The Adjunct Files
Adjunct faculty are a growing majority in higher education, shaping student experiences while navigating the challenges of contingent employment. As adjuncts at a regional public university, we know firsthand the realities, rewards, and roadblocks that come with the role. That’s why we’re here—to boost your mood and pedagogy with insightful dialogues on current challenges, practical strategies, and pathways forward for you and your students.
The Adjunct Files
From Storms to Students: Brian Rist on Entrepreneurship, Purpose, and Giving Back
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In this episode of The Adjunct Files, John and Maggie sit down with Brian Rist—founder of Storm Smart, longtime entrepreneur, philanthropist, and adjunct faculty member at FGCU—fresh off receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws at commencement. What unfolds is far more than a business success story; it’s a reflection on purpose, resilience, and the transformative power of education.
Brian shares how Hurricane Andrew sparked the idea that would eventually become Storm Smart, a company that revolutionized hurricane protection and helped safeguard hundreds of thousands of homes. But the heart of this conversation lies in what came next: his decision to step into the classroom, mentor first-generation and regional students, and invest his time, talent, and resources in helping others break cycles and build better futures.
From ethical leadership and lifelong learning to generosity as a way of life, Brian reflects on why teaching as an adjunct is one of the most meaningful things he does—and why he gladly flies back and forth to stay connected to students. Whether you’re an adjunct, an entrepreneur, or someone searching for deeper meaning in your work, this episode is a powerful reminder that success isn’t just about what you build—but who you help along the way.
Theme music composed, performed and produced by James Husni.
Adjunct Nation is a collaborative podcast under the auspices of The Lucas Center for Faculty Development at FGCU. You can learn more by clicking on this link:
https://www.fgcu.edu/lucascenter/
Welcome to the Adjunct Files.
We're a growing, diverse community who face challenging work in an ever-changing, higher
education landscape.
Your co-hosts for this podcast are with you in this.
I'm John Roth, adjunct since 2015 and now a coordinator for Adjunct Faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University.
I'm Maggie Hohne, adjunct since 2022 and currently work in the Office of First Year Seminars.
Together we hope to have conversations to empower, support, and elevate Adjunct faculty.
This conversation today is one to do just that.
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to the Adjunct Files.
John, how are you?
Doing great.
How are you, Maggie?
I'm doing great.
Yeah, I...
We've had some great guests this week.
We've had phenomenal guests and today it's going to be an exciting one because it's the
real world and it's practical and it's also theoretical at the same time.
And I'm really looking forward to it.
I got to sit next to the new doctor wrist, Brian wrist, at commencement.
And we got to talking and I thought, oh my goodness, he'd be perfect for this.
He is an Adjunct instructor here as well.
So welcome, Brian wrist.
It's great to have you here.
If you could share a little about your life, what brought you here to FGCU?
That would be wonderful.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me and it was truly an honor to be at graduation
a couple of weeks ago now.
You know, we moved to Southwest Florida just like a lot of people I grew up in New England
and they have this thing, I don't know if you're familiar with it, it's called snow.
Yeah.
And that and cold weather and that kind of chasing me for a long time.
Sometimes longer.
And then, you know, the economy wasn't as great up there partly because of the weather.
Sometimes the leadership or government of the whole thing.
So when I was in my senior year of college, which I'm not going to tell you when that
was, but when I was in my senior year of college, I met this young lady on Cape Cod, actually,
who was from Florida.
And I, after finishing my senior year, she said, hey, why don't you come down and see
the job market here in Florida and see what goes on.
And I came down here and that was probably, I'll tell you, 50 years ago.
And so we've been in Florida, mostly in Florida ever since then.
And who's the we when my wife and I, my wife, Kim, is the girl that I met on Cape Cod.
That's what I was thinking.
But learning to Southwest, actually, she was born in Hollywood, Florida.
So we started off in the East Coast.
And then that's when we get to the story a little later about Hurricane Andrew, we were
living on the East Coast when we first got here because that's where she came from,
the after she was born.
But then after the storms and all the trouble that might have been around the East Coast,
we decided we would vacation over here in Sanibel and in Sarasota.
And we really, really enjoyed it.
And so we were raising a child and the traffic, the crime, all those things on the East Coast
got to be a little too much after Hurricane Andrew.
And we decided to try something different.
We moved to the West Coast and lo and behold, it was like magic.
Well, thank you, Kim, for getting this gem down here in Florida.
We appreciate it.
We do.
Right.
So how did you start your business?
Like, what is your expertise?
What's your story?
We know how you got down here.
