The First Million Is Always The Hardest

Built From Within: Jeff McCall on Intrapreneurship, Turnarounds & Purpose-Driven Leadership

• Season 2 • Episode 2

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Video version: https://youtu.be/i5EHQjIcHwI


In this inspiring and refreshingly honest episode, host Bo Kemp interviews Jeff McCall, a rare kind of entrepreneur — one who has built thriving businesses inside some of the world’s most recognized corporations. From Hilton and Sears to TruGreen and now TurnPoint Services, Jeff has carved out a unique lane as an intrapreneur, known for transforming organizations from the inside out.

Together, Bo and Jeff explore what it means to build within a large company and why Jeff chose this path over a traditional startup or MBA route, the turnaround mindset — how Jeff steps into underperforming divisions and leads them to new heights through clarity, vision, and operational excellence, the unique risks and rewards of intrapreneurship compared to solo entrepreneurship, Jeff’s personal journey toward fulfillment and the moment he realized that leading from within could be just as impactful — and meaningful — as founding something from scratch, how faith and values guide his leadership style and tough decisions, including those that went against popular opinion but ultimately paid off, and practical advice for mid-career professionals who may feel stuck but have untapped potential to lead, grow, and drive change within their current environments.

This episode is for anyone who wants to lead boldly — whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or reimagining what success can look like within a larger system. Jeff’s story is proof that you don’t have to start from scratch to make a lasting impact.



SPEAKER_01

Are you ready to grow your business, build wealth, and spark transformation in the South Suburbs of Chicago? Visit Southlanddevelopment.org today and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected, get the resources, and be the first to hear about the achieved summit, where entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and change makers come together to ignite growth and opportunity. Don't just watch change happen, be a part of it. Join the movement at Southlanddevelopment.org and start building your legacy today. Plumbing, HVAC, the blue-collar backbone of America. Today we're breaking down why and what it means for your next move. Well, thank you for being here, Jeff. Good to see you today. Excited. We've got beautiful weather outside. And I want to start with just you giving the listeners a little bit of your background. And what I will feed you with is that I think you've had an incredible journey career-wise. You know, kind of a non-traditional but entrepreneurial experience. And it's one of those sorts of experiences that I think many people never thought about as a possibility that you can be an entrepreneur within the context of large corporations, literally be building businesses within that business. And it has its own challenges, but it has its own benefits as well. And you've also had the chance to almost be like a private equity investor to some degree within the context of a large company as well. So I'm I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but I want to just give you a setup to tell a little bit about your story, your history, how you got here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Uh so it's great to be here. And if I were to summarize a little bit what I do now and then backtrack to the overarching theme of kind of my career pattern. So today, president of um Turnpoint Services, which is the nation's second largest HVAC plumbing and electrical residential business in the country. We have 60 uh kind of local brands that uh in thriving markets across 30 states uh with over 7,000 uh associates.

SPEAKER_01

It's amazing. I'm jumping in just because everyone right now who wants to be an entrepreneur through acquisition is looking to buy HVAC companies. So you're right in the sweet spot of where everybody claims they want to be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and uh and and you know, I we love the space, I love the trades, uh, you know, actually supporting and working with people who are doing real work uh to solve real problems every day, and actually you can create great careers uh for everybody involved. And so but long story short, uh we are uh partnered with a private equity firm uh who has provided a lot of our uh investment capital to help us fuel uh to this point. The business was started seven years ago uh with one single platform in Kentucky. Uh and by our current CEO, uh and uh I joined the business about a year ago uh and now kind of oversee uh all of the kind of core operations of the business and our 7,000 associates. Uh but within that uh broad that kind of immediate story, uh my career over the last 25 years since business school um has really been a career of being this kind of uh private equity operator, entrepreneur, uh, and helping kind of establish businesses uh scale and grow uh and in a transformational state. And so uh right out of business school, and we can talk about this. I was at a large retailer working with um uh an investor who bought Sears K Mart and was kind of beginning a transformation there, and that was almost the largest of corporations, but needed a transformation.

SPEAKER_01

I do want to come back to that because those are two iconic brands that uh transitioned now. Yeah. Um and uh I want to you were there as that process was happening. So if we can talk a little bit about that, but please can go.

SPEAKER_00

So no, long story short, again, and then I I went to Hilton, which we can talk about as well when uh Hilton Hotel Company, uh the the world's largest hotel company now. Uh and we uh worked with the management team and an investor uh when we bought the company from the the the Hilton family uh to grow it and scale it and expand it to what you know it today, and eventually took it public. Uh, and I got to be a part of that. Uh and then spent uh a couple of other tenures in home services and in healthcare services into where I'm now. So the overarching story over the last twenty years is uh coming alongside uh investors within uh some form of established companies uh and helping them transform and grow uh to that next stage and with in a very entrepreneurial way uh to to then kind of reach uh its next stage of growth.

