Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2 / E5 - Rick Albertini - 47 Years Down: The Emergence of a Legacy
23 Plays25 days ago
HOST: Jess Villegas, ACUITY Business Consulting
Today’s guest, Rick Albertini, understands that the things we tend to label as ‘glitches’—the disruptions, the detours, the sudden recalibrations—are often the very moments shaping who we become. Not as failures or malfunctions, but as invitations to pay attention.
Rick is the President of Phenix Truck & Van, Southern California’s largest and most complete truck body and van equipment manufacturer and distributor. His work at Phenix has been an exercise in building not just a strong organization, but a compassionate one—where people matter, where culture is intentional, and where long-term thinking replaces short-term reaction. So today’s conversation isn’t just about business, trucks, or operations. It’s about how a life—over years, over decades—reveals who we are, what we value, and how we choose to lead.” Please enjoy and thank you for listening.
Rick Albertini: Rick@phenixent.com
Jess Villegas: Jess@acuitybusiness.consulting
Recommended
Transcript
Recognizing Talent and Development
00:00:04
Speaker
Recognizing good people and then trying to figure out how to keep them in your org and not lose them and help them to grow and help them get better and see their skills evolving. Maybe not being able to the left ever, but you know what? You do have that head fake and then they get their shot off because they continue to evolve and learn new skills.
Jess Villegas on Leadership and Self-awareness
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Leaders Commute podcast. I'm Jess Villegas. This podcast considers how the experiences that keep resurfacing over the commute of our lives inform our worldview for how to lead others, and more importantly, how we lead ourselves.
00:00:38
Speaker
The mission of this podcast is to assist you to transform those experiences from passive, compartmentalized episodes into leveraged connections for better thinking and outcomes.
00:00:49
Speaker
Today's episode is titled, 47 Years Down, The Emergence of a Legacy.
Turning Disruptions into Formative Experiences
00:00:56
Speaker
The longer I work at the intersection of business performance consulting and this podcast, the more convinced I become that things we tend to label as glitches, the disruptions, the detours, the sudden recalibrations, are often the very moments shaping who we become, not as failures or malfunctions, but as invitations to pay attention.
00:01:17
Speaker
Today's guest, Rick Albertini, understands that truth in a way few leaders do.
Introducing Rick Albertini and Leadership Insights
00:01:22
Speaker
Rick is the president of Phoenix Truck & Van, Southern California's largest and most complete truck body and van equipment manufacturer and distributor.
00:01:31
Speaker
But long before he was guiding an enterprise, he and I were part of a group I've mentioned before on this podcast, the Liberty Park Boys.
Lessons from Liberty Park Boys
00:01:39
Speaker
It was a basketball cohort, for sure, but was also a classroom, a place where we learned loyalty, where effort mattered, where you showed up even when life was messy or unpredictable.
00:01:51
Speaker
In hindsight, those games shaped our worldview more than we realized. They taught us that not everything unfolds cleanly, that momentum shifts, and that small adjustments can change everything.
Caregiving and Purpose Shift
00:02:03
Speaker
Off mic, I shared with Rick a story from season one called The Seven-Year Glitch. It was about a long, unexpected caregiving chapter in my home. Seven years of living alongside my mother-in-law's dementia.
00:02:16
Speaker
What looked for so long like a disruption, a postponement of the life my wife Leslie and I thought we'd be living, slowly revealed itself as something else entirely. A reframing of purpose, a shift in awareness, a reminder that meaning emerges over time.
00:02:33
Speaker
So today's conversation isn't just about business, trucks, or operations. It's about how a life, over years, over decades, reveals who we are, what we value, and how we choose to lead.
00:02:47
Speaker
Please enjoy, and thank you for listening.
