September 4, 2024 • 29 mins
Welcome to the LyondellBasell podcast series! In this special edition, we have an inspiring conversation with LYB board member Tony Chase. Tony, a renowned entrepreneur and business leader, shares his remarkable journey from humble beginnings to becoming the CEO of ChaseSource LP, one of the nation's largest minority-owned businesses.
In this episode, Tony recounts his early days in Houston, his educational journey at Harvard, and his ventures into various businesses, including radio stations, Cricket Wireless and call centers. He discusses the challenges he faced, the risks he took, and the innovative strategies that led to his successes.
Listeners will also hear about Tony's deep connection with his family, including his father's groundbreaking achievements as the first black architect in Texas and the entrepreneurial spirit that runs in his blood. Tony's insights on recognizing and seizing opportunities, even within large organizations like LYB, provide valuable lessons for anyone looking to make a difference in their field.
Join us as we delve into Tony's story, which he told at this year's LYB Global Leaders' Forum and captivated the audience. This episode is sure to leave you inspired and motivated to embrace your own entrepreneurial spirit.
Connect with us on social media: LinkedIn: LyondellBasell Facebook: LyondellBasell Instagram: LyondellBasell X: @LyondellBasell
LEGAL DISCLAIMER FOR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS:
The statements in this podcast relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions of management of LyondellBasell which are believed to be reasonable at the time made and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based on factors including, but not limited to, market conditions, the business cyclicality of the chemical, polymers and refining industries; the availability, cost and price volatility of raw materials and utilities, particularly the cost of oil, natural gas, and associated natural gas liquids; our ability to successfully implement initiatives identified pursuant to our Value Enhancement Program and generate anticipated earnings; competitive product and pricing pressures; labor conditions; our ability to attract and retain key personnel; operating interruptions (including leaks, explosions, fires, weather-related incidents, mechanical failure, unscheduled downtime, supplier disruptions, labor shortages, strikes, work stoppages or other labor difficulties, transportation interruptions, spills and releases and other environmental risks); the supply/demand balances for our and our joint ventures’ products, and the related effects of industry production capacities and operating rates; our ability to manage costs; future financial and operating results; benefits and synergies of any proposed transactions; receipt of required regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of closing conditions for our proposed transactions; final investment decision and the construction and operation of any proposed facilities described; our ability to align our assets and expand our core; legal and environmental proceedings; tax rulings, consequences or proceedings; technological developments, and our ability to develop new products and process technologies; our ability to meet our sustainability goals, including the ability to operate safely, increase production of recycled and renewable-based polymers to meet our targets and forecasts, and reduce our emissions and achieve net zero emissions by the time set in our goals; our ability to procure energy from renewable sources; our ability to build a profitable Circular &
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Jeff and I had become friends, so I went to Jeff, and I said,
Hey, look, Jeff, I have $20,000.
I need $980,000, and I'm there. And I'm there.
And so I'm just a little short. I'm just a little short.
You're almost there. I'm just a little short, but I think we can get there.
(00:21):
He asked me what my plan was for this station, and I told him. and we worked it out.
Your dad moved to Houston. He did. He moved to, he got, he was the first black graduate of UT.
Got his master's degree in architecture and his first black architect in the state of Texas.
(00:48):
You know, the value enhancement program, I think that's incredible.
To me, an organization that's as alive at the bottom as it is at the top is
one that works and that wins, right?
(01:09):
Where everybody really has a stake, can make a difference.
Welcome to the Lined Elba Cell podcast series. Today, we've got a great conversation
in store for you with LYB board member Tony Chase.
I actually met Tony earlier this year ahead of our Global Leaders Forum.
(01:29):
That's where 150 of the top leaders at LYB fly in from all over the world to
meet, discuss company strategy, initiatives, and more.
I was asked to host a fireside chat with Tony during the forum so that the attendees
could hear him, get to know him, find some inspiration in his story?
They certainly did, but more on that in a bit.
(01:51):
First, let me give you some background on Tony. Tony Chase is a chairman and CEO of Chase Source LP.
He previously started and sold three different ventures, Chase Radio Partners,
Cricket Wireless, and Chase Comp.
Tony grew up in Houston attending public schools. He is an honors graduate of
Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School.
(02:13):
He was a tenured professor at the University of Houston, where he taught law for 30 years.
Tony's company, Chase Source, is ranked by Black Enterprise Magazine as one
of the nation's largest minority-owned businesses.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Now, back to finding inspiration in Tony's story. His fireside chat went over
(02:35):
so well at the Global Leaders Forum that we decided to bring the conversation to you.
So let's get into this special edition of the LYB podcast filmed earlier this
year with LYB board member Tony Chase.
First of all, Tony, thank you for being here. I'm glad to be here.
In fact, I'm honored to be here with you.
(02:56):
Where you are is a great place to be.
And so many people, you know, I feel like I'll speak in that personally that
we aren't grateful enough. Right.
Just the fact that we're in this room suggests that we are in much better position
(03:19):
than most people in this world.
And a good deal of it has to do with our own talents, but a good deal of it
has to do with things outside of our talents.
And so gratitude probably is in order as well.
Well, we're really grateful that you're here as well, Tony. Thank you.
(03:39):
So I know that you and I chatted a few months ago, and I felt very inspired
by my conversation with Tony.
