Anniversary Throwback - #6: Clayton Flurry, Flurry's Market - In The Thick of It

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, listeners, this is Scott Hollrah.
It's hard to believe that we launchedIn The Thick of It almost a year ago.
As we're nearing our first anniversary,
we're workinghard on a celebratory episode.
In the meantime, we'd love for you
to catch up on a founder storyyou may have missed.
Not that I don't get excitedabout every guest and every episode
that we launch, but today's is extraspecial for me for two reasons.

(00:24):
First, as a business ownermyself, I'm always rooting
for other people who have taken the riskto start something on their own.
Second, I'm kind of like Oprah
in that I love to share things that I lovewith other people.
Maybe one day we'll do a live episodewith a live audience
and I'll give away all my favorite things,but until then, this will have to do.
Today's guest literally feeds my familyseveral times a week.

(00:46):
Flurry’s Market is located in my townand has quickly become a fixture
in our community.
I look forward to sharing the storyof Clayton Flurry, owner and Instagram
sensation behind Flurry’sMarket in Flower Mound, Texas.
Clayton has built a business on deliveringan exceptional experience, and he shares
what it was like in the early stagesof launching his business
at the height of a pandemic.
From running an oil and gas operationto opening Flurry’s Market,

(01:10):
we talk about the importance
of learning from those who have done itbefore you making quality hires
and never being afraidof trying something new.
Welcome to In The Thick of It.
Well, man,
thanks for coming or glad to have you hereand look forward to hearing your story.
Tell me about growing up.
Where'd you grow up?
Oh, man.
You know, actually, my wife Katieand I, we grew up in the same town.

(01:32):
Now, we didn't know each other growing upin that town of Shreveport, Louisiana.
So just three hours dueeast of here, driveway to driveway.
And so born and raised thereand was really able to stay in the state
all the way throughprobably my mid to late 20s,
which includedmilitary service and college.
So it wasn't until 2014we found our way to Texas.

(01:54):
Okay.
So what was growing up like?
Did you go to private school?Public school?
Did you play sports?
Yeah. No no no no to all those things.
So we didn't really have money, nor didI really have the probably,
I don't know, the wherewithalto hang in a private school.
And so I was what's calleda neighborhood kid back in the day.

(02:16):
I was went through the public schoolsystem over my hometown.
And this isn't a knock. It'sjust the truth. It's.
I'm glad I've survived it.
So I went to public schooland wasn't really focused on
college, wasn't really college driven,didn't play sports.
I use my size at the time as an excuse,but I was really more interested in
just hanging out with my buddiesand chasing girls

(02:36):
and really did the former the best across.
So, you know,didn't really have many aspirations.
So I knew I needed to get out of school.
And that's when I also said one daya recruiter,
I guess, came to our classroom said,if you want to get out of class all day,
you can take this Asvab test.And I didn't even know what that was.
Come on, do that.
And then I found myself in the military,shot and boots on the floor.

(02:58):
And at 17 years old, which was one ofthe best things ever happened to me.
So I went to the Army as a C studentand got out of the army.
And that's when I met my wife,thank God, chased her to Louisiana Tech
and did four years there and stayed
in Louisiana there after thatand found myself an oil field.
Awesome. You big Terry Bradshaw fan.

(03:19):
To hear Terry Bradshaw, Karl Malone,those are the two people say, you know,
losing tackle Terry Bradshaw and realizedKarl Malone was there Karl Malone yeah.
When the duck commander and I learned itI think it's true.
I think it's true that Terry Bradshawactually played back up to Phil Robertson.
I have heard the same name.
And Phil
just decided he'd rather hunt and fishand didn't want to commit to the game.

(03:42):
Imagine how different things would be.
Yeah, yeah yeah.
So college football really again,not not chasing
a college or really having the aspirationsor being pushed to go to college.
I didn't really grow up with an alma materto root for LSU.
Louisiana State University was is kind oflike the state school like Texas.
You know, you've got so many differentlarge universities.

(04:04):
It's it's LSU or bust, really.
Anything outside of that in Louisiana
you wouldn't even go to your own homegame.
You still down Louisianaat LSU's home games.
But I don't know a single personfrom Louisiana
who doesn't root for LSU, regardlessof whether or not they went there.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
I mean, that's the state schoolquote, unquote.
I wonder if there are more LSU fansthan Saints fans.

(04:29):
Oh, I don't know.
I think if you're 11A fan of either,
you're a fan of both because it's always a special such media.
You see it, it's the kind of the trafficthat your home school, if you're
if you're a Louisiana Techand you win, great.
And then if LSU won extra, great.
And if the Saints won that weekendbonus, it's the trifecta.

(04:49):
That's.
Yeah.
You know, there's a lot of people herein Dallas that don't like the Cowboys.
So you know that could go either way.
So 17 years oldyou're finishing up high school
and you go straight into the Army.
Did what you talked about Shannon Boots.
But what kind of jobs did you havein the Army.

(05:11):
I had many jobs.
My stepfather blue collar.
He gave me some wisdom earlybefore I left.
He said, get to know the cooksand get to know the supply sergeants.
And I had no idea what that meant.
But I did his advice and it paid dividendsbecause you never went hungry.
You had access to food when others didn't.

(05:31):
In the middle of the nightwhen you really wanted it,
and you always had the equipmentyou needed
when you got to know the supply folks.
But I didn't know what I was doing, Scott.
I just knew that that's where I wound up.
And looking back, it'ssomething I would never change
and also learnthat there's two sides of the military.
You've got the enlisted sideand the the officer side, if you will.
Or simply put, the educated side.

(05:52):
And I was on the enlisted sideand I looked around, my company
and I was one of few that non courtordered people that were there.
It was a very interesting Crown Court or
oh man, I mean people areI mean yeah, it's like, hey juvenile,
you can go in the militaryor you can face this type of punishment.
And so it was just
there was a lot of people there that justdidn't have any other path to take.

(06:13):
And I mean, I guess hindsight,maybe I was one
I could have stayedin my hometown of Shreveport and,
I don't know, vocational schoolor an hourly job or something.
I don't know, but it really opened my eyesto how long, you know, any career
you kind of learn through life
what you don't want to do morethan what you do want to do sometimes.
And so I learned that
sure don't want to be a lifer in this,but I excelled at it, humbly

(06:36):
excelled at it, I enjoyed it,I got to meet all walks of life.
And had I not met my wifewhile I was serving,
I was on the path to go to whatthey called at the time green to gold.
Maybe it's called that now.
And it's, where you go from enlistedto an officer status and go to West Point
and what have you.
And I was going through that process,but I chased a heart

(06:57):
with Katie, and she was at Louisiana Tech,and that's where, that's where I went.
I get that.
So he said something earlierthat really stood out and I don't know
that I've ever met anybody in the militarythat stayed in the same state
throughout their entire timein, in the military.
And I said, yeah, well there's a processwhen you get to boot camp,

(07:19):
they say pick three stations.
Where do you want to go?
And you look at your choices.
And I was just really a homebody.
And I said, well, there's FortPolk, Louisiana.
I know where that is, but it's Louisianabehind the name.
So one, that's choice one, I think.
Choice two I picked Hawaii just because Iwas like, man, you go to Hawaii, why not?
And I don't even knowwhat choice three was.

(07:40):
And they said, you can go to Louisiana.I was like great.
And so ended up in two hoursfrom my hometown of Shreveport.
And so any given weekend I,I was not in the field doing something.
I'd just get in the carand zip on back home and run around
with my running buddies from high schoolthat stuck around.
So really, my first two yearsof full active duty service,

(08:01):
I got to spend a lot of time back at home.
That's and that's a. Rare yeah thing.
I've got a lot of military in my family.
And, you know, those six month deploymentsthey wear on the home front for sure.
So that's a huge, hugeblessing to be able to be that close.
Yeah for sure.
So you did your entire military timeat for Hulk.

(08:21):
Yes. That'swhat I was my four years station.
That's where I was.But I didn't get that lucky.
So I mean,I literally showed up with papers in hand,
I don't know, call itthe end of the summer, end of a summer.
And they said, well, your unit's not here.
So go mow grass. Go get on this outside.
Okay. So.
Hey, mom, I made it.
I'm down here and I'm mowing grass,but so.

(08:44):
But but what?
Well,my unit's over in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
and so I'm going to be joining them herein about 30 days or so.
And I don't know where Bosnia is, nor doesmama I don't think she does.
So yeah I spent seven months in Bosniaright out of boot camp.
Wow. Which was interesting.
It was, towardsthe end of the initial war over there.
And what year would that have been?

(09:05):
It was 97, 97.
Clinton was still in office.
And so that was quite the experience.
And and looking back at it, even today,I was just a young 17, 18 year old kid.
I mean, you could put me on a planeand say, this is where you're going.
And oh, by the way, where you're at.
Again, I didn't excel in high schooland world geography and stuff, and so

(09:26):
I just I'm taking you for your word.
This is where you're atand this is what you're going to be doing.
And I was very simpleassignment had no idea the gravity of it.
Checks and checkpoints for war criminalsand confiscating weapons
and all this stuff.
It's like even in civilian world,the jobs are jobs, a job.
You come back and you get all these,all these oh, man service.
It's just a job at the time.

(09:47):
It's just a job.
That's fun.
Though I disagree with that, man.
I, I wholeheartedly disagree with that.
I appreciate the humility.
But man, it's not just a job.
there's sacrificeand you're putting yourself in harm's way.
And some people, you don't know if you'recoming home and some people don't.
Yeah.
So it's not just a job.

(10:08):
Well, I think I don't know.I'll speak for myself.
I mean, I'm really doing some reflectingas we sit here talking through it.
You know, when you're 18 years oldand you're sitting over there, I mean,
and you don't really come from much fromthe beginning of the in a loving family.
What do you have to I mean, you know,if they going today, it'd be different.
I got three kids,
a dog house and all this stuffthat if I went over there today, I'd.

(10:30):
I'd be way more timid and go, man,I got a lot to lose.
But then when you get to, you're overthere, just hard charge and man, just lets
go and you're trained and it's not likeI was on the front lines over there.
Okay, this is church.
When my brother was still in active duty,we got word.
I don't even know how he found out, but,he was deployed and one of the

(10:51):
Hornets in his squadron went down.
And we didn't know who it was.
And waiting for hours and hours and hoursto hear back like that was hard.
And that was really hard.And thankfully it wasn't him.
But there's obviously a familyon the other side
and the pilot and the Wizo, the back seatguy, they were both thankfully okay,

(11:13):
and they pulled him out of the water andand so they had some injuries, but
man, that's a long wait.
When you know something like that's gone.Know for sure.
And I tell you it, I don't knowif it been more of a pleasant experience.
This is talking about the deployment,
you know, in 97.
It's crazyhow far we've come with technology.
There was no cell phones, right?

(11:34):
I mean, their cell phoneswere really coming on the scene,
but there was no Facebook and appsand all this stuff over there.
So if I wanted to call home,it was a major process.
And you got to use the phoneevery third day or so of the week,
and you had to wait your turn in line,and you couldn't
just go pick up a telephoneand call the ten digit number.
No, you had to call a military postand then give them your phone number.

(11:55):
You're trying to calland you're in a different time zone.
And it was always echoey.And you know, it's funny.
You know, Mom or dad would tell you a jokeand you'd hear the joke
and you'd start laughing about it,but they're already on to something else.
And it was just it was so choppyand so just inconvenient and good luck.
And usually the the times you got to usethe phone
is when they were out to eat dinner.
So you never got them right
and you weren't calling their cell phone,you were calling their home phone.

