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Freedom, Failure, and the Fight to Build: Callie Groth on Leading in Defense Tech and Beyond
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In this episode of The Voice of Growth, Manny Teran sits down with Callie Groth — defense-tech founder, CEO of BlackBar, ranch owner, and Mentor-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship. From building warfighter-focused technologies to running a cattle company in Cochise County, Callie’s story is one of relentless resilience, freedom, and reinvention. She opens up about what it means to thrive in a male-dominated industry, why she believes freedom is the ultimate currency, and how every mistake she’s made has shaped her leadership philosophy. Together, they explore the future of defense tech, the role of education and AI in entrepreneurship, and the powerful balance between ambition and authenticity.
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Values
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
Speaker
What drives me the most is freedom.
00:00:15
Speaker
I have made every mistake in the book.
00:00:19
Speaker
Read as much as you can.
00:00:24
Speaker
You are fighting a battle that you are never going to win. For once in my career, it's working out like to our advantage. That would be one of the most profound conversations I could have.
00:00:36
Speaker
And I show up the same way every day, 110%, because I'm chasing that freedom and time with those people that I love.
00:00:46
Speaker
Oh, my.
Evolution of Personal and Business Values
00:00:50
Speaker
You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it. That is a quote that is on your Facebook page. Yes. And that to me, in part, embodies a lot of your spirit, a lot of what you portray to the world.
00:01:06
Speaker
So how is it that you can be a bad-ass CEO of Black Bar, loving wife, a wonderful daughter, a good friend, a mother, all these things? How is it that you can do these things? What drives you?
00:01:23
Speaker
That's a very loaded question to start off with. I actually i actually feel like I need to think about it. um What drives me the most is freedom, right, and time. um I think that every single thing that I do is for that level of freedom and time with those people that I love. um You know, you mentioned kind of like my family and and being a CEO and and being a wife and being a daughter. I mean, I have made every mistake in the book. I have learned every lesson the hardest way.
00:01:51
Speaker
And I think as I kind of mature and I get through things, I just try really hard and I show up the same way every day, 110% because I'm chasing that freedom and time with those people that I love.
00:02:05
Speaker
That's what drives me. When I was younger, I thought it was money, right? when i When I was younger, I thought it was these materialistic things, right? You knew me. I would show up in designer shoes and and Gucci bags. And as I've aged and as I've gotten more mature, it's that whole, I just want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to be able to do it. And who like to do it with is my most important aspect.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's really powerful. yeah In my own journey, I've actually felt a lot of the same thing with respect to time is the only currency that we all share. And we have a limited limited amount. yeah you know You can make money, you can lose money, and these things go up and down. But time, man, that's really powerful. Yeah, absolutely. Time and land. My my new thing is the two things that people aren't that that no nobody can replace anymore is time and land, right? And so those are kind of my two things, but time is the biggest thing.
The Birth and Growth of Black Bar
00:02:58
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Let's rebound the clock a little bit. We mentioned that, talking about my kids earlier, that you started Black Bar in 2020. And in 2015, roughly, right? There was a transition there. And tell us, what was the genesis of what started out out as a UAV company has now become basically a house of brands that span across a lot of different industries. So tell us about that.
00:03:27
Speaker
Well, the whole reason that I got into the original company, right, when when in 2015 was I didn't know what I wanted to do. I came out of a grad program. I had opportunities to go work for Microsoft, ah be at a kind of a Fortune 50 company.
00:03:42
Speaker
I didn't want to be, you know, in the bureaucracy. I didn't want to be in the policies and procedures. I wanted to grow something and I wanted to build something. And so I was a big believer in saying yes and I'll figure out how to do it.
00:03:54
Speaker
And over time, as I learned kind of how to build that business, not not necessari specifically the UAVs, but how to build the brand of businesses that people like and that people want to do business with people they like, that's where I kind of started building up some of the companies. i As I got a little bit older, I started realizing I have a myriad interests, right? I like horseback riding. I like being outdoors. I enjoy traveling. I enjoy real estate. I enjoy all of these things. So I started reading more. I started paying attention to people like Richard Branson, right? He started the Virgin model.
00:04:26
Speaker
Every one of his companies is branded virgin and then they all do something different. So I thought, why not emulate that? Right. And you don't have to have this career where you just go down one thing and you spend 30 years doing it. If I have all of these different interests, why could I not try to capitalize on all of those um and make them this house of, of diversity and, but, but sticking to that brand that everybody would kind of build and and know.
00:04:53
Speaker
Really? i like that a lot. Yeah. I think, um, You know, I just like you, I see a lot of entrepreneurship. I see corporate
Education vs. Real-World Experience
00:05:00
Speaker
people. I see a swath of different types of of mindsets.
