Hey everyone. Before I start the show today, I want to tell you about an amazing resource that can really help your business and your leadership capabilities, regardless of where you're at in your career. The website is called strategicfinancialleadership.com. In here, you can get access to free articles, past podcast, episodes, courses, economic indicators, and tools like the cost of capital calculator, which sounds pretty nerdy, but also cool.

Right? There are also membership options for you to get exclusive access to other resources that will help you to accelerate your career and drive better outcomes for your organization. Go to strategic financial leadership.com and enter the discount code free month. To get your first month's membership covered by us.

So you kind of look at when you want to phase that out. In many cases, Becky, you know what you got to make smart moves to get better

From Coltivar. It's the Strategic Financial Leadership podcast. A show about CFOs entrepreneurs and top business executives and their inspiring stories from inside the world of corporate strategy and finance, I'm Steve coffer and the founder of Coltivar. And on today's show, I'll be talking with Andrew Nobel about his views on the triple bottom line and how taking a holistic approach to business and life can enable us to generate better enduring value.

The role of the Strategic Financial Leader is much more expansive than it was in the past. Instead of focusing solely on the bottom line or profits, the modern leader focuses on social and environmental concerns in conjunction with the financial wellbeing of the organization. These three components, social, environmental, and financial are the building blocks of what is referred to as the triple bottom line.

When we evaluate our performance with a broader, more holistic perspective in mind, we are empowered to create and capture more value. Today's special guest. Andrew  is an example of a leader who applies the triple bottom line concept to both his professional and personal life. If Andrew had any advice for future generations, it is to be kind and give the other person the benefit of the doubt.

Andrew is always willing to lend a helping hand, which truly shows through his extensive volunteer experience. He has served on the academic relations committee for financial executives international since 2003. And it's a supporter of numerous associations, such as best buddies international and the multiple sclerosis association of America.

He's also volunteered with habitat for humanity international. Pretty impressive. Andrew has been part of the company, Oxy low carbon ventures for over eight years, he has served in a variety of capacities, ranging from the director of it, planning financial reporting, performance improvement, and now serves as the commercial director asked for his education experience for his undergrad.

He graduated from the university of Mumbai. Where he received his bachelor's of commerce. He continued his education and received an MBA with distinction from Imperial college, London, and a doctorate in business administration from Nottingham Trent university. Along with this, he has executive education from the tuck school of business at Dartmouth college.

So let's jump into today's conversation. With Andrew. Now I just wanted to start off with saying that any opinions on any football and Danny my own. So my employer doesn't necessarily share my views or endorsed.

Let me ask you this like what types of subjects were you interested in as a kid? Yeah, I really liked the whole range of subjects, but probably favorite was math and geography. Few other subjects like that. When I was in high school, I discovered accounting and really kind of fascinated me that you could combine numbers with.

Business decisions when they're doing financial accounting or management accounting. Then I went into college and undergrad focused on, on that, and I got lucky enough to get a job almost immediately after school with Arthur Young was, you know, back in the late eighties, that's when it was, it was one of the big eight, which is not the big four.

If I think you're, you probably remember when you, why. Well, maybe that's just the four year time, but Eli was formed from Arthur Young and Winnie. Yep. So I actually worked at it. I worked at Ernst and young, so that's familiar with that. And you're, you know, you've got some of the history and I felt really fortunate in those times.

Soon after working with RD, I worked with the Addison consulting and audit, and an incident was discussed from the beginning that the start of the Enron fiasco. And not many people know about that now. Steve Anderson was different from the other firms. It was just one global partnership. The other large firms were being a global phone.

You know, all of us had that kind of training development and the opportunity to move internationally that other firms didn't have. It was single from the flip side. It also resulted in the collapse of the problem. Right. One single office got any trouble with the Enron case, which is Eastern office said the whole farm collapse.

So that one office issues overall, for me personally, that was a really good start in very good grounding in consulting it audit. Yeah. So at that time, did you want to stay in public accounting for the rest of your career? Or did you not know what you wanted to do or were you like, Hey, I'm going to come in for a few years, pick up some experience, then I'm out.