SPEAKER_01

And you've been in situations that have been tough. I mean, they're kind of turnarounds, even though they're large corporations. You know, it's one thing to have to turn around a small business that say is one or two million dollars and you're trying to move it to be three to four million dollars. It's another thing to turn around iconic brands that have a long history and lots of different issues. I want to go back to the whole Sears in Kmart to talk a little bit about that, what your experience was. How did you even make the decision to take a job? Because you knew at the time, hey, this is not going to be easy. How do you make the decision to be engaged in something like that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. Um, you know, oftentimes when you look at anybody's life story or career story and and you look back and plot it on paper, it looks pretty l linear. But in real time, it was not a lot of zigs and zags, and you know, obviously a lot of thought that goes into it, but some of it is just how things work out. Um and so, yes, without a question, uh over the last 20 years, my career uh has kind of been charged with operating within what one would consider turnaround environments.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I would say, you know, and this is a little bit of timing, it's an interesting point as I just started thinking about today's conversation. A lot of that is just during the timing of my career. So if you think about the last 20 years, and I graduated college in 2001.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So my senior year was September uh 11th, yeah, right? Uh and then I graduated business school in 2008, which was the financial crisis, and then I took my first CEO job uh, you know, six months before COVID.

SPEAKER_01

If you're gonna get a doctorate, please let us know so I know to short the market the year you're supposed to graduate.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. But there's a lot of opportunity on the upside. And eventually, you know, timing is everything. Uh you don't control the external factors. So I would just say part of uh the the turnaround aspect of my role has just been the timing of my direct trajectory. But what I what I consider myself exceptionally skilled at because of those experiences, coming into an environment and really positioning it for transformational growth. And that's kind of really where my sweet spot is uh without a question. And we are are kind of living we've just lived through some economic times over the last decade plus that has required a different skill set, uh, which have which have been additive to me. Uh, but but all in all, I uh my sweet spot is I I think I'm uh uh exceptionally well at positioning companies for transit uh transformational growth and been able to do that successfully.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but one of the things that's important to understand is that even though, yeah, you're going into a large company, you are taking a personal risk to attach yourself to this brand. Not only to the brand that may be struggling, but to the opportunity, which if it doesn't work, you know, is egg on your face. How did you approach and distinguish the danger of the risk to your reputation or the risk of failing from the fear of the humiliation of having to admit to yourself, to your family, to people you went to business school with, hey man, this did this didn't work out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh again, uh in hindsight, things look a lot linear, you know, where when you're traveling through life um, you know, day to day, you're you're making decisions as best as you can with the hopes that they work out. But let's go back maybe to business school because I started my career right out of college in financial services, went to Columbia University undergrad, and most like most um uh undergrads at that time, rode the train down downtown to Wall Street and began my career at Morgan Stanley, then Goldman Sachs. Uh a great kind of first uh set of experiences out of college. But I realized two things. One, um, you know, I wanted to be on the operating side of the business versus the advisory side of the business. I grew up being an athlete, played athletics in college.

SPEAKER_01

Starting quarterback at Columbia, we'll just drop that for you, so you don't have to say it for yourself.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. There you go. There's not much film on it, so I can kind of embellish a little bit on what we're doing. You get faster and faster every decade. Exactly. There you go, especially to my kids. But all that being said, um, I know I I was I really enjoyed working, locking arms with people, working alongside teams and helping mobilize teams towards goal. The second part of, and this goes back probably a little bit to my origin story, which we'll get to, I loved hard challenges. Like I love charging a hill. And so the kind of a little bit to my benefit and detriment, the steeper the hill, the more excited I got. And so when I went to business school, I said, okay, how can I find an environment where I can be entrepreneurial, where I can actually uh chase a hard challenge? Look, wealth creation uh and kind of that part of it was what had some importance. Of course. Um but I also, about myself, and this comes down to the uh the individual assessment, I knew that I worked best uh inside environments that had some form of established infrastructure. There are certain kind of operators and um and entrepreneurs who can are really good at you know from dollar zero to kind of the first 10 million. I work best where there's some infrastructure there, but it's not positioned the right way, it's not in the right direction, it's not moving at the best speed. And so, you know, today I would say that's$100 million of revenue or more, but probably that sweet spot of$500 million of revenue is where I really can come in and make what I call a kind of exceptional difference than most leaders. And so for me, it was where how do I find that environment where I can be entrepreneurial? Yeah, but yet it has that infrastructure where I can kind of outperform in a way that a different leader. So at the time of business school, private equity was becoming an emergent asset class. You know, there weren't as many on-ramps for young operators to actually get in private equity. You had to be kind of, you know, uh 50, 60 years old, a lot of gray hair, retire from GE. And so I had to find kind of what were those opportunities where somebody was willing to take a risk on me early in my career, throw me into the deep end, I can earn those operational stripes, uh, and then yet make an improvement. And so uh my first job out of business schools with Eddie Lampert, uh, who bought Sears Kmart, and he was hiring a layer of MBAs to throw into the deep end into um into that investment slash experiment. And so it was a little bit of we were both taking risks. Without a question, um, that business kind of faced some challenges, but probably many of us didn't know uh all that would come with kind of uh e-commerce and Amazon, quite frankly, uh, at that time. But but at the same time, Eddie himself and almost the people that he hired were some of the most um the smartest, most talented people. I mean, many of that those those classes that he hired out of business school, many of those people have gone on to do very, very successful things. And so it was actually going with a very talented cohort to track to tackle a hard problem.

