soft skills. Again, if you want to mention the hard skills as well. Whatever, we're in any direction you want to go. Sure.
Yeah. So to me, leadership really begins with clarity around mission, values and vision. You know, mission is, you know what is, what is our reason for being vision is where do we want to go, what not, do we want to climb values or how we're going to conduct ourselves as we go there. I think these concepts are often viewed as being kind of bureaucratic, kind of Dilbert Esque parodies of of the the, the, the, you know, the sincere
importance of these things. But again, these are, these are incredibly important components of of of dogma in any company. And I I'll tell you we use these all the time. We talk about them all the time, you know, mission we, you know, we're a very quizzitive company. We've done 16 acquisitions since 2016. That's a really important part
of our story. But every, every acquisition that we look at, one of the key screening criteria is, is this consonant with our mission because we get shown things all the time and you know, bankers telling us all the time that oh, you should think more broadly and think of yourselves as a
test and measurement business. And you know I have a great vibration sensor business or gas detection business that I want to show you and we'll always begin by comparing that with our mission and we do use it as a lens and it's got a true pragmatic purpose in focusing us on the things that matter and again the things that that are consistent consonant with our our mission overall. Secondly, vision is critically important. We want to build a great company
here. You know we're proud of what we've done today, but we want to build a a lasting recognized company that that has seen as a as a true leader in its in its space overall. And the vision is critical for that because it it is very clarifying to your team in terms of what it is we're trying to accomplish, what good looks like and you can then take it and break it down into bite sized pieces that says here's how we get from here to there.
This isn't just some ridiculous hyperbolic statement. This is real. And we can get there by taking these steps and then finally the values. You know, one of the other things that I learned in my early days in large companies is that culture matters. Every enterprise, every business, every collection of human beings has a culture. And culture is a choice. It can be propagated the way the senior leaders want it to be
propagated. And if you have a good culture, it is a, it is a free strategic weapon, strategic tool that allows you to beat your competition, particularly if they have bad cultures. And when we talk about bad cultures, we're talking about companies that are, you know, very political, bureaucratic, risk averse, slow moving. Whereas our culture is 1 about, you know, being, being, you
know, kind of employee positive. Let's let's have a healthy sense of you know, self deprecating sense of humor, if you will. Let's be prepared to accept risk. Let's be free of politics. Let's be free of of of these types of constraints. And again you can express all of that through values and you can love those values if the leaders choose to propagate this. Again, this sounds, it sounds trivial, but it's amazing how many organizations really don't
take these things seriously. And again, this is stuff that that we talk about all the time and it's important for every leader, whether they're the CEO or a middle manager to to be able to express these things, reinforce these things, etcetera. The second key element is to build a team, Great leaders, build great teams and they do that in different ways. But having you know having the talent on the field necessary to win is obviously critically important. And and the key thing here again
is being decisive. Having a system or process, a methodology to be able to identify emerging talent, to be able to identify a talent that needs help, that needs coaching and or redirection and some level of dialogue. And ultimately to make sure that through some combination and some array of processes you're making sure that you have the best possible talent on the field.
And again, this is seemingly obvious, but but many people are are too slow to react or in some cases too quick to react where they're not helping people that are. You know that that will benefit from that help and ultimately will be great at at what they do.
You know the final element, you know in terms of how I think about leadership is then taking those things and and being being able to inspire people, inspiring them by firstly making it clear you know what matters the most and then secondly why, why achieving this is worth worthy. Thirdly, your personal connection, why you are critical in in helping us achieve these things, but basically to inspire people that hey, we're doing great things.
You know, our mission ultimately is about harnessing our capabilities for the for the greater good of humanity. And people really believe in that and they really are inspired by it. But to be clear, you know my that's my style of leadership and there's an infinite number of leadership styles that that clearly are effective. You know some some leaders you don't have a reign of terror. They but they build brilliant companies. That's certainly not the way we do things at Marion.
But that's how I think about leadership. I love that. So it's funny you say that because I have a book. I wrote a book about investing. It was #1 on Amazon for two months and I talked about there's an infinite number of ways to make money in the market. Your job's to find one that works for you. So what you're saying here with the infinite number of ways to lead, I love that as well. Let's talk about adversity and some obstacles.
How do you handle adversity? And what are some obstacles you had to overcome that you'd like to share with the audience? Yeah. So the nature of of of leadership again at any level within the enterprise is that you're going to face adversity and seemingly constant adversity because that's the, that's the nature of business.
It is the ultimate kind of Darwinian environment and and bad things happen all the time And so you have to be able to to react to it. And you know the way that that I personally handle it is firstly yeah when it occurs to not be surprised by it and and be able to to react to it in a in a systematic and positive fashion. Again this is AII think at one point I'm going to write a book about lessons learned flying piloting aircraft and how ultimately that relates to
business. But as an example you know if you have have a, if you're having a bad day in an airplane and you have to be very level headed and think systematically OK and and firstly recognize immediately that I have a problem and then secondly systematically go about solving
that problem. And so it is in business where you know first thing to do is maintain a level head and and not overreact to it because experience demonstrates that people do tend to overreact to adversity until they they calm down a little bit. And so it's important to start there, recognize that adversity often times it's not just impacting you, it's impacting your competitors or you know an entire sector. And so it represents not only a threat to your business but an opportunity.