Vision for a 100-Year Company
00:03:02
Speaker
Rick, welcome. Thanks very much, and very, very nice to have you on. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for letting me be a part of this. i I always enjoy catching up and and looking forward to this. One of the ways we get started is recalling the story I had made reference to a lyric by Sean Rowe, and it just went along talking about where are you're going to find wisdom, and it's locked up from those that hurry ahead, which is pretty powerful. The last line in that lyric, which I didn't say, had to do with just leaving a legacy, it's just time to leave something behind.
00:03:30
Speaker
And one of the reasons that stuck with me is in many of the conversations we've had over the years, and I've seen you on your journey ah in terms of growing Phoenix and doing a wonderful job.
00:03:41
Speaker
You have also mentioned that you want to do more than just have a really well-run company that helps take care of people and that helps take care of you and your family. that you want to have something that's lasting. Legacy was my word, that might not be your word, but you want meaning that that outlives you and the things that you're doing ah today. And I just have to say, you know, I talked to a lot of business owners and i think there are a lot of them, plenty of them that think I'd like this thing to go forever, but very few articulate it because, you know, once you articulate something, then you've got to account for it. I'm going to let you tell me whether any of that resonates with you and then we're just going to go from there. So again, welcome and I'm looking forward to to this interview.
Family Business Origins
00:04:20
Speaker
the term we use internally and and how we've framed it has been we want to build a 100-year company, right? If we talk about legacy or or something like that, sometimes I think legacy is is a little bit maybe selfish, I guess, is because it's seemingly only one person's legacy. And that's why the way we frame it is say, 100-year company, how do we do that? How do we accomplish that? And we're almost halfway there. We're at like 47 years now So We're trying to work towards that and make decisions as our point of reference, right? And saying, okay, how does this work for our 100-year company? Does it work today and potentially for years from then? The 47 years, I mean, that's a long ways. I know how old you are, so I imagine this is probably a family company, right? I think this is a company that your father started, your mom and dad started maybe?
00:05:06
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. was started in 1978. I was in high school at the time and used to come in on Saturday nights or Saturday mornings, actually. So I could go out Saturday night and have ah have a little bit of money in my pocket for to go out and do something. So Saturday mornings, I'd go in and wire trucks and wash trucks and clean the toilets as well. That was always the fun part. Eventually, My father and I worked together when I graduated from college.
00:05:32
Speaker
And that lasted about a year before, actually less than a year, before I came to him and i said, you know, Dad, I love you, but you and me can't work together. So I'm going to go off and do something else. And, you know, I'm sure that's a story that's happened for plenty of times. But...
00:05:51
Speaker
He then told me, he said, you know what? My dad was really good at working with his hands. He knew how to make stuff. He knew how to do stuff. But the business side wasn't his forte. So he he said, well, why don't you run this and I'm going to go off. And he got his contractor's license, his HVAC license, and went off and did that. I took the company over at that point. And it's been quite a journey.
00:06:14
Speaker
My story is kind of similar. My dad, you know, enormously... hard worker, work with his hands, do print media back when it was actually kind of dangerous to run print machines and things. His integrity was high, his quality was high, but his business aptitude was poor. But I imagine you, like me, took from our relationships a really strong set of values. And so, you know, it may be that I know more about business than my dad ever did, but ah but all the values and hard work ethic I have, I think, comes from his ah encouragement. I don't know if you might say the same thing.
00:06:46
Speaker
I would. He's that same guy who get up early, show up to work, come home late, don't take shortcuts, all those things. But like you said, I guess the the business aspect was not not their forte. That's not such easy stuff anyway. you know I talk to a lot of businesses. They have to wear a lot of hats, and some of the hats they discard aren't the ones they ought to be discarding. I think my dad thought if you work hard and you do a really good job, you you make money. and so But hey, listen, before we get even deeper into how the journey went, can you just ah just spend some time talking about Phoenix
Adapting to Southern California Fires
00:07:16
Speaker
and what you do? And I would imagine that in the business you're in, you would have peripherally been affected by the fires that were going on in Southern California last month. i don't know if that's a good assumption, but if you wouldn't mind sharing some of that.