Yeah, I was blessed in that my family, my dad was a small business person.
So it was kind of in our blood right from the begin with.
And when I did go to school in Massachusetts to get my undergraduate degree,
it was in operations management.
So it really kind of started back then.
But over the years, I'd worked for other companies and I was getting a little frustrated
with the whole thing.
But what really kind of made things changes, as I said before, we were living on the East
Coast when Hurricane Andrew happened.
And I was working for Overhead Door Corporation.
And we saw the destruction of Hurricane Andrew and all the tragedy that came out of the whole
thing.
Actually, I spent 18 months after Hurricane Andrew and self-dade trying to help them rebuild.
Wow.
And we saw that tragedy and all the things that came out of it.
And we just said there just has to be a better way.
And so I started thinking about different products and different solutions to maybe
prevent that kind of tragedy from happening again.
We got heavily involved with the building department, the building code people.
And we helped them try to craft what later became the Miami-Dade building code.
So that's what was really our first experience of really learning it.
You know, hurricanes are absolutely a tragedy.
There's no doubt about it.
People get hurt, lives get ruined.
Bad things happen.
But every so often you learn something from a tragedy.
And from Hurricane Andrew, we did learn what caused the failures and what we could do to
make buildings, houses, homes stronger.
And so I spent a lot of time thinking about how you could make people safer and have been
hurricane.
We live in paradise.
But the one part of our paradise that isn't so good is every so often Mother Nature challenges
us with a hurricane.
So if you want to live here, you have to prepare for those types of things.
And when Hurricane Andrew came, really people were using plywood, which isn't always the
greatest thing to use in hurricane.
And most people don't know how to board up our windows.
What up the windows, right?
I remember doing that with my dad.
Right.
But most people, most lay people don't really know how to fast imply wood to a house correctly.
And then it creates a lot of damage.
Then some people had those corrugated metal panels that they put up in ahead of time,
but then put it up in a vent of a storm.
But they're heavy and sharp and they don't allow light in.
And that was really the state of affairs when Andrew happened.
It was just tragic.
It just didn't work.
People didn't know what to do.
They didn't have they had limited resources to limited material to get done that quickly
before a storm.
So we just spent a lot of time thinking about it.
And eventually we came up with a concept of using a fabric as a hurricane protection product.
So what we did, if you think about it, Kevlar is what a bullproof vest is made of and it
can stop a bullet.
Now we looked at Kevlar, but it was very, very expensive and wasn't practical for what
we were doing.
But we just thought there had to be another product and we started using looking at different
fabrics.
And at that time, the space shuttle was going on and a lot of that was made of fabric,
a lot of cars, parts of cars are made of fabric.
So we thought if you can create a fabric that can stop a bullet, maybe with some engineering,
you could create a product that could prevent hurricanes.
So it's kind of a cheap story.
But one day we were raising a child, her name was Alexis, and we had a trampoline in
our backyard.
And I was watching her jump up and down on that trampoline.
And I was thinking, okay, well, there's a product that's sitting outside in the sun
all the time.
And it's able to withstand her bouncing up and down over a period of time.
What if we did something like that and it became, we used it for hurricane protection?
And really that was the beginning concept of what later became storm catcher, which is
the product we pioneered and really made a difference in our life and in the life of
our business as a protection product.
Today, that generation of products is the most popular product used for hurricane protection
in the Southeast.
And we started right here in Fort Myers.
That's amazing.
Do you have any numbers on like how many homes you saved or lives you've impacted over the
years?
I can tell you, because it's been a while, we've deployed over a million square feet
of hurricane protection products.
We've protected hundreds of thousands of homes because we were doing for 16 or 17 years
all year round throughout mostly Southwest Florida.
But really, we've sent product all over the world.
And so we've done a lot of big commercial jobs.
We did the Fort Lord of the airport.
We've done a lot of big projects.
We've done a lot of things with the military.
And so we've put a lot of products in there.
The marketing people will say that we've protected almost a half a million homes.
In Southwest Florida.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
So doing all this public good, really just because you all saw an issue and you're like, I don't
like preparing, we can see all the damages and stuff.
How do you find FGCU?
What drew you to us?
So I'm so glad you asked the question.
I actually was out here last Saturday, Dr. Dent from the business school.
He had this program even, actually it was even before he was here.
It was called the Business Ethics Award.
And every year they would have these competitions from businesses in Southwest Florida who would
do ethical things and win awards.
At that time, the contracting business was 0708.
It had a really, it was starting to get some really bad reputations, bad names.
And I just thought that was the wrong message to get across.
So we worked really, really hard to make sure that our company was different.