And I think you all are in for a real treat because Tony has a very interesting story.
You have a very interesting upbringing as well. And I know we're going to talk
about your entrepreneurial spirit and your leadership, but it all really began
(04:00):
at a young age for you. Your dad was such a trailblazer.
So let's start from the beginning. Let's start with your just upbringing.
At what point did you feel like I might be an entrepreneur and what really impacted you the most?
Sure. So my dad, I appreciate you mentioning my dad, Deepa, because he passed away in 2012.
(04:22):
You know, I think about him every day, I think.
He grew up in Maryland. And to make a pretty long story short,
he applied to the University of Texas to go to the School of architecture.
He was really interested in architecture.
And he was denied because he's black.
(04:44):
At that time, U of H, I mean, UT hadn't admitted any black students.
And so Thurgood Marshall, who was head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund at the time,
Called him up and said, we want to file a lawsuit.
And long story short, they did. It went up to Supreme Court.
My dad joined the Army, went to fight in the Philippines.
(05:08):
While the case wound its way through the court system, they won the Supreme Court case.
And he came to Austin to register at University of Texas, first black student, in the fall of 1951.
And that was pretty amazing. First black student at UT was your dad. Yeah.
(05:33):
The really lucky part, though, the really lucky part, that's how this works, right?
The really lucky part for him and for me is that he couldn't live on campus
because, you know, they got the admit black students part.
OK, but black students living on campus, that wasn't happening quite yet.
And so he lived in East Austin, as some of you know, that's historically been
(05:57):
the minority side of Austin.
But he met my mom. And so I was born a couple of years in 1955 after that.
So, yeah, so it was great. It was great.
And then your dad moved to Houston. He did. He moved to, he got,
he was the first black graduate of UT.
Got his master's degree in architecture. and his first black architect in the state of Texas.
(06:23):
And architecture is, you know, interesting. You know, engineers appreciate,
you know, there at least was an apprenticeship requirement in order to get licensed.
And so he went through that process. He got licensed and decided that he would
work for himself because it was difficult to get a job.
(06:48):
And his thesis, when he was at UT School of Architecture, was about the black
church and the design of the black church, which is kind of smart, right?
Because if there was any institution in the black community that had capital, it was a church.
(07:09):
And so every Sunday as a kid, uh, growing up, we would go and my dad had gotten
a lot of press because when he was admitted to UT, it was in the papers and all that stuff.
And, and so every Sunday we'd go to a different church around the state.
We'd get in the car and we drive and it was awful.
(07:29):
And, and we go to different black church.
And, And for those of you who've been to a black church, they'd scream and holler and, uh, and, uh.
And then finally they would say, you know, we're honored to have today,
you know, the person you read about who started, graduated from UT.
(07:51):
And by the way, we've got a new building fund.
Then we're going to pass the plate for that.
And they would, you know, ask my dad to design the church. So he designed a
number of black churches around the state.
But then he started doing different things. He did the George R.
Brown Convention Center.
Yeah, I was waiting to see if you were just going to throw that in as a throwaway.
(08:15):
And also he designed the George R. Brown Convention Center.
He was a good guy. Tony's dad, yeah. Yeah, good guy. All right,
so then you grow up in Houston. You went to public schools here in Houston.
You end up going to, you move to the East Coast, finished your schooling there.
Right. And then you go on to Harvard. Right.
So Harvard Business School, then Harvard Law School. Mm-hmm. In Harvard College.
(08:37):
College, law school, business school. College, law school, a business school.
Okay. You finished law school, but you didn't really like law school.
Not so much. Yeah, right. No, I finished it. Not your favorite.
Not my favorite. Not your favorite. Not my favorite.
Intellectually, academically, law school was fabulous. It was fabulous.
I, you know, never been as sort of intellectually challenged and excited as
(09:03):
as in my law school classes.
But, you know, sorry, Jeff, but practicing, you know, practicing law. I mean, that's awful.
Right. It's awful. It's like, where are the attorneys?
Yeah. Well, I mean, my sense is right. And that's sort of relevant to this conversation,
(09:27):
I think, is that there are two types of people in this world.
They're bakers and they're slicers, you know, and lawyers are slicers, right?
I mean, you know, they kind of are to me, right? They are.
I mean, and I always wanted to be more of a baker, you know. Right.
(09:48):
So after college, you decided to do the baking first?
Well... Or did we do slicing and then baking? Well, you sort of have to slice
a little first. Okay. So is that when you decided to teach law?
Yeah. Well, I decided to teach... Well, yes. Didn't love law school,
but then got asked to be a professor of law. Right. That's true.
(10:09):
So in short, what happened, I went first to work for an investment banking firm.
And I worked in New York on Wall Street for a while.
And then, you know, after doing that for six years or so, you know,
New York was difficult for me, just sort of in general.
And I really did want to do things on my own, you know, entrepreneurial.
(10:34):
And I thought it'd be better to do that in Houston, to come home and do it.
And problem was I didn't have any money. And so I needed a job to,
you know, to pay the rent and so forth.
And I had done pretty well in law school.
So U of H asked me to teach and I thought that was great.
(10:56):
And so I hustled to get tenure pretty quickly so that, because,
you know, once you're tenured, you sort of do anything.
That's the way I looked at it. And so that's what it was. So it would give me
the opportunity to do other things.