SPEAKER_01

I I want to I want to pause there and come back to a couple of things. One, there is something to be said about the environment that you put yourself in. And it impacts your um it impacts the opportunities in front of you, it impacts your willingness to take risks, it completely impacts, of course, how you approach this issue of disaggregating danger from fear. Um But not everybody may know who Eddie Lampert is. Just describe a little bit about him and then talk about some of the people that you had the chance to work with in that environment, because that forms and shapes a lot of uh what you've done going forward.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so the and then people can look him up on um the internet and look up his history, uh, you know, very unique personality, but I would say for most of his career and all of it to this day, he was one of the most famous, I would say, kind of liquid investors, uh, you know, kind of hedge fund investors uh in in financial services. I mean, at one point in time he was kind of uh dubbed as the next Warren Buffett uh on a cover of Fortune and and a billionaire and things of that nature. And so he was he was very, very successful in what they call traditional hedge fund liquid investing, and then kind of made a pivot to make start making some larger, what they would call illiquid investments, taking larger stakes in companies he thought could turn around. Long story short, uh he bought Kmart when it was in trouble, kind of actually turned that company around and then saw the opportunity to buy Sears with a broader vision. He knew the internet would affect retail. Uh and he thought uh two things. One, there was an opportunity for internet to affect retail, but also two, there uh those two assets had a had a value of assets that if he could spin them off could be much valuable uh than they were together. Um I won't go into too too much of the detail of of why it ultimately didn't end up working out, but uh it was a great platform with a lot of legacy.

SPEAKER_01

Are there a couple of little tidbits you can share with us?

SPEAKER_00

Um look, I want I want to I want to respect all parties involved. Listen, I think one, look, uh trends and timing are everything. Yeah. Uh what I would say is, you know, Amazon was just on a path that nobody could be able to do that. They were packets, they were just eating up. Exactly. And nobody really understood the pace and the speed of what that online retailer would do. Um we would spend, I mean, Eddie was decades ahead of his his time in thinking about we were doing buy online pickup and store 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Right. I think another big theme was we were largely a mall format.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And just the the headwind of that um that shopping experience uh just happened a lot faster. You had the financial crisis. I think the main punchline is uh one of the core original theses was uh the parts were greater than the sum uh at that point in time of those two assets. Uh we had a uh auto retailer, we had a uh a real estate kind of asset. I think had we s stuck stronger to the strategy of actually exiting a lot of those assets and monetizing those and and having a much um a much uh tightly focused core uh business, we we actually would have done quite well on it. He did well on the asset, but ultimately, you know, trying to save a mall-based format of Sears and Kmart, it it you know, they were just forces beyond.

SPEAKER_01

Just two questions on that. Um so there's a real estate play that could have been made, or maybe it was made. Because I I don't know how that was.

SPEAKER_00

It was made, but it was kind of made too late, I think.

SPEAKER_01

So so when you guys were owning Kmart's and and I'm I'm making an assumption because I don't know this to be the the case. My experience with most Kmart's um and Sears is that they were part of a wall mall format and they leased that space, but they didn't typically own that space.

SPEAKER_03

That's correct.

SPEAKER_01

And I didn't know to what degree you all had actually ever thought about the real estate play of buying the malls.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, I don't think the uh there was ever thought of actually going and buying the four malls, but there were actually portions of real estate that the retailer did own, even some of the kind of um the auto locations were actually so there was there was and eventually there was a REIT play that did happen in spinning those assets off into a REIT. Um what I would say is the business, if you think about the history of Sears and the history of Kmart, ended up kind of being a conglomerate of a variety of different businesses when consumers wanted to come to conglomerates uh in a physical format.

