)%20(6).png)
The Larry Vaughn Show
Mentoring Collaboration
Leadership
The Larry Vaughn Show
18 - LVS - Building A Legacy with Zephan Parker
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, Zephan Parker shares his journey from Texas roots to founding Parker Boot Company, emphasizing craftsmanship, leadership, and the importance of legacy in handmade goods.
👍 Like, Comment & Subscribe to support more honest conversations like this.
🔔 Don’t forget to turn on notifications so you never miss an episode!
--
🗞️ Subscribe to the Make Today Count Newsletter
Get leadership insights, life lessons, and podcast updates straight from Larry every week
--
📱 Follow Larry Vaughn Online
--
📘 Grab Larry’s Book
Business Cards & Shoe Leather – Stories and lessons from a life of mentorship, entrepreneurship, and grit
A lot of people ask me that in my private life, well, what about AI? I I can't wait for it to be all over the place because it creates a scarcity of human craftsmanship. To someone that loves history or or depth of interest, you're going, I just like the story. I I I don't really care too much about anything else. I I I just want to be able to talk about that in an interesting and and I'm with you. I'm big on stories. It takes a very unique leader to find them, sort them, and train them, and develop them. In the same that's that's that's the the the line of artisanship that exists there. It's taking something that is that is based on foundational rules and saying, what are the limits of this before it's unrecognizable?
SPEAKER_04Hey everybody, I am so glad that today we are got a wonderful, wonderful podcast. Uh, this is a gentleman that I just recently met, and he has a boot store of all things, and he makes custom-made boots. And it's uh Parker Boot Company. And his name is Zephon Parker, and uh he agreed to sit down here and talk with me a little bit, and he's going to tell his story. And the thing about it is he's a good Texas boy, because he is from Texas, matter of fact. So I'd like to introduce Zephon Parker and uh let him tell a little bit of his story.
SPEAKER_01Zephane? Good to be here. I appreciate you having me on, and hey, I look forward to the conversation and letting you know about who I am and where I come from and where I'm heading.
SPEAKER_04That's that's fantastic, it really is. I did read a little bit about your story, and I think that uh you just started uh Parker Boot Company in 2014. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01That's it. I I started this boot journey a little bit before that, a few years before that. But but you know, in an official form, you know, kind of growing up in an entrepreneur's home, my dad kind of said, Well, you need to go down and pay the tax man, you need to make this legal. So I officially on paper before the federal government and the rest of the world, I guess where it matters, I declared my existence in 2014. Oh man. But my boot journey did start prior to that. But but yeah, that's kind of where I started, and I came I grew up in Houston, kind of the Heights area of Houston, and but I migrated with my wife and kids to Central Texas in a small town of Gatesville. Uh and just kind of out of almost a random circumstance, I ended up learning how to make cowboy boots. You know, I I uh I went in I used to buy cowboy boots that were custom made from different makers. And an older gentleman who I admired, member uh kind of a elder in the church there, uh, you know, always had just a good pair of boots. He was farm and ranch kind of a guy, and uh he said, You want a real pair of boots, you need to go get a pair made by the gentleman that has kind of carried on the legacy of a name a man by the name of Ray Jones. And I said, Well, I don't know what that means, but I'm interested to find out. I I trust you. And so that led me into a shop that was run by the name of a man, uh John Haas, and then that's kind of how the world began.
SPEAKER_04And all this was in Gainesville.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it was all in Gatesville, which is is is South Fort Hood. But Gainesville, everyone mistakes it for Gainesville, so so because it's much more there's a lot more going on in Gainesville than there is in Gatesville. Gatesville has a prison and it's connected to Fort Hood. And and then in Lamb Passes, which is about 45 miles, 45 miles or so from there, is kind of where my journey began. It it it kind of took root there and kind of expanded from that day forward. And I kind of came back to Houston, you know, I apprenticed there, I learned how to make boots, I kind of learned the general working cowboy way of making boots. And when I came to Houston, I told my wife, I said, you know, I'm not gonna start a boot business. She said, I know you're not. You're going back to work where there's income. But it was cute. It was cute while it lasted, you know, kind of a thing. And but I had a window of time between when I got back to Houston and that the I was probably gonna go back to work for my father. I said, you know, that's my path of least resistance. I'm familiar with the industry, I know enough about it I can I can kind of get rolling.
SPEAKER_04And so now let me ask you a question. So, what was it that your father did? Was he in the leather business also?
SPEAKER_01He was in oil like oil and gas industrial work. Yeah. So, you know, when you think forklifts or moving big equipment and things like that. So total opposites. But in that home, now I grew up in a kind of two-bedroom shotgun house, six people, and but my father was the kind of man that that of that generation, you kind of did it yourself. You know, if you've seen something need to be done, you kind of found a way to make it happen. So if that was adding a 500 square feet to the house, well, he he was probably gonna figure out how to do it himself, at least gonna be heavily involved in the process. And so kind of growing up in a world where I kind of learned some of the woodwork, I've learned how to run a welder, I learned how to do these things just by proxy to somebody that was a kind of get it done mentality, kind of not wait around on somebody else kind of mentality. That that kind of led me down that road to kind of be naturally inclined to the connection between mind and hand, which is craftsmanship. You know, the the the more sophisticated that language is, the greater the craftsman is, right? And then when you mingle that with art, it's it's it's artisanship. It takes a little bit different flavor because it's not just executing a task as an engineer and architect would, it's pushing the limits of what that task can be. And and as you we had had an off-air kind of conversation about graffiti, graffiti is taking a letter and manipulating it as far as you can before it's unrecognizable as that letter. Now, one small illustration of that would be taking an M and flipping it upside down. Well, you can't do that because it's a W. So that's too far. You can't stretch that letter that far if it's not that letter. So in the same that's that's that's the the the line of artisanship that exists there. It's taking something that is that is based on foundational rules and saying, what are the limits of this before it's unrecognizable? Because you want it to be recognizable, but you want it to be bent to the degree that it's interesting or someone's own taker style on the thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well that's fantastic. Well, I got a question for you. You said that you were raised in the heights, and I got a custom pair of boots made from a bootmaker in the heights. Uh-huh. Right down from Herald's in the Heights. Do you remember that? Absolutely, yeah. And so I didn't know and I don't remember the name of the of the of the shop.
SPEAKER_01Do you was it model boot shop or was it Palace Boot Shop? Model Boot Shop, that's exactly what it was. Yep. So the model boot shop, I tried to run down when I got back to Houston, I I'm a I'm a history guy. So I I wanted to run down everything that had existed that was iconically unique to Houston style or craftsmanship. So I was able to acquire some model boot shop things. I was able to and I learned about all these entities, but the model boot shop had a group of men at one time there, which were the Morado brothers. There were two men that kind of were fundamental in that shop on 19th. And there was a group of Hispanic men in Houston that were really some of the most iconic makers that defined Houston craftsmanship. They are who provoked the exit you know, the the the founding of Wheeler Boot Company in its secondary form. Its first form was they did, you know, repaired other things, and uh uh a gentleman came along who provoked the custom boot side of that world, and then later went on to start Tejas boots, Tejas custom boots.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01And then in the model boot shop or Palace boot shop, there were a group of men there. Palace was a Greek family, but and they were downtown forever. But this group of Hispanic men eventually became Morado Boot Company, which has the son that kind of is still operating in some degree there. But that's what the first shop I went to. I I kind of walked into that history of Murado when I came back to Houston and that window of time, I landed there and I began to realize wait, there's this whole underground world. So I came out of a traditional Texas route of cowboy bootmaking, and I landed in a much more Spanish culture of boot making, which is a lot more uh it's a lot more romantic. It's a little bit more think of like the carving on the Alamo doors. Yeah. It's very, very Spanish inspired. There's a little bit more of that that uh that bullfighting kind of tension in the in the process. It's so but in the background of those shops, I met some of these former employees or children of those employees of those shops. So um that's kind of where I the pond I landed in here was that world. And it was like, oh, there have been these Houston guys for a long time here, and I learned a lot of tricks to the trade and what Houston boot making really is.