So then how did you begin your business venture? My entrepreneur venture. Yes. Okay, so I began.
(11:20):
It's interesting to talk about it in this building. I'll tell you why.
My first foray into entrepreneurship, I bought a radio station.
And the reason I did was because I was teaching law at U of H during the day.
And I had, when I was in college, been a DJ on the college radio station.
(11:43):
I had a jazz show called Breakfast Jam.
And I love jazz. And I was really into it when I was in college.
That the show went from six to eight in the morning because we turned off the transmitter.
The radio station went off air at overnight.
(12:03):
So I had to come into the station an hour early to turn on the transmitter.
So it would warm up to full power.
Right. I've had to do that as well. Yeah. And, and so five o'clock in the morning
to get to the radio station, particularly in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
it was ridiculously cold.
But I loved it. I loved it. And I thought I knew a lot about radio.
(12:25):
And when I worked in investment banking in New York, I was primarily banking
media and communications companies.
And so I thought I'd buy a radio station. And the reason why this building is
interesting to talk about this in is because, of course, when I wanted to buy
a radio station, and I found one to buy in Dallas, KHRB.
(12:48):
It cost a million dollars. It was a daytime, because, you know, it was an AM station.
Many AM stations go off at night, and it was a black gospel.
It was programmed black gospel.
Again, kind of a relation to what my dad was doing and designing churches and
so forth, and I'd sort of grown up in the black church, And I thought I knew about radio.
(13:11):
I thought I knew about black gospel, et cetera. And I thought it made a whole lot of sense.
Only problem was I didn't have a million dollars, but, you know, so.
But I'd gone to business school at Harvard with Jeff Hines, whose father's business
(13:31):
was headquartered here, who actually his father built this building.
And and Jeff and I had become friends. So I went to Jeff and I said,
hey, look, Jeff, I have twenty thousand dollars.
I need nine hundred and eighty.
I'm there. I'm there. And so I'm just a little short.
(13:52):
I'm just a little short. Yeah, I'm just a little short, but I think we can get there.
And we talked about it for a while.
He asked me what my plan was for the station. station and, um,
and I told him and, uh, we, we worked it out.
And so I bought this station, you know, long story short, and I bought seven
(14:17):
more and, um, not with Jeff though.
Interestingly, Jeff was, stayed a partner in that station and until we sold
all of them, uh, a few years later.
So you sell all the stations, but then you invest in the next venture.
Yeah. Which is not radio. Right. Kind of related.
Yeah. Yeah. How did you decide what to venture into next?
(14:42):
You know, I think, you know, I think it's relevant for this conversation that,
you know, opportunity abounds, you know, it's sort of all around us.
It's not that we have to search out and find opportunity.
(15:02):
I mean, you do, you do, but it's there.
And I think the more difficult part is to recognize it and take advantage of it.
And so it was the late 90s, you know, cell phones and Internet were still to
come. There was the experience in Scandinavia.
(15:27):
They had cell phone adoption pretty well before we did, several years before we did.
And it seemed pretty clear to me that that was the way the world was going.
And so when there was a federal government auction to sell Spectrum to offer
(15:48):
cell phone service, I thought, you know, well, that's where I need to be.
You know, it was pretty clear all the big companies, the Bell operating companies in particular,
Sprint as well, AT&T, they were all, you know, all over this.
(16:09):
But they wanted to create cell service for people who could afford it, right?
People who could pay their bills without much trouble. And I thought there was
a significant opportunity for self, because once the service became ubiquitous.
(16:31):
Which it seemed to me it almost certainly would, then it would be,
you know, critical for all people to have connection.
So my, you know, idea was Cricket, right?
Cricket Wireless. Do you guys remember the commercials?
Yeah. And so I opened the first Cricket market. And, you know,
Cricket was predicated on basically prepaid phone service, right?
(16:54):
It was all you could eat for 25 bucks.
All you could eat, meaning all the calls you could make for $25 a month.
And you had to pay your $25 up front at the beginning of the month.
Otherwise, we cut off your service.
And that was great because it essentially eliminated customer service because
(17:15):
80% of customer service in the phone business is about the bill.
And if there's no bill, we didn't send bills, then it really streamlined our cost on that.
And it really was predicated on the technology being able to handle the load
because, you know, we knew we'd have a lot of demand.
(17:37):
And there was a fellow out in California named Erwin Jacobs who founded Qualcomm,
who had come up with this spread spectrum technology,
CDMA, for those of you who are familiar.
And he and I met and became really good friends.
(17:59):
He's long since passed away now. He passed away about 15 years ago, I guess.
He was such a great guy. real scientist.
And basically Cricket became the showroom for his technology here in America
because he hadn't, you know, so we partnered and I built the first four Cricket
(18:20):
markets. The first one was in, all in Tennessee.
That's where I bought the spectrum from the federal government.
I had to bid for that spectrum. I bid 20.
Six million dollars for the spectrum. I didn't have that either.
I was going to say, did you make a lot of money? Didn't have that either.
You had to borrow a little bit of that too? Didn't have that either. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
(18:40):
But, you know, I mean. You seem to have a knack for asking for money.
No, I mean, you know, that was just.
Maybe that should be the next fireside show, to ask for a lot of money.
But it was such a successful technology, CDMA, Cricut Wireless.
Like you tapped into a market and found a niche that no one else had really
tapped into. But then you decided to get out of that as well.