And we got nominated for the Business Ethics of the Year Award several times.
And that drew me out here to, to Locker it actually.
And we were involved in that competition there with uncommon friends and the other people
that were out here at FGCU.
I ran into this very, very quiet young lady named Dr. Santa Kawanui.
She is so quiet.
Anybody in the audience knows her.
She's quiet as a mouse.
Passionate.
She is.
Right.
So as you then you know her and once she kind of met me and we started talking about it,
because again, I am an entrepreneur.
And she said, well, you need to come over and see what we're doing at these schools.
At the school at that time, we weren't even on campus at the time we were at ETI.
It wasn't building was a real off of Oleco.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So I went out to see some of the things that they were doing there.
And they had the runway program, which was like a shark tank thing that they put on
for students, which I think is so cool.
It's really, and so she asked me if I would judge it.
And then one thing just led to the other.
And then the more and more I got involved, the more, the more it was.
At that time, we were starting to begin to think about selling our company.
And she said, well, why don't you, and I had just finished getting my master's degree
from my school in Massachusetts.
And she said, well, why don't you, when you're done selling your company, what are you going
to do?
And I said, well, I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there.
She said, well, why don't you come out here and just teach, do an adjunct semester with
me, just one.
And they just do that and check it off your bucket list.
And she's like, let's cross that bridge now.
Right.
Exactly.
So I don't know.
That was probably five years ago.
And I've kind of never left the place in.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
So what really drew you to the classroom, I guess?
I know she's very passionate and watching her teachers really like watching a TV show.
It's amazing.
She's so passionate.
But what kept you around?
Well, you know, there's a lot of schools in our country.
But the thing that is different about the school, and if there's a few others like it,
is the whole first generation thing.
Yeah.
And, you know, I don't know that I would have been so enamored with teaching a bunch
of silver spoon kids about entrepreneurship.
Right.
I love the idea of trying to break the chain.
So meeting students that you can change their lives.
I mean, we did some events out in Mockely with the groups that are out there.
And watching those kids who certainly weren't dealt the best deck of cards in the world,
and then helping to break that cycle is a very, very powerful message.
And once you see success in that way, you just want to do more and more and more.
And even just, that's the worst case scenario.
But in general, most of the students that come here are, again, they're not coming from
super wealthy families or anything like that.
Right.
Well, we're a regional comprehensive university.
Right.
Right.
And so to help to change that and help them to upgrade their lives and help South with
Florida to continue to grow and trap.
That's social mobility.
It is so important that I think that if more people saw what we were doing out here, more
people would be involved in it.
And then everybody benefits from the whole thing.
He got an honorary doctorate at graduation, of course, for all that he has been doing.
Charitable work, teaching in the classroom, investing in this community, just his work
and his entrepreneurship as well, everything.
But you mentioned of all of that, teaching and giving back to the students and seeing
the impact you make is one of the most rewarding things you can think of doing.
There's no doubt, you know, during most people's professional life, you learn a lot of things.
And, you know, if you just take that with you and do nothing with it, other than maybe
put a little bit of money in your bank account, that isn't enough for me.
And I don't know that it's enough for a lot of people.
Sharing the lessons I learned and I'm still learning along the way with the students and
with the people, I think is really the right way of doing things.
I totally believe that the only real way of solving problems is through education.
If you want to solve a problem, we need to educate people more.
In this case, we're talking about students, in college students.
And so I think it's all of our jobs, but I'll make it mine to do anything and everything
we can to help educate those kids.
Now, a couple of cool things happen along the way.
One is, I think it makes me a lot smarter.
I think it makes me a better person.
I think it makes me, I know I have fun doing it.
The kids keep you on your toes and you need to continue to learn to stay ahead of them.
I mean, I'm a little bit older than almost, I think all of our students, but, you know,
the subjects that they're dealing with today, especially in the world that we live in today,
things are changing so quickly.
This whole thing about AI is changing everything.
And if I just sat home and did whatever I did, I would not learn anything about it.
But I find it so exciting to be learning about it.
And these kids know a lot more about it than I do, so in order for me to teach them, I have
to continue to learn.
I think it's very healthy to make learning a lifelong experience.
So I spend a tremendous amount of my time learning so that I can stay ahead of them
and perhaps teach them.
But honestly, I think they teach me more than I teach them.
Now don't tell the dean that because it'll stop them.
But it's just an amazing experience.
When you sit in front of these kids and students and you see their eyes open up, it's just
one of the most amazing things that you could ever ask for.
And it's so rewarding.