00:07:27
Speaker
In theory, we have rebranded now, we're known as Phoenix Truck and Van. And um we are what we believe as the is the biggest and most capable truck body and equipment operation in Southern California. And we provide work trucks for fleets, for the electric company, the gas company, ah the fire departments,
00:07:51
Speaker
U.S. Forest Service and various cities and and agencies throughout California and the Southwest. So as we've grown, our reach and who we work with has grown as well. um So relating that to the fires that happened in the last month, a lot of our customers, utility companies in particular, have been accused or blamed of potentially being the spark of of one of the fires. And they've all been impacted because, as you saw, so many homes have been destroyed.
00:08:19
Speaker
That entails water companies, gas companies, electric companies, all types of service companies. So a lot of our customers have been impacted and and they're doing all they can to make sure that the trucks we provide to them are operational and in service and getting to where they got to be and providing services for all those people that are in need of them. So we've been working hand in hand with them to make sure that They've got the trucks they need and the priorities have shifted. And all of a sudden we say, we need these in particular to go and do this job or that job. and
00:08:51
Speaker
And we've been working really closely with them to make sure that they've got the tools they need to get their
Custom Truck Solutions
00:08:56
Speaker
jobs done. So Rick, just a little bit about the business model or how the supply chain works. So are you purchasing a standard chassis with a you know, i don't even know what i'm talking about because I'm not a ah car guy, but is there some fundamental thing that you're purchasing and then you're re-outfitting it for for whatever needs arise?
00:09:16
Speaker
Yep. You claim modesty, but you know you're always you're always a sharp guy. And yes, that is that that is our our model in that normally we're purchasing a a cab chassis from one of the OEMs, whether it be Ford, Ram, Stellantis,
00:09:31
Speaker
Freightliner and so on. So we we buy the cab chassis and then we do the rest of the of the upfit of that vehicle, whether it be under deck air compressors, hydraulic systems, back hose in particular for for the gas company. And then we also manufacture all the compartmentation and and body that goes onto that cab chassis. So our goal is to basically buy the cab chassis and then manufacturer install all the components and and the bodies that go on top and deliver a turnkey unit that is literally already decaled and has their vehicle number on it and license plates and so on. And they literally get the keys and say, okay, let's go to work.
00:10:11
Speaker
So what's a turnaround for just one of those? I know you're producing them in some kind of mass and some type of mechanistic way, but typically to turn one of those around, is that several weeks, several days?
00:10:22
Speaker
We have really two different divisions in our company. And one is the side where we get the cab chassis and and we're doing a lot of work to it and putting different systems on. And that can take, let's say from inception, once the cab chassis is on the ground to completion can take anywhere from three up to four or five, potentially even longer than that months to complete it. We also have our light duty division where we take a cab chassis or a pickup truck or a van and really do some upfitting of that, maybe a van interior, maybe some accessories onto the pickup truck and so on and do all of the decals and wiring for the radio and communication equipment and safety lighting and so on. And that is literally out in a matter of days. um So,
00:11:09
Speaker
It really depends on what that particular project is. But on on the light duty side, we'll do we'll do a couple thousand vehicles a year. And on the manufacturing side, depending on the mix, we'll do four or five, 600 vehicles a year. Yeah. So I'm going to kind of steer us back in a second to the evolution of from when you took things over from your dad or so wherever you want to choose to begin. Because I'd just like to hear a little bit about the different experiences you had and what you had to evolve to to get certain results. But one last question about the operations.
00:11:39
Speaker
I imagine most people come to you and say, listen, this truck has to do the following five things and then you can make that happen. Does anyone ever come to you and say, look, here's a problem we're trying to solve. We're not sure exactly what we need. Like, do you do any design? Is there any innovation that you guys offer in terms of building out things that someone might use that they didn't anticipate they they could even need?