(19:02):
I did. I did. But only because, you know, there's a time for everything in a place.
And in my time and place was over. You know, I built the first four cricket
markets, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, covered the entire state of Tennessee.
(19:24):
But then I needed five billion dollars to build out a national network.
You know, maybe, but nah.
You know what I mean? Nah.
You draw the line at five billion. Well, I mean, or I could have a really nice
payday and go to the next thing, right, that was appropriate for me.
(19:46):
And, you know, being a telephone person, come on, I'm not a telephone person.
You know, I'm not that. So, yeah, so I sold to AT&T.
Yeah. Sold to AT&T. All right, next business venture then.
Well. Not radio. No. Not telephone.
No. What was this third one? Call centers, because I'd gotten to know AT&T and
(20:09):
gotten to know sort of the phone business.
The internet was, and that really was the gateway for me.
Gateway technology, right? Because all of a sudden, bandwidth made phone calls cheap.
If you really think about it, I think it made the acquisition of information, the cost, zero, right?
(20:33):
All of a sudden, people could access, you think about it today,
how you use your navigation system to get, I mean, how much time does that save you, right?
Versus, you remember when we We had to stop at the gas station and ask for directions.
I mean, you know, it's amazing.
(20:53):
So anyway, you know, phone calls became cheap.
And I had this relationship in the telephone business with AT&T.
So I set up a call center.
Actually, here in Houston was
the first one. But the real opportunity was offshore in India and Chile.
(21:15):
Philae. And I set up call centers in those places to arbitrage labor prices
and to take advantage of the ability to make cheap phone calls back into the
United States for customer service.
So built that up. You know, we had a couple of thousand agents and then sold that to AT&T as well.
(21:36):
So later on. Yeah. And that's all before your current role.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting because Because when we met first,
we were talking about just having that entrepreneurial spirit.
And as someone that's never owned a business, for a lot of us in this room,
we've never been entrepreneurs, you said something really interesting that really sat with me.
(22:02):
You said that even if you're not an entrepreneur, we all have that entrepreneurial
spirit in us. Absolutely.
Explain what you mean by that. Absolutely. So it is my view, right?
And I'm certain it's right. I just am.
Each of us, you know, opportunity abounds for each of us.
(22:27):
And it's how we take advantage of it or if we take advantage of it, right?
Do we take the risk that are in front of us or do we just let it slide?
Do we think about how we might do it better, how it might be done better?
Or do we just let it slide, right? And, you know, it's risky to take the risk.
(22:50):
I grant you that it is because as any entrepreneur, I think that's worth its salt.
What she will tell you is that if you take enough risk, you'll get hurt,
you'll lose, you'll fail.
But the key is not not to fail.
(23:12):
The key is to fail small and win big.
Right. And so to really take calculated risk, you know, risk to adjust the risk
based on the possible return, but to always take risk.
And I think often in larger companies, in any company, the most successful companies
(23:38):
are those that are characterized by entrepreneurial spirit within the people in the company.
And that's true whether the company has 10 people or 10,000. It's the same.
I'm glad you said that because this is obviously a company of more than 10 people.
What sort of entrepreneurial spirit do you see at LYB and in Peter,
(24:03):
just in your experience as as an LYB board member?
It's fun now for me in a way that when I first joined, it was much less so.
Just certain things, you know, the value enhancement program,
I think that's incredible.
To me, an organization that's as alive at the bottom as it is at the top is
(24:33):
one that works and that wins, right?
Where everybody really has a stake, can make a difference in their own lives,
but also in the lives of the people around them.
They really have an opportunity to move the needle.
The value enhancement program is one way, it seems to me, that's very tangible,
(24:56):
you know, generating several hundred million dollars that came out of nowhere, right?
It's real money.
It makes a real difference. I look at the new strategy, how transformational it is.
You know, the plastic recycling facility.
(25:18):
That's all entrepreneurial. People bring in little plastic bags,
you know, to be recycled.
It's how do you do that? You have to create a system that is completely entrepreneurial
in order to make that work. I think it's tremendously exciting.
And each of us, I would suspect, in your own jobs, have opportunities to do
(25:43):
things, to look at things in a different way.
Just because these things have been done the same way for, you know,
however long, I mean, that's almost evidence that there's probably a better
way to do it. I mean, it just is.
You know, it needs to make sense. It needs to, you know, but then I think you
(26:04):
have to try it and you're going to fail with some of this stuff. And that's OK, too.
It's a tremendous transformation.
And I've been here almost, you know, exactly for the transformation.
Right. I was here about, oh, I don't know, a little over a year.
I started my tenure on the LYB board before Peter got here.
(26:27):
I was on the selection committee for the new CEO.
And Peter always seemed like the guy to me.
Let's wrap it up the way that we started. I asked you about your upbringing,
your family, but tell us about your family.
Sure. What does your family look like now? Kids, wife?
Yeah, all of the above. Okay. My immediate family. So I told you my dad passed away in 2012.
(26:53):
My beloved mom who was, you know, you know, my dad was great, but my mom was fabulous.
So my mom passed away three years ago. She lived with us the last.
She lived with me and my immediate family the last four years of her life,
which was great, which is great. It's particularly great for my kids. Yeah.
(27:16):
Spoiled people that they are. I was like, is that why you're choked up?