SPEAKER_04And and then, you know, as time has gone on, you know, some of those companies have faded and went out of business, or we've acquired some of them, and uh they their stories have kind of ended to some degree, but it was always great when I would go into that shop, and because I I knew the fellow that was behind the counter, a Hispanic man, you know, and he's the one that measured my foot, and you know, we talked about leathers and and everything and went over it. And um I told him I'd really like to have a you know pair. He said, I would like to have them. Well he made the boots fit like a glove. I'm telling you, they were wonderful boots, you know, and because I wore cowboy boots all the time, you know. I'm a West Texas boy. And um then I've got a pair of I'll have to send you a picture of them, a pair of uh boots that I've had forever. My d and my son wants them because they are old, you know, and worn out, and I get a lot of miles, uh a lot of miles on them. And um, but and I lived in Garden Oaks, right next to the Heights, you know, I had a beautiful home there. And that now this is back in 76, 78, I believe, right in that era. And I wasn't home one one particular night, and my house was robbed. And then they got in there and they stole my boots. Well, they stole they stole every boot I had. Yeah, you know, and they just because of fit boots. Somebody's wearing them boots. Oh my God, I was so aggravated and everything. It was crazy how somebody could come in there and steal it. But they stole my clothes, they stole all kinds of stuff, guns, you know, natural.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, all the things that matter, plus the things you're thinking, man, you now my life's inconvenient. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's like I lose my license. You know, I had an uh a MacBook Pro stolen one time, along with a uh I always carry a pistol with me when I travel. Yeah, because I'm with family and I just like to make sure wherever I'm going, however, for and uh I had this book and I had all of my stuff in there, my laptop, my gun, just every my kind of personal stuff. And I I don't know, my wallet, whatever. And I mean, I sent my MacBook a message. I said, hey, now you keep everything you got. But man, don't make my life inconvenient. Send me that license back, man. I'll meet you somewhere. You can have it. I don't want to send an anonymous Uber it to me, man. Just just don't make me go down to that office over there. That's uh that's more punishment than having to buy a magnetic.
SPEAKER_04But you know, I just uh for all you viewers out there, you do we do live in Texas. So pretty much all of us do carry guns. That is true. It is true. Well, on um and you're talking about craftsmanship. I owned a printing company just not too far from here. Um and we about 50,000 square feet, we had 140 employees, just ran around the clock. Now, I grew up in an analog world. Yeah. Well, of course, now I'm trying to live in a digital world, and printing has changed, you know, drastically. And back then it was true craftsmen.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_04That handled the presses, handled the letter presses, had the cylinder presses, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_04And it uh as time went on, it was kind of funny. Well things changed, started getting digital, so you know it was press, and so I needed some I call it snort no, snot nose kids, you know, just young kids, and they push buttons, you know, they get up there and do that. Um but then as time changed, the salary for the craftsman started going up because you couldn't find it. That's right. Supply and demand. They just weren't out there. And I think and I sold my shop, and then the the people that have the the shop now, I think they've got uh three or four craftsmen left. And now when they leave, I don't know what in the world they're gonna do. But a true craftsman, whatever the field is, I mean, it is hard to find nowadays.
SPEAKER_01It is. It takes it takes a very unique leader to find them, sort them, and train them and develop them. And by the grace of God, I'm not saying I'm special, but maybe I am, but I have been able to refine that process of developing them out. And and I find, and I mean I'm telling you, when I say I find these craftsmen everywhere, I mean that. I mean I I have there's restaurants I go to that know my name, and and and I'll watch that waitress and I'll say, you know what, you're you you've you've got something. I want to have you come work with me and just shadow me for 90 days. And and I'll and and I mean it's it's they're everywhere. There they're I want to say that they're a lot more common, but there are certain characteristics that you begin to look for that you realize have a bias toward that type of skill set. And and it doesn't matter what walk of life they came from, there's some incredibly talented. I I've got clients that are some very independently wealthy doctors and have done very well in them, and they're some of the best craftsmen I've ever met. I mean, they're tying flies in the garage, and you're going, This is crazy good. And they're and they're a pediatric doctor. You know, they don't do anything in work that relates to that. And then you find people that come from a much more humble way of life, and you think these people are incredibly talented. And so I divide people into two categories of craftsmen here. There's an engineer architect mentality, which is a it's a high volume craftsman, meaning he needs more processes in his hand more frequently that he can do perfectly to feel justified in his craft. That's somebody that needs to take a repeatable process and do it perfectly every day. So, and they need volume to do it. They they they one thing over a week would drive them crazy. They wouldn't do it. And then there's other people, maybe someone that's doing art rendering or sketching to that type of perfection, that they per they appreciate a longer investment on the craft side, and they're more that artisan. They're more that one that wants to see something more beautifully developed rather than looking at the yard. You know, it the difference would be someone manicuring the the lawn, the landscape, and someone getting down and making that line straight along that driveway on that yard. You think, ooh, I love when that line looks just right down that driveway. But when you look at the landscape, you need layers, you need color, and you need you need it to just be right. There's just sometimes that, yeah, you might have someone get out there and cut straight lines, but you may not want that in your landscape. You might want the depth of bushes and the grass to look a certain way, or maybe you do a desert scene, whatever it is. But that requires a little more artistic approach, a little more detail, slow it down, don't cut my monkey grass, whatever it is, you know what I mean. And but, you know, and I'll tell this story about mowing. I put my kids out in the yard and I make them mow, and I make them do those things for a reason. And years ago, I was between jobs, I left my father's company kind of in one of those child rebellion moments. I said, you know, I'm gonna go find the world and I'll I'll do it on my own. Set it a fire. You know what I mean? So I got together with the gentleman who owned uh ABC Commercial Services, and I sat down in his office. Now his Mr. Jenkins, he's the owner of the operation, done very well, Houston family. Great. And he said, Well, I want to put you out on a crew for 90 days. I said, Man, you fitting to make me do what? But the process made sense. He said, if you're gonna be in management, you need to know exactly what they're doing and why.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I said, Well, okay, he signed me, team lead, I'd take a crew of landscape and lawn guys out, and I began to learn the difference between something right, something wrong. And now you get in a homeowner, some of these homes, wherever you are, I don't care if you're Siena Plantation, Foolshire, River Oaks, you get out there, you start mowing, you'd be amazed at how complicated a hundred dollar job can get.