00:05:05
Speaker
And you have one mindset that you you go into the matrix, you plug in and you plug out in 40 years. Yeah. Right. That's old school. Yeah. You drive the same way to work every single day. you don't see that a lot, but it's still there. It's still prevalent. um Maybe our parents generation is more ascribed to that.
00:05:22
Speaker
I still have friends in the Detroit area that their dads worked at GM, their grandfathers worked at GM, they work at GM or Ford or whatever, and they have this whole like lineage. And then I have people on the other side of the spectrum that they like basically drop out of high school.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah. They're hustling and they do this, they do do that, they do real estate, do that, and there now they have a small empire. Right. And you have the other leg is the ones that follow more the more hybrid path like you and I that went to school, you got your MBA. And and sort of we sort of figured out on the way.
00:05:56
Speaker
Now I'm gonna shift kind of, i'm gonna take that and also juxtapose your role as the president of the U of A Foundation South. yeah And you being a mentor at McGuire and that sort of aspect, how do you talk to these 20 year olds right now that are trying to figure this little triangle out?
00:06:18
Speaker
You know, i get asked, so let's, let's take education. For example, um, I get asked all the time, do I actually need to complete this degree? Should I go on and get an advanced degree? And I find when I'm talking to them, I'm, I'm always torn, right? So my father has always said education is literally the one thing that nobody can take away from you. Right. So once you get that degree, you have it. And no matter, they can take your houses, they can take your cars, they can fire you from jobs. But if you can fall back on that level of education, then you'll have some stepping stone. So there's, I kind of talk out of both sides of my mouth when I talk to these young students. Get the education, right? You're getting exposed to new things. You're getting exposed to new people, new thoughts, new ideas, et cetera.
00:06:58
Speaker
At the same time, right, I i see the same thing. i look at I look at my degree and I look at what I paid for getting an MBA, which is, i so I think it's still the most sought after master's degree in the world, last time I checked. And I look at that and i think, man, like I have made everything. every mistake in the book. I've learned everything the hardest way possible. I have had more failures than I have had successes. And while I've had some incredible successes, the magnitude of my failures have been horrendous. And so I talk to these students and I say, you've got to, I try to kind of balance them both, right? Don't take such an extreme route that you say, i don't need any of this education.
00:07:36
Speaker
Unless you were literally the next Mark marks up Zuckerberg, right? if you Unless you're sitting on some goose egg like that, then okay, great, you don't need it. But unfortunately, what that's like less than 1%. And so less than 1% of 1%. So I try to really take this this approach of get the education, learn learn what you need to know, but then keep going and keep kind of keeping that open mindset to knowing that education isn't your one-stop shop. It's not going to be your end-all be-all. You're going to have to kind of keep pivoting. You're still going to make mistakes. You're still going to learn everything the hard way. um And then how do you kind of blend both of those worlds so that we've got both the street smarts and the educational smarts?
00:08:18
Speaker
Talking to 20 year olds right now, it's it's interesting. I'm very, very fortunate that most of the students that i that I work with at Eller, incredibly like just great heads on their shoulders. They're innovative, they're thinking outside the box. They are, in my opinion, so much more ahead than where I was in grad school, right? So it's it's fresh and fun to talk to them. But at the same time, I try to instill some level of of realness with them and say, get a foundation, get something to keep in your back pocket and then you know kind of innovate and explore as you want with based on that.
The Role of AI in Innovation
00:08:52
Speaker
That's good. I'm gonna yeah take that and I'm going to take a ah grenade and throw it in the middle of that. Okay. And that grenade is AI. Yeah. How do you see AI playing into that, right? Because I also ascribe to that, you know, you and I are cut from the same cloth, literally wearing black. Yes. And I think that in some ways, like I see the same thing.
00:09:14
Speaker
I don't really do the mentorship like you do per se, but I do some in other ways. And I see the, in my own children, of course. Yeah. Because I have one in college, one about to graduate high school.
00:09:26
Speaker
And they ask me like, do I really need to do this? And I'm same thing. I'm like, yes, you do. but You don't, because if you had some like amazing amazing idea, if you had this like insatiable drive, then maybe you don't have to. right But since you don't necessarily get your damn piece of paper.
00:09:45
Speaker
yeah So how do you see the AI thing playing into that? I am a huge proponent of using yeah AI as purely a strategic asset. Insofar as if you're literally using it, and this is what I tell these students, if you are having to use AI to write an email, to draft something that is just basic English that you should have learned in English 101, then then I think you have a problem, right? That is not something that you should be using it for. What I am a fan of for these students is if you have an idea, right? If you have an understanding of a product, a new service, a new process that that could innovate something, use AI as kind of a strategic resource to understand what are the loopholes in this? What are the pitfalls? What are the opportunities? Who's also doing this, right? So
00:10:31
Speaker
I try to tell them, don't use AI to start, right? Like use your own brain power and think through things the way that you would kind of almost have to conduct basic market research and then use AI then to validate it, right? um A lot of the students that I work with, they're coming up with new products.