We mentioned earlier that I spend some of my time up north, but I actually fly back
and forth every week so I could teach here for a couple of days a week instead of that
because I just enjoy it so much.
And again, I truly believe I get more out of it than they do.
So you're not doing it for the money?
I think one flight back and forth from Boston to here is about probably what I make.
Certainly not that.
But it's certainly not the money.
You can't put a price on what they teach you.
No, not at all.
Luckily, I'm blessed and that's not an issue for me.
But I'll tell you that anybody who has been in business and wants to share what they learned,
I mean, you can't take this stuff with you.
Why wouldn't you share it?
And so I just think we all become better if we share this experience.
Absolutely.
I think this is just the passion we hear from you.
That is, I think, the most common silver thread through all adjunct faculty.
Because you've had a career, you've been successful, you've, quote unquote, done all the things.
And you've sold your company, you're here with your wife, it's like, well, I still got
time left.
What do we do it now?
I also think it's healthier too.
I mean, I don't know.
Everybody does different things and whatever makes somebody happy, God bless them.
Teach their own.
Right.
But for me, sitting around doing nothing is not healthy.
I fear that that could be unhealthy for a person like myself who's been busy their whole
life.
So having a reason to prepare lessons each week and get in front of the kids and talk
to the kids and then here, I'm here today.
And other things that I do, I mean, I sit on, I don't know, four advisory boards out here.
I mean, I sit on the foundation board, I chair the development committee.
I certainly sit on the advisory board for a Dablika Wannui and they're trying to put
an advisory board together for Whitaker.
And so I sit on at least four boards out here.
Other duties as assigned.
Right.
Right.
And so, you know, but, but it is so refreshing, so stimulating to come out here that I believe
if you could find other business people who are kind of in my situation who would want
to come out here and you just got them out here, it keeps you young.
I mean, honestly, I think if I sat home, I would get old fast and now I hope I don't.
Just with the way he's talking, right, Maggie?
Right.
No.
You can tell how young he is.
Absolutely.
And I think even now, just your passion, I do have a question.
Hearing how passionate you are about teaching, impacting the lives of these students long-term,
do you remember a time or a moment when you were in your corporate, like business building
phase where you felt the same passion or is this kind of like a whole new level of like,
whoa, this is so new and exciting and so outside of my wheelhouse?
You know, when you lead a company, when you first start out, you try to do everything
yourself.
Right.
And if you want to scale a company, that's not, you can't be, you can't do it.
You need help.
So you need to build a team.
Probably the most, one of the most rewarding parts about running a company, leading company,
eventually, I, I, as a company, is watching the impact you have on your employees.
There have been many stories and many events where we took kids that came right out of
high school and you know, they might not have been the, it might not have been Harvard material.
Right.
But they had work ethics.
But they had work ethics and they came to work for us and they're still working there
today.
And they eventually, you know, bought a house, maybe had kids, maybe get married in some
order that's not always there.
They were just checking things off.
Right.
It didn't always happen.
They all, I thought it was going, but, and then they have kids and then their kids go
to school and it goes on.
So teaching, having impact on people's lives, whether it's in the classroom or whether they
were employees for a leader or a business owner or a person, I think that's really
what's important.
Now, today we do it in the classroom and it's a little more different structured short time.
But before I was doing it in a, in a business and they would be with us for years.
And that was, as we were maybe even more rewarding because we had them along the period of time.
Right.
You could develop that relationship and, I mean, we had a lot of people who we took out a high
school and they've never had another job.
Wow.
And now they have, their kids are going to college, not to date myself again, but their
kids are going to college.
And so that is kind of like the same in a way.
Yeah.
And that you're helping to, I mean, we haven't said this yet, but, you know, I absolutely
believe that all of our jobs are to make this world a better place when we leave than
we get here.
So if I can do that by touching one person's life and helping them through the good and
the bad days and help them to contribute back to society, hopefully taking the message
that we've already learned to go forward, then I think that's our job.
This reminds me a podcast I listened to recently mentioned that.
Was it a comedy?
No, it wasn't.
No, but it was on, they were just talking about Abraham Maslow.
Do you remember his like need pyramid and you got the basics?
Yes.
Actually, he was going to add another category above self actualization, which is called
self transcendence.
And what I'm hearing from Brian is in a lot of ways self transcendence, he's beyond himself.
He's investing in the lives of others and he's finding even deeper meaning and purpose
by how he does that.
And I can see that as well with just the RIST family foundation now, you not only built
this business who's impacted, you know, millions of lives, but now you are also impacting with
just giving back in so many ways to education, the veterans community programs.
