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Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Dr. Jeff
Standridge. Jeff, welcome to the podcast. It's
great to be here. Thank you for having me. Jeff,
would you like to introduce yourself to the audience,
please? Sure. Jeff Standridge. I am an innovation
consultant and executive coach. I'm a growth
strategist. I do several different things. I
started my career in healthcare, spent about
a dozen years in healthcare, and then moved over
to the business world. I spent 20 years with
a publicly traded company, running global operations,
doing mergers and acquisitions. So I tell people
that I became an entrepreneur from the world
of being an entrepreneur, and I became an innovator
from the world of being a corporate change agent.
So I spent quite a bit of time in Europe. I got
to visit Lisbon a time or two. So about eight
years ago, I left my corporate employment to
start our consultancy called the Innovation Junkies
and then an entrepreneurial support organization
called The Conductor. So I worked both with startup
companies and entrepreneurs all the way up to
mid -market and large organizations as well.
Great to be here. Fascinating. I mean, I have
so many questions right now. It's going to be
absolutely crazy. I was actually checking something
on your profile. You're also a pilot, which is
pretty cool. I am. Yeah. Fairly recently. So
I started flying about three years ago and ended
up doing multiple certificates. So my private
pilot, my instrument rating, my multi -engine
rating. And so it sure has made getting around
to clients a lot easier and a lot less hassle.
I can imagine. I was just, I'm actually quite
curious because you started obviously in the
corporate world and then you move over to the
more entrepreneurial and startup type of world.
You probably know what works and what doesn't
work. So just to get, you know, this kind of
started. Are you able to pinpoint exactly if
a company or startup is going to be successful
from the get -go or not at all? Not at all. I
mean, there are criteria that we look at, you
know, I'm also an investor. And so I get the
opportunity to review a lot of companies on a
weekly monthly annual basis. You know, there
are things that we look at. Clearly, we're going
to look at the the value proposition of the company,
the uniqueness of what they're trying to do.
We're going to put a lot of focus on the management
team and just the leadership that they bring
to the table. Have they done it before? But I'd
be lying if I said that that anybody could pick
a winner from the get -go. Interesting and you
know from your time in Europe and obviously you're
from the US do you find the mentality of people
is actually quite different when it comes to
running a business? Is there like a lot of cultural
shocks and stuff like that and especially is
there a different attitude to running a business
in Europe versus the US or not at all? You know
yeah i would say they're different just different
cultural attitudes i don't know if it's different
specifically in running a business but there's
a little bit of a difference in. How would you
corporate culture how would you leadership how
would you communication you know i was talking
to on a podcast with a gentleman from the uk
the other day and he said that when he was working
with us based company said you're always so positive
and enthusiastic from the us you know and. And
I believe that is the case. You know, I said
to him, you know, we're still relatively a young
country relative to the countries in Europe and
around the world. You know, we're two hundred
and fifty years in. And and so, you know, we
we count ourselves as the land of opportunity.
And and and so we see immigrants that come in
from all around the world and they're they're
able to create successful, thriving empires,
you know. And and so, yeah, I believe there is
a little bit of a difference. But at the end
of the day, we all have the levers and knobs
and dials that we all use the same ones to fine
-tune how a business operates. Interesting. I'm
always curious because every single person I
talk to here in the UK and in Europe, they are
always obsessed with going to the U .S. overall
and say, oh, the U .S. is where everything's
happening, we need to move to the U .S. But then
when you actually talk with someone from the
U .S. they say, well, actually there's quite
a lot of stuff happening in Europe as well, so
you don't necessarily need to move to the U .S.
to make that happen. I'm curious on something
else, which is in terms of the funding rounds
and the size of the funding rounds, have you
noticed them to be completely different or quite
on the contrary, it's actually pretty much the
same size? You mean between the U .S. and Europe?
Yeah. No, I haven't seen a significant difference
between kind of the US as a whole. And what I
would say is the primary areas where capital
rounds originate in the US, the expected places
like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, et cetera.