(12:18):
So there was just a different time.
Interesting.
My wife and I were travelinga few weeks ago.
We were in Vancouverand kids were back home,
and my wife calls to check on them
and she facetimes them and it hit me.
We're in another countrythousands of miles away from home,

(12:39):
and we are driving down the highwayat 70 miles an hour,
and we're having a video call.
Yeah, with our kids. Like,that's pretty mind blowing.
So think of itand we take that for granted.
We do, we do.
And yesterday, finally, I have a brother.
I have a few brothers, but, the brother.
My half brother with my mom. Are we sure?
Mom? He's down in Houston.It just hit me yesterday afternoon.
I said, why can't we just FaceTimethe two of us together?

(13:01):
Our mother. And we did.
I said, you know, it's amazing technology.
And we leverage the FaceTimebutton ourselves yesterday.
Nice. Yeah. Very nice.
All right.
So four years in the Army. Yeah.
You met your wife. How did you two meet?
A weekend off.
Went back to Shreveport, and she was.
So we're two years apart
a year and a half,and she was graduating high school, which.

(13:24):
Yeah, a few months left.
And my buddies, again,they weren't really going anywhere fast,
and they're still hanging around, maybesome high school kids here and there.
And so anyhow, I found myself at some highschool party and, she was there, okay.
And the rest was history.
I think she even hada boyfriend at the time. And
a high school kid.

(13:45):
So. Yeah, that's where we met.
I just come back to Shreveport,and so we hit it off.
Call it love at first sight. Whatever.
And so that was two years in the militaryand then.
So we stayed together long distancefor two years until I got out.
Okay.
And she went straight to law tech.
She went straight to law tech.
And she graduated twice.
She graduated with her undergradand stuck around college

(14:08):
because I was there or whatever.
She we graduated from my firsttime, had her second time.
I know five 2005. It's awesome.
When I was getting ready to graduate,I did not know what I wanted to do.
And one of the things that went throughmy mind was, I'm going to get a masters.
And for me it was,can I buy two more years

(14:29):
to figure out what I want to doanyway, I've always admired people
that go that extra distanceand things I did for her.
I was ready to move on becauseat that time I did feel like I was behind.
I spent four years,
I leave high school, four year servicenow, four years undergrad.
That's eight years.
I'm like in some of the friends that I hadthat they had already graduated.

(14:50):
You know,I felt like I was behind us behind.
They graduated college, correct? Yeah.
And so my and I've, I've seenand I watched some of them already.
They've had their first job for four yearsin the corporate world.
They're owning homes and all stuff.
I'm like, man, I'm still in college.
But I'll never forget my father in law now
saying, you're not behindyou just hang on and I didn't realize it.

(15:10):
So now 9/11 occurred.
You know, I got out the year of 911,so I got out in June and then of 2001.
And so, you know, 911it was kind of a huge favor for military
service members because there wasthis all need renewed respect.
And we love veterans.
And so I kind of got out withI got out and went to college.

(15:31):
You kind of
I was able to compete against guyswith their masters and stuff,
because I had that on my resumeas a veteran
and I, my father in law was right,I wasn't behind.
Yeah, it was interesting.
You talk about that renewed respectand I can remember that.
Were you ever disrespected?
Oh no, absolutely not.
But it was just one of those thingsthat there was just
if you wrote a checkthe box of being a veteran,

(15:53):
and I say that humbly, I justit just became true.
I mean, when I got out, when I graduatedcollege, enter the workforce again,
I thought I was behind that.
I was able to compete against guysthat had
that had internships through collegeand specialized places that,
I mean, I could walk in and get somejust because I did have a little bit,
some different training.
It may not have been tailoredto that specific, career path, but

(16:16):
kind of put me on equal ground.
It's interesting.
I think there's a lot to be said, too,for the life experience.
And I did not serve,but I had the opportunity to intern
when I was in college, and that set me up.
I had jobs all through high school,all through growing up.
I begged groceries at a grocery storewhen I was 14 and worked retail

(16:37):
jobs and, you know, all this and that.
But I got to intern.
And just being in that environment,being around other adults,
seeing how things work outside of schooland I don't really care
what you're doing, military,working in an office, whatever.
There's so much growthand so many little things
you pick up on just through the osmosisof being around that.

(16:59):
Yeah.
So I my method of, of being a C student
in high schooldidn't wash off in the military.
I went to school to Louisiana Techand I kind of stayed the same way.
Now, maybe that'sbecause that's who I am in my DNA.
But also I was in a fraternity and there'sjust so many different distractions.
And I did maintain itfor almost a full time job.

(17:20):
And so my point of sharing that is itgoes back to the internships.
Obviously,the school provided those avenues.
I was not aware of them,or maybe I chose not to be aware of them.
And it wasn'tuntil getting into the corporate world
where the companies I worked for, publiclytraded companies, offered internships,
and I was able to be a mentor,do those programs.

(17:41):
I was like, oh, these things existed.
I wish I had known that these guys were
they can come in here and work a summerand just realize this isn't for me or not.
I wish I had.
Man. And there's so much to be said forfiguring out what you don't want to do.
Oh, yeah? Yeah.
I mean, I got to go recruit on the on the,like, campus of like, OU and stuff.
And it was eye opening, like,I didn't know this existed.

(18:03):
I got to do some college recruitingat a company I worked for years ago.
And man,that was one of the highlights of my job.
There definitely was my full time job,but twice a year we go down
and we make the visits, and that was justit was a lot of fun.
Some great.
There's some yeah,
I don't think the Dean was comingknocking on my door to push me to go.
These recruiting events.

(18:23):
Well, what was your major business?
Okay.
And I'm really not surehow I even chose that.
I believe I chose because it was businesswith a focus on entrepreneurship
and some reason that just,I don't know, entrepreneur.
It attracted me.
It also the fraternity had
the most prior testsin their tests in business.

(18:44):
and so I, I don't know, it'sjust kind of the path I went.
Down the get old test. Bank on the testbank.
You know, now that I think most colleges,their exams are online,
I don't know,I don't know if test banks still exist.
Probably not. But I'm sure there'ssomething that's equivalent.
It's just different era, you know, wherethere's a will, there's a way.
Yeah. Yeah.

(19:05):
So your business degree was a pretty broadgeneral.
Yeah. Business degree.
You got a couple accounting classes,
a couple of finance,a little bit of management.
H.R yeah, it was.
And so if I had a frame of four yearsat school, my first two years,
if you looked at my transcripts,say I was failing, it was terrible
because I was having to relearnwhat I really didn't learn in high school,

(19:25):
because I just didn't pay attentionto really learning
math and history and English,you know, and how to study.
But man,when I got into business processes,
not accounting, not accounting,but the things that really mattered,
I mean, I said I became an a student,you know, not economics
so much and not finance.
But man, the engineering

(19:47):
management process, you know, anythingto do with business plan stuff?
Well, I really lovedI'd say I almost excelled at it.
And so I believe I wasI went down the right path.
It's interesting to me.
What was your favorite class?
I'm trying to thinkit was not quantitative analysis for sure,
but it was more of just, I think, businessplanning and business processes,

(20:07):
those really stick out to me.
You can't do C before you do B,and how do you do B if you do A run
those, you know, supply chain management,those type classes.
So post collegewhere did you find yourself.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Yeah okay.
One of the people on our teamstarted at enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Yeah.
And man, I thinkincredibly highly of that organization.

(20:31):
I think that they do such a fantastic job
investing and teaching young people.
And some people stay.
In fact, we've actually got a neighborwho's been with them
since he got out of college,and he's probably at least
my age, is broken up 20 yearsand then within the whole time.
But everybodyI know who has ever worked there,
they're top notch peopleand they know how to do things right.

(20:54):
Yeah.
And I fell into thatreally by osmosis of my father
in law's neighbor was the regional guyin Shreveport, Louisiana.
So I think he managed the regionbeing Shreveport Bossier.
It's neighboring city.
I got to know him and just, you know,just have driveway conversations.
I'm going to be graduating.Hey, you should check this out.
And I just observed his life and go, well,I didn't know that existed

(21:14):
in Lyndon cars and sounds sexy,but he's put food on his table over there.
So I scoped it out and really didn'thave anything else lined up.
So let's go.
And, their management training program,it was very intense.
But three months of that, I quicklylearned it's not what I wanted to do.
I woke up,I said I didn't go to school for this.
And that's no disrespect to that programor that company.

(21:35):
It's very well ran, but wearing a longsleeve white shirt and a tie
in the middle of the summer, washing carsand running cars you don't have and just.
And it didn't help my friends,some of my buddies that had graduated
college a year ahead of me,they kind of found a different path
in the energy business and were workinghalf the hours, making twice the money.
It just.

(21:55):
And I'm a very curious person by nature.
And so I kept watching that going,okay, summers not this is not right.
So I was there for a very shortthree months, and when I left,
I was told by a very regional vicepresident that I was making
the biggest mistake of my careerby leaving there.
Wow. Yeah.Which challenged me to prove him.
Well, I didn't have, like, an I'mgoing to prove you wrong.

(22:16):
Right? Well, he was wrong.
Does your father in law still live?
No. That day, I think it's one of those
you grow, you go that ladderand then beyond regional.
Now you got to go towherever and. You get moved.
Yeah, well, I'm sure
there are many people who
have gone on to do incredible thingsthat have been told by somebody.
This is the biggest mistake of your life.

(22:37):
I was watching, it was like a documentaryabout the making of friends, the TV show.
And Jennifer Anistonwas on some other sitcom on NBC
that was like about a pizza placethat was run by an alien.
It was some weird thing.
And the friends role came up.
Somebody came to her and they're like,you'd be perfect for this.

(22:58):
She's like, well,I've already got this same network.
I don't knowif they're going to let me go.
So she auditions and the friendspeople called the other producer
and they're like, hey,we want her for the show.
And he went and told her, I'mnot going to stop you, but
you taking that, that'll bethe biggest mistake of your life.
And look. Yeah, right.
Look at what happened.
And I don't know,

(23:18):
I think for a lot of people that'sthat's motivating to prove people wrong.
Yeah. And that was the first jobout of her quit.
It wasn't easy.
In fact, I gave them A2I think I did that.
Oh, you know, here's two weeks notice
and you know, oh, man, I was, youknow, were about to promote you and stuff.
But that was the first job I'd ever quit.
But I sure didn't look back either.

(23:39):
You said it was the first jobyou ever quit.
You're in the military.
Did you have jobs in high school?
Oh, my God. Yeah.
So you'd mentioned you'd work in retail.
So. Yeah, I mean,
my first car, I had to pay for it.
It was a it was a family hand-me-downon my grandparents side.
I paid $300 for it.
If I wanted that thing to go,I had to put gas in it that I paid for.
So I was working minimum wage, $4.25at my buddy's daycare center.

(24:04):
His parents owned it,and I was a maintenance man.
And so maintenance man in high schooldoes that look like.
Well, I changed light bulbsand fixed toilet paper holders
and cleaned up spillsand wash the AC unit outside.
I mean, waxed the school bus,you know, just.
Yeah, I was blessed to have that job.
It was a family business,if you will, that I was able to go to

(24:26):
every day after school.
And I held that joball the way through high school
and if I went to Taco Bell,I had to go to work.
I wanted to pay my beeper bill.
You had a beeper, a beeper?
Yes. If they if I wantedthat beeper to be, I had to pay that bill.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Man, do you ever get the man one one text.
Oh, baby. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's.

(24:46):
I almost
got a beeper and I forget why I didn't.
What did I needa beeper for in high school?
I don't, I mean, but that'show you commute is how you communicate it.
It's you would get a page.
It's Friday night.
You're driving around in that 300 hourcar, friend pages.
Or you paid your friendand you have to pull over
at the 7-Eleven or circle Kand used to pay for by the payphone.

(25:07):
That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How far we've come?
Yeah, I hear myself say all about it.
You think I'm like 100,but my kids would say I'm 200.
43 years old.
So you talked about the maintenance work.
Are you handy person?
I can do things.
I can change my own oil,rotate my own tires.
I can do smallelectrical things around the house.