00:10:48
Speaker
So I tell them, please, please don't go and use ChatGPT to determine your market size, right? That's something that you should be able to figure out as an entrepreneur. But then once you get into ah the developing of an actual prototype, use AI to figure out what are all the resources you could do to not reinvent the wheel and to cut costs and actually get to an alpha and beta test. Right. So I really try to use it strategically for somebody like your son,
00:11:13
Speaker
If you are literally using AI to function in everyday life, that becomes a crutch and I don't agree with it. If you're using it to actually improve something that you're working on, almost as if it would be a colleague that you're bouncing ideas off of, then I'm actually a fan of it.
00:11:28
Speaker
I agree with you. I think it's a great tool if used correctly. Yes. But you see people leaning on it like a crutch a lot. Yeah. They can't even respond to people without running it through ChatGPT. This is what I've noticed about students. And I'm like, if you do not have literally the mental fortitude to respond to me, let break down what I've said to you or what I've asked you, and you then can't generate your own answer, that's a major problem, right? And then and then you won't you won't get better from there.
00:11:57
Speaker
That's true. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Exactly. yeah So we're going to talk about the elephant in the room. Okay. Okay.
Strategies for Success in Male-Dominated Fields
00:12:06
Speaker
You are a woman CEO in the midst of a war fighting, mission critical, defense, 97% male Yes.
00:12:22
Speaker
slugfest yes How have you dealt with that both as a woman, but also taking gender off the table, right? I try to you know, as much as possible, look at the the results, right? Who cares of of who is doing the work? yeah How have you dealt with all that?
00:12:41
Speaker
um ah Honestly, kind of trial and error, right? um So I have been very fortunate in the sense that in my career, I have never faced to my face ah direct discrimination because I'm a female. ah It may have been behind my back. I have no idea, but I have never felt it directly to my face. And so for that, I've been very fortunate.
00:13:02
Speaker
There have been times where I think people have questioned my ability, my knowledge, my level of risk, like my ability to navigate ambiguity and so forth. And I have tried to look at that more through a lens of maybe it's more of a lack of just experience rather than actually being a female.
00:13:20
Speaker
The first thing that I try to do really going into a completely male-dominated industry is I started reading everything that I could, right? And I realized that if I was going to come from behind the power curve, right? I'm not a prior and i'm not an engineer. um I'm not prior military. I already have major hurdles in front of me because I don't have those two boxes.
00:13:40
Speaker
How can I at least build relationships and get people to want to work with me based on any other attribute that I can have. And so I think in order to get along and and build those relationships with these guys, I started just reading everything that I could. i i I became that kind of person that I could talk about damn near anything, right? So at that point, for example, I remember a few years ago, I was i went into MARSOC, which is Marine Special Operations Headquarters at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And I was talking to the G8 there. And we talked for the first hour and a half about cars. right He showed up in a like British racing green Jaguar XK8 maybe. And we started talking about that and all of our different favorite cars and so forth. And so the ah the fact that I had the ability to build a rapport with ah with a guy that was 30 years my senior, that had literally been a special operator his whole life. We'd come from two very different worlds. The fact that I could find commonality, I think that's what's also kind of helped me drive my wedge or get my wedge in in the market.
00:14:42
Speaker
I also really had to kind of make sure that I could play to all sides of the field, right? So um you've seen me, I show up in in suits and high heels, unreasonably high, high heels everywhere I go, full makeup, right? But then i so I got smart and I realized if I want people to believe that I know what I'm doing and I can do these things, go to the field, dress in field attire, be there in dirty boots and, and you know,
00:15:09
Speaker
pants and and the shirt and the whole nine yards and no makeup and assimilate, right? Be there on their level and understand how the technology works. And when it's time to go into the boardroom, then dress for the boardroom. I think the biggest thing for me really understanding this marketing and going in was making sure that I had multiple faces while still being kind of my true authentic self. I had these multiple faces that I could put on, whether I was talking to an end user or to like a program manager, and I could kind of blend that gap, that blend that boundary.
00:15:41
Speaker
I haven't always been good at it, right? It's taken me a long time to figure out how to kind of come up with the different faces of Callie Groth and how do I talk to this guy who's done things that I will never understand. And then this guy who literally just sits in an office, right? It's taken me a long time to kind of figure that out. But I i would say that is probably single-handedly what has helped me um kind of keep going in this kind of good old boys network.
00:16:09
Speaker
Being that person that people want to do business with. That goes back to the initial quote. Yeah. and You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it. Look at that. Yeah. yeah ke sucker good Good tie-in. Yes. Yeah. I think that...