I wouldn't see a big difference there between
there and the... the rounds you see coming from
Europe or Israel or any other location. What
I do see is a significant difference in the U
.S. between the places where people commonly
think of being venture capital heavy versus what
I would describe as middle America where I'm
located. You know, valuations tend to be considerably
different on the coasts, much higher on the coast
than say in the heartland is what we kind of
call the flyover states. So in fact, our investment
fund, Kadren Capital Partners, we're predominantly
looking at opportunities in the heartland of
the United States for that very reason. So I
don't see a... a big difference globally, but
I do see within geographies, what we would call
unexpected places where startups originate that
the valuations are quite a bit different. Interesting.
What do you look for in startup when they're
just raising? I don't know which stage you normally
invest in, but I'm curious like pre -C then C.
What are your criteria for them? So our specific
criteria are, if it's a SaaS company, and we're
a little later stage now, we don't do as much
pre -seed and seed stage stuff as we used to
do. When we were looking at it at that time,
it was the quality of the idea, the quality of
the vetting of the idea with customer discovery,
and the quality of the management team. We're
a little bit later stage we're kind of series
a or just pre series a kind of series a gap rounds
or what have you and we look at if it's a sass
company or a subscription based software you
know we're looking at two million dollars of
of annual recognized or annual recurring run
rate if it's if it's a. non -SAS product or service
probably more like three and a half to four million
dollars. We're looking at high gross margins.
We're looking at an experienced leadership team
who's done it before. Those are kind of the criteria
that we're looking at and we're pretty much industry
agnostic. Okay, that's pretty cool because then
you open up the doors for a lot of stuff, right?
So it's just that much more interesting. Now,
I am curious on something else which is you actually
have a published book. How many books have you
written so far? Is it three? I actually have
four. Yep yep three most recently so i have three
that have been done since i've been in the work
that i'm doing today. I have one called the innovator's
field guide, which looks something like this.
It says accelerators for entrepreneurs, innovators
and change agents. I have another one called
the top performers field guide. Some of my academic
research was focused on identifying top performers
and looking at the criteria that are the characteristics
of top performers. And then my business partner,
Jeff Amoran and I, another Jeff, by the way,
we have a book that came out in 2021 called creating
startup junkies. building sustainable venture
ecosystems in unexpected places so it's it's
a book that focuses on how to create a culture.
How to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem an
entrepreneurial culture how to cultivate talent
access to capital and community engagement around
building driving on early ecosystems. I was quite
a lot of information taken there and a lot of
lots of knowledge I was just I'm curious on one
thing the top performers right because we've
all we all kind of know who they are but are
you able to pinpoint and say this is what all
the top performance do on a consistent basis
so that's really where Yeah, that's really where
my research focused on when I was working on
my doctorate in healthcare to start, but then
in the corporate environment following. You say
we all know who they are, but the interesting
thing about it is when I moved over to Axiom
Corporation, which is a publicly traded company
at the time, and I started by having all the
employees in the company and all of the management
and leadership of the company nominate high performers
from the company. And when we got the list and
looked at it, It was about 80 % different. The
top performers that employees said were top performers
were vastly different than the top performers
that management and leadership said. So when
we looked at the list, so that was a problematic
finding there is that what people believe top
performance is or what people believe the characteristics
of top performances is different from employees
to Leadership, right? Yeah, so we were able to
find about about 50 30 to 50 individuals that
that were across both organization or both nomination
lists. Then we were able to validate it with
some of their actual performance metrics in the
organization. We I think we identified ultimately
about 30 or 35 and then we started. interviewing
them around instances where they were challenged,
but they ended up being successful. Instances
where they thought they were staring failure
in the face, but they ended up being successful.
We looked at their behaviors. We looked at their
decisions. We looked at all of those things.
One thing that we know for sure is that academic
performance does not correlate with high performance.
Academic credentials do not correlate with high
performance. It really boils down to behavior.