SPEAKER_04Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_01And you you know, there's that needs to be this way. Here's a photograph of the way it was last time. It better look this way. You think, well, and so when you're guiding a team to that standard, you have to divide them. You have to say, well, you know, you can't work in the beds because you can't, you don't have sense to not spray weed killer on everything. Or but so anyway, in that process, I began to learn what those straight lines, those senses stacking things up to make that perfection work repeatedly. And I took that little short tenure window and began to apply that even in what I do it all the time here. I take that 90-day apprenticeship program, I apply it here. Because it makes sense. But yeah. Um I had something else I was to say about the lawn guy, but my brain went to straight lines. I need to mow at home. No, but but it teaches them that sense of returning things to perfection. It's kind of like there's a book written about making your bed. I don't there's a a naval officer or something that wrote the bed book. Great book. And there's a and there's and great speech.
SPEAKER_04I don't know if you've seen him on YouTube, I think.
SPEAKER_01And there's a the similar principle there is you gotta return things to order. In his case, there's an illustration that's different, but in the case of the law, and what I'm discussing with my kids is you've got to learn to get this to look the best it can be and keep returning it back to its original state in order. And it needs to be right. And that connection to that malleable but returnable thing helps them realize I need to be disciplined. I need to focus and begin to keep things tight. If if not, things in life get out of control. Oh, get totally out of control.
SPEAKER_04Especially women. But I do have a have a question. Just a while ago, you you brought up uh a customer of yours, he ties flies. Do you fly fish? Are you flying fish?
SPEAKER_01I don't. I have. Now I've I've thrown some flies and and uh tore up some. I've I've a bird's nest is one of my favorite things to create out there on the fishing. Oh, that's I've missed a few of those, yeah. I have done some fly fishing, and I I was fortunate to go to Alaska and fish a bunch of those rivers, and it's a very romantic, but I don't do it as much as I wish because I decided to go into business. Well, you know what I mean? You need to do it.
SPEAKER_04I I and I tie flies. That's awesome. Oh, I got me a little fly time station, and boy, and I sit down there every once in a while I just want to break. Yes. Because you sit down there and then you start thinking about, well, when I was a little boy, you know, and you know what grandpa said, you know, and then you just get way out there. But it just really brings you back to reality when you can sit there and you can get that clear of a head. But just like you said, you know, being just the pure romance of it, yeah. Um I go to Montana a lot and fish up there in the Missouri River and and uh you know, in Colorado, all up in there and in northern New Mexico and even here in uh Texas, up in Guadalupe. My son and I, we've got some beautiful trout up there, you know, because they well, they plant the fish, you know, that's up in there. We don't know the difference. But don't know the difference, don't matter. You're catching fish.
SPEAKER_01Hey, that's like I tell my wife, she said, everybody online is fake. I said, hey, I ain't trying to sit here and be the examiner, 103. I'm I'm I don't know the difference. I'm just I'm I'm trying to just I'm looking through my eyes, trying to be a man or a human. I don't know whatever that means. But I but you're that's I love it. It is. There's a there's a connection there. And in craftsmanship. And there's a pattern. Yes. And you've got to stay with it. Yes. That's not your flies aren't going to catch fish. Exactly. Right, exactly. And those patterns, people underestimate society patterns, life patterns, cultural patterns. Entrepreneurs break the patterns, but they have to abide by a system of rules. And we and as yourself know, when you go on to venture into business, you do these things, you're you're developing, you're building, you're growing, you're you're finding what works, what doesn't, and what's new and what you know. And but in craftsmanship, those patterns are what keep them focused. They're the what direct the behavior to focus on what matters, which is the goal. Because all craftsmen will take left turns at every time they get a chance, whether that's mental distraction, physical distraction, discovery process, you know, other processes. So we have to create these systems that say, hey, here's our roadmap, here's our goal. How do we leverage that skill set to where it's advantageous both for them financially and to the brand itself? Uh-huh. But it's amazing. You know, I often get this question, and this, you know, you talked about a digital world earlier, and I and a lot of people ask me that in my private life, you know, church or wherever, well, what about AI? And I say, I I can't wait for it to be all over the place because it creates a scarcity of human uh craftsmanship. It will inevitably do that, as it already has. It will get worse. With that scarcity comes the demand of interest. People are going to want to connect again, kind of like tying the fly. You know, eventually you'll have a garage full of young men that you might be able to say this class is $1,000 an hour, and I'm going to teach you how to tie flies because you have nothing else to do because robots are mowing along, right? But maybe it's not that exact monetary circumstance, but in this world there has never been a lack of curiosity as to how or who built them pyramids. You've got to stay curious. You know what I mean? We're still looking back and we're looking. We're saying, how in the world? Now we've never questioned who built the ones in Mexico. Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_04I have never thought about it, but you're correct.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I always wondered about that. You know, some of the places in the world we say, we know who built those. But you go into the certain places and we look at the geometry, we look at the mathematics, we look at the perfection, and we we question, we think. But with that being said, is that human the architecture of human hand and artisanship, whether it's pottery that dictates historical relevance and timelines, is always something the human values. It's something we'll always carry along the way. Yes, sir. Because we're never going back and go, if a robot would have if we find out a robot created the pyramids, all satisfaction of curiosity is eliminated. Because the beauty in handmade is the impossibility of perfection. And therefore, when it's achieved, something you think, oh my goodness. When you look out at Mount Rushmore, you think human beings did what? You just you're impressed by the conscious awareness of human failure that when something is made without it, uh even if it just appears that way, it's it's inspiring. You think it gives a sense of we can do something more than ourselves, right? And so I don't think there'll ever come a time in the digital world that that sense of inspiration will be lost. That nostalgia in the human heart, I don't think, is gonna just evaporate, no matter how distracted we become. You know, and no matter how much advanced technology my father has or his business, he still sits on the couch when the grandkids are there and just it's the moment. They're just the moment, yes, it is. It doesn't matter if the iPhone's there, the iPad, the YouTube, yes, those things are are are contributing to a better or the medical things that he has access to. Of course, that makes life easier and better. But the idea is it eliminates the distractions to get back to reality. Is is what the the proper use of the tool is. Now, kids, the younger you are, the more you use them to get away from reality.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and I find like I'm talking to my dad, I said, you need to go get one of them self-driving Teslas, you know, just to because you start worrying about do I want to drive at midnight out to where my brother lives in Magnolia Montgomery, or do I really want to do that? I understand that. You know, I I don't want to chance uh, you know, making it, you know, you where you did 70, 80 years, you make 70 years of your life, and then you go, I'm gonna just go chance it at midnight on Montgomery on a Friday evening. Right. Yeah, I'm not you know, you start going. I'm I'm worried about the dumb decisions of others at that point.