SPEAKER_03

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and so it was kind of disaggregating those assets and monetizing those was the play. Uh ultimately um we we we kind of got a little bit fell in love with this um this online strategy and thought that that was the brand that could pull it off. And as I like to describe it, we kind of fell in love with a bad girlfriend. Uh it was gonna happen, we just weren't the asset to do it. And so ultimately, uh had we kind of exited some of those assets on their own and monetized that and and had a different, smaller strategy, um, it would have done much better. I left before it eventually kind of uh dissolved into to what it what what what happened, but um look, big lessons were uh headwinds and tailwinds matter. Right, no matter what your kind of strategy and the people you have, headwinds and tailwinds matter. Another factor, Eddie was um one of the smartest people uh that I've ever physically been around. Yeah. Went to school to Columbia, been in Harvard, been in Wall Street. I mean he he literally uh computed at a different wavelength. Uh but coupled with that, there is also how do you actually translate that strategy down to you know 50,000, 100,000 people uh and actually mobilize large organizations. So I learned a lot about how do you mobilize large organizations, wins the heart and minds of people to actually accomplish accomplish the simple tasks.

SPEAKER_01

So you said something earlier that I thought was fascinating and I want to understand how you got to this conclusion, which appears to me to be correct, which is hey, I'm the guy you bring in once you get to a half a billion dollars, right? That can actually help you figure out how to asset allocate and kind of redirect the troops. I'm not the guy from zero to ten. Yeah. What experiences did you have? Um, and this is a bit of a setup because you got to see me at zero to ten. Sure, sure, right? You used to come down when you were in school to my fledgling business, Vanguard Media.

SPEAKER_00

It was not fledgling at all.

SPEAKER_01

You know, we had 200 employees, but but it was the hottest thing in town. We we thought we were at least. But you got to see that for yourself. And what types of experiences did you have that actually made it clear to you like, hey, that process of building from zero, um, I need to access that, but that's not me. I'm the person who does this at a different level. Yeah. Because most people really struggle with figuring that out.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And look, it comes through experience, it comes through trial and error. You asked the original question of how did you really figure out this was your path? One thing I would kind of point out is that my belief is that you have to play your career path from the inside out. A lot of, you know, there's a lot of external um data points, people's career, what other people are doing, the trend of the day that people can look at and that people, you know, you should glean information from. But at the end of the day, what are you passionate about? What can you be world class at, right? What's gonna kind of, you know, uh fuel your economic engine? And I think you have to say, okay, where do I best fit uh in the in a set of opportunities? And so for me, um, it was my team experiences in college. It was actually kind of some of the projects I worked on early at some of these large corporations that I realized what did I get the most energy from? Right, what environments both most fueled me? And when you kind of uh dissect that, you know, from zero to you know fifty million dollars in revenue, that leader of that organization, that founder, also has to be a player on the field. You're building.

SPEAKER_03

That's right, right?

SPEAKER_00

You're actually making the sales calls, you're actually kind of whatever your product is, uh you're actually doing leading.

SPEAKER_01

Product development, the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00

And that's that's a very important but also unique skill. Where I have found just from my own introspection, through experiences, through um, you know, obviously work experiences, that I am better than most uh once there are a set of assets that are there, but how can I attract outsized talent and outperforming talent that would never look at an opportunity? How can I mobilize that talent? How can I set the speed and direction of that an environment and how can I build a culture and mobilize a group of people to uh outsize return? That's where I think um you know I I'm just better than most at.

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, when you're in business school and you and I went to the same business school, right? Right, you basically the whole point of it appears at least at some point, just to focus you down a few tracks, right? Right. Um you're gonna be a consultant, which I did that, you're gonna be a banker, I did that too. You're gonna start a business, I did that. You're gonna go into private equity, you did that too. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, and all of those are kind of the paths that you're driving down. And what you're seeing over time is right when you graduate, a lot of your peers getting jobs in those spaces, very different jobs than what you were getting. And um when you think about your career, was there ever a moment where you had doubt, like, man, these guys that went over here, it sure looks like they got a cushy life.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You know, and did I make a mistake and can I recover? How did you how did your perception of the choices that you made change over time?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. That's a great question. And a little bit again to timing, uh, what probably helped me a little bit more is that over the last 20 years, just that journey, the world has been very disruptive. And so what seemingly looked like a safe path in investment banking or consulting, you know, was momentary, momentarily, right? And then two years later, the great financial crisis happens or COVID happens. And so therefore, those seemingly safe jobs uh there you go, right?