The knowledge, skills, and abilities that I have
that enable me to develop specific habits and
behaviors around results generation and relationship
management. So results in relationships. If I
focus on results at the expense of relationships,
I will achieve success very, very quickly, but
I won't be able to maintain those results after
I alienate everyone around me who's responsible
for helping me maintain those results. By the
same token if I focus on relationships at the
expense of results people will love me for a
while until they lose respect for me because
I can't deliver results and then I lose them
both and so so there are specific knowledge skills
and abilities that enable me to develop behaviors
and habits around results generation and behaviors
and habits around relationship creation and management
and maintenance and I have to balance those sets
of behaviors to be successful ultimately. Interesting
is this across both the entrepreneurial world
and corporate world so you see really interesting
is doing that research in the US I've had the
opportunity to kind of. What I would call do
observational research anecdotal and observational
research across five continents over the last
25 years and I have seen that play out in every
setting in nonprofits in Individual success in
leadership success in for -profit organizations
and publicly traded organizations and startup
companies. It's pretty much a universal Is there
Obviously, I'm assuming you also do the training
for people who want to get better at all these
things. But is there any specific training someone
can do to be better at both building relationships,
but also delivering on what they're supposed
to deliver? Do you think that actually works
for everyone? Yeah, you know, I don't know of
any specific training program or training module.
What I encourage people to do is to take an inventory,
kind of a self inventory of the strengths and
weaknesses that they have. Just hear what I believe
my strengths are, hear what I believe my weaknesses
are, and then to do some validation with other
people asking for feedback, getting some unbiased
feedback from people that we work with, from
our significant others, from colleagues, friends,
what have you. And then once we... We take that
list and feel like we've got a pretty good exhaustive
list of strengths and weaknesses, then begin
to separate those out into results versus relationship
oriented types of strengths and weaknesses, and
then begin looking for ways to skills, capabilities,
knowledge, what have you around those areas of
weakness. Interesting. And then you also wrote
a book on startup ecosystems and startup junkies.
So this is actually quite fascinating for me
because obviously I have an opportunity to talk
with multiple ecosystems across Europe. Have
you found that it's actually quite hard to create
your own ecosystem or it's just a matter of going
out there and asking a bunch of people, hey,
would you like to come and run this with me and
then we just build something up from the ground
up? No, it is a marathon forced march versus
a sprint. We've been doing it here in Arkansas
for Over fifteen years and you know we think
that there are four pillars that that we tend
to focus on one is talent development making
sure that we're. we're trying to build innovative
entrepreneurial talent because even even large
flagship employers want to hire innovative entrepreneurial
people, but we also need that for startups and
growing growing businesses, scaling businesses.
So talent, creating a culture, an entrepreneurial
culture where people can come together, can share
ideas, can share resources, can participate in
training together and networking events. The
third element or the third pillar is community
engagement, getting large institutions involved
like the colleges and universities, large flagship
employers involved, financial institutions, investors,
getting all of those folks engaged in the ecosystem
as well. And then finally, looking for ways to
provide access to capital and to help help entrepreneurs
navigate that access to capital at every stage
of venture development. As you said earlier from
the Precede the seed stage to the series a the
series B and all the way all the way throughout
that continuum So those four elements is what
we have found to really focus us on focusing
on makes a difference over the longer term I'm
curious on one thing that we talked a lot about
innovation and how important it is to be an innovator
in you know In multiple areas of your life, but
as a manager, how do you manage someone who's
a natural -born innovator? Because I'm you know
I know for a fact that it's quite hard to be
in the company and you're trying to manage someone
who's always coming up with new ideas and new
ways of doing things and you just want them to
execute. So how do you manage that? But at the
same time, how do you create the space for new
ideas to actually rise up and to be applied in
multiple companies? How do you do that? Well,
first of all, I think we have to give people
the flexibility to understand that failure is
only failure if you quit. Otherwise it's just
feedback right so creating a culture where people
understand that failure is part of the success
formula. And and we like to talk about you know
fail faster and fail often but what we do is
we limit the we limit the degree of that failure
by doing our research by doing our customer discovery
by. by making certain that we understand what
we're trying to do and the market impact of what
we're trying to do before we mortgage our house
to go make an investment on something that's
half -baked. So we do quite a lot of very, very
specific work around what's the problem we're
trying to solve? Who are the target customers
that experience that problem to the greatest
degree? What's our unique value proposition to
solve that problem? Have we done customer discovery
around all of those elements? product markets
fit, problem solution fit, that whole thing.