(25:28):
You know, I can clean up my own pee traps.
And I learned through that, throughthat job and also my my stepfather.
He was very handy, very handy.
He worked for Halliburton, workedin the railroad and summer jobs with him.
I was replacing roofs for family, friends.
I mean, so
I was exposed to a lot of simply call itblue collar work, if you will, which
I'm glad you know, I still mow my own lawnbecause I get joy out of it.

(25:51):
Really, it's not because I have to.
It's just it's that whole adage,no one's going to do it like you do it.
Oh, am I handyman? No,but I can do things.
Yeah, and I'm cheapwhen it comes to certain tasks.
So it's always like, man,I he pays me to do something.
I can do it myself.
All right.
So let's go back to kind of your careerprogression enterprise.
First job you ever resigned from.

(26:13):
Where did you go from there?
I went to the oil field,as it's called, as a land man.
my land man is responsible for everything
from running titlein a courthouse property title
to securing contracts from landownersto get the rights
to drill or traverse across property,to put a pipeline out.

(26:37):
settle damages,meaning I you own 100 acres.
They want to drill on it.You know, I need the lease.
I need the surfacerights, all these things.
And so that was what started my careerin the energy business was I left
enterprise, and I found myselfin East Texas in courthouses.
Check and title and check.
And title means, hey,
there's a piece of land I find who paystaxes on it, and then I run it backwards.

(27:01):
You just run the history,go backwards to find out
who owns the mineral rightsand every state's different.
And so I started doing that.
I did that for two years.
It's what's called a field land, man.
It's called a field land man
because you're out in the field,you're in these court,
various courthouses,you're all over the place.
You're not in the oil field.
No. Well, yes and no.
I mean, I'm in the county seat of whereverthese projects are that are happening.

(27:24):
And who's doing the projects?
Well, the corporate companiesor the operating companies. And that's
I say that kind of Idid that for two years, feel like I'm in.
And again, I'm a curious person by nature,and I didn't feel like
I figured out the tradeor like the trade by all means.
But I kept going.
Who was sending me out here to do thisproject, and why are we doing this?
But I do.

(27:44):
I need to go leasethis property from Farmer Smith or Susie.
And I just kept going back, tying it backto, well, it's because someone,
some geologist somewhere or some engineersomewhere
have figured out that there's a potential,
zone of interest that you could producecommercial hydrocarbons.
And so I just kept going, well,how do I go to that job?
And so after two years of doing the field,I was blessed to again in my hometown,

(28:07):
found a publicly traded operating companycalled Saint Mary Land and Exploration.
Been around 100 years.
I was able to get on as a junior land man.
Now what's called an in-house land man.
In-house outhouse. Outhousefor your field guys.
Where you really you kind of you take astep up the ladder and you're really
you're directing field land man to godo the work that needs to be done.

(28:29):
And this is a different companythan the ones.
Yes. Correct. And timeline.
This is probably 2006, 2007somewhere in there.
That's correct.
Okay.
And East Texas,I remember around that time
the Barnett Shale was a big deal.
It just started kicking off.That's correct.
That was kind of the motherof the unconventional oil
and gas exploration,if you will. So in North. America.

(28:50):
That was peak time.
It was I never worked the Barnett play,if you will.
I did work with some fellow field, landand brethren that had joined our team.
We were working something
different, more conventional stuffin East Texas that had exposure
to the Chesapeake and McLendonand all that stuff that they were doing
with the airport lease, the airport,that was a big deal.

(29:10):
It's interesting.
Even today, I mean, I still
take notice of drama on the airportand seeing those all those locations.
And but in Flower Mound, Denton County,learned about all the fracking and stuff
that's going on.
And but then over Shreveport,that's very pro oil and gas over there.
I mean, a lot of familiesmade a living from oil and gas.
And so we didn't have the people

(29:31):
storming the courthouseswith the anti-fracking and stuff.
That was happening over here.
But yeah, so that's reallywhen I jumped in from being in the field
to being in the corporate scene of the
all the unconventional stuffthat was taking place.
And boy, I wish I had a crystal ball and,you know, knew what I knew now.
Yeah, well,and maybe this is part of that.

(29:51):
But the energy industry, it's boom.
And bust. Oh yeah. For sure.
So all right,so you go from the field rep to in-house.
What was that job like?
It was amazing.
It truly was I learned so much.
I was very nervous going into it.
And I was nervous primarilybecause I knew I didn't know a lot.

(30:14):
I was probably way over my skis,
but I had to just say, Clayton, stop.
You don't have to know everything.
You work for a company that has resources,resources, meaning dollars
that you're able to bring in outside
talent, lawyers and other peoplethat had the 20 years experience.
Get over it, Clayton,that you're only 23, 24.

(30:37):
You've got resources.
Get surround yourself with smarter people.
And that'swhat I had to quickly learn to do.
And I was fortunate to do that.
And I got to meet so many peoplethat were in the energy biz
back in the 80s, went through all the buzzand learn from them
and how they managed, you know,their personal life through that.
And I don't know where I'm going with thatother than I just
learned a lotand I learned that I love the business.

(30:59):
It was challenging. It was very stressful.
Energy projects.
Initially, it was like, we're goingto drill this well, cost $10 million.
That's we're just one,or we're going to do 20 of these.
This year, $200million. We're going to spend that.
They got to where it's likethat was nothing.
If our region at the time was
where the wells were making the mosteconomic sense out of the whole company,

(31:20):
we could have a three quarter billionto $1 billion budget for that year.
Just for drilling, just for. Drilling.
And some of that would be an exploration.
And you don't know if you're going to hitor hit a drill hole.
No, no you don't.
But well, by the time in that business,by the time you have a budget of that size
approved, you spent, again,some pretty material dollars

(31:42):
on the explorationside to prove the project.
The energy business really goesinto exploration and development.
And so I had the luxury of doing both.
Working on both sides of started withexploration is just just mowing down wells
to stay in front of those rigs, stayingin front of them, which is a process.
It doesn't matterwhere you're at in the country,

(32:02):
which state, what field you're workingin. It's all kind of the same thing.
You got to get the lease.
That's old saying no lease,no grease, got to get the lease.
When you get the lease,got to make sure it's a good lease
and then you got to get the land
all surveyed and everythingand just get the pipe you got, you know,
you start producing,you got to have get it out of there.
And so the more you talk about this,the more my mind is blown
that this actually happensbecause you got to get the mineral rights,

(32:26):
you got to get the surface rights,go through all the title
to make sure that everything'sclear, figure out where it is.
I'm sure there's city state permittingthat you got to go through, I mean.
Oh, and don't even bring up the subjectof drilling on government lands.
That's a whole nother process.
I mean, so with this same company,they closed their office

(32:47):
down in Shreveport and they said,your jobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I'm like, I don't even know where that is.
And I'm well, I'm goingI don't know what else I'm going to do.
Backing up a second, atwhat point did you get married?
We graduated inoh five, spring of oh five.
We got marriedthat September, September 10th.
Okay.
And my mind, I was blind.
I was. Waiting until, yeah, 1905.

(33:07):
And it was just before Katrina. Yeah. So.
And what was Katie doing?
She was educated in health,fitness, kinesiology, and she was serving
as the regional YMCA fitness advisor.
Okay.
Yeah, she was teaching aerobicsand running the fitness program at YMCA.
And that's when I was doing field work.

(33:29):
And so our first two years of marriage,I was living in hotels.
I gets your two days a week.
And that was part of whatdrove the curiosity to it's like,
okay, how do I finish?
How do I, I love this business,
but I'm not going to continueto sleep in in La Quinta every other week.
It's not going to happen.How do I get home? How do I get home?
Yeah.
So you come home from work one day.
Hey, they're closing our office.

(33:50):
How do you feel about Tulsa?
Well.
I could that wasn't good,
because all of her family,including siblings, all of my family,
which was much smaller than hers,Shreveport, Shreveport.
And we had just had our second child
who was going to hindsight,
who did turn one the day we followedthat moving band out of Shreveport,

(34:12):
we celebrated his first birthday in Tulsa,Oklahoma, in a place we did not know
anybody in a hotel with a little blue
bell ice cream cup and a candleI found in the gift shop downstairs.
Yeah, that was. A match.
And there were some.
Yeah. She was.
Yeah, but I said it 100 timesbecause it's the truth.
We spent three years in Tulsaalmost to the day.

(34:32):
And the tears, her tearsleaving that town were larger
than they were going up there.
That's such a great place to live.
So you found you found community?
Yeah, we found a great church. Great.
I mean, the the the culture there atthe office that I worked at was fantastic.
Take our neighborhood.
We just got I had his hand in everything.
And so we met great people.

(34:52):
The climate there is phenomenal.
I don't know if you've been to Tulsa, but
it's almost like there'sa mother nature switch.
When the calendar says it's spring switch,it feels like spring winter
switch, summer switch fall.
It's amazing you actually have seasonsyou didn't like here in North.
Yes, it was amazing.
That's awesome. Yes.
So you touched on something.
You use the word culture.
You talked about how the office in Tulsahad a great culture.

(35:16):
Was it differentfrom the Shreveport culture?
It was.
And again, thisthe same company, same company.
But at that time it's a company. It's100 years old. It's crazy.
So craziest thing I'll never forgetgetting an email from the CEO.
I'm still in Shreveport.
Hey, this year we're turning 100 yearsold as a company, and every month
you're going to get some sort of swag tocommemorate the company in its birthday.

(35:39):
You know what that company didthe next year changed its name.
I'm like, wait
a minute, we have all this stuffin the reasoning behind it.
As I understand it, I get it was
that was when, you know,we've talked about the Barnett Shale and
up until then, oil and gas drillingwas called conventional, conventional,
meaning straight holes.
Conventional way of drilling,not used up and down or unconventional

(36:01):
is now you're turning these things,you're drilling horizontal.
Well everyone startswe're kind of rebranding.
We're no longerthis 100 year old conventional player.
We're now unconventional, and we're goingto shorten our name, a new logo.
So this
so the culture was different out therebecause they kind of were changing
before everybody else in a newer officespace looked really nice.

(36:22):
Kind of like your place here, Scott.
And just it felt good.
So it was a different culture
primarily was drivenbecause the company was changing.
Interesting. Yeah.
And they're hiring a lot of younger peopleat that time, too.
It was because the energy programs,with the foresight of eight
unconventional petroleum engineersat 8 a.m., hey, this is the new thing.

(36:42):
This is how you study reservoirs.
Now, all these new technologies.
Well, those, you know, when I came tothis company, to the company at the time,
I think I brought that average age of40 people in that office down by 20 years.
Oh, yeah. Wow.
And so by the time I left,everyone looked like me.
How many offices did they have?
at the time, I think there wasprobably six across the country.
And cultureis just such a big, important thing to me.

(37:04):
And what you said earlier just kind of setoff this whole thought pattern
after the new brandwas kind of settled on.
Do you think that the cultureof the other offices
kind of leveled outand had a similar feel, or was there just
a true, distinct differencebetween HQ and the regions?
No, I think that company,they did a very good job at.
You could walk in any one regional officeand it almost

(37:26):
it looked the same, felt the same.
So you didn't feel out of placewhen you would go visit different places.
The only thing really differentwas the food.
So you mentioned leaving Tulsa.
That was a hard thing.How long were you there?
Three years in again,here comes curiosity creep.
That's what really curiosity creep andwanting to get a little closer back home.