What, what were you thinking at the time? I actually was interested in moving up in the public accounting with more responsibility towards partnership, but really I didn't have the opportunity. I think one, because it was smaller, much smaller office. I worked in the QA office and later on in the Dubai and Oman offices, they will create was invaded by Iraq in 1990.

Yeah. So I really, but I think the barrier was more size of the office. So there really wasn't enough room to grow. If something wasn't something I did not want to have the room for it. So, Lisa, how did it living abroad and how has your international experience shaped who you are today? And is it a good idea for youngsters, you know, growing up in their career to get some international experience?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think we've talked about that before Steve, you know, I'm a first-generation immigrant here, you know, came in 2000, joined with with a company move. And really for me bring that perspective really appreciate the cultural differences. A lot more. Went back to the middle East, you know, with the company about 10 years ago.

And. You really see that kind of opportunity to kind of bridge cultures, but also it's not just culture, it's also working style and just pace of life. There's so many different things that mixing rooms. I agree. And you know, that taught me a lot. When I did my MBA program through Duke, you know, I had the opportunity to travel to four different countries.

So we studied in China and India and Chile and Germany. And, you know, I have to admit, you know, going into these programs. You know, I was kind of naive to the rest of the world. Like sure. I traveled to a few other places before the program, but never to, you know, opposite sides of the world. Yeah. America is fascinating as well.

It's so Tilly I, I didn't, I didn't. Yeah. I always wanted to go there. I've always wanted to go to China and Japan. I've never been to China or Japan. I've been to China or Japan. Love to go there. So you did all of that in the space of one program, one MBA program. We did China, India, Chile, and Europe, Germany, Germany.

Okay. Have Germany and yeah, there's all different residencies. And we had a chance to live in these different countries and study. And it taught me a lot about just the cultures and the different cultures. You know, how people in different cultures view power, like power distance, whether you can walk into the CEO's office and just say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking.

Or if that's taboo we also learned about like time, you know, how do people view time in South America? It's very, you know, it's relative relative time, like, Hey know, let's meet at 10 o'clock. Means roughly 10, 10 30 versus in the United States. It's rude to be one minute late. Right? So it just taught me a lot of differences about people and it taught me how to respect differences of opinions in different cultures and how to be like enriched and empowered by these differences rather than to be fearful or, you know, turned off by these differences.

Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does that, you know, in business, I think, you know, I've certainly seen kind of my fair share of different cultures, you know, India, middle East you're and North America. I think one thing that kind of comes across in business also is not everywhere in business relationships are important if you know that that's a given, right.

But you see in certain cultures that relationships are put above principles. At some point. And that's where I think for North Americans, it becomes difficult to manage, like, no you're doing something wrong. I don't care if you're my best friend, but stop you, you know? And I think there, you see some cultural differences that actually percolate into changes in action.

Right? So. I think you culturally, if some conscious put that relationship above, you know, legal or business considerations, always, you know, and, and I think that's an adjustment that people have. Absolutely. I agree. And it's definitely something to navigate. Let me go back to a comment that you made earlier.

You said you really liked the counting. You liked the story behind the numbers and how it relates to business. And you're into math and numbers. Do you think that's a necessary attribute of a successful leader of an organization? Does a CEO or a CEO, should they have some type of basis of accounting and finance and numbers?

Or do you think that's just the responsibility of a CFO or financial leader? Oh, I think it's the responsibility on leaders, really everyone in business and, and Steve, you know, I teach MBA students over here in Houston, and you've got people who work in government, in private organizations, large public organizations for rice, right across the board.

So MBA programs, they do want you to know about. Capital planning. They do want you to know about budgeting and all the financial areas because they see that as so important to a well-rounded management education. Right? And the reason that is, is because you've got people who are making decisions based on a whole range of factors, but the numbers, whether it's rate of return net present value, or, you know, your, how many years your money is going to be at risk, your payout, all of that are important factors in making project decisions.

Right? So. Yes. They are not the only factors. Very important factors in that overall decision. Yeah, absolutely. And, and having just a foundational understanding of these things is pretty critical. Let me ask you this. Is it possible to know all this stuff? Like I knew a lot of people that went through accounting programs and finance programs, and they're very smart when it came to, you know, the debits and credits and the fundamentals of a financial statement.