And so recognizing that that failure is part
of the success continuum, I think is probably
the key element to that. And then giving people
a process to, to limit the impact of those failures
so that they can fail faster, fail off and make
improvements to their, to their innovations,
their ideas. Putting on a different hat now as
an investor, when you invest in a company and
you see that they are failing fast, but learning
the lessons and adapting to the challenges and
overcoming those challenges, but still failing,
nevertheless, would you continue investing in
a company or do you just call it quits and say,
guys, you failed too many times, I'm done with
you? Yeah, I think it really depends. It really
depends on the nature of those failures and are
those failures a result of just multiple oversights
or multiple situations where we didn't really
assess the environment well, we didn't really
do the work. There's no shortcut. to success
in the startup world. And so we place a lot of
focus on, are the entrepreneurs doing the work
to actually take their company to ultimately
a successful place? Are they pivoting based upon
customer feedback? Are they pivoting based upon
market dynamics? Or are they out there not doing
the work and shooting an arrow one direction,
then shooting an arrow another direction, and
they're playing pin the tell on the donkey, so
to speak. If that's the case, we're probably
not going to continue throwing good money after
bad. So it really depends on the situation. I'm
curious on something else, which is there's always
everyone kind of talks that you need to go to
Silicon Valley, you need to go to San Francisco,
obviously being being almost the same place.
Do you find in terms of human resources, you
can actually find talent across the world and
across America more specifically, or are they
just focused on these regions and that's actually
a shame? Well, that's the book you mentioned
a few moments ago creating startup junkies. It's
about creating startup junkies in unexpected
places, which literally means outside of Silicon
Valley, outside of Boston, New York, what have
you. So we have been focused on helping people
understand that you can in fact build and find
talent in these unexpected places. So I absolutely
challenge the assumption and the belief that
you've got to go to Silicon Valley to build a
good quality, healthy startup and find the talent
that you need, that you can find the talent you
need in these unexpected places. You know, you
take a look at... Two, two and a half, three
hours north of me in Northwest Arkansas. We have
three, the headquarters for three Fortune 100
companies, Walmart headquarters, Tyson food headquarters,
JB Hunt, which is one of the largest logistics
companies in the world in Arkansas, in Northwest
Arkansas. We've got one of the largest coffee
companies called West Rock Coffee just down the
street here. in one of their two major locations.
We've got one of the largest data management
and analytics companies just about two miles
that way called Axiom Corporation, part of the
interpublic group. And so, so yeah, I I absolutely
challenge the assumption that you've got to go
to Silicon Valley or that you have to go anywhere
other than where you are. What about the support
of the local government in terms of like tax
deductions and having lower taxes? How impactful
is that overall? Oh, it's hugely impactful. Uh,
in fact, I spent about seven years on the board
of science and technology for the state of Arkansas
appointed by the governor. It's our, our economic
development entity in the state of Arkansas is,
is called the Arkansas economic development commission.
And the director of that is actually appointed
by the governor and they have a number of incentives
there for research and development tax credits.
equity investor tax credits. They actually have
non dilutive funding programs, like what we call
the technology development program investment,
which is a royalty based investment, the seed
capital investment program, and other types of
incentives. In fact, one of the one of the funding
mechanisms that they have is they also fund a
statewide technology commercialization center.