(37:48):
We've now had her third child.
I learned that Katie had a planthe whole time.
I had no ideawere gonna have three children.
We had a boy and a girl.And what do we eat?
Why do we need more children?
But, one thing about Tulsa.
At least our friends group.
You have a litter, you don't have 1 or 2.
And so I think some of that influencerubbed off.
And so we had our third childand we needed to get closer back home,
these six hour, one way or 12 hour trips

(38:10):
back to see grandparentsevery month was just off.
So where is that going to be?
I didn't really want to go backto Shreveport won.
The energy business was quicklyfading away.
Their people were moving out.
And so where?
Where can I go?Well, Dallas is pretty close.
It's three hours now.I've just cut everything down in half.
And so I just startedpull out the Rolodex.
Who would I know in the business?
You know, just making some phone calls.

(38:31):
And I landed in Shreveport.
I'm sorry. In Dallas.
I'm sorry I landed in Dallas. Okay?
I landed in Dallas, and I left nine yearsin the publicly traded energy space.
Two private equity backed energy space,two different animals.
You do the same thing,and you still drill the same wells.
But how you plan and budgetand in the projects

(38:53):
you take on or don't take on or twoare driven two different ways.
Mentalities totally do.
Yeah,I call that my six year MBA, if you will.
What are the biggest differencesbetween the two?
Oh my gosh, it really comes down tojust how money's handled
and how you make decisionswhen you're working for big three, $4
billion publicly traded company,you move at a different pace.

(39:15):
Your risk rewardprofile is completely different.
Is it safe to assume that the PE was spendthe money?
Let's move fast decision.
How quick can we get a return?
Yes, it's all return.
It's more ROI versus ROI.
I yeah, it's that rate. It's that rate.
Yeah, yeah.
And I came inI believe kind of at the tail end of

(39:36):
it was very attractivebecause when the energy business went
from conventionalto unconventional private equity
specifically there's a group called InCap out there that they got really good
at finding and taking young gunsfrom these big public companies
and putting together these management
teams, giving them a $300million blank check and say, go.
And at that time, it was really more landplay driven of getting in front of these

(39:58):
public companies to move slower.
So the small, independentlittle management teams, you know, say
me and you,we just got 300 million our check
and we just gowe're very nimble, very nimble.
We can make our own decisions.
We could just get on technologycomputer and say, well,
there's a bunch of rigs here.It looks like they're moving this way.
Let's go. Lisa, plan in front of them.
We do that. Well guess whatExxon needs to keep moving.
So they're going to go payyou ten x on what you just paid.

(40:20):
And it was just very lucrative.
It was very attractive very sexy.
Now everyone was successful.
I mean there'sa lot of ways around that rig.
And if you get it wrong, you get burned.
And that's what made a big differencebetween good and bad teams.
And so I kind of came in on the tailend of that private act.
We're still doing that.
But the opportunities were getting fewand far between.
Is that because they're just the.

(40:41):
Land grabs were kind of over,and now it was more a and of just
people's positions and companies.
And how does their balance sheet look,and are they at the end of their cycle
of private equity.
Just it was different.
In, in the PE businesswhere you really just holding the rights
and flipping the rightsor you guys actually.
Oh no we were drilling. Yeah.
We're full blown.Operating team is amazing.
Ten people in the officedoing the same thing that a office of 60

(41:05):
or 70 publicly traded guys would do. Wow.
Yeah. It's just it's amazing.
And it's not a knockagainst my old company.
I just see it everywhere.
I mean,
but there's just a lot of fat out therethat can be trimmed
when you're doing anything.
Yeah,I've learned mind the existing business,
I've cut labor in half and I'm still doingthe same thing I was doing last year.
Which did you enjoy more?

(41:27):
I like them both.
I wouldn't have found my way on it.
Private equity team starting out.
There's just no room for novice.
You've got to havesome sort of experience.
They were both great.
They were both great.
I think the most rewarding was the my lastcall it three years
when we stood up our own companywhen we being two engineers,
my last two business partners and I,we wouldn't we wouldn't got our hundred

(41:49):
and $50 million checkand hired some very good people
and bought some assets, drilledsome wells, had some success.
I mean, that was very rewarding,but very stressful.
So how long were you at thethe backed company?
Yeah.
So when I came to Dallas, when the familywe came down here, we went to work.

(42:10):
I went to work for a management teamthat was already put together,
backed by natural gas partners,and they had already had their commitment.
And we spent two yearsI was on the land team
trying to find something to acquire,
trying to find somethat was already produce real quick.
It's like 2010, 11, 11.
20, 12, 13 ish.
Yeah.
I spent two years trying to find assetsto acquire that were producing

(42:33):
cash flow, cash flowing,and we couldn't really find anything.
By the time you get a deal on the line,commodity prices would drop down.
You know,it's always like a falling knife.
And we finally said, you know what?
Let's go put together our own property,our own deal.
And so we ended up putting togethera bunch of land leases up in Oklahoma,
drilling some wellsand our backer got tired of

(42:56):
call it the team, call it the properties,and really wanted to sell them,
flush them. We weren't ready.
And so myself and two of the engineersat work there said,
why don't we buy these propertiesourselves?
We believe in them. Still.
They've been mismanaged potentially.
So we need to find money.
And so we just we went toour private equity provider at the time

(43:17):
and said, hey, it could be viewedas we staged a coup, but we didn't.
We just said, you know, if these guys aregoing to be done with it, we're not done.
And we don't want to just go downwith the ship.
So we're young,we have families, and let's go for it.
So we went to the private equitysponsored.
The town said,
would you allow us to go try to find moneyand buy this from ourselves, from you?
And we got the green lightand that's what we did.

(43:39):
So you got three kids.
You're an early mid 30s mom.
How about late 30s now? Yeah. Okay.
And what was that like?
You've had kind of the safetyand security of a W-2 job.
Yeah. All these years.
What's going on in your mind.
What was the conversationlike at home. Is fight or flight?

(44:00):
It was, it was I did not want to go backto the public world
because now I've kind of becomenot my own boss.
But now I'm in a small worldand it's great.
And I didn't want to go back tomaking widgets, if you would, I wouldn't.
I like being out here super nimbleand let's go big projects potential.
You know it's skin in the game.
So should the stars align.

(44:20):
You make a big lake or do a lot better,if you will,
than sitting there collecting a paycheckevery two weeks at a public company.
Was nothing wrong with that. Energybusiness is great that you make.
You can make great moneyand not even have an education to boot.
I just want to go backand I've gotten a taste of that and
I just saw a way ofand if if I've got the will

(44:40):
and I got two engineers herethat are truly trust, they have the will.
And so we literally we would asthings were kind of starting
to show themselvesthat this thing's going to wind down.
We would our spendour lunches down in the, public
now called dinner hall,whatever the building, your cafeteria
space with a yellow legal pad say, okay,what do you want to do?

(45:01):
How does this look?What's our company name going to be?
What are we gonna get the money?
How are we going to do this?
Do we want to do this?
Here's the chart.If we don't do it, you're going to go it.
And so we stacked hands and went for it.
For your two partners.
And were we all friends outside of workor were you really just work?
Well, it's funny, we actually met

(45:22):
back in the public company daysin Shreveport.
We all worked togetherback on an asset team way back in the day,
so we actually sowhen we're making these decisions
and having these meetings,do we want to go get our own money?
We'd actually work
together on and off through our careersfor about ten plus years.
Okay. Yeah.
And was everybody all in totally on board.
Yeah we were.

(45:43):
And one thing I learned tothat is I think it's very important
that you're kind of the samelike mind and position in life to County
because what we were viewing waswe had management,
our existing management at the time,they were in different
it was kind of old and wateryand it just wasn't working.
And and I think some of our successeswe were having

(46:05):
once we got off and running,we stacked hands, we'd got funded,
we were all like kind ofin the same part of our lives, you know,
young families and all like minded and,and actually voted the same.
But justwe all had the same goals and aspirations.
Let's just
do what you say you're going to do,put your head down, go to work and trust.
God's going to take care of the rest.We're all believers.
It just all was just that.

(46:25):
We named our company okayexploration, not the partners.
And it was biblical based.
Keisha would know it's right. Okay.
Very cool.
So what was it likehaving two other partners?
How did you guys make decisions?
That's a great question.
I did not realizeuntil this current venture I'm in,
and this is no disrespect to my partner,which is my wife

(46:48):
on paper of this, venture I'm in now.
But having partners, I mean, I've said it.
I've said it so many times,I'm blue in the face now.
Hindsight.
I wouldn't do what I'm doing now.
If I could do over, I wouldn'tdo what I'm doing now without partners.
Really? Yes, yes. Wow.
And that's just been my experience.
Because you have a sounding board.

(47:08):
You're not making decisions in a vacuum.
You're just kind of.
It's three legs to a stool,if you will, yours.
Hey, Scott. This is what I'm thinking.
I woke up this morning.I'm thought we need to do this. You go.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.
Remember? Wait.This is not what we talked about.
Oh. Where?
I don't really have that check balance,and I can be one I hear all the time.
Like,then you do. You move a lot, you pivot.

(47:28):
Well, I just pivot.And I don't really have those three legs.
You know, those two are the two legs andand so what was the question.
How did you guys make decisions.Was that a positive thing.
We sat around in meetings a lotokay a lot.
I jokingly said a little rude up my buttevery day.
I felt like in chairs.
But yeah, it was great.
But it was also a natural.

(47:49):
It was natural is once a petroleumengineer, was a reservoir engineer.
Himalayan guys,we all brought different lenses,
if you will. You know,
it was three petroleum engineers,three land men or three accountants.
So it wasn't a big echo chamber.
We all had different points of views andreasonings of why we would make decisions.
Yeah, I think that's hugely important.
I assume you had a little bitmore of the business side

(48:10):
and they had the more execution.
Here's how we go about thiskind of you bet. I didn't know anything
about rock mechanicsor anything about volume displacement.
And so I respected themand really, truly valued
and wanted to learn about that stuffas much as I could on a high level.
But I also got the same respectback from them of,
hey, we can't just go do that over thereon Farmer Bob's land, and here's why.

(48:32):
But the contract says we can't, but we aregood people and we're going to live.
We're going to be an operator of choice.
And so we always had this respectand it worked out.
It's a good team, great team. That's huge.
Just because you can do somethingjust because it's allowed
by the contractdoesn't mean that you should.
And I think there's
a lot of
people out there, a lot of businessesthat don't operate like that.

(48:55):
Right? Yeah.
And we kind of borrowedstole that public company that, that both
Brandon, Melissa and I, my two partnersthat we're speaking of were at Saint Mary
Land and Exploration, that CEO Tony Best, that was there while we were there.
Da tenure.
He just had some great,just great mission statements.
And one of them being we'regoing to be operator of choice.

(49:16):
It just always stuck with meand stuck with my two partners.
And we carry that over to occasion.
We live by that.
We want to be an operator of choice,and you're not operator of choice.
If you're mowing down
and disrespecting the people that you knowwithout their land.
Yeah, nothing,
you know, and that then they that's that'sreally where the rubber hits the road.
The right thing to dois the right thing to do regardless.
But when other people are lookingat leasing out their land

(49:40):
and they're talking to farmer Bob,who who were on
when they hear, hey, who treated you well?
Who didn't?
I mean.
Well, it's also partner of choiceto are in business.
You partner with people, other businessesand we always wanted to be the partner
of choice.
We wanted people to call usbecause they knew
that if we said we're goingto do something, we're going to do it.
Even if it hurt, it's beautiful.

(50:01):
Like, man, we should have never committedthat. We do it.
I have carried thatinto what I'm doing. Now.
If you're gonna sayyou're gonna do some do, it means a lot.
I'm glad to hear the partner model workedwell for you, because there's
a lot of stories to the counter to that,and that's great to hear.
When it works. Well, it does now.
Doesn't mean it's easy,

(50:23):
you know.
Oh, get a humble yourself a lot.
Sometimes you get into partnershipsthat you,
you know,as soon as that honeymoon's over.
You sure?
How do we get out of it?
Did you guys ever have any disagreementsthat were really difficult
to work through?
Probably,but I'll speak from my experience.
And if Melissa ever listened to that,she would respect that and what I learned
or what we went through.