00:11:58
Speaker
That is something that we work a lot on and that we work
Creating a New Division from Customer Request
00:12:03
Speaker
ah with a lot of different customers with. And having seen a lot of different operations from different companies and and different ways of them doing their work, a customer comes in and asks that question and we say, well, we can talk to you about some things we've done for someone else over here or this and that. So we do a lot of design work. When we sit down with a customer, honestly, we don't necessarily say,
00:12:25
Speaker
We're going to try and sell them this. We sit there and ask that very question. All right, what challenges do you have? We are merely a solutions provider. How do we solve whatever glitch, whatever problem you're having, and how can we help you solve that? And we think we can bring some good ideas to the table and and help accomplish that. So that...
00:12:47
Speaker
methodology has worked really well for us and and that's evolved over the years, but that's absolutely the way we approach it and not saying here we are offering you this, we go the other way and say, hey, let's talk about what your needs are and how can we help you? Because we think we have a lot of different solutions and a lot of different innovative ways to help you improve your operations.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, well, I have some general sense of your growth over the years, and so i imagine that you've been able to spark lot of that growth just through the expansion of your ability to do exactly what you were just describing, right, design and give solutions to your customers.
00:13:19
Speaker
Oh, for sure. But I'm going to change this a little bit because one of the things that you were talking about in the story that you were telling earlier about a glitch is indicative and applicable to what we had experienced. Our light duty division does a higher number of vehicles a year because they're just simpler and less complicated and less equipment on them. but we We do a couple thousand vehicles a year out of in that division now.
00:13:43
Speaker
That actually started because we had one of our customers come to us and said, hey, we love what you guys do for us. You build this complicated stuff. It's integrated, it's just that terrific. But we have a problem and our problem is that we also buy a few hundred pickup trucks a year, and pickup trucks, vans, maybe even some sedans that we need to put decals and radios in and, you know, some simple stuff. We need you guys to do this because that market is fragmented in really small operations and we can't get the output we need. And we have to go to various places to get this work done. So we want you guys to take this over.
00:14:18
Speaker
And this female fleet manager, which is kind of unusual and in that segment, let's say 15, 20 years ago, told us that's what she wanted us to do for her. And we said, okay, we'll go back and talk about it. this that We went back and talked about it. In our bravado, macho way, we said, come on, we're manufacturers. We we build stuff. we you know We're not going to bolt some stuff on and just do this light duty stuff. And that's for little of the shops and this, that's not us. We're not going to do So we went back and told her, hey, we appreciate it, but you know thanks, but no thanks. She said, okay, well, I think you're wrong, but maybe give it some more thought.
00:14:52
Speaker
So about a week later, we come back and my partner, who whom you know, Todd Davis, he's he's walking down the hall and she sees him and says, hey, hey, come in here. Have a seat just for a minute. So he sits down, she stands up, opens up her drawer, reaches in and pulls out this stack of papers, right?
00:15:10
Speaker
And slams them on her desk and says, here's a stack of POs for what I need you to do on my light duty site. Go figure it out. And basically hands them over a bunch of POs and says,
00:15:21
Speaker
You're now in this business. And he came back to the office and said, you know, that she's serious. She wants us to do this. And we're like, what the hell? how are we going to this? So we start figure it out, right?
00:15:33
Speaker
We'll separate this team over here. We'll start doing this. We'll figure it out in this snap and that. And that's how we got started in that business. That is now a third of our business. And we do thousands of those trucks a year.
00:15:44
Speaker
And we use it as an entry point with a lot of customers because we say, hey, we can take you from your sedans and your light duty stuff all the way up to this other more sophisticated stuff that we build for you and so on. So we can take you soup to nuts, whatever you need in your fleet. But again, that was a glitch.
00:16:00
Speaker
we We didn't want to do it. We didn't think we' were going to it. And now it's a huge part of our business. Yeah. And you can look back on the years and you may have been resenting it for a year or two or so because you had do Oh, for sure. Yes.