I called a rise and arises and isn't a cross
stick that stands for Arkansas innovators startups
and entrepreneurs and just recently our team
at the conductor startup junkie was selected
by the state of Arkansas. To manage the state's
technology commercialization center funded by
the state of Arkansas so so it is it is catalytic.
In in all of those incentives non diluted funding
programs and technology commercialization programs
are catalytic at helping to spawn activity within
the state of arkansas you know what's the population
of lisbon roughly. What's the what's the what's
the population of portugal. Ten million total
ten million alright and you have the same the
state i think no. So we have 3 million in the
state of Arkansas, the entire state. Our geographic
size is about the size of the UK and they have
70 million people and we have 3 million people.
The revenue generated is crazy. I'm saying the
revenue generated as a group of people, it's
actually quite high, isn't it? I was wondering,
have you noticed that Actually, I actually have
two questions here. But the first one is, if
there's this European startup, they want to move
somewhere in the US, would you advise them obviously
to, and I know you're going to be biased on this
one and rightfully so, would you advise them
to move to Arkansas and trying to do business
there and trying to launch in Arkansas compared
to, let's say, Delaware, where we know there's
all this legislation that kind of helps companies.
Yeah, you know, of course I will try to advise
them to move to Arkansas or a state or a place
like Arkansas because they're going to be a big
fish in a small body of water versus a little
fish in a very large body of water. And the focus
that they're going to get with just a little
bit of success, the focus they're going to get,
the financial incentives they're going to get,
the cost of living. The cost of labor all of
those things are going to be financially advantageous
to them doesn't have to be arkansas course i
would try to recruit them to arkansas. You have
to be arkansas but it could be places in the
flyover states in the heartland kind of that
middle america where there's a balance of metropolitan
with with rural because the cost of getting their
business off the ground is going to be so much
less expensive. Interesting, because there's
always conversations and I talk with multiple
companies and they always have this dream of
going to the US doing business in the US, but
I think they don't actually look at it as a place
with so many states. They only look at one or
two locations and that's actually a shame, right?
It's just an error from the get go. And then
they end up getting stuck and saying, oh, you
know, rent is really expensive in New York or
we can afford an office in San Francisco. Oh
guys, look elsewhere. There's more states and
they probably offer a lot of the same. They also
don't understand the geographic breadth of the
state of Arkansas. I lived in London for about
18 months when I was doing mergers and acquisitions.
And we had some friends after we moved back from
the UK who said, yeah, hey, we're going to be
in the US for about 10 days. And we'd love to
pop in and see you guys. And I said, OK, where
are you going? They said, well, We thought we
would fly into New York, but then we're going
to drive down to Miami and then maybe drive over
to Los Angeles. And we thought we would pop in
and I was like, you're going to need way more
than 10 days. You're going to need 10 days just
to do the drives. But you're not going to see
anything. You're just going to be driving for
10 days. So they don't understand the breadth.
You know, they only think about, as you said,
the New York's, the Miami's, the Chicago's, the
San Francisco's, and there's a lot of other very
thriving cities around the country that are much
less expensive and provide access to high quality
talent, resources, capital, and what have you.
Interesting. I'm curious on one thing, which
is in Europe, there's always I guess in the last
six months or so there's been talks of a bit
of a slowdown when it comes to investment. People
are saying it's actually quite hard to raise
money now because obviously the interest rates
were quite high. Have you noticed the same thing
in the US or quite on the contrary it's been
you know? No, yeah we've seen the same thing.