Can you share a little more about that?
Okay.
So I figured out that you don't get to take this stuff with you.
Wait, what?
There is no U-hall behind that.
So that makes so much sense now.
You know, you, I've been very blessed in life and we were able to provide for our families
sufficiently.
And now I think it's time to help others.
Now I will also tell you, and I could share with you some different stories that happened
in my life, I know that every time you give, if you give for the right reason with the
right heart, it comes back to you in so many ways.
Now that doesn't always relate to dollars.
It may not be the same way.
Right.
It left.
Right.
And for us, you know, it's the whole thing.
If you do good things, good things happen.
And the opposite, if you do bad things, bad things happen.
Well, I don't have the time or any interest in the bad things.
So we tried to continue to do and teach about doing good things.
And by doing that, it was magical that good things kept happening to us.
So knowing that, why wouldn't you keep doing it?
And so we, we were blessed in that we could and we, we spent a lot of time.
But by doing that, by helping others, it seemed like we were always helped as well
in different ways, but we were helped.
And so it started out very small and it just continued to grow.
And then we got to a point where we could do bigger and better things.
And again, going back to the two stories when you do good things and also that I think the
way to solve real problems is through education, why wouldn't I continue to do it?
The veterans thing, I just don't think you can ever say thank you enough to a veteran.
We couldn't live the life we lived if it wasn't for the sacrifices they made.
So we certainly tried to support them.
And then I said earlier that we live in paradise and I really believe that.
But it's so sad that in paradise, sometimes kids go to bed hungry.
People, even in the world we live in, there's people who are hungry.
So we try to do what we can to help them.
Now our main focus is on education because I think that's the old teacher Amanda Fish
story is really the long term goal.
I understand that you need to give them some food for today.
We can do that and learn.
Right.
Yeah.
So we really try hard because we want to perpetuate this lesson.
And that is through education.
So most of our activities are focused on education.
And I'm just so very proud to be able to help students pay their tuition or build programs
and do different things like that.
And I just think that way we make the world a better place.
I just don't understand why more people who can business leaders don't get involved in
this because it works so well.
Right.
Generosity is a lifestyle.
And you can be generous even if you don't have all sorts of resources.
I mean, it could be something as simple as giving somebody your time.
Yeah.
Right.
But a 30 minute conversation.
It's amazing what you just get into as a lifestyle.
And I try to tell people that it's, you know, yeah, we're blessed and that we can do a little
things with money.
But it's time, treasure, or talent.
I mean, everybody has one of those three, maybe more.
And doing that, I mean, and you know, when we first started, we didn't have the treasures.
We had the time and eventually we learned about the talent.
And so we started doing things by volunteering to food banks and things like that that didn't
cost us anything but an afternoon.
And once you start getting involved in it, it just kind of perpetuates itself and grows.
So everybody, I think anybody can really give one of those three and then our world becomes
better.
So we have about 430 active adjunct faculty here that teach about 20% of the coursework
every year.
What advice would you give to the other adjuncts here or encouragement that you would have
for them?
You know, if we could start before the adjuncts for a second, because just talking in general
is to just come out here and get involved.
Like I said to you earlier, to both of you that, you know, I was out here judging contests
and I was out here evolving.
And you were also saying this, I mean, you mentioned it several times.
This isn't your institution.
This isn't where you went to school.
I don't think we were open when you went to school potentially.
Hey, hey now.
Well, it's only 30 years ago.
You are only 20, so it's fine.
You're right.
It happens to be, will we make our home now?
And honestly, if you do a little research, we are.
I mean, next week I'll be in Massachusetts and next week I'll be at my school in Massachusetts.
I'll spend three days up there.
So there are, we actually are involved in three different college programs around here.
When you get out here and you start to talk to the kids and when you see the impact you
can have and the changes you can make and the impressions you can give, it just truly
is inspiring.
And I will, willing to bet you that if you get more involved in it, you'll learn more
by doing that.
I mean, I mentioned earlier about AI.
Well, you know, everybody hears about AI.
Because I'm in front of a bunch of college students every day or every week, I spend
a lot of my time learning about AI.
You have to understand it.
Right.
Because it impacts everything.
And so I found it to be extremely interesting.
And so I spent a lot of time learning it in business use cases for AI.
But if you're going to be involved, and I'm a business guy, so if you're going to be
involved in business today, you need to be involved with AI.
So if it wasn't for me being in these classrooms and teaching these kids, I probably wouldn't
be certainly wouldn't be as involved as I am today.
So I learned all that.