SPEAKER_04Oh, by far, by far. You know, I I experienced a lot of that this morning driving in from Fulshire. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, you hit that beltware 99, you go, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_04You know, where all those people come from, I have no idea. Of course, everybody's moving out that way nowadays. You know, and they uh they just stacking up out there. And I know there was you got this one section right there close to me, which I used to live in the woods. I I don't live in the woods anymore. Yeah. And uh They found you. This one section they were building 7,000 homes. And people were talking, wow, 7,000 homes. I said, You gotta understand. You took 7,000 homes at a minimum. You know, it's 14,000 cars.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_04You know? And then, you know, that's it's 21,000 people. That's amazing. That's a city. And they're gonna have to eat, gotta go to the grocery store, you know, so you gotta build all that up. Which they are, you know. I mean, they throwing H E B's up out there left and right, you know. H E B's having a good old place. Oh, they are they a good store too, matter of fact. But you know, the um the other thing that I want to uh talk to you about, just like what you said a while ago, and if you uh don't stress perfection and following order, it's costly.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04Look at all these beautiful skins that you have here. Those aren't cheap. Right. Okay? That's right. Well, if you make a little mistake in there, well you gotta get another skin. That's right. One skin to this skin's not gonna match. That's right. Okay. And that's just like in the in the which in I was in the graphic business. Yeah, you know, and and I can understand a lot what you're saying there. Um and uh you know, we would print very large commercial print jobs, which a lot of those have gone online now, you know, and but it was nothing to to spend like, you know, thirty five thirty to forty thousand dollars in paper.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, and then run the job, fold the job, ship the job. Okay. Well but if you mess things up, you know, that's a big hickey, thirty thousand dollars in paper. You know, and I ain't happy. Yeah. Several other people aren't gonna be too happy. But that's the thing, and that's why you stress, stress, stress, stress, uh to and then they'll try to I mentor a lot of kids. But uh let me say the the to kids to me, I mean everybody kid to me, yeah, but uh they're usually uh uh like their junior and senior year in college. Yes. Just right when they're making that step, you know, to to get out into the world. And I talk to them about money and life and marriage and just all kinds of things, you know, and and they still talk to me today. I love them. And they're doing very, very well. I mean, some of them are um tremendous graphic artists. I've got a young lady that worked with me, and uh just shy as she could possibly be, but she has just blossomed and she's in high demand. Amen. You know, uh she does a lot of stuff with the Astros, she does a lot of stuff with uh rockets and you know, and also the Texans, she does a tremendous amount of uh work with uh the Texans. And then I got um and also she um she went full-time with Levi Strauss. She was the lead packaging designer, and then now she just works virtually. I mean she's still full-time with them on that and stays uh pretty busy. And and then I, you know, I had one uh young man that became a um a tremendous financial advisor. And he handles everything for me now. And he worked for me for probably oh, a good uh close to 15 years, I guess. That's awesome. Yeah, and then he got a chance to, you know, be a financial advisor, and and I told him to take it. And then um, matter of fact, I I told him if you don't take it, I'll fire you. So it kind of encouraged him, you know, to make sure he he took that job, you know. But you know, trying to work with the youth to bring them up. Yeah. And I know you've probably got some some of them here that you work with them, and because you see that little light bulb that's going, and you want to work with them and and make them better.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That is a key variable is the future investment. And in and future can be, you know, I know with my dad's generation, when he got through the business years, he thought, well, future is three, four decades after me, but in real time today, it's I mean, ten years is a is a it can be a long way away from where I am mentally. And I I look at some of the men out here that are 20 years younger than me, and I think to myself, wow, I mean, they're in a very different headspace than I was 20 years ago when I was having, you know, preparing for a son, you know, I and uh basically within that short time frame there. But it's it's one of those things where you're right, there is an investment that has to be made, and you have to learn how to kind of glean some of those qualities out of them and help them see it in themselves. You know, that's one of the hard things, as you've probably seen, you know, depending on how far through the spectrum they go, may either A, dilute their qualities, or B, enhance them. So some of the young things, you know, you can go through college in these phases and think, wow, that really enhanced that young man's ability to understand finance or history or or psychology or whatever his his discipline is. And then you have other variables where maybe that's a grand distraction. And you think this character here, if he could lock in on this, he's exponential value. It's it's it's uh you know what they say on the 10 exit, you know, or whatever it is. And so what I do is, you know, I I used to say for years, I took a young man who was 18 years old, he came to me, and I uh he's still on the team here. He's he's in and I looked at him and I said, I I mean, I was at a point where I genuinely thought uh this is post-COVID, uh, my team had kind of broken loose at that time, and I had kind of reduced back down to basically me, had one other person kind of helping, and I said, I'm gonna make a decision here. I'm either A, gonna quit this and go into finance, right, or something like that, or do whatever was on my plate at that time, and I said, or I'm gonna make a full send commitment to to build something. And I'm gonna just I'm gonna put everything out on the line, whatever that is, finance is anything, time, energy, resources, and so a young man walked in my shop about that next day. I looked at him and I said, Now look, you you you're an old wore-out diamond in the rough. But I might be able to just clean you up a little bit.
SPEAKER_04But but I say that all the time, matter of fact. I'll say, boy, she's a diamond in the rough. That's right.
SPEAKER_01And I mean her. That you know, I and I and I just remember that day and I think about who he was then and where he's developed to where he's at now. And I've seen that in many members on this team, but he was the catalyst. And so of the experiment, maybe. I had some experience before that, but he was kind of an experience at the right time in my life. So, but I took him and I said, you know, I don't care at that juncture of the road as I began to hire people and teach and train, and I have gone through dozens of people over the years since him, and he's still here, but he's gone through dozens of people with me, you know. But he uh I said, you know, I'm gonna make you a manager, and I want you to lead as a carbon copy of whatever I'm doing. That's good, you know, and just animate it, make it real. And very talented craftsman, apt to learn things quickly, uh, you know, ADHD, of course. But uh I have that. Yeah, you know what I mean? So so you gotta utilize it. You know, but uh but he became kind of the blueprint for what we would do going forward in that we would eliminate the reckoning, we wouldn't look at people's age, we wouldn't look at their background, we would assess them for who they were at that time and where they were gonna go and what was gonna be the potential we could draw out. Now, in a craft trade that's by hand, you're looking for different qualities than you are in the medical field, finance field, you know, those different industries are going to look for different things. But you're right. It's it's learning how to look at a candidate and say, is this a diamond in the rough? And what what I often say is it's a trainer trade. You know, it's a trade or trade moment sometimes with people, meaning you may be working with someone and think, you know, this is just a moment I need to trade you to build this team. I need you to kind of go on into the But you're doing them a favor.
SPEAKER_03We can do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't help you anymore, or you're not helping us, and this juncture is a little rough. We need to, for me to develop these guys, you know, and so I I get to points in my business. Well, I'll bring the team together and say, all right, we're on a train or trade time, and this is our standard. If you're not on this standard, then we we're gonna line you up for the draft. You're gonna move, we're gonna we're gonna send you to better, greener pastures where wherever that may be.
SPEAKER_04And it's just tough to do sometimes, but you got to do it.
SPEAKER_01It is. It's part of leadership is in the modern era. My dad grew up teaching me to be very firm-handed. Rule breakers are chastised, they're criticized, they're humiliated, maybe potentially on the team. Um, there was love, but it was hard love. It was your your motor blew up, I'm gonna help you, but you're gonna know I helped you. And the whole the whole building might know I helped you too. Because there's gonna be a pressure created that makes you respond to what I'm doing. Now I'm gonna do it for you, but it's not gonna be quietly. And and that was just that old school mentality had wasn't to be punished, people, it was accountability. You need to be accountable.