You know my experience is when the real estate
market is hot and when the stock market is hot
it's difficult to get people to make the higher
risk venture type of investments because of the,
of the risk relative to the reward. Usually though,
when you, when you begin to see a cooling off
of the stock market or a little more volatility
in the, in the real estate market or what have
you, you see a little more, a little more cash
coming into the venture spaces, you know, as
a result. And so, so yeah, I think, uh, I think
we're seeing some of that same kind of thing
globally, quite frankly. incredibly curious on
one thing, which is you've published four books
now, how hard is it to actually write a book
and publish it? Obviously, a lot of people will
use chat tpt right now and it will come out absolutely
horrible. So how hard is it to actually launch
a book? I mean, that's quite impressive. You
know, it's it's not hard to to launch a book
and and get it out there. There's a lot of resources
where where you know, you can you can hire typesetters
and editors and cover designers and those kinds
of things. What's difficult for me is writing,
literally writing the book, you know, process
of planning the content, making sure that you're
not being redundant and repetitive, but that
you fully cover the topic that you're wanting
to cover and that you give the reader actionable
insights that they can use so that the book actually
makes a difference. It's easy to just put a book
together and throw it out there, but if you want
to really have something that's impactful, that's
thought provoking, that leaves someone better
than you found them, so to speak, then it's quite
a bit more difficult. But the mechanics, the
mechanics are not difficult at all. You've done
so much. It's actually, it's kind of impressive
even to be sitting here and talking with you.
I always want to understand what actually goes
on behind the scenes. And I always try and ask
this question, which is when you're having a
bad day, when you're having one of those days
you just want to give up, what thoughts go through
your mind? What's the one thing that keeps on
popping by? Is it just faith? Is this that, you
know, complete craziness? It's like high confidence?
What is it? What goes through your mind when
you're having a really bad day and it's a full
month? You know, it's interesting. I don't know
that I have really bad days and I'm not. I mean,
bad things happen. You know, bad things happen.
But I think bad days are between our ears. You
know, I think that the biggest battle we will
ever wage, in many instances, the biggest war
that we will ever wage is the one that goes on
between our ears and allowing thoughts to conquer
our psyche, to allow thoughts to conquer our
attitude, to allow our feelings to lie to us
and get us to behave in ways that... that we
know we shouldn't behave. So I'm very much a
proponent of mental toughness, mental resilience,
and being able to control our emotions, not stuff
them down, but just control them. So I don't
know that I ever really have a really, really
bad day. I have bad things that happen, but just
like failure's only failure if you quit in a
business, you know, setbacks are temporary. Bad
things that happen are only temporary. Someone
asked me one time, you know, or actually shared
with me, when they find themselves being consumed
with worry, they ask themselves just a handful
of questions. Number one, what's the absolute
worst thing that can happen? If that about which
you're worrying comes to fruition, if it actually
occurs, what's the worst thing that can happen?
And then once you identify that worst thing,
then ask yourself the question, well, if that
worst thing happens, can I live with it? And
the vast majority of the time, the answer is
yes. There was some research that was done a
while back that said that actually only about,
I think it was about 85 % of the time, everything
that we worry about, the things that we worry
about never even come to fruition. 85 % of the
time, it never happens. Of the remaining 15 %
of the time, 12 % of the time, that which we're
worrying about comes to fruition, but it's...
Less than or even better than let it's better
than what we anticipated. And sometimes it's
an even positive outcome not a negative outcome
which means that the remaining three percent
of the time. That would about which were worrying
comes to fruition and it's bad it's as bad as
what we anticipated so worries worry is kind
of a liar. It's kind of a liar and recognizing
those statistics i think probably what's helped
me. Help me navigate if something bad happens
then my I immediately go into okay This has happened
what I need to do to lessen the impact on my
business on my family on my life on my time What
have you? This was a lessons for business and
also for pilots and i'm just about to ask you
something to do with i love aviation actually
have a background aviation as well but i'm i'm
curious on one thing which is time management
how do you manage to do all these things is quite
impressive. I'm assuming quite a lot of time
consuming it is also how do you manage all that
well number one. I am in tune. Just over the
last 15 or 20 years with what I believe my God
given calling is my purpose in life and I believe
that I've been that I've received specific gifts
to create new insights that inspire people to
better ways of living and working. And so much
of what I do around innovation junkie conductor.
writing books, speaking on leadership, doing
podcasts, investing in companies is, is about
fulfilling that purpose, fulfilling that calling
of creating new insights that lead people to
better ways of living and working. So I'd say
that is first and foremost that I get energized.