And you know, I try to help other business people by implementing EI from because I teach
out here because I, but not because I teach, but because I have to be sharper and learn
and talk the language that these kids are learning.
I absolutely believe by being in front of these kids, I stay healthier.
I absolutely believe that being in front of these kids gives me more purpose in life.
But I mean, you mentioned a little while ago that a couple of weeks ago, I got an honorary
doctor's degree.
That wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for me being more involved in the schools.
I mean, giving money to the schools, a lot of fun, but it's really about the kids and
teaching the kids.
In the time.
Right.
And the reason you were here is for the students.
And so if it wasn't for them, the rest is, isn't that exciting?
I mean, just to give money to a school that doesn't teach kids, I don't want to say that.
So what we're doing there, right?
Right.
So it really is all to get it.
And I'll tell you, when I look out at my class and have done it for seven, right?
Semesters now, when I look out at my class and I see their eyes light up, it's magic.
It just truly is magic.
I just finished teaching a semester a couple of days ago.
And at the end of the class, the kids stood in line to say, thank you.
And I mean, how cool is that?
Oh my gosh, my heart.
Right.
And so that doesn't happen very often.
Those of you who may not teach in person all the time.
Right.
So it really is amazing.
And I think I still am in contact with kids.
I taught the first semester I taught.
So it's not a one and done type of situation.
I'll also share with you the opposite side.
You know, you hear all these horror stories about teaching kids and they don't pay attention.
They talk.
Honestly, I have no discipline problems in my class.
They're turned on.
They're participating.
We collaborate together.
They're just amazing.
And I think a lot of that too, because I also hear those same kind of sentiments.
They're unengaged, da da da.
But I think too, how the instructor shows up to the class just sets the tone.
And even just talking to you for the past 34 minutes for the first time in my life,
I can tell that you're passionate.
Yeah.
It's very evident in how you speaking your demeanor and you want that long term impact
on the students.
If you are truly doing it for a passion, the students know when they show up how they
do for you.
Yeah.
I guess there's all kinds of adjuncts out there.
But the adjuncts that I've met out here are passionate about.
Yeah, the passionate about.
I mean, we joked about the money.
I don't know that you come out here and be an adjunct because of the high pay.
You come out here for the high reward.
Yeah.
And in that, you want to do the best you can do.
And so the adjuncts that I've met out here are just great people.
And they want to share the stories that they learned along the way.
Again, you can't take the money or the stories with you.
So you might as well share them.
You know what?
You don't run out of them.
You can say them different times each semester because these kids don't remember what you
said last semester.
Your stories never get old.
Exactly.
You learn so much.
And again, the good thing here is the classes are relatively small sizes.
So I'm dealing with 25, you know, 20, 25 kids in a classroom.
So you get to know them a little bit.
Yeah.
And that is even better.
And we said earlier that I got an honorary doctorate degree in the graduation.
But for me, that day was about watching the kids, the students that I had taught either
this semester or previous semesters walk across the stage and get their diploma.
That meant more to me than me getting mine now.
I'm so humble and thankful for the school giving me that degree.
So I don't want to belittle that.
But really, I was much more excited about the kids that graduated that day than me.
What are some of the takeaways that you would like to instill in the students from the classroom?
So there's several.
We talked a little bit about them.
And that is obviously the big one is I think it's all of our goal, all of our responsibilities
to leave this place better when we leave than we get there.
I think that there's a couple of very, very simple steps you can be to be successful in
business and it revolves around customer service.
You need to really work hard on taking care of your customers.
We started out with this and I didn't invent this, but if you take care of your customers,
your business will take care of you.
And that's been proven in business for a long, long time.
But as we scaled in business, I learned that if you take care of your employees, your employees
will take care of your customers and the business will take care of you.
That is a lesson that I try to teach everybody.
And I don't care what business you're in.
You want it to be a referral based business.
And the only way that happens is if you do what you say you're going to do.
So you have to, business is not easy and there's tough days and hard days and a lot
of bumps in the road.
But if you treat your customers correctly, your business will probably succeed.
It takes more than one person to have a business.
So you want to build this team that swims in the same direction that you swim in.
If you want to grow a company, you're going to lead by example.
I can't ask my employees to do something different than what I'm doing.
If I want them to treat people ethically and do the right thing, well then certainly I
have to do it.
So those are some of the things that you do.
And then we said it earlier, the whole giving back thing.
I can tell you that every time we gave back, in many years we were in business, our business
grew.
And that is not why we did it and that wasn't the plan.
But it just happened that way.
And you just, you did good things and good things happened and it was the most magical
thing in the world.
And so those are very simple basic things.