But sometimes I noticed that they missed the whole. Point or the whole story. Do you see this in your daily interactions or in your leadership roles? Is it possible to know the numbers, into understand the concepts, but to miss the whole point in the whole story behind the integration of finance and business and relationships?

I think so. So you know that the U S system, if you, if you look at the development of us gap, right, and you as the sec and the FASBI over the years, the U S has generally been perceived as very strong and valued, structured set of standards. But over the years, you've had successions of people trying to work around the rules or decide.

So it became, it's become very rules-based. If you compare that to like the international standards, the U S counting standards, the very rules based other principles based. And what's happened with that is that you inevitably have to spend more and more time really understanding and putting the rules themselves.

So it clinic needs less bandwidth, I would say. For senior accounting professionals to get really involved with the business. I think that's unfortunate, but I think to a large extent, that's not been the same with other financial areas where they talk about management, accounting. So that's more financial economy, but we talk about management.

Accounting. Are you talking about financial treasury or tax or tax is complicated in itself? But I think if we're talking about financial operations, it's probably not as pronounced, but I think part of the problem that, you know, you, you mentioned just how complex our world has become. Sure. So how do you see the world changing the world of finance?

I mean, you've teach MBA students. You've been a financial leader. You've been a business leader. You've been very successful in your career. How do you see the role of the CFO or the financial leader transforming over time? I think more leaders are recognizing that they've got to have those multiple skills.

They've got to have those broader skills from a strategic perspective. And if you say, what would you define the strategic perspective? I think it's saying it's both or what term? Like looking over like a longer term issues, but it's also looking at threats, right? So it's also the breadth of the business.

That's a strategy, or you're looking at how that fits into the overall business. So it's both length of term as well as the breath. I think more, more people are seeing that. I think also that technology has helped more people get there by being able to quickly communicate and get data from through search or a number of sources, but also in terms of being able to quickly analyze that just data from a number of sources.

Right. So, yeah, I think people who may not have had the ability to do that effectively. In terms of really understanding their business, they can do that with technology. Absolutely. You've worked with a number of businesses. Are you seeing something like that with your and festivals? I can echo what you said regarding like this whole strategic movement where, you know, in the past, I think the financial leader was somebody who was.

Over compliance and the transactional side of the business. And they're doing debits and credits in the back office to produce these financial statements. And, you know, in the executive meeting, when is their turn to talk about the financials he, or she would speak up? I think now you're starting to see the CFO own more of the strategy process, you know, because without strategy and in the financial side of it, those two things aren't integrated, then you just have some.

Marketing plan with a bunch of garbage, or if you have more weight on the financial side, then you just have like all these budgets, right? And your strategy becomes like an over complex overexplain budget. So I think the integration of those two has been key. And to your point of like the strategic leader needs to be thinking about new trends, new technologies, new movements, what's next on the horizon is really important.

And so it's shifting this function is shifting this role quite a bit. Yeah, and I think it's not just finance. So if you look at traditional organizations and structures, right. I think in many organizations, not all, you know, there's a lot of exceptions, but many organizations, finance, legal, HR, it supply chain management.

They've all been kind of, they were relegated to like the kids stable, right. So they didn't have a full seat at the table. They will kind of call on when, when needed. But I think there's more recognition that all of these areas are so important. You may look at it and HR so much, so many other areas on that is a critical core pieces of every business.

Right? So I think it's not just finance. It's all. Yeah. All of them are starting to play a bigger role in that. And I think that's great cause it's the diversity of opinions and just these, these different perspectives that people bring is extremely valuable to the organization. Now in the past, Andrew, you and I, we were talking about this concept of a triple bottom line.

So can you explain that to the listeners? What is meant by this concept and how do you think that relates both professionally and personally, you know, and, and, and this has been around for awhile It's been around the concept and there for 30 years, I forget the name of the, there was an English man who came up with about 30 years ago.

And really it was around saying your activities as an organization, your projects, you should strive for financial, social and environmental benefits. It's also been just kind of modified to be called the three PS people, planet and profit. Right. And many people would have heard that. But I think it, it became more and more.

Common to see that and say, Hey, we can do this. We can do, we can look at projects as being much more than just financial gain. How can it improve jobs in the area? Can we engage with local workforce? How can we protect the environment or improve? One thing that really intrigued me about that is whether you can take that concept and apply it to your own portfolio of projects that you're working on, whether it's at home with your family and friends, with your work.