And so the second thing is that I don't I don't
have hobbies that take me away for hours and
hours and hours at a time, like fishing or golf.
I play golf occasionally, but it's not an every
Saturday morning, six hour hobby. My hobby is
much of my hobbies outside of being with my family,
which is my biggest hobby. My hobbies have to
do with thinking about better ways to fulfill
my purpose. And so I've constantly got an iPad
in my lap or I'm constantly consuming a podcast
or an audiobook or something. And so I feel like
living this integrated lifestyle, I'm working
way harder than what I expected to be working
at 58 years of age, but I'm having a great time
doing it. So as long as I continue having a great
time doing it, I'm going to keep doing it. Sounds
like the dream. I'm curious to one thing. I mean,
we were talking before that you actually fly
to things now instead of, well, most people fly
to things, but you actually fly on your own plane
instead of going commercial? Yeah. That must
be amazing though. How does that even work? Well,
you know, it is. I had a client meeting in Chicago
a few weeks ago and I was going to fly myself,
but the weather wasn't looking great and it was
going to be too... Iffy with the weather and
so I ended up flying commercial and, and so I,
uh, it was a direct flight, which there's not
a lot of direct flights out of Arkansas, but
it was a direct flight. We left on time. We arrived
early. My Uber got there very quickly and took
me to my hotel coming home. We left on time.
We got home early and I still hated it. It was
still terrible. You know, have to be at the airport.
You know, I leave my home two hours before my
flight so that I can get to the airport, get
through security, get to the gate. Many times
we have to fly through Dallas or Chicago or Atlanta
to go somewhere else because there aren't really
close connections like there are in Europe or
direct connections rather. And so, but when I,
when I fly myself, I drive 10 minutes to the
air to a different airport. I get on my plane
and I leave and I'm there a couple of hours.
It makes a big difference. It's enabled me to
be able to see more clients in a shorter period
of time than I would do otherwise, to get more
work done in fewer days. You know, if I go to,
if I go to Chicago, I can do an early morning
flight and come home late at night. But almost
always, if I go anywhere commercially, it's going
to be an overnight and overnight flight where
we're here. I can be, I can be in Chicago in
two, two and a half hours. I can be in Dallas
in an hour and 45 minutes. I can be in Nashville
in two hours. I can be down to the beach on the
Gulf coast in two hours. So there's a pretty
broad brush of places that I can go to work with
clients. In a in a couple of hours. Do you ever
do you ever have like meetings inside the plane
you ever take people over for it let's go and
fly over I don't know some some city and just
go and talk with people. No I really don't do
that I mean now granted when I'm flying some
of my business partners they may be in the back
talking business and we may all be talking business
through the headsets but usually when I'm flying
I'm I'm focused on I'm focused on. Yeah, that
makes sense. Yeah, I think that that's actually
one of the first rules, isn't it? First, yeah,
a V8 that you as you navigate, navigate, navigate,
communicate. Yeah, okay. I got them right. I
was like, because you're right. But yeah, okay.
That's that's quite impressive. Jeff, I'm sure
a lot of people after listening to this podcast
and seeing the podcast, they want to see obviously
your own podcast, which we're going to add to
the link. But they probably also want to reach
out to you. Now we have four books on Amazon
people can buy, which is awesome. How can you
reach out to you? What's a better way of doing
that? Yeah, the best, the best way to reach out
to me, probably two or three different ways.
The best one is probably LinkedIn. I'm very active
on LinkedIn and it's Jeff Standridge is my handle
on LinkedIn. Jeff S as is Jeff standards, Jeff
S at innovation junkie com and jeffstandridge
.com had my own website as well. So happy to
connect and would love to, to talk with any of
your, any of your listeners who would want to
connect me. Sounds good. Jeff, thank you so much
for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
It has been my pleasure. I appreciate you for
having me and I hope you survive the heat. I
shall. Thank you so much. This podcast is also
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