Because she did spend that in those last few years. Well, just because.
Yeah, she's your mom. She's my mom.
So my family. I have a wife. I've been married for 35 years.
Don't tell her that I really don't know the number.
I don't. I don't. It's been a long time. We won't tell. It's been a long time.
(27:39):
I love her to death. She's amazing. I met her when she she was a student at
Wellesley College in Boston.
So we met, you know, way back when. In any case, and we've just we've had a
lot of fun over the last many years.
We have one biological child who is 32 and lives here in Houston.
(28:07):
He's doing great. We adopted two kids, each as infants.
The first was an abandoned child. They think he was a week old.
He's now, get this, he's 20, and he's an architecture student at UT.
Wow. Yep.
(28:29):
Yeah, it's a good story. It is. It is. And then he has got a younger sister
who we adopted from Africa.
She is 16 with all that that means.
That sounds fun. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She just got her driver's license. It's just awful.
(28:52):
I have a 16-year-old. It's just awful. It's just awful.
I can empathize. No, she's wonderful. Her name, we named her Abyssinia,
which is the original name of Ethiopia.
And we call her Kat. Her middle name is my mom's name.
(29:12):
So that's my family. I've got a sister, a younger sister, whose birthday was
a couple of days ago, and she's a lawyer at Shell.
She's been there for 25 years, something like that.
That's my family. Very nice. Yeah. Very nice.
Music.
Jeff and I had become friends, so I went to Jeff, and I said,
Hey, look, Jeff, I have $20,000.
I need $980,000, and I'm there. And I'm there.
And so I'm just a little short. I'm just a little short.
You're almost there. I'm just a little short, but I think we can get there.
(00:21):
He asked me what my plan was for this station, and I told him. and we worked it out.
Your dad moved to Houston. He did. He moved to, he got, he was the first black graduate of UT.
Got his master's degree in architecture and his first black architect in the state of Texas.
(00:48):
You know, the value enhancement program, I think that's incredible.
To me, an organization that's as alive at the bottom as it is at the top is
one that works and that wins, right?
(01:09):
Where everybody really has a stake, can make a difference.
Welcome to the Lined Elba Cell podcast series. Today, we've got a great conversation
in store for you with LYB board member Tony Chase.
I actually met Tony earlier this year ahead of our Global Leaders Forum.
(01:29):
That's where 150 of the top leaders at LYB fly in from all over the world to
meet, discuss company strategy, initiatives, and more.
I was asked to host a fireside chat with Tony during the forum so that the attendees
could hear him, get to know him, find some inspiration in his story?
They certainly did, but more on that in a bit.
(01:51):
First, let me give you some background on Tony. Tony Chase is a chairman and CEO of Chase Source LP.
He previously started and sold three different ventures, Chase Radio Partners,
Cricket Wireless, and Chase Comp.
Tony grew up in Houston attending public schools. He is an honors graduate of
Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School.
(02:13):
He was a tenured professor at the University of Houston, where he taught law for 30 years.
Tony's company, Chase Source, is ranked by Black Enterprise Magazine as one
of the nation's largest minority-owned businesses.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Now, back to finding inspiration in Tony's story. His fireside chat went over
(02:35):
so well at the Global Leaders Forum that we decided to bring the conversation to you.
So let's get into this special edition of the LYB podcast filmed earlier this
year with LYB board member Tony Chase.
First of all, Tony, thank you for being here. I'm glad to be here.
In fact, I'm honored to be here with you.
(02:56):
Where you are is a great place to be.
And so many people, you know, I feel like I'll speak in that personally that
we aren't grateful enough. Right.
Just the fact that we're in this room suggests that we are in much better position
(03:19):
than most people in this world.
And a good deal of it has to do with our own talents, but a good deal of it
has to do with things outside of our talents.
And so gratitude probably is in order as well.
Well, we're really grateful that you're here as well, Tony. Thank you.
(03:39):
So I know that you and I chatted a few months ago, and I felt very inspired
by my conversation with Tony.
And I think you all are in for a real treat because Tony has a very interesting story.
You have a very interesting upbringing as well. And I know we're going to talk
about your entrepreneurial spirit and your leadership, but it all really began
(04:00):
at a young age for you. Your dad was such a trailblazer.
So let's start from the beginning. Let's start with your just upbringing.
At what point did you feel like I might be an entrepreneur and what really impacted you the most?
Sure. So my dad, I appreciate you mentioning my dad, Deepa, because he passed away in 2012.
(04:22):
You know, I think about him every day, I think.
He grew up in Maryland. And to make a pretty long story short,
he applied to the University of Texas to go to the School of architecture.
He was really interested in architecture.
And he was denied because he's black.
(04:44):
At that time, U of H, I mean, UT hadn't admitted any black students.
And so Thurgood Marshall, who was head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund at the time,
Called him up and said, we want to file a lawsuit.
And long story short, they did. It went up to Supreme Court.
My dad joined the Army, went to fight in the Philippines.
(05:08):
While the case wound its way through the court system, they won the Supreme Court case.
And he came to Austin to register at University of Texas, first black student, in the fall of 1951.
And that was pretty amazing. First black student at UT was your dad. Yeah.
(05:33):
The really lucky part, though, the really lucky part, that's how this works, right?
The really lucky part for him and for me is that he couldn't live on campus
because, you know, they got the admit black students part.