With your studies and say, how do I do things that tap into all of those? So it's almost like making your individual projects, your personal goals include those. And I think once people start to think like that, and I think it's intuitive to us, we want to do good. Right. And I think it's intuitive to make that part of individualized, that concept.

Yeah, and I think that's so smart and that really struck me, you know, last time we were talking, you know, because in business, you know, we hear that you're seeing more companies like ESG is coming out and you're seeing more investment flowing into this area where people are like, Hey, yeah, it's not just about making profits for the shareholders, but it's also about profitability and doing good by the stakeholders, by everybody in the community.

Right. But I think when you relate it on the personal side, You know, it gets really interesting because if a person's pursuing a life, that's just financial based. I mean, you're going to get to the point where money is just money. Right, right. After a point, it doesn't have much utility beyond, you know, covering the basics and sure.

You know, you could buy a new sports car and it's fun at first. And then it, you know, it loses its appeal and its luster there. And then, you know, you often do you buy your. Your second home or third home or your private jet or whatever, but I've seen so many executives that, you know, reach these high levels of financial success and then their lives are just empty.

So I think when you start applying these other areas is triple bottom line idea of, Hey, how am I relationships with people? Okay. How am I doing from a financial perspective? Okay, that's great. That's a noteworthy pursue, you know, especially if you take that money and you can go do other things with it, I'm all for that.

And then, you know, what am I doing for the planet or for. My community and, you know, for a bigger cause other than just myself. And I think when we can take this concept and apply it to our lives. This is where we could start to get more in harmony with all these good things that we should be doing. No, that, that definitely makes sense like that.

Steven, thank you for kind of building on that concept for me. I think it's something that kind of fascinated me personally saying, Hey, how can I think about that when I'm agreeing to take on an activity, how am I doing online? Kind of. Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you about your life. Andrew, has your life been what you expected?

I mean, are you a goal oriented person? Do you set goals and you have plans and are you living the life that you planned out five, 10, 20 years ago, or has it taken you down different paths that you never expected before? Talk to me a little bit about that. That's that's, that's always an interesting one. I think the short answer is no, I don't, I didn't expect to be doing this.

You know, at this point I thought of myself as kind of a broad financial or general management leader for, you know, in a large organization. I think one of the things that I don't think it's the lack of focus that I struggled with, but it was around understanding some of the dynamics. In organizations of how they work in working some of those more effectively.

So I didn't climb the corporate ladder the way that I thought I would. So that's one, but on the other, I don't have any regrets. I think it's that. The journey itself was so varied and so interesting to me that I don't feel like a lot. I don't know if that makes sense, but I feel about it. It does. No, it, it, it's interesting because you know, I've always been like a goal oriented person and that's why I like to ask this question to people.

You know, I, when I was a youngster, I remember having a journal by my bedside and, you know, I'd write in my journal. I had different goals that I wanted to achieve. And here I was like, Yeah, 10 years old writing down goals, which is crazy, but it's interesting because there's been some twists and turns throughout my life.

Like when I became CFO of a company, I didn't have anywhere. My goal book be a CFO in the next 12 months or 24 months. It just, you know, I worked hard. No, I created value for organizations and then the opportunity opened up and I was well positioned to take it, but it wasn't anything that was in my life plan and nor was it part of my goal.

So it's interesting. Some people, you know, they have a plan, they stick to it and they go through life and they achieve things. Right. And I think we all have trials and tribulations. There's definitely twists and turns in everybody's life, but it's, it's interesting how people's lives evolve over time. And.

It is. And I think if I make it a habit to talk about politics, but I think to some extent, if you're in some way towards the center of that. So, so you said, you know, some are very goal oriented and some are very kind of loose everyday. You know, the hit let's take it as right. So somebody is read as most balanced and harmony and that kind of mirrors how I see.

Political things as well. That's often it's a middle position. That's the most balanced and is the most effective in summary. Right. You know, unfortunately when we have political debates and political views, once you're hearing them, most of the time are seeing most of the time. It's not the middle. It's not them.