SPEAKER_04Accountability. A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01And then in the modern era, I've found you gotta tread a little careful on some of that. Egos are a little shaped a little differently than they were the way maybe even I grew up with him. Is is to me, my ego was associated with being proud of my parents, you know, what they had done and and where I went to church and what neighborhood I grew up in. I that was where I kind of felt proud about. Today, people don't have those things to connect to. I uh there have been times in my business I have 15 members on the team, not a single person has a father at home. Ever had one. That's something. And you think about that. Versus what I had, I guess, as a as a as someone who just fortunately my parents stayed together, you know, and and and or I had a role model in the home. But it's one of those things where that becomes another type of analysis you've got to make when you get down and you think I've got to draw a line for this character and I need to make it firm. Well, firm to me is maybe being embarrassed or someone saying, hey, you need to act right, you you you're not a good guy, you're not doing the right thing. And I think, man, I've got to straighten my life out, I'm gonna get down to business. I'm gonna I've got to make my parents, my life proud, my wife proud. She's never proud, but you know, you kind of imitate that. They claim to art till an argument, and you think, well, I thought you no, no, no, you say you're proud of me. You re-rework that. But and that's kind of some of the thing too. I've thought, how can I create boundaries and correct behavior in other methods and means, which has forced us to be very creative. And and we've been fortunate enough to find out some of those ways and and and some of but I read leadership's books. I'm reading one now by John Maxwell, and and it's about team building. He's a good author. And he he he makes these comments, and I'm working with the the the client relations kind of sales team as they're building their their world out. And in sales, it's very easy to have one member of the team that wants to go climb the mountain themselves. They see the momentum and they think, man, I'll I'll tackle this. I can do this. They'll ping off away from the team. And in this in this book, he gives an illustration about getting to the top of Everest, and he tells a story. There were 50 some odd crews that tried. And what would happen is they'd get up right to that final base camp in the 1950s, and sometimes an old rogue crew of one or two guys would say, you know, we're close enough. Let's take the extra 5,000 feet and let's just get it. We'll be the first at the top. And sure enough, they'd end up dead. Yeah. And yet the first crew that went went up as a sophisticated crew. They went up the proper way, they kept everything right, they kept the team, the team went up. It was about team success. Everybody from the cook providing the nutrition for the guys going to the peak to the people that were rolling up the bedrolls to make sure that we were actually capable of carrying this the next leg of the race. And it's something like 5,000 people or three, five, six, eight hundred people that are needed to get two men to the top of Everest. It's the logistics from getting it from this town to the food and the thousands of cargo and the backpack, you know, whatever these people are called that backpack up to there, and then they go down the neck in next crew of backpack guy. 500 people to get two people to the top. And the and the man that made it first, in the quote that's used, made the comment that you cannot accomplish a feat like this outside of a tremendous team effort. And you you're humbled by the fact that, yeah, I made it here, but did I really make it here alone? I would have been dead like the rest of the guys before me. Yeah. You know, kind of like a guy on the moon or anything you do in life, you know, you you need a team, you know, to do it. So we try to create that camaraderie as much as we can.
SPEAKER_04That's good. Yeah. It's because if you keep them within the teamwork, everybody tries. Yes. Everybody's happy. Yes. And I always consider myself, I'm really not a leader. I was a listener.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And, you know, having 140 employees is a lot of employees, a lot of personalities, and a lot of nationalities. And the uh I had uh Hispanics, I had uh Koreans, I had Vietnamese people, I had, you know, uh just a variety of different cultures. Yes. Hard workers. Yes, very hard workers. Amen. And I had um a lot of uh women in the binary area because it was handwork.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And they're good at that.
SPEAKER_04They're man, they're good at that. Boy, they don't miss a lick. And I'd get these other guys on these big presses and you know, that know everything, boy, and they push them buttons and run them things, and there was nothing right about the damn thing. And what I what I love the most is Zefun, is when Jesse, he was running the press, and the press is three and a half million dollar press, you know, and it prints both sides at the same time and goes through there and everything, and and and it's a um uh a 29-inch by 40 inch sheet of paper.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_04There's a lot of text on there. And you're you're running that at at uh 11,000 sheets an hour, okay? Oh, and when Jesse would set up on the press, now this is a Hispanic fella, okay? And he'd go up there and then he'd get the press and you know, get the press sheet out, and he would lay it out there and everything, and then he was looking at and ruling it and measuring color and everything, and he'd bring me a press sheet, and he said, Sir, this is not right. I said, Well, don't ask me to spell it. And so it sure enough, it was it was a heading on it was a medical uh piece, medical form. It was misspelled. And you it makes you wonder, well, who pr who typeset it, who proofed it, you know. Well they didn't proof it, and get it all out there.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_04But that didn't and he still works there today. And and he's he's been there, I think he's on his 38th year. That's all doing that. That's amazing. But he was happy to come to work. He was happy to help and happy to show people. Never was scared that somebody was going to take his job. Well, number one, nobody wanted his job. But uh he was just a a a wonderful employee.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04And a lot of those employees, the majority of the employees that work for me, I talk to them this day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04They'll call me, check on me, see how I'm doing, I'll call them. Wish them happy birthday, you know, has your kids, or your son graduated from college, you know, and and it's just good to have that. And you know, instead of just being cursed and, you know, uh they don't care about me. And you know, when I made money, buddy, they made money. Amen. And I passed it out, you know, and it was always fun at Christmas time, you know, everybody was hollering. But uh, but I didn't make any money, they didn't make any money.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_04You know, and so and they understood that.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's right.
SPEAKER_04But so far as me being a leasener, uh a listener and and not a leader, if there was a an employee that went rogue for some reason, you know, it was usually it was a new hire, yeah, they took care of that. I didn't have to go back there and have that employee. Yeah. I mean, they just they pretty much assured him or her that you know they were gonna leave. You know, they weren't they weren't gonna stay there. Yeah. But it was um it was wonderful. I love being an entrepreneur, and I loved, you know, talking to all the people and you know, and and seeing things be developed. Yes, that is making things, you know. And and my customers were wonderful. Yes. It's it's and I still talk to them to this day. That's awesome. You know, and I'm retired from the printing business and and uh they they uh they still give me a call.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you're right, it's one of those things where entrepreneur an entrepr I say an entrepreneur, I mean I realize in in that definition there's variations of that, you know, in finance or in res real estate investing. I mean, there's serial entrepreneur, and I know there's operational entrepreneurs, which is I'm I'm an operator, right? I'm in here, I'm involved, I'm personal with the brand. Yes, yes. And but it takes a special person to do it. It uh the you have to have a threshold for for patience, you have to be able to listen clearly and understand what's being said, maybe even through what isn't being said. You know, there's times that maybe they're saying things and you're listening going, I really see what you're saying. And they're saying something else and you're thinking, I I hear you. Yeah. You know, you're seen and heard, don't worry. And and being able to transfer that message throughout the brand is how you br build a brand of 140 people. It's how people feeling seen and heard, you know, most people don't mind. You know, I I never minded you. You know, working for a family member like my father or one of my brothers. You know, I I never minded having a leader, so long as the leader knew who I was and what I was doing, where we were, we were all going to the same place. And I I you know I had a situation here recently where I had a circumstance between some people, and I thought to myself, you know, you can have a follower that's so good at following that he'll follow a uh a leader that maybe isn't, but he'll follow all of that to where it it cripples his skill set.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because he says, Well, if you I'll do exactly what you tell me, even if I'm not looking beyond and thinking, well, I know that needs to be done, but I didn't get told to do that. And that may not be a negative thing, in that he's gonna be the best follower following to the exact detail. And so I liberated that role and I said, let's let's break that system up, let's break that team up and make that individual a a leader, a team lead. Let's see what that and I mean 24-hour change, totally different human beings. Right. And it because now he's following the governing system of the entity that tells the leaders to create their own boundaries, rules, timelines. Now there's a sense of which, great, I can set the bar for myself as high as I want to and create that challenge to get there. Versus if the bar is set here for me, then I think, hmm, once I get there, there's a tension. It's almost like something trying to boil out, or or you know, you shake up a can of coke, and you go to break the ceiling, it's under so much pressure. It's containing it, but really it's not capable of really pushing beyond its limits. So it takes a in uh in leadership, it takes a uh not only the creativity on my part, but I've got to find ways to implement systems that that re-discover those problems and those things. And it could be something as simple as, and like you said about uh nationalities, that that too. You deal with that differently. Oh, very much so in female to male. And there's things that I let I say let slide, but there are things that I interpret one way if it comes from a certain individual, that if it happened to another, I'd say you know better. Correct. And and it that what you did was very the motive and intention is much more obvious, you know.