00:16:13
Speaker
Are you kidding? i was like, this is not worth it. What are we doing? Yeah. you know Yeah. When you think about even some of the things ah that I'll do, I want bigger companies to call on me. And i i would rather talk about, you know, leadership and designing complex strategies and stuff. But, you know, a lot of people, the first thing I want to talk about is how do I read my income statement? So I finally figured out, well, if I help him read the income statement and then I say something clever in the middle of it, someone says, oh, you know how to do that too? Do you know how to do strategy? Yep. So my accounting is like your um like a truck buddy. Now, you're probably making a lot higher margin on your on those truck buddies than I was making on my little accounting consultations. I imagine that since you took over the business, that it wasn't necessarily all perfect, right? But did you have any rough times coming out of that out of
Overcoming Early Struggles
00:16:58
Speaker
that transition? Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker
When I got the nod that, here, you take this over and you run it. I remember looking around and going, okay. um Of course, it was after a situation where the economy had turned bad. We had lost our largest customer for various reasons. And I'm looking around and this is going, now what am I going to And I think there was six guys, right? Six or seven, maybe. And I i brought them all into a circle and said, all right, guys, here's what's going on.
00:17:25
Speaker
We're going to go on a new path. We're going to try and figure this out. I'm in charge and we're going to our damnedest. And I will tell you, I'll do my best and work hard and and be fair and straight with you guys. And I like to say that two of those guys wound up working with me for 30 plus years. You know, two of those six. We've been through a lot together. Now we're over a couple hundred people today and it's worked out in the long run, but there's plenty of glitches in the journey from there to here.
00:17:53
Speaker
So when you leverage the truck body's story into some work, and now it's a 30-year business, so that was a ah net positive looking back. And I think part of what I was relating to story is when you're in the middle of something, it doesn't seem very palatable for what you're trying to do. But when you back up, there's a Zen Buddhist guy that having stepped back, I can see more of the horizon. And the danger there is you can step so far back that you can't see anything. And i've been in I've been accused of and have actually done that myself. So it's a matter of trying to find the right thing. But I think it's the fundamental gravitation to the idea that, look, ah everything can't happen in short bites.
00:18:27
Speaker
I think fundamentally, if something is sustainable, it didn't become sustainable overnight. It had to be sustainable for a long time. And if you can sort of indoctrinate that into the business and in the mindset, then people don't feel high anxiety over trying different things because they know our company is strong enough to absorb this if it's not perfect.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I'm just wondering, besides the truck body stuff, like that was a success story. And looking back, is there anything that maybe didn't turn out the way you you' like that you're willing to admit, or talk about
Lessons from Discontinued Product Line
00:18:58
Speaker
that you had to abandon that you also maybe learn something from?
00:19:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah okay. And this was quasi-personal and really for a long time ah somewhat a sense of ego on my part. Some years ago, talking with a customer, he said, hey, you know, I'd i'd like you to make this this thing for me. And I've got some ideas and we started designing together and going back and forth. and We developed this body, if you will, this utility body, this self-contained unit that would slide into a pickup truck, into ah an existing pickup bed. And it had all the compartmentations and a big slide-out drawer. And you could put different accessories on, like ladder racks and roller tops and all this other stuff in it, right? And I actually got a patent. And then we called it the Load & Go product line.
00:19:40
Speaker
And we made it for a number of years, right? But it never... could quite scale to something big enough and worthwhile enough to really be sustainable and be able to invest in it and improve and this and that. It was always just kind of like there and and it did okay. And it went up a little bit, went down a little bit. Some customers really loved it and others tried it and said, oh, there's a place. But then it kind of flittered off. Ultimately, about, I want to say,
00:20:09
Speaker
I don't know maybe it was three, maybe four years now. I don't remember exactly. We had to come to the decision to to kill the line. We said, we're no longer going to make that line. And my ego had to get over it as well and say, hey, this was my baby. This was the signature thing that I designed it. We got a patent. We did this. We did that. All this cool stuff. And and ultimately, it was like, yeah, it's just not good enough. you know it just It's not going to grow to be substantial enough and have a good enough footprint in the market. um so We had to make the decision to kill it. And so that had a ah business element to it, but also a ah personal you know ego element to it.