OK, but black students living on campus, that wasn't happening quite yet.
And so he lived in East Austin, as some of you know, that's historically been
(05:57):
the minority side of Austin.
But he met my mom. And so I was born a couple of years in 1955 after that.
So, yeah, so it was great. It was great.
And then your dad moved to Houston. He did. He moved to, he got,
he was the first black graduate of UT.
Got his master's degree in architecture. and his first black architect in the state of Texas.
(06:23):
And architecture is, you know, interesting. You know, engineers appreciate,
you know, there at least was an apprenticeship requirement in order to get licensed.
And so he went through that process. He got licensed and decided that he would
work for himself because it was difficult to get a job.
(06:48):
And his thesis, when he was at UT School of Architecture, was about the black
church and the design of the black church, which is kind of smart, right?
Because if there was any institution in the black community that had capital, it was a church.
(07:09):
And so every Sunday as a kid, uh, growing up, we would go and my dad had gotten
a lot of press because when he was admitted to UT, it was in the papers and all that stuff.
And, and so every Sunday we'd go to a different church around the state.
We'd get in the car and we drive and it was awful.
(07:29):
And, and we go to different black church.
And, And for those of you who've been to a black church, they'd scream and holler and, uh, and, uh.
And then finally they would say, you know, we're honored to have today,
you know, the person you read about who started, graduated from UT.
(07:51):
And by the way, we've got a new building fund.
Then we're going to pass the plate for that.
And they would, you know, ask my dad to design the church. So he designed a
number of black churches around the state.
But then he started doing different things. He did the George R.
Brown Convention Center.
Yeah, I was waiting to see if you were just going to throw that in as a throwaway.
(08:15):
And also he designed the George R. Brown Convention Center.
He was a good guy. Tony's dad, yeah. Yeah, good guy. All right,
so then you grow up in Houston. You went to public schools here in Houston.
You end up going to, you move to the East Coast, finished your schooling there.
Right. And then you go on to Harvard. Right.
So Harvard Business School, then Harvard Law School. Mm-hmm. In Harvard College.
(08:37):
College, law school, business school. College, law school, a business school.
Okay. You finished law school, but you didn't really like law school.
Not so much. Yeah, right. No, I finished it. Not your favorite.
Not my favorite. Not your favorite. Not my favorite.
Intellectually, academically, law school was fabulous. It was fabulous.
I, you know, never been as sort of intellectually challenged and excited as
(09:03):
as in my law school classes.
But, you know, sorry, Jeff, but practicing, you know, practicing law. I mean, that's awful.
Right. It's awful. It's like, where are the attorneys?
Yeah. Well, I mean, my sense is right. And that's sort of relevant to this conversation,
(09:27):
I think, is that there are two types of people in this world.
They're bakers and they're slicers, you know, and lawyers are slicers, right?
I mean, you know, they kind of are to me, right? They are.
I mean, and I always wanted to be more of a baker, you know. Right.
(09:48):
So after college, you decided to do the baking first?
Well... Or did we do slicing and then baking? Well, you sort of have to slice
a little first. Okay. So is that when you decided to teach law?
Yeah. Well, I decided to teach... Well, yes. Didn't love law school,
but then got asked to be a professor of law. Right. That's true.
(10:09):
So in short, what happened, I went first to work for an investment banking firm.
And I worked in New York on Wall Street for a while.
And then, you know, after doing that for six years or so, you know,
New York was difficult for me, just sort of in general.
And I really did want to do things on my own, you know, entrepreneurial.
(10:34):
And I thought it'd be better to do that in Houston, to come home and do it.
And problem was I didn't have any money. And so I needed a job to,
you know, to pay the rent and so forth.
And I had done pretty well in law school.
So U of H asked me to teach and I thought that was great.
(10:56):
And so I hustled to get tenure pretty quickly so that, because,
you know, once you're tenured, you sort of do anything.
That's the way I looked at it. And so that's what it was. So it would give me
the opportunity to do other things.
So then how did you begin your business venture? My entrepreneur venture. Yes. Okay, so I began.
(11:20):
It's interesting to talk about it in this building. I'll tell you why.
My first foray into entrepreneurship, I bought a radio station.
And the reason I did was because I was teaching law at U of H during the day.
And I had, when I was in college, been a DJ on the college radio station.
(11:43):
I had a jazz show called Breakfast Jam.
And I love jazz. And I was really into it when I was in college.
That the show went from six to eight in the morning because we turned off the transmitter.
The radio station went off air at overnight.
(12:03):
So I had to come into the station an hour early to turn on the transmitter.
So it would warm up to full power.
Right. I've had to do that as well. Yeah. And, and so five o'clock in the morning
to get to the radio station, particularly in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
it was ridiculously cold.
But I loved it. I loved it. And I thought I knew a lot about radio.
(12:25):
And when I worked in investment banking in New York, I was primarily banking
media and communications companies.
And so I thought I'd buy a radio station. And the reason why this building is
interesting to talk about this in is because, of course, when I wanted to buy
a radio station, and I found one to buy in Dallas, KHRB.
(12:48):
It cost a million dollars. It was a daytime, because, you know, it was an AM station.
Many AM stations go off at night, and it was a black gospel.
It was programmed black gospel.
Again, kind of a relation to what my dad was doing and designing churches and
so forth, and I'd sort of grown up in the black church, And I thought I knew about radio.