00:16:22
Speaker
that as I've known you, I've seen that in you mature and and the the ah the the saw sharpened. Yes. And you know, I saw you a couple of years ago at that event on the U of A mall. I saw you last, I mean, i so i we keep in touch. Yeah.
00:16:38
Speaker
So tell us right now, what is it that you're focused on the most? I know that's a loaded question. It's very loaded. That's got different angles, but what is it one thing that you're driving the most?
00:16:51
Speaker
You mean as far as pure Blackbar standpoint, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, what are you talking about? we'll say We'll put everything on the table.
Diversification in Defense Technology
00:16:58
Speaker
OK. So as if we're talking about pure Blackbar, the aerospace and defense tech company, um what I am driving the most is diversified products. So since I started the company, um it has been solely focused on hardware, right? And what's interesting is started building hardware when people told us we would never make it. And now all of a sudden with the change in ah Department of War procurement and product um product desires, we're we're kind of at the the absolute forefront because we have spent our career, our the time building this company, building inexpensive cost, basically efficient hardware.
00:17:39
Speaker
What I'm now focusing on though is I can't put all of our eggs in one basket of hardware, right? So I'm really focused on what you call human machine teaming. Understanding that the future of autonomy, and as far as defense tech goes, is not just another autonomous system, it's actually how you control them, right? We've got multiple platforms.
00:17:59
Speaker
How do you now make a control layer that reduces cognitive burden, ah reduces operator latency, and and you know kind of all of the industry buzzwords and making every kind of decision dominance ability at the tactical edge. How do you do that? And how do you then not only sell it to the Department of War, Department of Defense, as I still call it, but how do you also sell it to other OEMs, right? So now I'm trying to really branch us out and say, not only do I want to sell to the government, I want to sell to my competitors as well and be that kind kind of control layer for all hardware across DOD.
00:18:33
Speaker
As far as what am I driving towards as an entrepreneur, um i i I think it, once again, it goes back to that level of freedom, but also a level of diversification. So what I have learned very much, and I'm sure you can we could talk ad nauseum about this, is entrepreneurship, like it is just an absolute evan ebb and flow of of success and failure. And I'll have one good year and then I'll have 18 months that just sucks. And so I am very much focused on, I wanna make sure that we have just revenue in a variety of areas um that kind of basically creates this feedback loop, right? So we have a ranch out in Southern Arizona.
00:19:14
Speaker
I had no desire, we actually had no desire when we purchased this ranch to get into the cattle business, right? It was almost just happenstance. A herd was on the ah was on the ranch when we purchased it. We purchased it purely for defense tech testing and analysis. um A herd was on the ranch and then slowly but surely my dad, my husband and I, we bought the herd. Now we then we started Black Bar Cattle Company. And not only does that serve as a tax benefit to the land, but now that also generates revenue by selling 12 to 15 steers per year, right? So now that pays the mortgage on the ranch, then that goes back into the the the whole the real estate holding company and so forth. And so it kind of creates this like investment slash revenue feedback loop.
00:19:54
Speaker
That in an overarching nutshell is kind of what I've really been focused on is I don't want just one source because when that gets bad, I need to be able to offset it. Right. And how do I go into these very, very contrasting industries to make sure that I am I'm never going to hit kind of like downturns in those industries and then and then suffer the ramifications of that solely. Right.
00:20:15
Speaker
That was a, that was a lot. I hope that made sense. No, that was great. Okay. That was a lot, but it was great. i think a diversified income stream is always smart. Yeah. Um, I have friends that have 15, 20 of them and I have friends that have one.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. Right. I, and so I kind of gather a lot of data from how they're doing and if, if they're doing great, it's interesting to look at if they're doing not so great, it's even more interesting. yeah Because I want to understand in my life, how do I protect myself my family? I mean, part of this podcast is about the market, all things market, all things business. And the other part is about mindset.
00:20:51
Speaker
So we've talked about kind of both.
Market Conditions and Opportunities
00:20:53
Speaker
yeah How do you see the the market at large? Right now in this month, almost the end of 2025, how do you see the market playing into that house of brands you're talking about?
00:21:10
Speaker
Is it kind? Is it there's there opportunity? Is there rough waters? How do you see that? So very different markets, right? So let's let's start with the biggest one right now, which is defense tech. um I am trying to be optimistic about where defense tech is going. Right now, I see a lot of rhetoric. I see a lot of buzzwords coming out um with the Department of War. I see them all kind of saying they want startups. They want entrepreneurial ah spirit. They want these these companies that can like rapidly innovate. If they need to fail, they'll fail. But they they really want to get away from these behemoths that have been kind of dominating this market.