And I guess because we're here, you need to add the one that says learning is a lifelong
commitment and you want to continue to learn.
I mean, I can't continue to make my company grow if I don't grow.
So in order for me to grow, I believe the way you grow is through continuing your education.
It's the most logical way of doing it.
So you commit to the life long, the career of life long education.
You commit to doing the right thing.
You commit to treating people the way you certainly want them to treat you.
And then you take care of your customers.
It's that simple.
Did you ever struggle with imposter syndrome as you were building your business?
You know, when you're in business over 26 years, you run to all kinds of problems.
I mean, we, and it's a much longer story, but we spent three years of my life battling
a patent case.
We developed a product and somebody, an ex-attorney, tried to knock off our product and he sued
us in court.
And we were a struggling company and he just thought he could paper us to death and do
that.
And that went off for three years at a time we were growing the most.
So yeah, that was a tough day in our lives.
But in the end, we prevailed.
But you know, then we were the largest in our industry.
So lots of people tried to knock us off.
And they could do things cheaper than we could because we were much bigger.
So our overhead was bigger.
Everything was bigger.
And we made a decision to, you know, get all the product approvals that we needed to do
and do all the permits and all the licensing and all the things that we needed to do with
somebody who was running on the radar didn't necessarily do that.
But again, if you continue to do the right thing and you do it, I believe it will prevail.
One of the things that I always did was I was very out in the public.
I would be that would be very noticeable and do a lot of different TV things and so that
people knew who we were.
That required us to make sure we were doing the right thing.
But it gave us the right exposure too.
So we would just, you know, competition is healthy and it made us sharper.
And you know, we were just very careful how we dealt with those things.
But sure, in 26 years of business, anything, everything that could possibly have happened.
But if you do the right thing, then you win.
You'll, you'll, you'll prevail.
We were fortunate and we were the largest in our industry.
You don't have to be.
You can just, as long as you do it the right way, you can be successful.
Do you have any, you've talked a lot about ethics and morals and modeling behavior and
like building your business?
What recommendations do you have for young students or entrepreneurs who want to be successful?
You talked a lot about building effective teams.
Do you have any like quick tips and tricks on how to build effective teams rather than
all my buddies and I are going to build a company and it's going to be great?
Okay.
So first of all, that's a huge mistake.
Yeah.
But it's all about who you know, right?
Right.
Right.
But see, when you first start building a company, your tendency is to, you know, you're going
to be interested in doing that.
You know, the idea is to hang out with your buddy, buddies and, and build them that way.
But the problem is, is all your buddies are probably a lot like you and that's not what
you need.
You need some, not in business.
Not in business.
Yeah.
That's great.
When you want to go to dinner or something, the bar or something.
Personal life.
Right.
But you need, when in business, you need somebody who's opposite of you.
So I was always more of a sales marketing operations guy.
I needed somebody who was more the accounting detail, those taxes type of person.
So when you hire your first person and you start to grow, you don't want to hire a mirror
of yourself.
You want to hear the opposite of yourself because that allows you to do what you're
good at and that person to do what they're good at.
And that's how you really scale hiring.
First of all, the best way of losing a friend is to hire a friend and I want to be on a
and that just becomes a problem.
Right.
But if you hire someone who is the opposite of you, then that will make your business
much more successful.
Now to a different side of that question, again, we talked about it earlier today, this world
is different.
And because of AI, there's a lot of things that are changing in things that I absolutely
believe the way that you would, if I was to restart a company today, the, my partner
would probably be some kind of chat GPT type of person.
Because that's really the multiplier of the whole thing.
Now you never ever want to lose the human touch.
Absolutely.
And you need people to talk to people and do things together because that's the world
we live in.
But if you are not using technology a lot, then I think you're going to, you might be
related to a dinosaur.
Yeah.
You're going to be left behind.
Right.
Exactly.
So Brian, I get the feeling you have had some really good mentors in your past or some
people that have been role models for this kind of a lifestyle.
Or people who you're like, I don't want to be any.
Well, that might be the opposite.
Yeah, I'm sure there's something.
I just have a feeling because I, um, you're a generous spirit.
You're a sense of seeing the world this way, which I love.
I think this is the way to be.
But it just doesn't happen out of the blue too often.
It's usually because you've experienced it yourself from others, right?
There's no doubt.
I mean, you're never, you certainly don't ever want to be all by yourself.
So I, um, I tried really, really hard to always surround myself with the smartest,
brightest people I could do, whether it was when I was hiring people or just associating
with people because life is all about continuing to learn and you're not going to learn from
sitting in a corner.