SPEAKER_01

There will be no analyst anymore. There you go, right?

SPEAKER_00

And so so a little bit uh navigating those kind of uh those disruptions in the economy forced me to kind of say, what is that entrepreneurial path? But what I would say is it is actually coming down to one, spending as much time being introspective, learning your skill set, right, learning what you're passionate about, uh, and then having conviction around, okay, is this the right choice for me? Because again, it will never go as you planned, right? Some surprises will be on the other side of the door, but you have to kind of in those wee hours of the night, or when you're putting on those long hours on the weekend, or when disappointment happens, which uh it has happened many a time, did I rate make the right decision for me? Am I kind of again performing at the highest and best use of my skill set? Am I really happy? Yeah. And one of the things about you know my life and fortune and God has been good to me is ultimately if if I don't enjoy what I'm doing, uh, I won't do it. Right. And so I've taken some risk of you know turning down job offers, delaying job offers, uh, in order to kind of say, you know, what do I really want to do? And taking time to think about it. Um and and that has come with why, you know, why are you kind of not moving down a different path? But taking that time to actually be introspective, understand your convictions, understand what you're really good at, and then going after it. That's the way to live life.

SPEAKER_01

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SPEAKER_02

Your listening to the first million is always the hardest. We are now returning to the show.

SPEAKER_01

I want to talk more about what you're doing now and how you got there because the concept of turn point and being an aggregator, right, essentially, of all these home service businesses is in the sweet spot for a lot of the people who will listen to this and are interested in trying to figure out how to build their own kind of empire. But I want to take a second before that and just go back to you and talk a little bit about your personal story. You know, I will reveal that we are, I guess, what they call play cousins. Um, and in fact, we're so play cousins that I didn't even realize we weren't legally uh actually related to one another until much later in my life. But your grandmother is my godmother. And as you had mentioned before, um your grandmother and my grandparents actually lived together when they first moved to Detroit in the 40s. Um but so we go way back um and have known each other in different capacities. But talk a little bit about your background and you know the things that impacted you throughout your life, because one of the things that I think is really amazing about you is the clarity that you had about this is what I'm good at, this is where I'm not as strong, this is what I want to do, this is what I don't want to do. Most people actually don't have that level of clarity. They would wish to have that level of clarity, but usually that comes from past experiences, which kind of cemented you in having a sense of who you are. So just for the listeners and what you're willing to share, share a little bit about your background and kind of how that's gotten you to where you are.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I'll try to summarize, you know, maybe the first 20 years in a couple of minutes. But like you mentioned, born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, uh two-parent uh exactly, two-parent household. Uh both of my parents actually uh I would say kind of first generation, college educated. Um, and what I thought was a middle class um uh memory of bringing. Absolutely. I would kind of call probably upper lower class a little bit. We were on the cusp of middle class. But it but Detroit was a thriving uh environment for uh African Americans and without a question a great life. Um and everything was actually what I thought was pretty comfortable up until um um around the age of nine, my mother started to get sick. She went in the hospital for an extended period of time, about six to nine months as I recall it. Uh eventually get her got over that illness. I thought everything was was fine and and and and well to do after that. Uh but then eventually about a year later went back into the hospital for a more extended period of time. It ended up passing when I was 11. And look, without a question, losing a parent and losing a mother at 11 years old uh is one of the most traumatic events of anybody's life. Uh but I call it, you know, obviously one of the worst events that ever happened in my life, probably the worst event, but also one of the best events. And here's why I say so the worst event is obviously uh obvious. Um, but from the best event, there there's a couple of things that happen. One, um you actually kind of get a uh very early experience and and revelation and and awareness that life is finite. Yeah. Right. And so you start to really grapple with some serious kind of adult questions at a very early age.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what am I really gonna do?