00:20:45
Speaker
I've utilized a methodology that sort of covers three or four dynamics, but one particular one is what I refer to as opportunity management. And when I say that, a lot of times ah some of the people I'm talking to are thinking, well, listen, we could we can sell this or we can sell that and we can charge more here. And I'm saying, well, listen, those are opportunities that I'm sure you're going to evaluate them, but are you going to spend something or not? Are you going to make a capital investment or not?
00:21:07
Speaker
And so that's one facet. And the other facet is sometimes you say no, or sometimes you say, we tried it and now it's no. And that's a hard place to get to because we're all so emotionally invested in what comes out of our head.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I've found that that's a difficult thing, even for me. I can tell think of two things right now that I do not want to let go. And one of them is personal and one of them is business. And I just know that i that two months ago I should have done something different and I still haven't done it.
00:21:32
Speaker
And i don't know I don't know why. I do know why I'm a human being, I guess. but So I'm going to keep working on that. Let me go back to, by whatever ah metric, dont you don't want to give away the company secrets, but let me ask the question this way.
Growth Through Seven-Year Cycles
00:21:44
Speaker
From the time you took over or shortly thereafter to where the business is now, How would you characterize the growth in terms of percentages or what would help me understand and the audience understand how you've been able to scale from the time you took the business over?
00:21:58
Speaker
One of the things that I liked about the premise when we spoke about doing this episode was the seven year glitch piece. and And as I thought about that premise a little bit, the thing that came up a lot in my thought process was that seven years is almost kind of like the cycle of different elements of of my life anyway. And I think it relates to others um that if I think back on these seven year cycles,
00:22:27
Speaker
I think we more or less played at Liberty Park, I want to say for about seven years. you know As I look at my kids, that there's these, to me, very distinct elements that happen between, let's say, one to seven, and then you know that eight to 14, and then 15 to 21, and then 21 and beyond, right? I'm in a seven-year cycle in that I bought everybody out in the company because we were fractured and had competing interests within the family ownership. was predominantly myself and my brother. I bought everybody out about four and a half, almost five years ago. So we're five years into the cycle.
00:23:03
Speaker
And I will tell you from when we bought it to now, we've doubled in our revenue compared to where we were. And I think that's mainly because of more of a focused approach and unified approach within our team to say, this is the direction we're going, this is our goal, and this is where we want to head towards.
00:23:22
Speaker
So if I look back for me, 35 years, so let's say, give or take five, seven-year cycles, I don't recognize the company we started as versus what we are today, but it was a big deal. um The one year my dad said, oh, we sold a million dollars of product. We are a million dollar a year company.
00:23:40
Speaker
and And I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. That's a neat deal. I can say that we're well over 100 times that now today. So I'm like, okay, that's kind of what our journey's been. It's been a heck of a ride. So I know on the one hand, you can say, look, we want to be a 100-year company and and maybe even want to be a 100-year company starting today, right? But in any case, in any case you you want to be in business 20 years from now and you might be retired by then and someone else is going to be handling for you.
00:24:08
Speaker
But in that journey, is this company bigger because you're optimized and and that's kind of where it's going to top out? or Or is it kind of thing where you're going to keep scaling until something stops you?
00:24:20
Speaker
Our goal is to continue to keep scaling. We actually just closed on a ah new building last year. We're now in it, operating not quite as well as we'd like yet, because we still have some organization to do. But that building was effectively as big as our existing two buildings are. um So we said, okay, we're going increase our scale. We're going increase our footprint, our capabilities, our capacity. And i will tell you that I'm always out looking for something else and how can we improve what we're doing and what our capabilities are and what we can do. And that we're looking to continue to expand.
00:24:56
Speaker
And do you think that happens both organically and maybe through some expansion or acquisition or anything like that?