00:21:52
Speaker
They say this, i haven't really seen a whole lot of it except for they're going towards very strategic companies that are very well funded and so forth. So I'm not seeing a lot of the diversification of businesses and products that they're saying that they want really come to fruition.
00:22:08
Speaker
I am hoping that that in the next six months, you kind of maybe just sometimes need to let it play out, right? And so that's kind of where I'm sitting with this. As a small business in defense, you know, it's kind of a luck of the draw. Like if you get in with the right program manager, you're golden. Like you are set up for life. If you don't get in with the program manager, you are fighting a battle that you are never gonna win, right? there' There's a gentleman that you and I both know here in Tucson.
00:22:36
Speaker
Um, he does not build great products. I've seen the products, um, in my mind, they're very like undergrad engineering level quality stuff. And yet they're, they have been very open and honest about the fact that they have program managers and department of defense that work with them and they write, they ghostwrite proposals for them and that's how they win all of their contracts. Right. So, and that's, that's business, right? That's just how it is. So, you know, I, I, It's a very tumultuous environment right now. Like I said, you've got a lot of these quote unquote startups that are getting very like well funded.
00:23:11
Speaker
ah we I'm just hoping that it kind of spans a little bit more and they bring more into the mix than just these kind of onesies and twosies. as far Let's talk about beef. I mean, we are going to like a more positive op our market.
00:23:24
Speaker
I think that that is an absolute goldmine for two reasons. Number one, we have had an absolute like cataclysmic change in the way people are viewing food, um health, ah the supply chains and so forth. So when when we say our stuff is grass fed, it's grass finished, like we don't vaccinate, we don't do all of this because we let nature handle how nature should. um We have a waiting list of people wanting our beef, right? and And we only do a small amount because we don't, believe in overbreeding and we also don't believe in overgrazing our lands. So we're trying to do it the right way.
00:23:59
Speaker
And as a result of us actually doing it the right way for once in my career, it's working out like to our advantage. um So I think as we kind of keep going down as a society and a large pop percentage of the population starts really focusing on what they're eating and what they're consuming, that is that is going to be just kind of opportunistic for us.
00:24:19
Speaker
And we don't really have a desire to make that much bigger. So, but all of the other, you know, real estate, ah i think, like i like I said in the beginning land, land is absolutely going through the roof because they're not making any more of it. um i think that's a major opportunity we'll we'll kind of see on the defense side, right? There are days that I want to quit and then there are days that I'm just like, nah, it'll work out.
00:24:39
Speaker
So very, very different tones of voice for for all of the markets that I currently operate in. Yeah, it's almost like you're you're taking a regenerative farming ranching approach to business.
00:24:52
Speaker
I went down to Oaxaca, Mexico. Yeah, went down to Oaxaca a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, actually. And we toured this this site and they talked about how they this was at the crossroads of all these different cultures. And they talked about the three sisters.
00:25:07
Speaker
i don't know if you've heard of this. ah Maybe. refresh So they would plant squash. corn and beans at the same, like the same place. yeah And they kind of supported one another, right? Sometimes the corn would you know would grow and then it would fall and then it would,
00:25:24
Speaker
basically go back to the earth and it would feed the bean and whatever. And so. They're also very seasonal crops. Very seasonal. Right. So they grow at different times. Yeah. So you've got a regenerative three sisters of. Yes. For business. Yeah. I've not actually looked at it in that way. um But I do appreciate that. Yeah. the The other thing that helps with these businesses is I actually genuinely enjoy them. So going back to that whole kind of like I used to chase money. I i thought that's what I wanted.
00:25:49
Speaker
A lot of these endeavors have come from. Well, some of them actually have kind of come out of like nowhere, right? Just by pure happenstance. But then I've been able to say, wow, I really enjoy this. Right. So every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I'm out pushing cows and it's not a pain in the ass. I actually am like, I love this. We're fixing fence. We're doing things. And so it actually makes it a lot more enjoyable. No, that's brilliant.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah. I know that, um, I know your, your family, I know your, ah You're a Sierra Vista girl. Yes. And I'm a Cochise County boy as well. Yeah, Douglas.
Entrepreneurial Success in Small Towns
00:26:22
Speaker
um How do you see your small town roots um painting the way you see the world. Because you have had you had that foundation, went high school, graduate, all that. yeah But then you' done you've done things that, I mean, your MBA was in part in Chinese, yeah right? and Or maybe your degree. My undergrad, yeah. Your undergrad. And so you you basically started down home in Cochise County with a view towards...
00:26:51
Speaker
the world, right you went out to the world and you figured out you wanted to go back to Cochise County. Yes. um How do you say that to these young entrepreneur entrepreneurs that are sort of like dealing with figuring out what they do next?