SPEAKER_00

What am I gonna do? What is time, you know, how how do I think about time? What am I here for? Uh, you know, what is this life all about? So you start to really wrestle with those things. I would say the second thing, and and this kind of just frame my life journey, it did kind of begin my what I call conversations with God. Yeah and began my faith journey. That was one of the things that uh truly sustained me through that time and then eventually has kind of been a foundation of my life. But it pretty early, that experience kind of brought a level of clarity, a level of intentionality, a level of focus. And listen, on the other side of that, as I interpret it, I've never really had this conversation with my dad. But my dad, uh now being a single father father, he was an entrepreneur himself. Really, I I I consider, you know, with my community and family around me in Detroit, aunts and uncles and grandparents, really, you know, he kind of pulled pulled his bootstraps up and said, Hey, I'm gonna make sure you make it out.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And I actually took on that persona and said, Hey, I will not let this defeat me. And so at that point, what became um pretty important to me was academics, uh, athletics, uh, and hard work. And that's kind of my dad said, those three things will actually make make you out of the get let you get out of the east side of Detroit and get you a better opportunity. And so I ended up having a pretty focused life after that. Um I ended up sports became a really big part of my life, football and basketball, and played football in college. Um, I was uh able to fortunate be a great student throughout high school. Um, but it brought a level of discipline, hard work, intentionality pretty early in my life, uh, which then kind of then shaped me moving forward. And there's a little bit of blessing and curse to that. No, because you process some of that trauma, I would tell you just very directly. One part of overcoming that um that that early childhood difficulty is that I took on the persona of uh every obstacle and hurdle that's presented to me in life, I will overcome.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

No matter how hard, no matter how difficult, uh, or no matter what the circumstance is. So one that develops a level of determination, but also what it develops is sometimes you're not reading the tea leaves to actually not everything is a wall, but maybe it's a it's a doorway into another opportunity. Yeah. Right. And how do you discern and kind of know how to pivot when needed to versus breaking through the wall?

SPEAKER_01

And so um, but but that's where that early determination is of what you developed in that determination was a trauma response. Yeah. Right? 100%. And you know, part of the difficulty when anyone has this kind of trauma response is to separate when um the my response to this trauma is actually healthy, and when the response to this trauma isn't healthy, right? You've been a top performer at everything you've done. You are a great son, you know, you are a great student, you are a great athlete, you're a great dad, you're a great husband, but you can't be great all the time. You know, how do you find that space to not be great? Yeah, right? Yeah. Because that's a really important part.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's hard. Uh and um, first of all, I'm not great all the time. Uh my wife will tell you that, uh, as wonderful and beautiful as she is. But I I think the way I interpret your your your response is you know, from that trauma response, without a question, there is a motor that starts where again, to determine where you're always on, where you're always striving, where you're always achieving, right, where you will not be defeated. And there, without a question, there's some good sides of that. But uh, you know, I go back to a little bit of uh in That moment, what developed in me, my faith journey, which really has continued to be not only a foundation for my life, but brought a balance of perspective and just helped quite honestly shape my perspective. That at the end of the day, uh achievement can't be right my core focus and centerpiece of my life. It can't be the driving motive. My own self-fulfillment can't be all that I'm striving for. And so that without a question has been a what I would call a saving grace and and giving me a bigger picture to live for. That brings balance to, you know, how do you work hard but find rest? How do you have boundaries? How do you put margin in your life? How do you serve something beyond yourself? So I think that has been the foundation and complement to some of that, you know, that trauma response.

SPEAKER_01

You know, um we've we've you've we had a moment, I don't remember exactly when exactly it was or where we were, but I think at the time I was working in Newark um and we were going through some really difficult challenges, and I don't remember how we connected, but I feel like we were in a hotel or something in New York. Maybe I was visiting you, and you and I sat down and you had a spiritual conversation with me, and we started talking about the book of Job. Yeah. Right. And I just um one of the things that I so admire about you is that um you're a true believer. I have a lot of people that claim to be Christian. I've met not as many people who walk in the light of Christianity. Um I found you to be a person that I believe does that, and I see it. Not because you tell me or proselytize, but because I watch you, I've seen you in those situations, I've tempted you. You used to come to my parties back when I was on uh in the media space, you know, and you've been in that environment and I've watched you be disciplined, yeah, right? Um I've watched you as you've chosen your spouse and consistent throughout that entire time. Um and it's really um you are actually a model for me about how I think about what it means to be truly spiritual and truly, you know, regardless of what your relationship with God is or who you pray to, to watch someone that really is attempting to walk in that space. Um, and there aren't very many people. So when you describe that being a balancing act for you, um I see that personally, and that can't resonate to all of the listeners, but I have the tangible experience about that. But that causes its own problems, right? I mean, you've lived in different parts of the country where you've been in different environments where other people who claim to profess your faith have radically different perspectives about what history is, what things mean. Yeah, you know, I've I know you've been challenged by these things, so it causes its own kind of uh challenge. And how have you been able to address that? And particularly within the context of business, because I know there's been moments where you've been torn about how you make decisions based on your faith.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, 100%. Um yeah, there's one, I appreciate uh your reflections on me, and again, um uh and I could say the same thing about yourself, but um, but I do appreciate that because you again you walk alongside life and you never know how each of each other's lives are speaking to each other.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um and I would say only by God's grace that uh that those things are able to happen. Um to your other question of how do you balance the tension? Um again, I just go back to the phrase you have to live life and play life from the inside out. So, you know, you have to know who you are and what you believe. And it's important to spend a lot of time around who do you want to be? What are your core values? Um and then be comfortable with living that out. Listen, as African American men in business, just in our lifetime, yeah, we are often right the one uh few in the many kind of rooms, no matter where we go. Yeah. Right. So even if you go on Wall Street, you're a minority. So, you know, having a certain faith perspective in certain environments, yes, you may have a minority perspective, but that we have to be chameleons, yeah, right, in general, and in just uh and just the the road that we have traveled. And that's a beautiful part about uh, I think many of our life's journey is that we can connect with all walks of life. Listen, I can kind of be a leader of a 7,000-person organization, but I can walk into a brand and connect with that technician uh who m doesn't have a college degree maybe and kind of is looking to buy their first home because again, that's just like the east side of Detroit, right? Exactly. And and I get energized by saying, you know, how do we create opportunities for that? And so I I would just say the um the ver the the windy road of life experiences has has equipped uh you, myself, and many others to to be ourselves in in environments where we might be uh one of uh of a few, uh, but that's okay. You learn how to build relationships, kind of be who you are, uh, and also kind of um you know operate uh with integrity no matter where you are.