SPEAKER_04You're 100% correct. And and I have I have uh had people work for me, and I've told them to speak up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04What I say is not always gospel, you know, because I need to know. I've got a young lady that works for me right now, and I pretty much told her, I said if you agree with me on everything, I don't need you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, because you're talking to an old man here that doesn't understand a whole lot of stuff in the digital world and everything, and I I I don't know. You know, but I'm I'm I'm trying to learn on there. Uh but I do have a uh a couple of questions here for you before we uh wrap up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we got time.
SPEAKER_04You shoot from the hip. Where is Stephen Parker or Parker boots going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now? So have you put your plan together? Are you still just shooting from the hip monthly?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, trying to figure out what what tomorrow brings, right? Well, I'm I'm a I'm a visionary, so I I like to imagine, I I I'll say when I when I see things for the future, I I'll tell my kids this. Um, what's the room look like? I want you to identify the painting and the color of the trim. Don't tell me you have a dream until you're walking in that room in your own conscious imagination that you're in it, whether you can, but you gotta feel it. It's gotta be something you're totally aiming for. Whether that's a relationship with his girlfriend or their relationship with a if it if he has a girlfriend, whatever, he's gotta know how to that, how is that uh kids, is that a life, is that a home, is that a white picket fence? But so yes, I do have a vision for it. And and where we're going now, as we especially in light of where the context of the world is, is we'll eventually begin to distinguish ourselves in that artisan handmade way. Like now we do a lot of custom bespoke. Now, from the ground level, uh that seems commonplace. There are several companies out there that make cowboy boots. Um there are almost none that have built a culture of leadership and a culture of excellence that I have. Now, I have the youngest and largest first generation cowboy boot team on earth.
SPEAKER_04That's good.
SPEAKER_01So there's nobody that has has done it now, and I've I've had 35 people run through this shop that aren't here anymore. So and what I mean is that we've gleaned through what we're willing to keep. But we've and so but our system has been able to tolerate that volume. When when I was out looking around, there were, you know, you you there's it's it it it was depreciating. That the the industry was collapsing, if you will. Now it's changed a little, but but with that being said, what we're going to continue to do is harness that energy, encapsulate it in a snow globe, if you will, and say, and take that to the world the same way that like an Herma's did. Now, Ermaze is a is a is a fancy European luxury brand that has capitalized on the art of scaling excellence, meaning they build things perfectly at scale, which is hard to do. And they don't change, there's no variety. It's the brand itself is an investment in the artisan of handbag making. You're not buying the label. Now, you buy the label when you buy you know Michael Coors or something like that, right? You're buying a designer's viewpoint on fashion. But what we're going to do, and what we are doing, and what we have done in our small world, is capitalize on cornering the what the cornerstone of American fashion, you know, style is, which is the cowboy boot. And as you said earlier about owning a pair and your son wants them, that's what I'm gonna put in a box. I'm gonna put that in a bottle and bring that to the world a little bit more effectively than what's been done in the last hundred years with big brands. It it big brands have pretty much driven people away from cowboy boots. There's no romance to it anymore unless you have it in your own heart based on your own individual take on it. To where it's almost weird when it becomes popular. You're like, oh, what is all this? It's not even it doesn't make cultural sense in our minds. People that grew up in it go, well, what is all this? You know, we kind of get a little confused about it. But so what that's what we want to do. We're gonna define what silhouettes are, continue to build the best boots that can that can be made on planet earth and perfect the craft and trade, and then uh deliver that at scale. So what that looks like in in manifestation in the real world is probably a flagship store somewhere like the Woodlands or River Oaks that will invoke that experience more definitely. Yeah. You know, right now it's kind of it's kind of piggybacking on you come in and tell us exactly what you want, and we kind of bring that dream to life, right? We're going to take that excellence and we're just simply going to find independent silhouettes that give access to the general public to that type of quality or that type of uh uh brand experience that doesn't require you to come in here, sit down in a consultation and design something that takes a year, kind of a thing, you know?
SPEAKER_04So But you you you know, we've been talking pretty much exclusively about cowboy boots. I mean, you do also duffel bags, high-end, I've seen them, very, very nice, and purses, yes, wallets, yeah, uh uh gun cases. Yep, we definitely do that. You know, and and so there's a lot anything that involves leather, yes, you know, you pretty much design and do.
SPEAKER_01Is that correct? That's right. And and so for us, yes. So all of those what we're gonna call accessories have been def we we basically created them out of an out of demand. Someone someone came to me, all the things we've made, someone or a series of people or a group of people came together and said, I love this item. I want it made the best that it can be made, keep it simple. So rather than the traditional take, which is someone goes out and designs something and develops it and then tells the masses, you need to have this because it's cool. What we did is we said, What do people that actually care about the thing working, being beautiful, and lasting their entire lifetime without the headache of being like, well, the thing failed again. I I need another rollerbag. You know, it just like every time you go to you do going out of town, you gotta figure it out. So what we did is we we said, what is that guy that carries that rifle, if we built it perfect, that it could be used, I mean, till grandkids are inheriting that bag with those initials on it. What does it look like to help build that individual's legacy forever to ingrain it on a now leather isn't permanent forever, right? We know that it burns like everything else, but we decided that we were going to make silhouettes and defining pieces that literally could be timeless in that when your if your grandson or your great-grandson picked it up one day, he'd be he'd be it it'd be like he was touching a piece of your life. And I have a belt that my grandfather had, it was this, he was a he raised horses and racehorses. And and my mother's family's all from up north, so Idaho, Montana, that kind of area. And that belt that he had made was a is a is a is a narrative of his love. You know, the the one has a scene of a breaking a horse, and and I remember watching him breaking those horses and those corrals and the energy created of a of a of a 65-70-year-old man out there could be trampled at any second, but the grit, the sense of the spirit, the essence. And when I hold that piece, I think about that.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, you feel it.
SPEAKER_01It's a spirit there.
SPEAKER_03It's like what I was talking about a while ago. You talk about think about little boy, you know, and then the memories come.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and that that essence lives more effectively in something that is worn. Leather is the easiest way to manifest that worn generationally. A nice Oxford shirt won't make it. It'll be replaced in Brooks Brothers, right? Uh a fine watch will, still or something like that, might make it. It'll make it a few generations. And a worn leather thing, though, it shows its age. You know, we've been in the last 20 years of this crazy era of vintage watches where watches, you know, I I got a watch I bought. It's a 5513 Rolex Submariner, which pretty much means nothing unless you're into Rolex watches, but it's a it's a it's patinaed, meaning it's been sitting out in the sun and it's the looms are fading and it's got this life. And a friend of mine that I grew up with from a very young age, I mean toddler, he took it out to Disney World and got it in a little a little a little accident, you'd say the Liz. This is before I owned it. And it added to the story. And so I went to, I said, man, I I I I wanna I wanna have that because I I want that. I like that story, and I and I I just you can buy a watch that's in perfect condition and and eight people may have owned it. But when you own something that's been dinged and nicked and it's got the story and dropped at the b bottom of the ocean or or or and it's been flooded with water, and and to the to the average wearable collector, I mean the wearable buyer, perfection is the is the goal. But to someone that loves history or or depth of interest, you're going, I just like the story. I I I don't really care too much about anything else. I I just want to be able to talk about that in an interesting and and I'm with you.