Balanced moderate, it's one extreme other, and I think it applies to life in general that you say, you know, I, I don't want to wake up every morning, not knowing what find is going to be anything that's going to, anything my day's going to be like, I don't want to be so regimented that I can't spend 15 minutes to start with Jack.

Yep. No, and that's such a great point and I love that, you know, because you have to find the middle and the extremes, and even going back to the triple bottom line, you know, if you're in a strategic leadership position and you say, Hey, look, we're just going to pursue things that are all about the environment and about the planet.

And you can bankrupt your company, right? You can give so much to give away so much you bankrupt it. Right. And same thing is true with people. You say, you know, people they're so important. We're going to pay these great salaries, have all these benefits. We're never going to make any cuts. And if you don't make the necessary cuts, when demand goes down or, you know, your revenues are declining, you can destroy the rest of your business.

And a lot of other people will be out of work there's middle ground. And I think that's a really. Good point that you make Andrew and a really good lesson learned that it's in the middle somewhere because whatever position you're in, whether it's politics or whether it's in business or in your personal life and personal relationships, people have opposing perspectives oftentimes, but oftentimes they want the same thing in the same thing as often in the middle.

It's just disguised by extremes. Oftentimes. So let me ask you this. What do you think like when you hear the term strategic financial leadership. You know, that's what this podcast is about. What does that term even mean to you? Well, you know, I think, you know, of course it's a conjoint, so if you kind of break them apart, let's say strategic finance leadership as a film, it's some kind of amalgamation of what each of those stones mean.

Right? So the strategy part, and I think we talked about that is that you're not looking at something from a kind of narrow perspective. So it's broader both in terms of length of period of duration, right. As you're saying, I'm looking for the next five years, 10 years longer, but it's also broader in terms of.

What you look at, right? So you don't just look at the financial piece or you don't just look at one piece of the business and hit the hole so that you have it. We talked a little bit about that. I think from a, from, from a leadership perspective, though, not a lot different financial leadership is not a lot.

Different from leadership in other areas, you know? So it's, it's really about inspiring your team, serving your stakeholders and, you know, working together, you build something and really making sure that you are leading a team that is the right fit for what the task is. But also works together. So it's not just task oriented, but also relationship oriented that we would be in this together.

It makes perfect sense. So what if you're giving me advice and he said, Hey, Steve, here are some key core attributes that you must develop in order to be successful as a person, both professionally and personally. What attributes would you recommend? I focus on and really try to hone in so I could become, you know, a really effective person and a great person overall.

It could be big time. I know you well enough to know that you don't need the advice kind of giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when you know that somebody is saying something that is really at odds with what you believe in or does something that is really offensive to you in some way or something of detriment to you.

I think he's just saying, is there something that I don't know, is there something this other person doesn't know? Is there something we both don't know? Are there some circumstances that you go to the whole, and once you get to that list, you're going to say they're going to be so many things around that you cannot answer.

Definitively. So just give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Right? That would be one. I see that as part of being kind, being kind person. The other thing I think is just keep your skills though, because there's so much available that it's Wikipedia, Google search search is a great way to do it as well.

I'm not trying to promote Google. This just happens to be the one I use most, but it's just easy to. You get information and stay up to date on what's happening. Get some regular news sources that are reliable and balanced and stay up date. And then the third thing I think is just try to balance your relationships.

Are you work day to day and it work, try to balance it. So that's kind of the advice I would give to somebody starting their career. I look back on your own life and you went back to 20 year old. Andrew, what would you tell Andrew? I think I really struggled with the kindness spot. I was abrasive. I think in my twenties, early thirties, definitely much more type a type.

I think I grew smarter, just mature and it just became easier to work with me as I grew up because I was so focused on the knowledge and tasks that it kind of, my relationship size a lot as there should be. It's interesting that you said that because I just had a conversation just the other day with one of my clients who is owner a company.

And he was saying the same thing that over time, you know, as he continues to age, he gets softer and his approach is more kind. He's like when I was in my forties and especially in my thirties, I was really brash. I wanted to like, Conquer the world, you know, he was very short with people, very task oriented.

And it's interesting to hear your perspective and hear you echo that point, that over time, you know, you like soften and become more in touch and, and also you probably get to see a lot more perspectives over time and realize that, Hey, maybe my perspective isn't necessarily. Right, right. No, that's true.