You know, but, but it isn't always going to be from the most, most intelligent person
in the world.
No.
You learn things from the funniest places.
But you have to have an open mind and you have to listen to other people and try to
figure out, okay, why do they think that way and what makes them do that?
And then so you can do it because, again, I'm a business person, but there's nothing
wrong with somebody who's an artist or something wrong that's a, you know, is a scientist.
I just believe in, in being a business, but the world needs all kinds of people.
There's a place for everybody.
Yeah.
And, and so you want to do that.
So I want to learn what, what makes them tick and then by that, I can understand a
little better and hopefully be, I become a better person because of it.
You, you know, I read a lot.
I listen to podcasts constantly.
I try not to waste a lot of time with unproductive things.
Um, you know, in, in, I'm, I'm a very blessed person.
I also, again, spend all my time out at different colleges, which is a great way of learning
a lot of things.
So, so yeah, you, you, you, you, there have been a number, quite a few people in my life
who really impacted me on good days and bad days.
And, uh, and, and you learned from that and you try not to make the same mistake again
and, and, and do it in that fashion.
But you're, and I guess I should always say that, you know, I mentioned in the very beginning
that I met my wife 50 years ago.
Yeah.
She might have had a little bit to do.
Thanks, Kim.
And so that's it.
And, and you know, I was blessed with a, with a great family.
I was blessed with a lot of good things.
And, and so that, that makes it all worth.
Was it all easy?
Oh, popcorn and cotton candy.
No, when you're in business, especially the hurricane business.
Yeah, it's, it's tough.
It, it, it, and absolutely there's good days and bad days.
And when you have a lot of employees, there's all the challenges of doing that.
But I honestly, and I tell people this all the time, if there was a book called
the American dream, I think I could be on the cover of it.
Because I really got to live.
When we started our business, I think I had, um, maybe enough money to pay attention.
But, but not we didn't have, we didn't start with a lot of money or anything.
So we had, we bootstrapped our way through the whole thing.
And then, you know, today I get to live a very, very nice life.
And it, and it was all by spending all these years in business and surrounding
myself with great people and being part of this university and doing different
things. And I mean, I, I do get to live the American dream.
Have you written a book yet?
You know, it's funny you said that because I know you have so much free time about
your boards and classes.
I have started writing a book.
Oh, good.
And I, I was talking to somebody Saturday when I was out here and said, well,
you're going to write last summer and I got busy.
And so on Friday, we're flying back up north and maybe I'll sit down and try to
write it.
I mean, I know what it's about and I've got a framework of it, but the answer is no,
but I think about it.
Right.
So well, now with AI, maybe you could just talk to text it.
Right.
You can talk the whole thing out.
Right.
And they'd probably will do most of it, but I don't know that that has, I don't
know if that has the same impact.
No, I think that's true.
Right.
So.
Well, thank you so much.
This has been a great conversation.
And I'm just amazed at the adjunct faculty.
We have at this place, right?
Every time I do a podcast here, I'm like, I just love my job.
Yeah.
And this isn't even really my job.
This is just like a fun side hobby that I do.
And it's just so amazing.
The quality of instructors that we have and the passion.
And I think the, what makes FGC unique as well is people in the community adopt us.
Right.
Most adjuncts didn't go here.
No.
I mean, you all just move here and it's like, oh, hey, right, because you kind of joked about it.
Most of us, we were here.
We were going to school before FGCU was here.
Yeah.
So it wasn't, I mean, some of you, you're starting to see more now people who are alumni that are successful.
We're getting older.
Right.
We're all.
But a lot of people who certainly have my generation, you know, FGC was near.
I'll share with you who you raised a child in.
And I remember coming out here when she was starting to think about going to college.
And we were out doing a tour this place here.
And we parked our car and there were wild hogs running around.
Oh, my goodness.
She was actually, she graduated in the first graduating class with school nursing.
And she's still here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
And she still works at Lea, Lea Health and she was, she came from FGCU.
Yeah.
Along.
She was the original.
Yeah.
Right.
But, but, you know, honestly, I am so happy that the schools here, you'd mentioned earlier that this is
a regional school.
I think that we need to work harder on our partnership between the students, our
school and our business community and our government because we all need each other.
And we will all be better off if we all work together.
But I thank you for this opportunity.
Oh, this was wonderful.
Glad you enjoyed it.
And I had a great time doing it.
And I'm here to help you guys anytime I can.
Well, thanks so much.
We appreciate it.
Thank you.
And thank you so much so much for�
Theme music composed, performed and produced by James Husney.