(13:11):
I thought I knew about black gospel, et cetera. And I thought it made a whole lot of sense.
Only problem was I didn't have a million dollars, but, you know, so.
But I'd gone to business school at Harvard with Jeff Hines, whose father's business
(13:31):
was headquartered here, who actually his father built this building.
And and Jeff and I had become friends. So I went to Jeff and I said,
hey, look, Jeff, I have twenty thousand dollars.
I need nine hundred and eighty.
I'm there. I'm there. And so I'm just a little short.
(13:52):
I'm just a little short. Yeah, I'm just a little short, but I think we can get there.
And we talked about it for a while.
He asked me what my plan was for the station. station and, um,
and I told him and, uh, we, we worked it out.
And so I bought this station, you know, long story short, and I bought seven
(14:17):
more and, um, not with Jeff though.
Interestingly, Jeff was, stayed a partner in that station and until we sold
all of them, uh, a few years later.
So you sell all the stations, but then you invest in the next venture.
Yeah. Which is not radio. Right. Kind of related.
Yeah. Yeah. How did you decide what to venture into next?
(14:42):
You know, I think, you know, I think it's relevant for this conversation that,
you know, opportunity abounds, you know, it's sort of all around us.
It's not that we have to search out and find opportunity.
(15:02):
I mean, you do, you do, but it's there.
And I think the more difficult part is to recognize it and take advantage of it.
And so it was the late 90s, you know, cell phones and Internet were still to
come. There was the experience in Scandinavia.
(15:27):
They had cell phone adoption pretty well before we did, several years before we did.
And it seemed pretty clear to me that that was the way the world was going.
And so when there was a federal government auction to sell Spectrum to offer
(15:48):
cell phone service, I thought, you know, well, that's where I need to be.
You know, it was pretty clear all the big companies, the Bell operating companies in particular,
Sprint as well, AT&T, they were all, you know, all over this.
(16:09):
But they wanted to create cell service for people who could afford it, right?
People who could pay their bills without much trouble. And I thought there was
a significant opportunity for self, because once the service became ubiquitous.
(16:31):
Which it seemed to me it almost certainly would, then it would be,
you know, critical for all people to have connection.
So my, you know, idea was Cricket, right?
Cricket Wireless. Do you guys remember the commercials?
Yeah. And so I opened the first Cricket market. And, you know,
Cricket was predicated on basically prepaid phone service, right?
(16:54):
It was all you could eat for 25 bucks.
All you could eat, meaning all the calls you could make for $25 a month.
And you had to pay your $25 up front at the beginning of the month.
Otherwise, we cut off your service.
And that was great because it essentially eliminated customer service because
(17:15):
80% of customer service in the phone business is about the bill.
And if there's no bill, we didn't send bills, then it really streamlined our cost on that.
And it really was predicated on the technology being able to handle the load
because, you know, we knew we'd have a lot of demand.
(17:37):
And there was a fellow out in California named Erwin Jacobs who founded Qualcomm,
who had come up with this spread spectrum technology,
CDMA, for those of you who are familiar.
And he and I met and became really good friends.
(17:59):
He's long since passed away now. He passed away about 15 years ago, I guess.
He was such a great guy. real scientist.
And basically Cricket became the showroom for his technology here in America
because he hadn't, you know, so we partnered and I built the first four Cricket
(18:20):
markets. The first one was in, all in Tennessee.
That's where I bought the spectrum from the federal government.
I had to bid for that spectrum. I bid 20.
Six million dollars for the spectrum. I didn't have that either.
I was going to say, did you make a lot of money? Didn't have that either.
You had to borrow a little bit of that too? Didn't have that either. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
(18:40):
But, you know, I mean. You seem to have a knack for asking for money.
No, I mean, you know, that was just.
Maybe that should be the next fireside show, to ask for a lot of money.
But it was such a successful technology, CDMA, Cricut Wireless.
Like you tapped into a market and found a niche that no one else had really
tapped into. But then you decided to get out of that as well.
(19:02):
I did. I did. But only because, you know, there's a time for everything in a place.
And in my time and place was over. You know, I built the first four cricket
markets, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, covered the entire state of Tennessee.
(19:24):
But then I needed five billion dollars to build out a national network.
You know, maybe, but nah.
You know what I mean? Nah.
You draw the line at five billion. Well, I mean, or I could have a really nice
payday and go to the next thing, right, that was appropriate for me.
(19:46):
And, you know, being a telephone person, come on, I'm not a telephone person.
You know, I'm not that. So, yeah, so I sold to AT&T.
Yeah. Sold to AT&T. All right, next business venture then.
Well. Not radio. No. Not telephone.
No. What was this third one? Call centers, because I'd gotten to know AT&T and
(20:09):
gotten to know sort of the phone business.
The internet was, and that really was the gateway for me.
Gateway technology, right? Because all of a sudden, bandwidth made phone calls cheap.
If you really think about it, I think it made the acquisition of information, the cost, zero, right?
(20:33):
All of a sudden, people could access, you think about it today,
how you use your navigation system to get, I mean, how much time does that save you, right?
Versus, you remember when we We had to stop at the gas station and ask for directions.
I mean, you know, it's amazing.
(20:53):
So anyway, you know, phone calls became cheap.
And I had this relationship in the telephone business with AT&T.