(50:43):
Brandon, Melissa and I,
and I guess we're talking about my lastthree years in the energy business here.
My communication skills just suckssometimes and probably not sometimes.
Probably a lot of times I am a badswimmer, meaning I assume things.
I assume people know what I'm thinkingand can make
decisions based on what they already know,or they know why I'm doing this.

(51:03):
And Melissa is a mother,a wonderful mother.
Brandon is a father,a wonderful father. I'm a father.
And when you got you inner dynamic of
you've got two men and a womanin a, in a partnership, you got to treat
Melissa a little different than Brandon,not treat that you talk different.
Right. And everyone has a different needs.

(51:24):
Brain has got differentneeds. And Melissa does I have different.
And she taught me so much ofshe's not Brandon right.
She's a woman.
And I hope this isn't coming acrossas like sex.
But she need to be treated differentor she need to be talked to different.
Her language was different.That's what I'm trying to say.
Not treated.
Her language was different than Brandon'sand I communicate.

(51:45):
BrandonI could have five in the break room
and say, yeah, we're doingsay boom and not tell Melissa.
Well,Melissa needed to be involved in that.
And if Melissa not half ofand made it to John Brennan,
it didn't really affect him as much.
Or maybe he'd share it as much.
And so Melissa, I got really closebecause I could almost bank
about every six monthsmy door was going to slam,
and that's with herit behind her for coming into office

(52:06):
and giving it to me,just giving me the business.
And it resulted most of timesme in tears saying, I'm so sorry.
But those encounters just strengthenedour partnership.
It really did.
And she knew I never would do anythingor make any decision out of spite.
And I knew she wouldn't either.
But it was always just like,
here goes Clayton, assuming againthat she knew or it just

(52:29):
I don't know where I'm goingwith that, but.
Being able to say you're sorryyeah is really, really important.
And there's a lot of peoplethat pride just won't let them.
Yeah. So glad to hear that.
You weren'tafraid to say those words. Yeah.
So you were with them for three years?
Yeah. Three years.
And what caused that to come to an end?

(52:51):
Oil going negative in 2020I think it was March.
I swore I would never forget the date,but when oil went negative, we're at home.
I'll never forget where I was at.We'd gotten funded.
Brandon was we'd gotten funded,put the team together.
We got the old regime out the door.
No disrespect to them.
Just we bought the assets.
You know, one of the hardest thingsI've done in that energy career was buy

(53:11):
my own assets.
Imagine spending $1 million in legal fees,buying your own house
from you, from yourself.
In the next day.
You still wake up in the same bed.
Yeah.
So you know, but our own assets,we got through all of that,
learned about what his day isand all these women bank it was
we learned so muchand we got through all that
and stayed in our old digsfor about eight months.

(53:34):
And we release was coming due and we said,well, we got to move our office.
What are we going to do?
And we settled over by the Galleria
grade office, put our touches on it in.
About five months later, Covid hits,we go home and we're all network in
and we're now doing some consolidatingfor our sponsor.
We're taking out other teamsand all through Covid, and I'm

(53:55):
watching all go negativeand that's what I'm going.
Our number is going to be up in it.
Sure enoughit was our number came up meaning
we were going to get consolidated,meaning our team was going to go home.
And naturally you would say, well,if it's the end of the road's near,
we'll do what you did earlier.Go get some more money.
Well no, no, no.

(54:15):
All negative that year
and was giving anybody any moneyand that space and so I knew that
and I was very fearfulof just sitting around and waiting
for that downturn, if you will,at the time, to iron itself out.
Which would it ever?
We had an administrationcoming in and killing energy
like, I'm not going to be part of that.No way.
So when you say you got consolidated,does that mean you're back

(54:39):
or pull the plug and said, hey, we'regoing to take this and roll it up under?
That's right.
And so at that time I was KaneAnderson was our sponsor and our backer,
our partner.
And we were operatingassets up in the Middleton in Oklahoma.
And there was also 2 or 3other operating teams,
also royalty companies, mineral companies

(55:01):
under this in the same fund,
operating in the same baseand all had their own management teams.
And so I mean, you cut G&A deep,put it all under one team
with the planof taking it public potentially.
And we we threw our name in the hatto get those consolidators.
And I think we could have done it.
But one of my partners wanted to be done

(55:22):
for a little whileand completely respected that.
And it changed the dynamic.
And I said, well, if that person's goinghome, I don't, hey, I love you.
But, you know,I think I'm gonna do something different
to, you know, and and I'm just prayingabout it like I did something different.
Was that a hard conversation now?
Not really. Yes.
But now Melissa, she want to go be mom.

(55:44):
And when she sat there and said,
I want to go home,I said, we're going to help you go home.
And then that left her leaving the room.
And Brian and I looked at each othergoing, well, do you want to keep going?
And we said, yeah, let's do it.
And we did.
It's not like we sat on her hands.
We'd pull out the Rolodex, you know, starta good climb in every tower in Dallas.
Hey, what are y'all doing?Do you want to sell this asset?

(56:05):
Need a partner? We got a team.We're gonna end up going home.
But we can do these things.
We can operate your assets, a nonoperator, and nothing would really stick.
And I just kept looking, countergoing. I'm not.
I'm going to give this thing till aboutOctober and I'm going to make a decision.
That's what I did.
And Katie was on board. Yeah.
She's wonderful.
She'd jump off the bridge with me I think.

(56:27):
Well no she wouldn't but she's that type.
She just you know,she knows I'm a dreamer.
And I kept thinking about nowwhat else could we do.
And she's been a big fan.
I can relate to that.
Before we get deeperinto what you're doing today
you talked about oil going negative.
And I remember that being all overthe news for the uneducated like myself.

(56:49):
Does that mean that oil companies areliterally paying people to take the oil.
Yes, yes, that is true.
And there was even a bigger issue isthere was no one to take.
The oil storage was full.
Cushing I mean, we were blessed to bewhere our assets were.
Cushing we could still get oil out,but it wasn't at a pace we needed to,

(57:12):
and we were having to build a huge,which was very risky.
Like, lightning could strike one tankand you lose everything.
We were having to stockpile oil,but we were hedged.
So in the energy business, you can hedge,you can hedge that commodity.
And so but you're only as goodas your counterparty.
But oil went negative.
We were still selling barrels at $56. Yes.

(57:33):
So it didn't affect our balance sheet.
But it sure affectedthe sentiment in the industry.
If you go oh come on. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So when you talk about the storagewas full, you had no place to put it.
Is that because, hey, we're in Covid.
People weren't driving,their cars were not earning.
And we don't we just don't need it.
So there was no draw.It was a demand issue.

(57:54):
And it was no draw in the industrygot really good at what was doing,
is producing a lot of oiland that's what happened.
The energy business is his own worst enemyand you're always chasing the price.
Natural gas is starting to trade up.
Well, let's go produce gas. Well,we're so good at it.
We put too much supply out there.
Guess what?
Price goes downand it shuts projects down.

(58:14):
Peoplelose their jobs or oil starts going up.
And that's what happened was Barnett Shalebig gas unconventional and everyone's
will get natural gas was trading $15an m you know, and boom we crushed gas.
It went down to $2.
Guess what? Oil.
We can do that same stuff in oil.
It didn't take a loss man, to figure outwe're going to do this.
And then they did.
Going back to whatwe're talking about earlier,

(58:34):
just how long it takes to actuallyget something through the whole process.
You're looking at the spot price today,but it's going to be six months,
a year or two years before you actuallystart pulling stuff out of the ground.
So you're making decisions on price today.
That may not be that price by the timeyou actually start pulling it out.
Yeah, there's it's what the industry use,what's called a strip

(58:54):
and the strips never. Right.
But it's a guidepost of well,the industry says in 12 months
it'll be this 24 months will be this, 36months will be this.
And you plug that in your model.
And if the project works based on stripwith some sort of discount,
typically you goand that's where your, your,
your risk profiles by different companiesand tortures change.

(59:15):
I mean some people take stripand don't discount
anything and go, you know, I was like,oh my God, they're idiots.
But hey,sometimes those guys are geniuses.
It's it sounds like luck.
Timingis everything in that industry fail.
So how does Clayton go
from the energy world to flurries market?

(59:36):
Yeah, I don't know, really, I don't know.
I mean, I wanted to do something,I had to do something.
And so I just literally came homefrom church in November of 2020, I think.
Yeah, I'll never forget coming homefrom church in 2020 and sat on
the couch, turned on some footballand looked over.
There was a purple spiral notebook.
The thing is, my daughtersand I just flipped

(59:57):
to the back to some free paper and said,what do I know?
What have I done?
Who do I want to be?
I'm 42 and so I just started penciling out
the whole proscons and, you know, don't stay in energy.
Yes. No. And I kept going.
Energy just didn'tI didn't see a path because I just knew it

(01:00:18):
would take some time.
No one was hiring,it was firing was no money.
And so I really just
that pencil, the paper just immediatelyjust went bent to something different.
And I didn't want to goto real estate school or I have to go,
well, what have I done?
So I had to actually go,what have you done in life?
Why wouldn't I go back in the military?
So, well, and I worked in a meat market.

(01:00:40):
When I got out of the Army, I did that.
I really enjoyed that.
I still know the guy that owns
that same meat market that I worked in.
I, worked in a prep kitchen or bartended.
I wash dishes in college for four years.
I like food, I like service,I really like my town.

(01:01:01):
What does this town not have?
Well, I would I would.
One of those meat markets work over here?
This is truly.This is exactly how it went.
Yeah. I'm. I want to be market.
That's what I'm going to do.
So you put that purple.
So that was it.
Look down and you go find Katie and sayhere's what's next babe.
Yeah well I think I reached overand grabbed my laptop
with the next to the purple notebookand I said, do meat markets make money?

(01:01:25):
Google?
Well, I didn't get any results,so I just started making phone calls,
made phone calls, and I called my buddyRoss that owned Maxwell's Market,
Shreveport, Louisiana,that I worked in back in 2001, I think.
So, Ross,you've been doing this for 20 years.
Would you do it again?
And, you know, I have to prefacebefore I made that phone call and I shared

(01:01:47):
Katie with the idea, she said,I don't want to be married to business.
I don't want to be married to a store.
I don't want to do it. Okay, I hear you.
Hey, Ross, would you do this again?
He goes, well, you know, I'm I'm marriedand I his wife, we don't have kids.
And so I live here at the store.
And it's easy for mebecause I don't have kids.
And that's like, oh my God.

(01:02:07):
The first thing he told meis what Katie said.
You don't want to do that.You know me. I'm smart.
Right? I'm like,oh, well, I'm not going to tell Katie.
He said thathe's going to be married store
because I'm going to do this thingcorporately.
I'm not going to run the scenelike a traditional mom and pop where
the man or woman's name that's on the dooris the butcher has got to be there.
I'm going to I'm going to do this
kind of more of a,
a white collar corporate fashion, andI'm going to hire people to do this thing.

(01:02:29):
Oh, they're for Jeff Bezos.
He's not the butcher at at Whole Foods.
He runs Amazon.
He just opens our own Whole Foods.
And I still haven't given that up.
I still haven't given that up.
I haven't seen the light in the tunnel.
But so I said, okay,I can get beyond that.
What else? You go as well,if you can get past that.
It's been one of the most rewarding thingsI've done.
This is Ross telling me this.
I said, okay, tell me why.
He goes, well, you're going to meetfamilies, come in these doors.

(01:02:52):
They're going to bring their kids in thereon a Saturday after soccer practice.
They're going to get a icefrom the ice machine,
and you're gonna get to watch those kidsgrow up
and their kids are gonna have kids.
And it's just and everything you describe.
So that's what I'm looking forin life service and part of the community.
And, you know, I'm kind of my bossand it's my store.
And it's not a new concept.