SPEAKER_04I'm big on stories. Yeah. I've always got one or two to tell, you know, uh somewhere in there. It's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01And and that happened to me on a Stelzig saddle. I I found a Stelzig saddle online years ago, and Stelzig was a Western store here in Houston out on I think Hempstead for a while. I mean they were maybe downtown, I can't remember, but they uh I ran one down on an old post from years ago. An old gentleman had put it up, grandkid put it up, you know, online. Well, years go by, this fella calls me. I had messaged him on email that I wanted to buy this saddle, but through the website. Well, out of the blue, some mysterious circumstance happened, and the granddaughter something said, Hey, somebody messaged you, they left their phone number. Years later, this fella calls me and says, Hey, I want you to come out to my house. We'll uh we'll don't we won't talk about it on the phone. I just want you to come out to my house. And this is an old gentleman and his wife, they were working for the government, very sophisticated, amazing life story. I said, told my wife, Well, I mean, I don't know this guy, I don't know if he has a saddle, but he is an old school guy and said that he wants to just chat in person. And I said, So I hop in the car, drive out to the woodlands where he lived, and I go in this home, and and he's got this saddle, and he said, I want you to have this saddle because you have interest in it. And no one else I know does. He said, My dad built this, and he gave me this long history of it, and it was one of the first saddles in the dad gun, you know, the cattle ride in and all that, and where he lived out by the gallery and rode his horse to his the dentist office at the galleria. It was all dirt road. And but he looked at me and he said, you know, it were it's worth more to me that you're interested in the story than it is for me to sit here and put a price tag on it and tell you you need to buy this for me. And he's you know, it you get to a point in life where the financial transaction is is something, you know, it's kind of you know, but that's not the point. Yeah, he he was more interested in making he was one to he wanted me to come out to his house because he wanted to vet me a kind of way. Oh, yeah. He said, I I I want to, you know, find out if you'll keep it, like you say. And and so I have had it for years and I've just splayed it here. It's been in much of my photography, and and I think he appreciates that that that when he sees that in a photo or something, he thinks to himself, you know, it it story lives on. It it his father owned it, then he owned it.
SPEAKER_04And the story lives on.
SPEAKER_01You know, and yeah, and to him, it's and I told him that when I'm done with it, my kids will learn about it, and if they're not interested, I'll I'll do what he was thinking about doing, which was take it to a museum or some local shop and say, you know, I want to donate this. And and and meeting him made me realize why many of the museum items you see when they say, you know, I had a family friend in Gatesville that he donated a lot of these pistols from the Rangers to the museum there. And but he said, It's not worth anything in this safe. It's a lot of fun to show your five friends for the first time. Yeah. But you then every couple of years pull them out just to make sure they're still there. You know, he's like, so I took them down to the Waco Museum and I said, now y'all have a lot of people that like to look at this, and uh, that's gonna be a whole lot more interesting. I'd love to send my grandkids over here to look at the guns that that they'll inherit. Yeah, but at least they're somewhere that that they're people enjoy. Yeah, they're they're just because if they're sitting in a safe, you think to yourself, you know, he and he had a classic car parked there too, and he said, I love this car, but I just don't I want to just I can't wait till the grandkid turns 16. I'm dumping it on him. But that's his problem, but you know, it's just one of those things, but but it's so that that that is what I want to kind of cast forward. I want to carry a piece of a living legacy forward. I I intentionally choose to use a hand artist here. I don't need one. I choose that. I I choose to incorporate that into my budget because I want that to be observable. I'm bringing a group here from Europe in in March, and they're they're coming from all over Europe, and I want them to see that this is hand sketched and hand-rendered to these lines, that it someone had to learn that, someone had to figure out what the boundaries of that sketch could be, the limitations of those stitch patterns or the inlays, and that I keep her here because there's a romance to watching a human being go, What am I gonna put on this boot? And then take that canvas. It's the only footwear in the world a canvas exists. That's true. You know, and to go, what am I gonna do here? And then to have somebody go, What do you love about life? What do you love about things? What's important to you? And that story I'm telling about the artist is why, you know, we we did a collaboration with Carnival Cruise once with the president there, we did an installation on their ship that came to Texas, and they said, We want an artist because we don't want to just put a pair of cowboy boots in here. Yeah, we want something that feels if if in their world, you know, Carnival Cruise, where they are or not, I don't know. But but in their world at that time, they were saying that that we want the experience at Carnival to be art like, their craft house they had there, whatever. And so they were saying that that what is true American craftsmanship? You know, when you when you go to Europe, Europe and Paris is full of of craftsmen, they're all over. They are, and they don't have much economically to give to the world, to be honest. America has everything from lumber to oil to relative, whatever we want to give, right? The luxury of living here, period. But when you bring a corporate executive, as we've seen over the years, and I do often tell this story from Hong Kong, and you're a CEO of uh local oil and gas, and your public salary is 23 million with options and everything else that's included in that, and you bring one of your buddies from Hong Kong who's an executive there, and you're you're giving them this guest experience in America, and you want to give them something American, they'll often take them to the galleria, take their wife into Louis Vuitton, or you know, do something. Here's the but the the Texas boys will often call us and say, I want to give them something, Texas. I don't where care he wears these boots. I don't care if it's just a bag, something, but I want him to see something that is American made. It's it's made here, you can see where it's made, and and it's and it's a sense of luxury, meaning it's it's a luxury to own it. It's in it it magnifies his value and importance. And when you really look at the spectrum of what's available in America, luxury in America is the absence of America. When you want luxury, my kids go, I want to go to the mountains of the Swiss Alps. Why? Let's go right here to let's go to Aspen. Yeah. We don't need to go to the Swiss Alps, Mama. Well, but on this TikTok, look, son, when you've hit every all 50 states and when you've been into the the rivers of Alaska, Montana, let's talk about we don't need to go to Russia to fly fish. No. We can shoot a we can shoot a moose and a bear here too. Now there are game and things you can't shoot here. Um but Texas is changing that. There are ranches in Texas now that said, why can't we have safari animals here at Plains game and make West Texas look the terrain, you know, one one fellow came in here and he said, if I had the money, I'd breed elephants out here if I could fence them in. He said, because you can get out in West Texas and the terrain and the climate. I mean, you you could you could almost make it he's you you you you'd make a fortune. Just you know, you I don't know the dangers that'd be involved, and that's probably why he said, well, you do but he was saying that you you can take Texas landscape and you can say, I can replicate down to the T many of the things you can find all over the world in just one state. Now you get out of the state and it's beautiful, whether you go to, you know. And I was but I was just telling my son, not that I don't like to go out of the country. I think that is fun and there's a sense of cultural significance there. But I think it's a little odd when you've got men and women in this city that we've worked with that have, I mean, I'll call them a gazillionaire, but that's an infinite number. Yeah. Buy anything and everything they want, when they want, how they want, go wherever they want, when they want, how they want, concierge drivers everywhere they go, private jets, their whole life's encapsulated in that. And yet when they bring somebody here to give them a Texas experience and they're working for the energy sector of Houston, and they take them to the gallery. Well, wait, what is that? You take them down here, good barbecue, you buy them some barbecue pink, you need to take them somewhere to Texas. And they will do some of that. But but when they send them home with the gift, it's an I Love Texas shirt and a Louis Vuitton bag.