Focus on Organic Growth and Expansion Plans
00:25:02
Speaker
Thus far, everything we've done has been via organic growth, seeing some opportunities and trying to expand our capabilities. I think if we did something on the acquisition side, if we do something like that, it'd probably be to go into a different marketplace, a different region. And that's definitely something that we've got our eye out and see what opportunities present themselves.
00:25:24
Speaker
All right. Well, so Rick, i'm going to do a little bit of a pivot here in a second. We're going to wrap up here shortly. But before I do that, just maybe one more question about your vision. What do you think dominates in whatever way you can communicate it? Will dominate the next seven-year glitch, if that's what we want to call it? What will it be characterized by, do you think?
Leadership Transition Plans
00:25:42
Speaker
I think, do I hope we're potentially around still in 20 years? ah Yes, is the answer. And fortunately for me, we've got a team of people that are that next generation already in place in our ranks. Our general manager, he's in his early 40s. Our production manager, he's in his early forty s We have salespeople in their late 30s and growing, and I'm well past those ages. So I won't be part of that. I think that transition is going to be where, let's say I was a general manager years ago. and Then I'm going to say I'm currently president, but I think my next role will be more CEO, even more strategic and less operational.
00:26:22
Speaker
and um And that role was where our GM will grow into. And that's what that next seven-year cycle or seven-year glitch will look like. You know, Rick, it's just no secret. I mean, it's almost a it's almost embarrassing how much I gushed over that time being part of Liberty Park cohort.
Retaining Talent and Positive Environment
00:26:40
Speaker
At least four of the 10 or 11 podcasts I've done, I've made some mention of it. But besides just really enjoying it, the reason I enjoyed it is because I took a lot of lessons from it. And there's at least three of them I can point to. One had to do with... Is one of them not going to your left? you it Sorry. Sorry. I didn't mean to mean to bring that up. Yeah. Yeah. Don't let's not go there for the moment. I wish okay I wish my some of our other friends were on here because ah I know you're better than me, but I was better than one or two guys.
00:27:09
Speaker
You can try that. no But but i've I've used that example in, well, I remember coaching a kid's basketball team, and I remember thinking the way I coached had to do with the way I was sort of when I was hanging out with a group and playing ball. So it was an organizational development type of story. Then I would talk about ah strategic decisions that one coach made versus the decisions that I made.
00:27:30
Speaker
And that became ah the story about what's the utilization of your assets and how you're expending your energy and and how are things going to look based on the decisions you make. And then other stories had to do with the roles that different people play. it wasn't necessarily about...
00:27:46
Speaker
Stratifying, know who was better or who was not it was that everybody was important and everybody was encouraged and everybody was dogged and everybody was everything because it was a high level of trust and then it helped That I was with a lot of ah good men and they were also but not only friends, but also cousins and brothers and all those good things So I'll put you on the spot here You may not have had any lessons learned from that other than how to dominate people who are shorter than you Did you have you did you take anything from that experience that you actually think about that hits you when you're thinking about business? Can you relate any of it?
00:28:22
Speaker
The big piece for me is it's surprising how that thread stays relevant. So on weekends now, usually on Sunday afternoons, if if all goes right, there's a group of us that play pickleball together.
00:28:37
Speaker
And Another Liberty Park guy is part of that cohort with me, Paul James, right? ah Two weeks ago for Super Bowl Sunday, I had Ruben Davila, Paul James, and Todd Davis, and Mark Wilson, all Liberty Park guys at one point or another, here at the house, okay? So we keep that cohesion. And I think, okay, people that that do their best, people that matter, people that that show up and know how to do the hard stuff,
00:29:07
Speaker
and then can enjoy the good stuff are important. So in business, what I've gone with is saying, okay, how do I keep these good people to continue to be part of our organization?
00:29:21
Speaker
And I'm proud to say that We have so many people that once they come into our company, they they stay with the company. They say, oh, this is a good place to be. They pay me well. We have good you know working conditions. I like what I do. This is a good organization and so on.