(01:03:13):
Meat markets and corner storeshave been around for centuries,
you know, or century,you know, King Sugar,
go get a pack of smokesand sugar down the street.
I don't sell cigarets with sugar,but I was like, okay, well,
Ross, do you mind if I come visityou and see it again?
And he did.
So the summerwe made the commitment to do this thing.
I said, okay,I think so we're going to do.
And so I went to my standing businesspartner, said, I'm out to buddy.

(01:03:37):
I'm going to go be a meat man in FlowerMound, Texas.
That's what we did.
And so my neighbor,an attorney, he's a good friend
and said, man,how do I stand up an LLC on my own here?
So he helped me do that.
And in March of 2021,
formed Flurries Market and Provisions LLC.
A year after the pandemic.

(01:03:58):
Yes. That everything down. Yeah.
What gave you the courage to do that.
My experience in the energybecause I was scared to death
when we moved to Dallas I was working for
private equity companynumber one management team.
I was scared to deathwhen I saw that thing winding down
and said,okay, this is where I can either be scared

(01:04:21):
and just ride this wave until it hitsthe shore and I have no job or
go work back for making widgetsfor big public company, or let's
go do this ourself.
And man, that was such a hard process.
That was I really thinkit took years of my life
because we found the funding,the deal died,
it revived itself,it died again, revived itself, and

(01:04:42):
we got through that and said, well,
we know this is and I just kind ofand I fell in love
with the process of startinga company is like, man, this is great.
So, man, I don't know how to do this.
No, I'm a corporatego format on paper and go, you got it.
So what do you need? You needyou need capital.
You need people.
Both resources will get the resourcesyou need and roll.
So what we did.

(01:05:02):
So November of 2020 you have the idea
March of 21 is when you form the LLC.
And I turned out my lights March 31stat the energy company walked out.
How long from thenuntil you opened the store?
Yeah, we opened December 13th, 2021.
On paper, I was supposed to be openSeptember 1st.

(01:05:25):
We had some conversations runningeach other around town or school events
and I got to hear a little bitof what it took to get the doors open.
Talk about that for a minute.
In this podcast.
Go on another six hours.
It was a very expensive
learning experience and I wish hindsight.

(01:05:46):
There's a lot of things I wish I had doneand use that time more wisely.
I wish I had a partner going into it.
Did you wish that at the timeor I don't know.
It's a reflect.These are reflections. Reflections.
So and here's why I just leftthe energy business of 1718 years.
I'm starting a businessin a whole different industry.
I don't know anything about
my experience and it was

(01:06:07):
as a hourly earner,not an hourly owner, if you will.
And so I'm, I'm sitting herebuilding a company on spreadsheets
and building margins and proformabased on what I get off Google.
What's the margin on groceries,what's hourly wages these days?
I was wrong on all of it.

(01:06:27):
And so man, I sure wish I had someone
that was alongside methat said, you're an idiot.
Margin on beef isn't that
you're going to be paying people twicewhat you have on that piece of paper
right there.
Payroll taxes.
This I came from that companythat Brandon Mills are running.
Well, we had a straight upCPA down the hall as our CFO.
I mean, our CFO down the hall,you know, took care of that stuff.

(01:06:51):
So I do all that now.
Yeah.
Sourcing a payroll provider.
I mean, all these thingsthat standing all that up was such
a tremendous learning experience and
getting equipment timely.
People are net we're still, you know, now
we're on the back end, I'll say the backand we're still kind of on the running.
The masks are starting to go away.

(01:07:13):
The supply chain screwed up.
Everything's screwed up.
Need sheetrock. Can't get it.
You need refrigeration.
Can't get it ten weekly timeswe can 20 weekly times.
And so how do you timely hirethrough all that?
Oh, you do the best you can.
We literally carried payroll
for almost 90 dayswithout a dollar coming in that door.

(01:07:34):
So you had hired. Oh yeah.
And to retain the talent that I'm sureyou had to search long and hard for.
Oh, yeah, you had to pay themeven there, there wasn't really a.
Job for them.
To me,there's nothing to do. I'd make up stuff.
Hey, you asked me at the coffee shop.
Go home. Here's homework.
Come give us a presentationon how to cut a fish.
Or come tell us about the history of dryaging beef.

(01:07:57):
It was purposeful.
I didn't really add much value,but yeah, in
between equipmentin town, regulations and rules.
And you can't do this.
You can't do this.
Oh, by the way, this is just man,it took a lot longer than I sure
thought it would,but in all lessons cost, right?
I had a mentor tell me all this is cost.

(01:08:17):
That one cost cost a lot,but we're still there.
We're figuring it out here.
And you talk about, I need a time clock,I need a payroll person,
I need this and that.
I think a lot of people underestimateall of the little things.
Like,there are plenty of big things, right?
Get the LLC form.That's kind of a big thing.
Get the lease for the building done,get the permits.

(01:08:41):
But there are so many of those little
things that I think people just thinkand they just happen.
No they don't.
Somebody like youhas to figure it out and get it done.
Oh yeah.
I mean tax filings,I mean insurance and you just state of
Texas is the only state in the country,at least it was last year.
Whenever for this thing that you do not bylaw have to carry worker's comp.

(01:09:02):
Right.
And so as a business owneryou could be like,
well I can save that money.
Well I'm like, well I'm, I got guysthat are running meat saws and grinders.
I better not skip out on that.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.
Hey, I need ice.
Well, I need an ice machine.
Well, restaurants have coke.
How do I get ahow do I even get a Coke machine?
What do I do? Crawfish farm?
I don't
there's a lot of self-teaching throughthat process, but that sounds good.

(01:09:24):
See, I had a lot of great peopleto shop in my life.
Who are some of those people?
Oh gosh.
So my food suppliers, my vendors, it'samazing how you just make one phone call.
There's a well-known restaurant overin the Flower Mound, Bartlesville area
that he championsa particular farm, 44 farms beef.
I said, okay, well, I'm a meat shop

(01:09:44):
and I'm going to leverage and ridehis wave of marketing.
This town already knows that farm.
It's Texas, it's local.
Thomas, sell that beef.
Oh, how do I get it?
I don't know, Google 44 farm phone number.
So I call 44 farms.
Get Ahold of a gentleman.
He said, well, hey, yeah, that's cool.
You're going to open a butcher shop.
We'd be glad to talk to you,but we don't self distribute our beef.

(01:10:05):
You got to go through this companysaid, okay, well who do I call there?
We'll call this person.
And it's just that messy of ofjust that chain of people
that now I'm talking to a food supplierthat doesn't just sell that beef.
They sell tortillas and toiletmince and everything.
You know, everything you needto kind of supply
a restaurant or a grocery store,if you will.
And and then those peoplehave their suppliers and it's just this

(01:10:27):
big chain and, and it really is funnyas one phone call to 44 farms said, yes.
Interesting. Set the trajectory. Yeah.
So I hadn't even thought about that.
So you gotthe distributor is for for that.
How many distributorshow many partners do you have.
Because you don't just sell me.
You got beer and wine, you got produce,you got candles.

(01:10:51):
I got, you know.
Yeah. I'm the only meat shop in the world.
Smells like candleswhen you walk in there.
That's Katie's influence.
That's Katie's influence.
So I was naive.
There were so many things that I came uppound in the table.
In the beginning,I was like, I'm never going to run ads.
I'm not going to run discounts.
I want to be the Rolex meat markets,
but be for every manI saw all these things I'm going to do.
I'm only have one supplier.
I just wanted to have ones

(01:11:12):
that was stupid, thatnot oh man, you have a bunch of suppliers.
Keep those guys honest.
Took me a while to figure that outbecause you have one supplier.
How do you knowyou're getting the best price?
I mean, the guy's looking. You're asking.
Yes. Good price.
Well, I learned no, no no no, you getmultiple suppliers, sell the same thing.
Keep those guys honest.
And then I learned laterthat you can even put contracts in place,

(01:11:34):
that kind of lock in your marginsor the percentages
above what their costs are,what you're going to pay for goods.
That sure helps with your balance sheet.
But I learned a lot.
But yeah, I used to bang on the tapebecause I want it to be simple.
If one thing went wrong, didn't show upon time, it was one person I'm calling.
Not like which vendor was that or which.
Now more is better.
So you start paying people in Septemberand you don't open till December.

(01:11:59):
The night before you opened,
what was going through your mindof the butterflies in your stomach?
Are you are you able to sleep that night?
You know, my pants didn't fit anymore.
Not because I got fat.
Because I'd lost so much weight in Katydid two.
Our mirrors kind of reflect each otherin the bathroom,
and then we both at the same time, like,
we've lost like ten, 15 poundsthe past 2 or 3 months.
We're running ragged.

(01:12:20):
I mean, just. It's just the stress.
Yeah.
I mean, because it's the putting
on finishing
touch, it'sgoing to open the doors, all this stuff
and there's just so much wantsthe running.
Okay. Now we got to stock.
You got to get the food and otherand that's who it is for our product.
Yeah.
And the timing of getting that ordered andgetting it cut and getting it filled and
and not changing the opening date and itjust to get your certificate of occupancy.
I mean tell me say yeah you're goingto get approved more of it until you do.

(01:12:44):
And then it's just heythey don't deliver food on Sundays.
And so it was just ait's just man that coming together,
opening those doors that first dayI think I did sleep
I don't know I know I lost a lot of weightand I have to give credit to my team.
I mean, remember what I said when I firstwent in-house at an energy company?
I was scared to death,but I quickly realized

(01:13:06):
I just got to surround myselfwith smart people.
Well, that's what we did here in hiring.
I hired probably one of the bestyoung butchers in the metroplex.
I hired two greatfishmongers. Fishmongers.
They just know everything about seafoodsauces, how to cut them, everything.
Some really good counterhelp a chef at the time.
And so they were really thereand they kind of

(01:13:28):
helped me stay balanced, if you will.
I will look to realize this.
Not only do we have this,and they they taught me so much
that if I brought in this isn't anythingagainst the butcher shop back home.
But if I brought the butcher shopculture of hometown Shreveport,
Louisiana to Flower Mound, Texas,I got crucified, I got buried.

(01:13:51):
It would have worked.
It's just done.
It's just a different demographic.
Things were donedifferent over there in my hometown.
They could sell what's called no raw beef,meaning it's not graded
by the USDA inspector and get away with itjust fine.
But here people want prime,people want quality.
Not that that's not quality,but it's just different market.
And that's what I knew.
That was the educationI was bringing over here.

(01:14:12):
But I was surrounded by people that knewbetter, that worked in this market
for several years,if not more than a decade in some cases,
that it got us across the finishline of opening.
Knowing your customer
and knowing that the customer
and flower amount is different thanthe customer in Shreveport, that's huge.
Oh, yes.
That's huge.
so opening daydidn't meet your expectations.

(01:14:36):
Do you remember the day I.
Do, I do, I do, I do remember it.
It was wild.
I think I cried in the bathroomseveral times, of just more of just joy.
It's kind of like. You finished.
Yeah. I mean, I've never run a marathon.
I've run A5K or two, but just that you'veworked so hard on something for so long.
I mean, it's literally,
I mean, from the time I sit downwith that purple spiral notebook.

(01:14:57):
It's been over a year now, right when weopen those doors on December 13th of 2021.
And so it was just a lot.
And my balance sheet shows thatI didn't know what the hell I was doing
because we were just been I had the awfulmentality, just spend money, just just go
that boy in that in this industry
and he's matter about pennies matter.

(01:15:19):
And so I was just so it was just a lotit's a lot of moving parts.
I remember coming in within the first weekor two, I wanted to come the first day
and I think I was traveling or something,but I feel like a weekend.
You had a refrigeration problem?
Yeah, that was a little bitfurther down the road.
But yes, we did have one of those.
But it's interestingyou've made all this investment.