SPEAKER_01

So going back to the conversation about some of the businesses that you've managed, um, and I, you know, remember having a conversation with you at the time uh where you were in Memphis or right outside of Memphis and running one of the businesses there. You know, I'm curious, you know, as you became more established, right, had more options in front of you, and you started making decisions about where you wanted to spend your time, you didn't have to necessarily work at that time. Yeah, right. So you're choosing where you want to play, just like you've now made a choice to become part of turn point. I I want you to walk people through kind of how you made the decisions in those moments where you have a lot more flexibility as an example of all the things that we've been talking about and to help give some people some insights as to what they might be able to leverage for themselves.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um hopefully I answered the question correctly. Listen, as you know, as you progress in your career uh and hopefully have success and also have information about yourself that does afford a level of autonomy to kind of say, okay, how do I want to spend my time early in your career? You're kind of what's the opportunity in front of you? What are the skills you want to acquire, right? What are the experiences you want to acquire to build your resume? But you know, at by that point in time at uh in Memphis, again, I was part of the leadership team at True Green Long Care. We took over a business that at the time was$700 million in revenue, losing$5 million of EBITDA a year, a part of a larger company called Service Master. I joined a CEO as his number two. We spun that business out of Service Master and grew it to a billion and a half and two hundred million in EBITDA in five years. Right? It was so so it was just a remarkable um kind of growth and turnaround experience.