And so the key thing is to figure out how are we going to get out of this, Are we going to mitigate this situation and ultimately can we turn it to our advantage in terms of being able to respond to it better than our competitors are. You know some of which involves preparation and anticipating adversity and some of it just relates to you know the the in the moment option set that that you have to deal with. And beyond that understanding that you know this takes a toll
on you. It's a it's a grind and it it creates enormous stress. And as you know Adam running, running your business that you know as the as the key guy you know it's on you 24/7 365 and you think about your business all the time and you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. And so you have to find a way of, you know, of of turning this into a marathon and being able to deal with the occasional body blows and the stress that comes with it. Part of that is being
spiritually grounded and and whatever you know whatever that means to you it's being physically fit so that you can be resilient and and deal with these things as they come and recognize that you know the more senior you are in an organization the more eyes are going to be on you to see how you're reacting to it. And if the world is you know upended if you're a steady hand on the teller, then that's going to be enormously calming to the to the people that work for you
and around you. And that's you know that's how I would approach adversity in general. The the second part of your question relates to, you know, personal challenges and you know, here I'd I'd probably cite two things that that have been obstacles that I had overcome in in my career. Firstly, I would tell you that I am naturally highly introverted. And you know, I think the classical definition of introversion is a When you're around people, you feel like they are consuming energy rather
than generating energy for you. The world is run by extroverts. The the corporate world in particular is run by extroverts. And so ultimately as I have learned how to, you know, to be extroverted when I am fundamentally wired to be introverted, I think that's kind of like a superpower. Because not only do I understand the extroverts, but I understand
the introverts really well. And some of our our greatest leaders, our best ideas come from introverts and and too often if you're not sensitive to how these people are wired their voices won't be heard and their talents will not be leveraged to the greatest degree possible. But you know that would be #1 for me again is that I'm I'm an introvert in a in a world run by extroverts. A secondly I would tell you that
my background is in finance. I'm not an engineer and I'm obviously running a you know a hyper technical company. The advantage I have though is that I'm naturally kind of technically or technologically oriented. I was a bit of a Motörhead as a as a kid. I've always been fascinated by vehicles and you know taking engines apart and putting them back together and things like
that. And despite being a finance guy, hold over a dozen patents that I have more in the works, I push people to think in a very lateral and expensive fashion. A lot of people assume I'm an engineer by by virtue of that. And then you know, there are, there are many occasions where, you know, I wish I had a little bit deeper technological understanding about certain things. But at the end of the day, you know, in in the seat that I hold
today, I I don't need that. And I I I have enough of it. The last challenge that I would cite that I have personally is that I am definitely ADD where you know I and this is something that I've had to deal with my my entire life which is a challenge when you're a student and you know you sit down for a lecture and the minute the lecture starts speaking you know you're
1000 miles away. But on the other hand the things that you learn somebody with that background is the ability to hyper focus, the ability to multitask in a way that many others can't. And again I think weirdly you know being a bit ADD as ACEO again it's kind of a superpower that allows you to to focus deeply on things that really matter at that moment but otherwise to to be able to keep
a lot of balls in the air. So those are the things that I would, I would say them challenges for me personally. Right. Come absolutely knocked it out of the park. I I mean, I could spend an hour commenting on on what you just said, the spiritual stuff, the state grounded stuff, the superpower stuff. So in my book, I literally have cartoons and I'll share with one second. The idea is to bring out your Superman, your superhero inside of you and then beat the that.
Is awesome. Yeah, thanks. So I've got 2 characters. One's a smart money superhero and then the other one's a dumb money beast. And the idea is to make rational, not emotional decisions. Which is exactly what you're saying. Stay grounded and then ready when the body blows. Come. Every garden has weeds. You just got to take the weeds out. It's going to the weeds are coming. So but you can still have a beautiful garden. So I I absolutely, I mean, next level, what? Very well.
Amen, brother. I'm. I'm right there with you. 100% OK. Final question for you, what's the best piece of advice you'd like to get to the audience or share with your 30 year old self please? The best advice I would give I'll, I'll I'll address this to my 30 year old self is is is maybe three things. Number one is work hard be good at what you do and you know that's obviously obvious advice. Secondly, I would say have an agenda.
You know too many people will come in and and even in a, you know, a more humble job, you should have an agenda. You should have a point of view, you should have a world view that informs the way you think about your job. Understand how your job is connected to, you know, whatever the overarching mission of your organization happens to be. And you should have an agenda focused on here's what I want to do while I am in this role. Here is the here.
Here are my personal set of visions and values and in mission, while I'm in this position and too many people don't have an agenda. They just come in and they wait to be told here's, you know, here's what you you need to do. Here's what good looks like. And even if you are told all those things, you should still, you know, have a countervailing point of view as to, you know, how would I think about this organically? What should my agenda be? The final thing I would say is to be kind.
You know, the world is a small place. The business world is a smaller place. In any specific industry is a smaller place still. Being kind to everybody that you interact with cost you nothing. It it makes everybody feel better about the way that they interact with you, the way that they they feel about themselves.
It gives people the ability to take off their armor and to think not about how do I protect myself from what may be an unpleasant or hostile interaction, the one where I can think about, How can I be my best self? How can I? How can I you know, how can I play offense instead of defense? And kindness is really the most fundamental prerequisite to that, understanding that kindness is a reflection, that you care about people, that you want the best for them, and you're not in this just for
yourself. And too often, again, particularly as as young ambitious people, you know, we don't think about these things overall. So those would probably be the the, the most important elements, I guess maybe the final thing too would be don't love for the future, you know, smell the roses, take your victories as they come, as you take your lumps. But try and be present and and appreciate life as a journey. You never get to the end until the end comes to you and it's
important to keep growing. Keep keep looking looking forward but also try and you know try and smell the roses along the way and and be present. Don't live for a future state that may may or may not come, and if it does come, you know may not be what you think it won't be. I love that have the internal scorecard instead of the external and and be. Yeah, I love that. Absolutely fantastic. Well, Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show.
This has been absolutely pleasure and hopefully we'll have you on again soon. Adam, thank you very much for inviting me. Have a great day.