(01:15:40):
Yeah.
And your equipmentjust goes. On a Friday. Yeah.
So in the, in the meat industry or in the,
corner butcher shop industry Fridayyou live and die by Fridays and Saturdays
and we are open Sundaysnow, those days too.
And, I'll never forget coming inand one of my employees said,
hey, boss,we got a problem on a Friday morning.
I said, what's the problem?He goes, man, the meat.
And there's like 80 degrees.

(01:16:02):
Oh, come on, really?
That's 24ft of meat case.
And we had just started the night beforetrying to get ahead of the weekend. And,
and we lost a lot of product.
But is your stomach just turning.
You know, I had to laugh about it.
What are you going to do about it.
What are you going to do?
Okay, well what is working?
That case is working.

(01:16:22):
That refrigerator is working.
Well, we open in an hour.
Guys, get the stuff out of here.
Get that one returned over.
You know, and take to fill that onefull of beef.
Get those potato salad out of thereand do this and do that.
And we just did the best we could.
And you know, it's funny.
It was a Friday.
We operated that day
with 24 less feet of product,which is a lot of product, by the way.

(01:16:46):
We made more money that Fridaythan we had any Friday job up to that day.
That's awesome.
And that taught me a lessonthat our product mix was wrong.
We didn't need some of those productsand so we got rid of them.
It was interesting.
There's a lot that came out of that day,a lot.
You know, we had some teams and particularguys on the team came and said,
you know, boss, you handle that real well.We've had some bosses in the past.

(01:17:07):
I just lost it. So well,thank you for that.
I just, you know, askeddo I've probably just going stir crazy.
It looked like I was happy,but it really wasn't.
But I also learned a lot about p mix andthere's a lot of things we're carrying.
We didn't need to carry.
P max.
Product products. Yep.
And you know what I did to that same day?
I called my old mentor Ross at Shreveport,Louisiana.
Butcher shop is a.

(01:17:29):
Have you ever had this happen to you?
Yeah, you'll get through it.
So did you have, like,call insurance and file claim on that?
No, don't do that. You'll probably need itfor a bigger disaster later.
I said okay, well I didn't heat that.
I called insurance and I called my broker.
I said,what do you think? He said, just file it.
Was it got a thing that it didbecause cash flow got real tight.
About four months later in the summer,and I went and checked the mail one day,

(01:17:52):
and there was a checkthat it covered our rent that month.
It was a blessing
had those cases not gone downand he filed that claim, I don't know.
I, you know, a lot of credit.
So it was just it was one of those things,you know, you're like
kind of life gives you lemons,make lemonade.
So how it goes if.
You've roll with the punches.Yeah, quite a bit.
Have to. Man.

(01:18:12):
Are there any other standout stories in
but coming up on two yearsit's all been open, man.
You know?
Yes, probably none.That just comes to mind.
I mean, it's really been just more to me.
It comes from a man has experience.
It's just been quite the experiencegot because I left a world of

(01:18:33):
I didn't reallyknow what was going to happen every day
because you really don't know or feel, but
you didn't know you're going to come homewhen you're kind of ready to.
And if you didn't call any land owners,you know you're all going to get yelled
at. But,you know, in this industry, it's service.
It's not energy, it's retail.
It's not energy.
And consumers with social media,they've got a lot of power.

(01:18:55):
And you can do a lot of things right.
But if you misstep at the wrong time
with the wrong customer, wrong consumer,
it could be like a big stickout of nowhere.
That's just damage control.
And I don't have any specificsthat come to mind, but
you just got to be on your toes every,every second of every day.

(01:19:17):
And you layer with customersbecause, again, one star review
or you didn't have this or this,this product
didn't meet my expectationsor that employee looked at me wrong or,
you know, that's just from the customerfacing part.
Well,now you got to deal with the employees
and then the,
you know, I'll come in every dayand the lights flicker

(01:19:37):
and I got to get up there and hammerthese these LED lights, man.
They just don't make thingsas they used to.
You're back in the workingthe day care days.
Those lights started acting up.
If you change the balance
and you're good, it'salways something mechanical or something.
And it's it can wear on you.
Where on you.
You touched on social,
but you touched on a different aspectthan I was thinking about.
You guys kill it with social.

(01:20:00):
You've always got fresh posts
and they're always fun and funny.
Who does your social? Is that you?
Yeah, it's me. And that's funny.
That's a good question,
because the strategic plan was Katie,my partner, who owns 51% of this company.
People always ask, do I own the say, no,Katie doesn't just work here.
You handle social media.

(01:20:20):
And that was a touchy.
So it kind of became touchy becausethat was what we were supposed to do.
She does social media well,
I became kind of thein the grind of things every day
behind the meat counter,in the cutting room, in the kitchen.
And I would kind of do some social media.
There's like, well, wait,you're supposed to put on it.
And so it's really a transitionto where I do it now, just naturally.

(01:20:41):
And there's been a lot. Of learningsthere.
And was that something you knewa lot about? No.
I still don't know a lot about.
It's funny you ask that questionbecause yesterday I was so happy.
My daughter just turned 15.
I said, Brennan, did you know that youcould record your screen on your iPhone?
I did you see my post?
I recorded my screenchecking on our website.
Just like that. Really.

(01:21:04):
And yeah, I think out those thing.
But yeah, there's there's a lot to learn.
But we're blessed to live.
And that's a changethat we've recently made.
I mean, we were running print ads.
You know, we're doing a lot printadvertising a lot.
We were running print advertising.
And I looked at a panel last yearand I, I just started
looking at it go, man, I feel like I'mgetting more bang for our buck.
No buck really to three social media.

(01:21:26):
And I could put out there, hey,we're giving away bacon.
And what better have a lot of bacon?
Because people look at thatand they're in the store.
Within seconds.
My wife set me up here.They saw your thing.
It works. Amen. It's awesome.
So one of the things you talked aboutat the beginning of the story about
starting flurries was getting to watchthe family come in after their soccer

(01:21:47):
game on a on a Saturday afternoonand watch these kids grow up.
Have you got to experience some of that
and other thingsthat you were hoping for that you've seen?
Absolutely I have, I say a lot.
This is a hard business in a sense.
You're dealing with.
Okay,let me back up. I'm building a brand.
I've literally entered a marketsurrounded by big box stores.

(01:22:11):
Good ones.
Whole foods, sprouts, Walmart.
Neighborhood grocery is rightacross the street from me.
There's a few Kroger's Tom thumb's.
And here it is.
I'm coming in here saying,hey, Flurries Market.
That's my last name.
You should come buy your food from me.
Even though I knowit's gonna be inconvenient
because I don't have kitty litterover there, too.
You have to make another stop.
You got to come up to me.
And the point of me sharing that is it'sbeen a slow process to build cash flow.

(01:22:36):
It's a monthly business.
It's a monthly man.How are we going to do that?
We're going to do that. Well, maybe.
Now granted, year over yearwe're up 2,030%.
It's great. It's working.
It's actually working, the models working.
And where I'm going with this isif I didn't have to worry about that.
Bottom line, I'm convinced I'mwhere I'm supposed to be,

(01:22:56):
because on the days I don't have to worryabout the bottom line
and child number one comes in
or marry, who just became a widow,
who intentionally drove to our storeto tell me that Bob passed away.
And she wanted us to knowand to be able to hug her and embrace her
and then sit down to have coffee with herin our store and share and cry with her.

(01:23:18):
Pray with her.
That's it.
It's everything is everything.
And so should the store start being ableto throw off cash and then that we can.
My goal here
literally, and I tell my employees,and I probably shouldn't
have told them so earlybecause I don't want them lose.
Trust me,
I want this to be a profitable business,to give them the opportunity
to in a industry
that you don't really make moneyand make money,

(01:23:40):
give it back to them because they'rethe ones that make it work.
They're the ones that come in and makeand get the job done.
Most of them.
And so, man, there's a girl,she came in, Ava,
she brought me a pictureand it's still hanging on my front.
I there's nothing on my front glass.
It's just a it's a eight and a half by 11.
She, she broughtshe came in the other day.
Mr.. Flannery, Mr.
Fleury, I brought you something andshe drew a picture of most stick figure.
Her name.

(01:24:01):
She's got blue long hair.
I've got blue crayons, curly hair.
It's meant the world to me, you know?
That's all.
It's just. I mean, to me, that's joy.
That was the crux of me saying
life is more than tryingto get a three eggs
on sell on an oil and gas property,which is probably never going to happen.
You only read the headlinesabout those guys, right?

(01:24:22):
There was there's so many managementteams out there.
So, you know, it's not about the money.
The money's meant to be there.
Come it to me.
It's about service community.
Well I want to encourage youany kids sports event
that I'm at there's a flourish logobecause you've sponsored it.
You guys really have become an important

(01:24:43):
part of the communityand it's awesome to see.
The other thing I wanted to say,
you talked about your peopleand how you treat them.
Man, in retail and in food service,
turnover is incredibly highand in the last few years
it's gotten out of controlhow bad turnover is.

(01:25:04):
And when I go in,I'm there about once a week,
if not, if not more for not travelingand the faces don't change.
You've done an excellent jobkeeping your people.
Yeah.
And you know, I found my people throughthat initial phone call to the farm,
you know. Yeah.
And then the suppliers as well.
And it's no different back.
I mean, it's the same tools, same process.

(01:25:25):
I learned back in the energy business.
We all used the same Halliburtonto go practice.
Well, the frack the competitors.
Well he was like,hey Halliburton, how are they doing it?
Hey supplier,you call on these businesses.
Who's got some good people out therethat probably want to go somewhere else,
I know Jim-Bob over at Butcher Shop
X, he's probably one of the bestyou want to sell number?
Hell, yeah, I do.

(01:25:46):
Yeah.Guess what? Jim-Bob works for me now.
True story. I like to share this
when I'm still scoping.
This is a little at home.
When I'm still scoping.
Do I want to do this meat market thing?
And I was like, well, almost look up somelocal meat, some metroplex meat markets.
I'm gonna call and ask the ownerand ask them if they would do it.
How's it going?

(01:26:07):
And I'll call it oneparticular meat market in the metroplex
and say, hey, I'm quite Flori.I live in Flower Mound, Texas.
I'm thinking about opening a butcher shopthere and Flower Mound.
I've gone to your website.
We kind of look likewe're in the same stage of life.
You got a beautiful family, by the way,and I've been in your meat shop.
I went and looked at itbefore I made this phone call.
I loved it.Get great customer service there.
You think you want to have coffee?
Maybe you could help me, you know.Would you want to talk to me about it?

(01:26:30):
I was not prepared for the response.
I got the responseI'll just boil it down to was,
well,you're not going to be able to do it.
I'm planning to open one in FlowerMound myself one day,
and you'd be better offcoming to working for me.
Well,
it was no differentthan the enterprise guy
that said, biggest mistakein your life. I said, okay, all right,

(01:26:51):
I'm opening a butcher shop right here.
Challenge accepted. Well,you know who's been my number?
Who? My number one hire was his best guy.
I wouldn't take him.
Yeah,not really out of spite, but it just. Hey.
Yeah,it was just funny how it all worked out.
Have you had any.
No follow. Up conversations? No.
Hey. No.
Yeah.
Do you ever think about franchising thisor expanding it out?

(01:27:13):
And that's crazy.
Opening other flurries.
Mark I was. Getting those questionsweek one.
Were there other ones of these.
Are you do more of these.
You should do more of these.
And you know Scott, I don't know.
I still standuntil I can make this one profitable.
No, but I do look at other things.
Right? I am looking at other thingsalong the way.