So I set up a call center.
Actually, here in Houston was
the first one. But the real opportunity was offshore in India and Chile.
(21:15):
Philae. And I set up call centers in those places to arbitrage labor prices
and to take advantage of the ability to make cheap phone calls back into the
United States for customer service.
So built that up. You know, we had a couple of thousand agents and then sold that to AT&T as well.
(21:36):
So later on. Yeah. And that's all before your current role.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting because Because when we met first,
we were talking about just having that entrepreneurial spirit.
And as someone that's never owned a business, for a lot of us in this room,
we've never been entrepreneurs, you said something really interesting that really sat with me.
(22:02):
You said that even if you're not an entrepreneur, we all have that entrepreneurial
spirit in us. Absolutely.
Explain what you mean by that. Absolutely. So it is my view, right?
And I'm certain it's right. I just am.
Each of us, you know, opportunity abounds for each of us.
(22:27):
And it's how we take advantage of it or if we take advantage of it, right?
Do we take the risk that are in front of us or do we just let it slide?
Do we think about how we might do it better, how it might be done better?
Or do we just let it slide, right? And, you know, it's risky to take the risk.
(22:50):
I grant you that it is because as any entrepreneur, I think that's worth its salt.
What she will tell you is that if you take enough risk, you'll get hurt,
you'll lose, you'll fail.
But the key is not not to fail.
(23:12):
The key is to fail small and win big.
Right. And so to really take calculated risk, you know, risk to adjust the risk
based on the possible return, but to always take risk.
And I think often in larger companies, in any company, the most successful companies
(23:38):
are those that are characterized by entrepreneurial spirit within the people in the company.
And that's true whether the company has 10 people or 10,000. It's the same.
I'm glad you said that because this is obviously a company of more than 10 people.
What sort of entrepreneurial spirit do you see at LYB and in Peter,
(24:03):
just in your experience as as an LYB board member?
It's fun now for me in a way that when I first joined, it was much less so.
Just certain things, you know, the value enhancement program,
I think that's incredible.
To me, an organization that's as alive at the bottom as it is at the top is
(24:33):
one that works and that wins, right?
Where everybody really has a stake, can make a difference in their own lives,
but also in the lives of the people around them.
They really have an opportunity to move the needle.
The value enhancement program is one way, it seems to me, that's very tangible,
(24:56):
you know, generating several hundred million dollars that came out of nowhere, right?
It's real money.
It makes a real difference. I look at the new strategy, how transformational it is.
You know, the plastic recycling facility.
(25:18):
That's all entrepreneurial. People bring in little plastic bags,
you know, to be recycled.
It's how do you do that? You have to create a system that is completely entrepreneurial
in order to make that work. I think it's tremendously exciting.
And each of us, I would suspect, in your own jobs, have opportunities to do
(25:43):
things, to look at things in a different way.
Just because these things have been done the same way for, you know,
however long, I mean, that's almost evidence that there's probably a better
way to do it. I mean, it just is.
You know, it needs to make sense. It needs to, you know, but then I think you
(26:04):
have to try it and you're going to fail with some of this stuff. And that's OK, too.
It's a tremendous transformation.
And I've been here almost, you know, exactly for the transformation.
Right. I was here about, oh, I don't know, a little over a year.
I started my tenure on the LYB board before Peter got here.
(26:27):
I was on the selection committee for the new CEO.
And Peter always seemed like the guy to me.
Let's wrap it up the way that we started. I asked you about your upbringing,
your family, but tell us about your family.
Sure. What does your family look like now? Kids, wife?
Yeah, all of the above. Okay. My immediate family. So I told you my dad passed away in 2012.
(26:53):
My beloved mom who was, you know, you know, my dad was great, but my mom was fabulous.
So my mom passed away three years ago. She lived with us the last.
She lived with me and my immediate family the last four years of her life,
which was great, which is great. It's particularly great for my kids. Yeah.
(27:16):
Spoiled people that they are. I was like, is that why you're choked up?
Because she did spend that in those last few years. Well, just because.
Yeah, she's your mom. She's my mom.
So my family. I have a wife. I've been married for 35 years.
Don't tell her that I really don't know the number.
I don't. I don't. It's been a long time. We won't tell. It's been a long time.
(27:39):
I love her to death. She's amazing. I met her when she she was a student at
Wellesley College in Boston.
So we met, you know, way back when. In any case, and we've just we've had a
lot of fun over the last many years.
We have one biological child who is 32 and lives here in Houston.
(28:07):
He's doing great. We adopted two kids, each as infants.
The first was an abandoned child. They think he was a week old.
He's now, get this, he's 20, and he's an architecture student at UT.
Wow. Yep.
(28:29):
Yeah, it's a good story. It is. It is. And then he has got a younger sister
who we adopted from Africa.
She is 16 with all that that means.
That sounds fun. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She just got her driver's license. It's just awful.
(28:52):
I have a 16-year-old. It's just awful. It's just awful.
I can empathize. No, she's wonderful. Her name, we named her Abyssinia,
which is the original name of Ethiopia.
And we call her Kat. Her middle name is my mom's name.
(29:12):
So that's my family. I've got a sister, a younger sister, whose birthday was
a couple of days ago, and she's a lawyer at Shell.
She's been there for 25 years, something like that.
That's my family. Very nice. Yeah. Very nice.
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