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, so I was that quintessential student that I was graduating from Buena, right? I didn't hate Syravista. I was very much appreciative of it, but I could have told, I would have bet money that I was gonna end up in New York or Paris, right? That was just my personality.
00:27:19
Speaker
um As I, and and and like you mentioned, so i've I've lived in Tucson, I've studied abroad in China, I've had, I've been afforded the ability to travel to a variety of places all across the world.
00:27:30
Speaker
And I think where you reside really depends on who you are and who you want to be. So I didn't understand it at the time, but there's something to trying to make a huge impact in a smaller place. And you actually have the ability to make a bigger impact sometimes in smaller communities than versus me trying to go to ah a lower Manhattan and and make a name for myself, right? That takes a much, much bigger scale that most people don't achieve.
00:28:01
Speaker
And that's not to say that I went back to Sierra Vista because I thought, oh, I'm never gonna make it in lower Manhattan. I went back to Sierra Vista because as i be As I've grown in my career, there are certain things that have become absolute non-negotiables for me. And I and i always say, if I'm going to put my my work into something, I do it 110%, right? So I want to be able to see the fruits of my labor. um And being in Sierra Vista, number one, the the people are just, and even the entire Lake Cochise County, the people are just crazy.
00:28:31
Speaker
genuinely good people, right? There's no nonsense. um The political climate is pretty neutral. You don't have a bunch of just, you know, polarizing voices down there.
00:28:42
Speaker
um For the most part, people just want to live in a nice community and be nice to everybody. And I think that was one of the driving factors for me. The second thing was, what can I do down here to kind of become a bigger fish in a small pond and be able to make some of the change or some of the impact that I want to make? So for aspiring entrepreneurs, yeah, it might be really desirable to move to Austin, right? That's the new Silicon Valley. It might be really desirable to go and be in that environment because there you can't argue there's high levels of innovation and inspiration.
00:29:13
Speaker
if you If you don't have a desire to go and be in that really big city where you more often than not can get lost in that noise, um look at smaller towns where you actually have the ability to build a community and make that impact. From a pure business bit perspective, I'm friends with our mayor, I'm friends with all of our city council people, um I know our city manager, I know a lot of people on Fort Huachuca, and when it comes time to where we're trying to innovate something or we're trying to do something,
00:29:40
Speaker
These people are friends and they're a phone call away and I say, how do we how do we work together? And there are a lot of pillars in the community that all want to work together. In a bigger city, that's a lot harder to do to bring all of those people in and find a common voice forward. So- I think there's a lot of advantages. There are disadvantages to living in small towns, right? You very well know. yeah Sometimes you don't have that inspiration. Not everybody is as ah innovative or as ah driven as I am in smaller communities, but there's something to that where you can kind of inspire them around you and then you kind of create this like ecosystem of innovation.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, i I would love to live in Quidges County again. Yeah. I love Tucson. i love where I'm at. But there's always this calling, you know, for me, I spent some time in Douglas for Thanksgiving and was out in in the sort of the Eastern part of the of the state and just like, I want to find a way to go back.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah. There is new- But had the ability to to still have this high flying career yeah and be able to give talks worldwide and all this, but then go back to the ranch and just chill. Yeah. I think more and more, I think we're seeing a trend towards that, right? There's there's this new kind of found, and i'm I'm seeing it a little bit like romanticism with smaller communities. um I'm seeing it kind of a lot. like And we see it across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, all of these people, even with ridiculous amounts of money are moving to these small communities because they're realizing the big city, like ridiculousness and noise, it's not serving any purpose, right? Beneficial purpose. And so when we move, when my husband and I moved to Syravist and we moved the business down there, at first I was like, oh my gosh, am I regressing? And then two days later I was thinking, oh my God, this is the biggest breath of fresh air I've ever experienced.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah. All right. I'm going to take a magic phone, Callie. Okay. And I'm going to dial a number and it's going to be you at 18 years old. oh Okay. And you are going to give some advice to 18 year old, just graduated high school, Kelly.
00:31:49
Speaker
Oh my. I mean, that could take an hour. I ah um i think at 18, my biggest thing there I would say is make sure that you're taking care of yourself physically.
00:32:04
Speaker
Right. um So when I look back on my career right now, the there was a positive correlation between the absolute lack of care that I was taking, that I was putting in my physical, right? There was a moment in time where I was absolutely run down. I was eating poor food. I was eating airport food. um You know, I wasn't running. I wasn't doing all of those things. And there was a positive correlation between ah how badly i was taking care of myself and the magnitude of my mistakes. So if I could look back at my 18-year-old self, I'd say, number one,
00:32:36
Speaker
Make sure that your physical, right, which then leads into your mental state, is always your top priority because when you are in peak physical condition, you just naturally make better decisions, you think clearer, you are more productive, more ah more active, and you can also tolerate much higher levels of, of ah you know, adversity and so forth. So if you could do that, that's number one. Number two, I would absolutely say read as much as you can, right? I mean, I kind of, I was always a reader just because I was required to in school.