00:29:37
Speaker
We have some employees that are literally 20, 25, 30 plus years with us, right? And then as we continue to grow and and get people on board, now we've got to a growing number of people that have been with us six, eight years and so on. and And that's the lesson I took from there, recognizing good people and then trying to figure out how to keep them in your org and not lose them and help them to grow and help them get better and see their skills evolving. Maybe not being able to go to left ever, but you know what? They do have that head fake and then they get their shot off because they continue to evolve and learn new skills.
00:30:15
Speaker
Or they play defense to make up for a lack of offense. Yeah. Also true. you know But how do you do that? if You make it a good environment and you know that people will show up. And what you got to do is not make it where they like, oh, you know I don't want to be part of this anymore. It was the highlight of so many of our weeks to get up there early Saturday morning and and come together.
00:30:34
Speaker
Well, we're trying to now translate that and say, how do we make that so that we make it the highlight? And it's not the Monday morning dread, but it's like, hey, you know what? I'm going to a good place. I will mention that. I'm sure you have some excuse, like you live in L.A., I'm in Atlanta, but ah honestly, i I just did not get the invitation for the Super Bowl party that you had. i just it's It's somewhere Leslie probably kept it from me. i don't know. I don't know. You know, she probably did. The last thing she wanted was... Would it let let you come over here with PJ, Rubin, Mark, you know Todd, myself? That's the last thing she'd want that to have. Nobody wants that. Well, listen, is there anything else that maybe you just want to ah communicate that maybe is important to say? Or if not, if you want to just go to maybe just saying, how might people reach out to you? mean, you got a hell of business out there. Maybe someone might want to call you and offer you $500 million dollars for your business. I don't need any of that, but you might. Is there anything that you'd like to close with? i don't even know where to go with what you threw out there because that's so fanciful and and it's a crazy world. No, I look...
00:31:35
Speaker
All I want to say is I enjoyed this process, but two, I truly enjoyed the journey and the the ride that I've been able to take, the people I've been able to work with, the friends I've made, the things I've been able to learn and seek out and find out about. I'm truly blessed. It's enabled me to have opportunities with my friends, which provided for my family and with the kids, the educations that they can have and the opportunities that they can look at when their lives going forward. I am truly blessed.
00:32:04
Speaker
Well, Rick, man, listen, it's been a pleasure as always. I and enjoy interacting with everyone from back there. And I really appreciate you participating and look forward to connecting when I can get out there pretty soon. Okay. I look forward to it, Justin.
00:32:30
Speaker
Listening to Rick today reminds me that leadership isn't defined by the clean stretches. It's revealed in the uneven ones, in the places where something unexpected interrupts the rhythm and demands that we see differently.
00:32:42
Speaker
Over the decades I've known him, on the court and now in the world of business, I've watched Rick embody something rare. He leads with a long horizon in mind. He builds organizations that don't just perform, but care.
00:32:55
Speaker
He thinks in seasons, not snapshots, and the culture he's nurtured at Phoenix reflects that long view. Strong but compassionate, structured yet human, grounded in accountability, but lifted by camaraderie.
00:33:08
Speaker
It's the same spirit we grew up with on the court. A belief that you do the work, you show up for your people, and you trust that the effort you invest today is shaping something meaningful over time.
00:33:20
Speaker
In systems language, we'd call that emergence. The idea that what ultimately comes into being is greater than the sum of its parts. Rick's story and the decades-long arc of his leadership reminds us that the most important outcomes rarely appear quickly.
00:33:35
Speaker
They grow, accumulate, and emerge. And often, they begin with the moment we realize that a glitch in the short term may be a breakdown, but in the longer, more attentive view, it's actually opportunity for a breakthrough.
00:33:51
Speaker
The Leaders Commute podcast was produced by Acuity Business Consulting. Acuity demystifies the challenge of transforming talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development.
00:34:13
Speaker
You can catch a new episode every month wherever you enjoy your favorite podcast. Until next time, I am Jess Villegas, and you have been listening to the Leaders Commute podcast.