That's by a long shot Steve, but I think maybe too much of the stuff's thrown or something, but do you tend to see 20 something men be predominant in that kind of aggressiveness more than they should be? Yep, absolutely. So where do you see the opportunities for growth and innovation and value creation into the future?

That's a really pertinent question because I'd love, I could do a whole segment on that. But middle of last year, I've been in this new role as commercial director for obvious low common ranchers. This is easily the most exciting job I've had in like 35 years career. This is the most excited I've ever been.

So you've got a large ecosystem. That's developing projects to capture transport, just permanently sequester carbon dioxide, 8,000 feet below the surface. Right. There's so much happening in this space. So you, as the whole, world's realizing that solutions like reducing consumption. Reforestation and much, much of others then they're needed, but you have to take an all of the above approach, right?

So you got to include the stuff that I'm working on, which is carbon capture and sequestration. And so whether you're capturing it from the air or capturing from industrial sources to capturing it and putting into way forever. So I think that's a big area, but also the other clean energy spaces, whether you, you know, working around a whole bunch of new technologies for clean energy, I think that's a huge growth area.

And then I, you know, I tried to persuade you at some point, I think Steve, to come to Houston at least to visit more often, but you know, you got the big three year thing. If you, if you look at, you know, what are the exciting areas to get into for someone starting out very early in their career to move to.

One we've seen the energy of the other one would be medicine, medical devices, medicine in general, just human health. And then the third space. I mean, who's not excited about what's happening in the space. I've been in Houston last seven years. And just so excited because I don't know if you knew this, but got the biggest medical center in the world.

Wow. I didn't know that what I know in Texas, you know, I come from the, you know, the solar utility scale solar side. And when I was a CFO, that's what we were heavily involved in that business. And there's so much new utility scale solar coming online in Texas and in you're right in its infancy. As far as the technology goes in, when you start coupling, like.

Battery storage in with the solar sites. And when the technology gets better just from the, each of the, the solar panels, you know, the opportunities are, and, and even stuff that it's considered, like they say, Oh, follow through too bad. But think about, think about how. Clean natural gas or even crude compared to, you know, predecessor, dominance of coal and gold people.

Don't don't remember, but how clean coal is compared to burning wood and how good it works. I think it's progression. You can just say, okay, coal bad, because it's actually better than its predecessor. And you people have messaged us as this infrastructure that, so you kind of look at when. You want to phase that out many, one, replace that in some cases, your answers decades out, you know, but you got to make smart moves to get better.

Right? So clean energy is not only about solar and wind, you know? I mean, I, I think there's a lot of potential in the wind as well. You probably know that, you know, Texas state . But I think each of these, each of those come with their own challenges. And I think I do understand how the world running in the meantime.

Well, and I think you just nailed it, Andrew, really? And that's what I love about you is this idea of progression this, learning this growth, this progressing, you know, just. Always, you know, trying to become a better person or, you know, unlock potential, whether that's in your personal life or professionally.

So with this drive for progression and with so much information coming at you and you, you talked about search and how you can search so many different topics and there's just so much distraction out there. How do you stay focused on what's most essential? For me that when I was younger, even to some extent today, staying disciplined, focus and organized is somewhat of a challenge because I'm just, I get enthusiastic.

I do get distracted and I see that as a growth area for me. And it's. It's odd to be talking about growth when you're in your fifties. And I still, you know, I, I, I think that's, self-awareness, that's something I still need to improve on. It is important to me that I, I that's an area staying focused on, on task is important to me and I'm still trying to improve.

One of the things that I use as I would definitely recommend to people is use the technology that, you know, Again, I'm not endorsing Microsoft. I love teams. So if you look at Microsoft teams, you look at some of the technology with outlook and teams, and even just some of the technology, it allows you to kind of stay organized and disciplined.

You're going to your calendar, that you got everything that you put on there, and then you store files or data that, that you don't have to go hunting for them. Obviously put some thought into how they structured it. But I think using the technology. No, that's a great point. And there's so many resources out there nowadays.