00:33:10
Speaker
um But I didn't ever enjoy just self-education, right? Like continuous learning. And if I look back on it now, the amount that I probably could have learned and maybe navigated differently just by continuing continuing to look at these these books like Good to Great, I may have not ah understood that when I was 18, but it would have been something that I would have revisited. So I think those are probably two of the biggest things. And then number three, ah ask for help.
00:33:37
Speaker
I think- You know, don't let this, and when I was 18, I was very proud, right? Go figure. um And that's been a big a big thing of mine throughout my career is I've always had too much pride and I never wanted to ask for help. I always thought I could do it on my own. And if I could look back to my younger self and say, literally, there's no shame in it. And then number two, ah most people that get ahead in life very quickly are the ones that are asking people for help. Yeah.
00:34:03
Speaker
Do that. So those are probably the three biggest things. But we could go down a whole list of of everything. Oh, I'm sure. yeah i have so many things. and and I say this almost all the time where when I do this, I ask this question yeah of my guests. I ask it of myself and it changes sometimes.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah. Changes based on what's happening in my life. You know, sometimes it's about, for me, it's about pausing. Right. I would be the first to charge into a burning room, a burning building, but I've got to now I have to pause and and be like, okay, what does it really take to deal with what I'm, what I see in front of me? Right. Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the risk? Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
I'm going to take that same phone. i'm going dial a different number and it's going to be Kelly Groth at 84 years old. 84. Okay.
Learning from Mistakes and Embracing Change
00:34:48
Speaker
What would you ask? Obviously you're not telling. what are you going to ask Kelly Groth at 84?
00:34:56
Speaker
So i'm always I'm always curious about people's mistakes and how they would do them differently, right? That's where I've learned the the most. And that's what I try to actually teach all the students at U of A is I don't tell them the good. I tell them all of the bad, right? And I see so i think at 84, the first thing I would say is what what are your top three mistakes that you've made?
00:35:16
Speaker
How did you overcome them? And how would you fix them right now if you could go back and do it? And then i think that I would also... or Just kind of ask, like, have you enjoyed it along the way, right?
00:35:30
Speaker
Did you get to 84 and did you blank and did you drive that same way to work every single day and now you regret it? Or did you actually accomplish everything that you wanted to and more? And I think that if you if I could get to the 84 and have an answer to that being yes, that would be one of the most profound conversations I could have.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. yeah that That to me is, I ask that a lot, obviously not just this podcast, but I think about legacy. yeah I think about, I mean, you have a young child, I've got two children and you know you try to show them the error in your ways so that they may have you may have a simpler path to their their path, right? right But just like anybody else, you can't teach most of this. You have to have your own mistakes. yeah And I really love to celebrate failure.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yes. We don't do enough of it. No, we don't do enough of it. And I think we should, as ah as a society, as a culture, as a business community, celebrate it Yeah. Give us a, maybe top three failures that you've endured.
00:36:33
Speaker
oh God. Okay. um Like, ah do you want just kind of the philosophical failures or do you want like hardcore examples of failures? want hardcore.
00:36:45
Speaker
Okay. so let's see. um Number one, um I had a contract. So in 2018, BlackBorough was awarded a $250 million dollars IDIQ, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract.
00:37:03
Speaker
Now, that seems really great in theory, but then the government has to issue task orders under that ceiling, that $250 million dollars ceiling, and then that's how you actually make money. So ah the contract was, um it's funny i'm I'm saying this, I don't know if I've actually ever told this story.
00:37:21
Speaker
So, and I don't actually have evidence that I failed on this. It could have literally just been government bureaucracy to know that that that's why. But in my mind, I think I preemptively screwed all of this up. So to win the contract, I didn't have all of the capabilities or the credentials to to do it. So I partnered with another company. They were my subcontractor. And as a woman-owned business, I could be the prime.
00:37:43
Speaker
So we use their hardware. We supply all of the contract. We win. Well, I got a very great idea, being novice that I was, that once we won the contract, could I talk them out of using the other company's hardware and could I put BlackBars hardware in there? And so I went down to the contracting meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, and I thought that I could walk in and I could basically strategically try to switch the hardware. And they kind of looked at me...
00:38:15
Speaker
and and i could And now looking back on it, I'm like, that was the worst thing that I could do because I was a know nothing company, right? They had just awarded me an opportunity at a $250 million dollars contract. Now, there were multiple companies on that. um And I was in there trying to basically do a bait and switch, right? At the time, i i was like, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be so strategic and it's gonna win. And now looking back, I never, like we never got a task order under that exact contract. And I think that they probably looked at me and they were like, she has no idea what she's doing. This is not what they submitted and we don't like anything about this. That's what I think.