(01:27:34):
They're industry related.
Call it theA&E experience in me of just curiosity.
I just I see a product set in my store,who owns it, who manufactures it,
do they want to sell it?
I like it, I believe in it.
Could I scale it? Stuff like that.
There's a lot of great mom and popsout there that have created cool products
that they don't know how or don'twant to take it to the next level.

(01:27:56):
And I kind of don't know how, but I surewould like to because I believe in them.
And I think you could make some money.
And so I was telling Katie,the day where I'm at right now
with flurries market and it's notwhere, it's where I personally it's
I want to I think this thing,Lord willing, we continue to slowly
grow slowly become a part of the communityagain, Lord willing. And,
you know,I just and let it do that over time.

(01:28:19):
But I'm a little impatient.
I'm going to try to find other thingsand just kind of diversify.
If you will flourish.
Spice Co flourished Beef Jerky Co,
Larry's Dog Food Co,whatever doesn't need to be flurries.
But sure you know justput some more corporate boxes out there.
So you want to tinker. Yeah.
You want to havemultiple irons in the fire?
Yeah I do, because I think one of them,one of them, Shirley, work.

(01:28:41):
So you touched on a few thingsthat I think are consistent
with what other entrepreneurs have said.
You had a mentor back in Shreveportwho who came alongside you.
You talked about surrounding yourselfwith good people
and people that knew more than you didabout certain things.
And that right there.

(01:29:01):
I think it takes humility,
because I think there are a lot of peoplethat don't want to admit
that they don't have the answers,you know?
So recognizethat you don't have all the answers
and that you need other people aroundyou treat your people well.
And what else would you tell somebodywho is thinking about starting a business?
Well, this may fall onsome on some deaf ears just because

(01:29:23):
of everyone's different beliefs.
And last time I checked,we're in a free country and we can believe
and have faith or no faith.
However we choose.
But for those believers,I say, just listen to God.
Ask God and I stand on that, Scott,I just do, and I don't wear on my sleeve.
I'll never forget callingmy father in law was so knotted up.
Do I make this decision?

(01:29:44):
I don't know, I mean,
just so just I can't even think straight,almost dizzy, fearful.
And he simply just said,have you prayed about this?
I said, man,that's such a simple solution.
And it's not like it gave me the answers.
I said, hey, God, I don't know what to do.
And he said, go do this.
No, but it did just help meget in the mindset of, well,

(01:30:07):
practice what you preach.
I mean, if you believe there's
someone that's created and do these thingsand you know, God put you here and put,
you know,put the wife, your wife in your life and,
you know, he's in the truly lovingis you know, it may not feel good,
you may not make the money you want tomake, but put your faith there.
So that's that comesthat's the first thing I mean, really.
And then rest of itjust kind of falls in place.

(01:30:28):
You may not see it at the time,but man, I can look back at almost every
single move, every fork in the roadand say, man, that makes sense, man.
Sitting in all those different
private equity providers officesand getting told no.
So many timesI used to think that it was us.
It was those just were failures.
But no, that was getting experience.

(01:30:50):
It was just learninghow to do it better the next time,
how to go sit over that bank and forthand say, yeah, I'm not a meat man,
but I want three quarters,$1 million, go open up a butcher shop.
You know how to not sitin those boardrooms.
I have known how to do thator had the courage to do it.
So learn from experiences,every experience,
whether it be good or bad, learn from it.
If there was one thing,you would go back and do different.

(01:31:12):
If you were starting all over knowing whatyou know now, what would it be?
I don't think there is one, causeI don't think there's any one thing
that I would do differentthat would change much today
other than themaybe the experience partner,
but I don't know howthat really would have turned out because
I'm again, very curious person,and I think I needed to learn
the things I've learnedthrough this past year and a half.

(01:31:36):
The way I've learned it the hard way I do.
And itdoesn't mean I have all the answers now,
because I know I sure as hell don't.
I'm still every day trying to figure out,well, should I open more hours?
Do I need to do this?
Are chef hires are fired? Do that.
You know that I and Melissayou know there's just a lot. But.
So Scott I can't give you the answerI don't know.
I don't think there is one.
I think I mean the partner thingsticks out that having deeper pockets

(01:32:00):
know who wouldn't want that openingin a different location now?
I mean, who knows if that would have beenbetter or worse or in a great location
experience.
Certainly that changed experience,
but I knew that I wasI knew going into it, I don't have it.
So I'm not supposed to sit here, Dago man.
Everything has been bad.
Well, I should have been bad. Kind of.

(01:32:21):
But I tell you.
But that's what I canof course correct it, though, Scott is,
you know, we now sell barbecue.
Well, I don't do the barbecue.
I had somebody who does barbecue.
Does it really well, who's 64 yearsold, who's own 14 restaurants.
I didn't just do barbecue to do that.
I joined with himbecause he's got a lot of wisdom,
and his wisdom to me isI've shared with him some of our numbers.

(01:32:43):
He says, man, for you to do whatyou've done so far, that's great.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
If you keep doing,you just keep doing it. So
it'd be nice to kind of have thatfrom the beginning
along the wayto have some of that encouragement.
But I've had Katie, she's encouraged me.
Thank God we we all need that. Yeah.
So I think the just the experience,if there's anything I'd change

(01:33:04):
would be the experience.
But I knew I didn't have it going in.
But I think the lack of experiencejust got us where we are now.
It's made us, it'sforced us to figure it out and bootstrap
it versus someone tellingus, based off their experience,
which is value to that,right, can save you money,
save you some missteps,save you some time.
Don't do it that way. Hey,be careful there.

(01:33:25):
But so far, I mean, I don't follow thatinsurance claim up and I'm glad I did.
I don'twhy did you slow to hire quick to fire?
I probably should do betterat that sometimes.
Are you ago with your gut kind of person or you.
no, I gotta I gotta analyze this.
No, not in the spreadsheet.
No, I, I am a buy it nowfigure out what a bought later type guy.

(01:33:48):
Just go for it.
Make the move with my gut. Tell me
which is
probably all washes, and it'sbeen good and bad in my life, but
I pivot fast. Man.
If something I feel like it's not working,I want to know
what's the alternative and go same wayI always like.
Back in my corporate days, I would changemy office around every 30 days.
I just like change or to be different.

(01:34:09):
So if I'm not making money this month,well, let's throw this at the wall
and see if it sticks.
And one thing I'm learning with thatin this particular industry is some people
perceive that as you're failing,you must not be doing good.
And I had a lady, I had a customer
look at me in the ass and said,you're not closing, are you?
So yeah, we close in about 30 minutes.
She no like closing closesand no, she's most people out there

(01:34:31):
think that you're not doing well. I said,well I've heard that.
I hear some people have been so far takenas because you're always doing
different things like.
Yeah, because what's what I'm doingisn't what I want it to be.
I want it to.
In your world, though,there's so many knobs to turn.
Yeah. And the knob you need to turn today
may not be the knobyou need to turn tomorrow.
Yeah, there's several things like,the loyalty program.

(01:34:53):
I, you know, you go to any grocery storeat whatever.
People have loyalty programsto create loyalty, I get that, but.
And so I did that early on our POS systemallows us to put a loyalty program
in place. You get a discountafter you earn loyalty points.
Well, that was stupid becauseis it really making people loyal to us?
If you've got a really good product,good service, good quality,

(01:35:16):
do you really need to incentivize themto be loyal to you?
Probably not.
And you're alreadyoperating on razor thin margins.
And so to give more discount,it took me a year to figure it out.
And so when you go take that away,yeah I can see why people go,
oh is that doing good?
No. It's just if you want me to be here,I got to do this.

(01:35:38):
And so there's things like that.
I mean, it's little things along the way.
Oh, I wish I'd never done that.
I mean, just someone forgetsto get their points or mad at you like me.
I'm trying to do your favorite.
You know, the program.There's there's so many things.
You gota lot of people you're trying to please.
They're a. Lot.
We're running a big saleon, prime grade brisket.
Right now. I'm giving away.
I call itthe Robin. I do a lot of Robin Hood.

(01:35:58):
Robin hooding, and it's.
And I'm doing itintentionally at the stage where it.
I'm trying to create foottraffic and brand awareness.
Who is flourish because we care 40,000cars drop by every day.
I don't think a day goes bythat we're open.
So how long have you been here?
You're have what, year and a half. Yeah.
So we'realways finding deals in the market
that we could super leverage them.
We could use them.
Some people would call it gouging.

(01:36:20):
But I choose not to saywell I know what my price is.
I can use this
as a marketing tool, cost menothing and just pass it on to consumer.
But if it only that easy consumer
site to sometimes can booger that up.
Example. Hey, I'm gonna say this for 399.
I'm only making a penny on it,
but they're going to want youto do a little bit extra to it.

(01:36:41):
And it's like, well,I didn't make that labor in.
I didn't do it.
And the nephew says, no, it's oh, well,then you suck.
And your service is terrible. Like,wait, wait, you're missing the thing.
It's the best deal in the world.
I'm better.I'm cheaper than H-e-b at the big box.
Guys, what do you.What about that guy? Doesn't matter.
You didn't care. It's.
It's that balance in.
It's an easy balancewhen you get the right people.

(01:37:02):
That's the key.Gotta have the right people.
We've covered a lot. Yeah.
What else would you want people to know
about you, about your story,about your store.
They haven't. Shared?
Well, I don't think there'sanything special about me.
I don't know, I'm just a big believer.
I think it's I'm a big believer in takingadvantage of the free market world.

(01:37:23):
We live in.
If you want to go do something,
don't not do itbecause you don't have the experience.
If you're in your gut or have prayed or
just you were convicted,you need to go do something different.
I don't care how old you are,I don't know.
It's easy for me to say,sit here in my mid-forties.
I really don't care.
I think you should go do it now.
Don't go blind.

(01:37:44):
I'll jump off the cliff.
But at least Google
get the purple spiral notebook out,pen to paper, man, and just go for it.
And I think if you go for itand you surround yourself
with the right peopleand think you do anything,
I tell these young kidsthat come in the store, not in.
We have high school guys and girlsthat come in workforce.
And so what do you where you get in schoolagainst the joy I have.

(01:38:06):
This is what I love, what you want to do.
It's okay man.You don't know. You don't know.
And but just know that you can do anythingyou want to do.
Just know in 20 yearsyou think you're going to be a doctor,
but you're going to own Amit Shah.
I mean, things are going to happen.You're just so.
I don't know, Scott.
I think that's if that's an answer ofand just live your dream.
And no meat owning meatmarket was not at my damn dream.
I can promise you that.

(01:38:28):
But my joy is people.
And I think I've found a way to be aroundpeople a lot and influence them.
Not that I'm trying to influence people,
but I do believe that my heartis in the right place
to be a light and cast hope in a worldthat really needs a lot of that right now.
Whether you intend to or not,you influence people

(01:38:50):
just by being who you are.
I mean that the general sense,if you're intrinsically good natured,
that influences people,
if you're intrinsically bad natured,that influences player. So.
Well, Clayton, thank youfor being a guest on In the Thick of It.
Thank you. Appreciate it man.
Proud of what you're doing.
It's awesome.You got a beautiful place here.
You really do.

(01:39:11):
The whole time I've been talkingI feel like a Saturday night Laughs get
the radio station
I don't remember what.
It's two ladies two ladies.
So I know exactly what you'retalking about.
It's real song. Yes. Low.
Yeah. Monotone.
Yeah well keep up the good work.
Thanks for having me Scott. Appreciate it.
Thank you man.

(01:39:37):
That was ClaytonFlurry, founder of Flurry’s Market.
To learn more, visit flurrysmarket.comand be sure to follow them on Instagram,
where you will be entertainedand your taste buds will be watered.
If you or a founder you know would liketo be a guest on In The Thick of It,
email us at intro@founderstory.us.

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Anniversary Throwback - #6: Clayton Flurry, Flurry's Market

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.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Anniversary Throwback - #6: Clayton Flurry, Flurry's Market