I mean, I just remember, you know, growing up and when I was in high school, that's when, you know, the Apple, I think is the Macintosh computer is all, you know, the, the green screen. Right. And you like around there, Hannah is like super slow, you know, even typing on it. And, you know, that's, that was the technology that was around at that time.

And I mean, if you even think about like the last 10 years, and you just think about. Going back to 2010 and all the technology that's out nowadays. I mean, I think it's crazy because pretty much anything that I think of, or I'm like, Oh, it'd be really helpful to have this widget or gadget or app or whatever it is.

It pretty much exists, which is pretty crazy. So you're right. There's a lot of technology, a lot of resources that we can use. So you've been very successful in your career. You've done a lot of great things. Is there something that is just always in the back of your mind where you're like, Wow. I just, I really want to do this and then you throw in the, but I'm too old.

I'm too busy. I'm too. This I'm too tired. I don't have this. Is there something that you want to accomplish that you just haven't accomplished yet? Well, all the excuses out the door, right? It just say you have less resources, endless energy time, whatever it is. What, what do you want to do with the rest of your life here?

Well, you know, I've always felt like ultimately success is just about doing the things you love being around people. You've careful, you know, it's and it's also mental attitude, right? So, you know, I, I tried many things. I didn't succeed in any of the projects. I attempted maybe, maybe most of the projects that attempt, I still say I'm successful already because I'm doing what I love.

I'm surrounded by supportive family, friends, colleagues. And so I think. In in saying, Hey, what's next from a project basis work basis. I want to take this, you know, carbon sequestration to the next level, have it really fly and be a go-to place to root for climate change to save the planet, basically.

Right. And so to me, it's really inspiring personally, to do that from works and fun. Oh, personal standpoint. I want to get more fit. I want to Coupons are way too bad, maybe 15, 20 pounds over it, but I just like to be much fit something I've never really done, but I think it's, I've see if so many of my friends, some of my, some older who benefits so much from staying fit and healthy, you know, so much health wise.

So I think those elements just kind of keep on building on relationships with people I care about. No, those are definitely praiseworthy things to be pursuing. And, you know, I agree like the, the fitness piece is like so central, you know, to me, because if I don't have the energy to play with my kids or to go outside and do things, or, you know, I'll have the energy to pursue the things that I'm passionate about.

You know, a lot of that stems from health. And, you know, it's funny because you know, I'll, I'll lift weights, right? I'll lift weights in my basement. I have a little gym set up and I'll do the same exercises and, you know, I can take dumbbells and I could bench press them and I can curl dumbbells and I could do lap hole and all these things.

But, you know, it's like going outside and wrestling with the kids in the grass or doing like functional stuff. That's of like, dang, I'm a wimp. Right. That's what I, I run to run a lot. So I'm like, I need to focus on like functional strength, like strength that actually I use in daily life. So that's, yeah, it's great though.

I I've never been one to run nicest sprint when I was at the same day, you know, sprinters don't usually make. Distance observed enough to be more into running and other things. Yeah. Once you get past like the painful part, I was once extremely overweight, at least overweight from my perspective and, you know, going out there and running for the first like year was miserable, just going out and running a mile.

Was like, I thought I was going to die. And once I got past that that it's fun or maybe I'm just crazy and I call it fat. So Andrew, it's been great talking with you. I think you shared a lot of valuable insights today for the listeners. No, I really appreciate your drive for just growth and improvement.

I think that says a lot about your character and has definitely contributed to you being successful. And I know that you've said multiple times and the episode today, and in other conversations like, Hey, yeah, I've been distracted and I've tried different things. And I think that's great, you know, and I think that's a great message for the listeners to where, you know, life isn't necessarily this linear plan where you go from a, to B to C you try things and you fail at things.

Hey, look, I filled out a lot of things too, but, you know, as we try things and as we experiment and we just, you know, create that space to do different things, we, we learn and grow and we stumble upon different opportunities. So I think that's a great message. So I appreciate your time, man. Yeah, you're, you're certainly welcome.

Thank you so much. It's for listening to the show this week, you can subscribe where you get your podcasts and if you liked the show, It would mean a lot. If you left a review, you can write us@contactatsflhub.io. Finally, to stay up today on the latest happenings, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn by visiting us at strategic financial leadership.

I'm Steve Coughran, and this is strategic financial leadership.