00:38:53
Speaker
I could be wrong, but that was a big mistake. um The second thing that i failed on was we... So I have made of just an absolute magnitude of mistakes with hiring people. In fact, um probably some of the worst mistakes I've ever made were bringing in the absolute wrong team members and so forth. um So we had another contract where we were building a launch system for Naval Special Warfare. it was We were supposed to create an expeditionary launcher ah to to replace this like two ton launch trailer that they had for another another aircraft.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I just was so in this mindset of like, I had to rapid fire. I i didn't wanna take any time. And they were kind of like, hey, can we have this in 120 days? That I didn't really think through the process. And I kind of like, how do I put this? I brought people in that I didn't vet.
00:39:50
Speaker
I knew them. I didn't actually know if they had the capabilities. i just brought them in and I was like, hey, let's do this. And things worked 50%, right? right um And it just...
00:40:03
Speaker
It just failed miserably. we we we got We basically got a super small amount of money, and I'm saying like less than $250,000 to build this launcher. We were supposed to then have a follow-on purchase for like three or four of them. We never made it to that.
00:40:18
Speaker
And it was because I didn't actually try to put together a legit team and go and ask for the money that I needed. i was hungry. And they were like, hey, just give us your lowest price. I said like $80,000. And then I went and found a friend that I knew. and we tried to try to make it work and we put in every ounce of effort that we could, but we had no money, we didn't have the right skillset on the team, and I just absolutely embarrassed myself in front of Naval Special Warfare. So that was a pretty, pretty big one. um I think the biggest the third biggest thing, because you asked for three.
00:40:51
Speaker
ah The third biggest thing is there were employees that I should have let go long before i let them go, right? And then the problem is with me, um I am one of those people that the switch flips and I go from like absolute too lenient to just hardcore, nasty, like there's no turning back. And, you know, I had a gentleman, you we you knew him. Yeah. ah Not a great team member, you know, did all sorts of things, stole from the company. i should have let him go far sooner, but I had this idea that he was irreplaceable.
00:41:24
Speaker
Right. Right. And then you don't want to let him go. You don't want to let him go. And then you finally let them go and you're like, Holy shit. There's like 4,000 other people just like them. I then had another employee that get this one. This one's great. Um, he was trading guns for sex on my work IP address.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He was trading like Glock nine millimeters, forty five s for, uh, sexual acts at like the motel six along I 10. And I knew about it. And I was kind of advised by legal that I had invaded employee privacy. So therefore, in the state of Arizona, if I fired him based on me looking on his computer, um i I would have basically faced my own civil legal issues, right? Right. And I let that one linger and I let that one linger for a long time. And then my switch flipped and I like kicked him out of the office. And then, you know, he came back and filed like OSHA complaints about me and so forth.
00:42:20
Speaker
I think with those two things, I kept thinking that people were irreplaceable and I was, i was young and I was inexperienced and I didn't realize that. Everybody has a skill set. And if I had just let those people go, i would have saved myself a boatload of time.
00:42:34
Speaker
I probably would have not made some of the mistakes that I made like in programs. And then I would have also saved an extreme amount of money. But yeah. I'd say those are probably the three biggest. That's a, those are crazy. Yeah. Sure.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah. You know, the, the mistakes that we endure, you know, they say, of course, um, about hindsight is 2020 and this and that, man, man I'm really excited to see what happens in the next five or 10 years here with Blackbar with you and the defense tech side and certainly the beef side and all the other things you have going on for you.
00:43:11
Speaker
i appreciate it. and you list Any last words you want to give our audience here about things they should look forward to in in the future for Kelly? Yeah. Um, you know, i I, I am so open to new ideas at this point where I've historically not been, I've been very resistant to anything that wasn't my own idea. Um, we actually could be seeing a lot of change. I don't, I don't know what that looks like, but I'm kind of at this point where I'm embracing all things and I'm starting to realize if what you're doing isn't working, do a 180, right? Like that kind of mentality. And again, have no idea what that looks like. um i just I just know that I'm kind of in this, well, so admittedly, I'm very into this Chinese horoscope right now where we're in the year of the snake and the snake is shedding its skin and now we're entering the year of the horse. I just told my husband this yesterday and he gave me that same kind of like, oh, okay. Look,
00:44:05
Speaker
But I think I'm really embracing that and I'm kind of thinking, okay, like if I want to, if I'm here and I want to reach here, stop, maybe don't keep trying to do it the same way, embrace different opportunities. So maybe, maybe the 2026 is going to bring some, some significant changes and I hope for the better.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. We'll see. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kelly. Thank you for having I was looking forward to it. Yeah, I appreciate it. Cheers. Cheers.