SPEAKER_01

Um but I gotta stop you just because you went from negative five million dollars of EBITDA to what was the EBITDA? 200 in EBITDA. 200 and five years. So just for everybody who is listening and watching this, to understand the kind of uh cash on cash return that you have generated is substantial. Yes. Substantial.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, those are kind of the one of the uh the you know the once in a career, twice in a career, hopefully we'll do it a couple more times, uh uh God willing. But it it it was a it was a very unique, very unique uh experience in a rocket ship.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um and so from that experience, a couple of things uh that came out. One, uh that was my first kind of real deep experience into home services. Yeah. And, you know, without getting too far into the broader thesis of, you know, a lot of these legacy fragmented industries are really ripe and benefit from some consolidation and scale. And so I saw that opportunity uh being able to uh kind of be replayed uh across uh several other subsectors and hence why where I am now uh in turn point in the trades. I think secondly, uh what I also experienced, I just ended up going to work with the CEO where um culturally uh and philosophically and value-wise we were aligned. Yeah. And I had and I experienced probably an important point. Uh and I'll give you this example and then tell you the kind of takeaway. My first call it week on the job, I'm in an office, kind of working on my first project, uh, and this CEO comes into the office, busts into my room, and we're owned by a private equity firm, and we're giving have a leadership retreat maybe in in in a month or so. He comes into my office and says, Hey, um, by the way, do you play golf? And I say, uh, no. He says, Great. Well, you're gonna be in my threesome caring in two weeks. And walks out of the office. And I I kind of look around and say, Wait, did he not hear my answer? Like, you know, I play, but I don't play. Uh but what he was doing is putting me in the room, putting me around the table before I thought I was ready.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's when I realized, like, oh, he's got my best interest. This is what a home game feels like. Yeah. This is what mentorship feels like. Because, you know, we're oftentimes, and I just say we as minorities in in in certain environments, you're working on Wall Street, you're like, you are just, you know, you always feel like you're one year, one year too late from the opportunity, and you're just fighting for a seat at the table, fighting for an opera invitation to the golf outing, fighting for that, you know, that unofficial invitation to dinner with the kind of decision makers, and always feel like, you know, you're a second late or kind of a week late to that party, but you're just waiting for your chance. But then you say, okay, and you feel like you're playing an away game. I put my sports analogy on, right? You walk into an arena or a stadium, the wind's blowing against you, you know the ref's not going to give you the calls, you know that the you know opposing team has the home field advantage. But this is what real mentorship felt like. This is what leadership is. So for me, it was a great example of one, I want to work in the environment and with people who I'm aligned with. Secondly, and and and because we can get a lot done in a short period of time, kind of when you're in that home field environment. So that also shaped my environment. Who do I want to work with? Where can I be my best self? Where can I bring my full um skills and also personalities to bear, right? And that I realized those environments that are gonna allow me to be the best leader are then gonna, I'm gonna be able to create exceptional kind of economic value and leadership value in those environments, and I'm gonna pick and choose where that is.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, it's interesting. Um I was blessed, and my my father told me this when I was 13 years old, and for whatever reason, and I didn't always spend a lot of time with my father, but when we did, we talked about business because that's what he was comfortable business and sports, is what we talked about. Um, and he said to me something that you just acknowledge, which is sometimes the people who are gonna help you, um, they're not gonna be the people that look like you, they're not gonna be people that even agree with you politically. They may come from a completely different environment. And sometimes we will overlook folks that are actually trying to help us. But what they see in us sometimes is, hey, I remember I was like that at that point, or I want my son to be like this gentleman, and I see that in you, and they're trying to connect to you. And if you stay open to the possibility that someone who has a radically different life experience, maybe radically different in a lot of different ways from you, might connect to you, you sometimes can find a mentor in unlikely places, but you have to stay open too, right?

SPEAKER_00

You have to stay open and be open and put yourself out there, take those risks, and because at the end of the day, we are all people. Absolutely. Right. And we're we're made up of a lot of different interests and value sets. And so there are a lot more commonalities than may meet the and to your point, finding those kind of those those mentors and those sponsors, as uh Carla Harris likes to say, yeah, who are really gonna open doors for you and just quite honestly, give you the opportunity you've been working for and you deserve, uh, then that's when it's like, okay, well, I can do this.

SPEAKER_01

Well, Carla, Carla and I lived in the same building in New York. When I started at Morgan Stanley, she was an associate, I was an analyst, and then she's she's now ruler of uh of Morgan Stanley. Um I I know we're gonna have to close up pretty soon, um, and there's a lot to talk about. And one of the things I think I may have to have you come back and talk about is this idea around entrepreneurship through acquisition. Because the space that you're in in home services, starting with the service master now with Turnpoint, is an area that is of strong interest to a lot of the people who will listen uh to this podcast. So I'm gonna bring you back to have that conversation. I would love that. But I want to end with giving you an opportunity to talk a little bit about what's next. I mean, obviously you're still working with Turnpoint and there's a process that's there, but as you think about how you move forward in your career, you have a lot of time left. You got another 40, 50 years ahead of you. What is it that you are anticipating is the next steps for you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, um again, you know, um God only knows kind of what life will bring. What I would say is I thoroughly enjoy what I'm doing now. Uh and and and when I say not only at turn point, but the role that I have. Um and we are a large organization, again, uh over a billion and a half in revenue, 6,000 people. So that is a large platform to make influence, uh, and at the same time have an entrepreneurial influence on driving transformation. And so look, I foresee myself doing some version of this uh for the foreseeable future. I'm really excited about what we're doing, and uh it energizes me. Uh there will be different chapters to my to my life and story, and so you could take kind of uh these lessons and then parlay that into you know kind of different board or investment seats and kind of you know extend the knowledge that you have um to other investments in maybe a kind of a less intensive way. That may come um in the next decade or so. Uh look, I think we personally have an opportunity. Um, you know, one opportunity for us may be in a public market environment, right? And so does this does this path lead me to lead even in a different environment of scale as well? Um so we'll we'll see, but I I love leading organizations through transformational growth. I love kind of the impact and influence I can have uh in this case over thousands of people, uh, and also reshaping industry. And so uh it's hard to answer. What I know is I love what I'm doing right now, and it does extend into many potential avenues moving forward. And so we'll see, uh we'll see what's ahead.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you, Jeff. It's been great having you and look forward to having you back again.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. We love to do it.

SPEAKER_01

All right, thank you.