SPEAKER_04It's it's an auto Texas item.
SPEAKER_01No, you go to India, maybe you pick up a rug. You go to to uh Columbia, you pick up maybe a little woven basket or something for the wife, you bring it home. It's it's culturally significant. In Texas especially, it is always symbolic when they do a pair of boots. It's always exciting. You think, you know, it's like it's just a token or a memorabilia, and it's it's different, you know. And so that's part of that is the essence of what we're going to continue to box in and then take that out a little bit more effectively in terms of products that that are more available to the public. And and we're starting that even as soon as is two weeks from now, we're doing a 30-day pop-up with the historical Zaza, 100-year-old hotel uh down there, and and they're not the most modern refinement of luxury. But Houston doesn't have a whole lot of old things. So if it is an older hotel and it's refined and it's down there, Herman Park, it's it's an interesting just little recipe of location, and we'll kind of install something there as a kind of a soft touch to maybe what we'll do as we progress forward. And so that's kind of What's on our future? And uh I'd say 10-year goal, but I'm I'm like Elon Musk in that. I think to myself, what's the shortest distance between right now and that goal and move all limiting factors out of the way, you know, whatever that means. You know, if I got to get rid of my wife, well, I'm considering it. I'm just kidding. I can't get rid of her. She's just she's too expensive as many as she's proven.
SPEAKER_04Well, let me I'll tell you a little story here real quick before we before we end. Um I was a single man for many years. Okay. And um a fluke that I got on a cruise ship, a pure fluke, was asked to be on on a Friday at the boat set sail on Sunday.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_04Got on the cruise ship, Valentine's Week. Matter of fact, it is right now, Valentine's Week. That's amazing. Got on the cruise ship. Well, a single man on a cruise two places on a cruise ship. That's the bar and the casino. That's exactly what I'm saying. Had my head bent down, and I was counting chips, and I heard this little old voice say, Are you the only single man on this ship? And I looked up and here's this pretty little girl. And you said, Well, I was. I was turning on my best material. Yeah. I said, Yes, I was. You know, I surely am. And kind of stayed in touch there and on the uh ship there and and everything. And she got off the ship and she called me and said, I said, Well, why don't you come see me? So she came town for four days, and then a few months later, well, I went up to her. She's from West Virginia, and that's where she was at. Yeah. Because she was a blackjack dealer on Carmel's cruise lines. Oh, that's cool. Then I went up there and I says, Well, why don't you just come to Texas for a while? Yeah. And uh come back down to reality, honey. That's right. You know, get out of the dead gum snow. Yeah. And then um she said, Okay, you know, so I gave her one-way ticket and I gave her mom a I mean, I gave her a round truck ticket so I could send her mom back. Yeah. You know, just so it and everything. A couple weeks later, I said, Well, let's just go to Reno and gamble. She's gonna have big time and everything. And I looked at her and I said, I just want to let you know I'm a good deal going to waste. You're gonna marry me or not. Amen. Forty one years ago. You're kidding. Forty-one years ago. That's a long time, isn't it? That's amazing. But she loves me about 70% of the time.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, that's kind of the deal you get. You know what I mean? The deal you get is, you know, you, you know, you you get to, you know, you you're supposed to love her unconditionally, but you you you better start cleaning up. Well, I'm telling you, act right. And they do. I think the uh, you know, women are funny, you know. I I think they're all I I joke, but I do think they're all crazy. But I know I personally think that's what we like. Well, it has to be. We're we figured that Adam, somewhere down the line in society.
SPEAKER_04The only thing I can't follow is when she pulls out this question that I have no idea what it is. And I'm trying to think, well, that was something that happened 10, 15 years ago. Yeah. You know, and I said, okay, well, what story did I tell her at that time? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, write that one down. I'd we won't catalog that story. That's right. I need to start making my notes. But but it is, it's crazy. It's it's uh, but it it is, it's funny, but that's an amazing story, and it's it's it's how it's how life works. And it is how life works. You know, you never know. I mean, I I be prepared. That's right. I I look at my wife and I think, you know, I was married young at 19, so I I kind of was stupid and crazy, but at the same time, you know, you you you learn that that a relationship is I joke sometimes when I talk about this, but it's true, it's a contract to get along. And I mean I look at her sometimes. And it is tough at times and I say, honey, I love you, but I don't like you. But but it's like one of those things where I think, and she says that to me, like, you know, I love you, but boy, I'm starting not to like you in a hurry. But but you make a contract to get along and you look at each other and you say, we can live a lot happier together if we can learn to figure out ways to get along. Now that might mean that I need to do things differently, you know, and that's something I agreed to subject myself to, you know, and every so often I'll I'll you know, I've I've been fortunate enough to counsel a few couples on the rocks. Don't know why that happened to me. But I'll often look at the man and say, uh, you need to get over yourself. And he'll say, Well, I mean, I'm the man of the house. Yeah, you're the man of the house. You're supposed to be, you know, but you gotta figure out a plan. What you gonna do? Is it gonna be humility? Is it gonna be financial security? Is it gonna be where where's her problem? She is crazy. We established that before we got in this conversation. You know, they're not gonna operate. We think logically, but there's a but it's a blessing, you know, that that uh that we're not married to men, amen. I don't want to do nothing to do with that. But but but also you need that ping-pong table of illogical irrational, crazy. You know, we could add a lot of adjectives to that. They might all start becoming the same. You know, that it that is all all tongue in cheek to say that it was designed, but that's what we want. We want that anomaly.
SPEAKER_03That's what I signed up for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we want and it gets finer like a wine or or or whatever, like a fine wine, or or a good rolled cigar, you know, it's you, you know, it does get better with age and time because you learn to know what to appreciate in what you have. You know, when you sick on the couch and you think to yourself, Dad come at I want that sandwich or I want that thing, and you can holler out and someone brings it, you think that 40 years of marriage is worth everything.
SPEAKER_04You know what I mean? It's I know when I told her that I was going to retire, it's all my business that I was going to retire. And she said, Honey, I think it's great. Just make sure you're out of the house by eight and come up till five. That's right. So I'm no short order cook. That's right. So, and and I don't want to hear what's for lunch. That's right, that's right. On that well Zephin, I'm telling you, I've had more fun talking to you. I mean, we could just go on and on and on, and we might just have to set up another apartment with uh talk about some more things, but I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. Absolutely, it's an honor. Um I we'll have a lot of viewers from here. Yeah. You know, it'll be a a lot of fun. And uh talking to the the the viewers, um, we'll leave you know notes how you can get a hold of uh Zephan and you can go to his website. And if if y'all have never had a pair of custom-made boots, you hadn't lived. I'm telling you, there's just nothing like them. But I appreciate everything. Be sure and like and subscribe, and uh we will look for another talk with Zephin down the line. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01If you're enjoying the Larry Vaughn show, don't forget to give the episode a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and ring that notification bell to ensure you never miss a new episode.