0:01 okay so we're live and we're recording and there's siri to let us know that we're ready so welcome everyone to the way to wow people making money i'm your host kevin bemel and i'm here every week at uh 12 30 p.m e uh pacific time i have to think about this 3 30 p.m eastern time and my guest this week is craig noel and i'll talk about uh craig in in just a few minutes but as i usually do i want
0:37 to do a little recap of of where we've been on the show so far so if you missed last week my guest was jennifer chang of platform io so jennifer started out in the in the uh you know big accounting world with uh oh shoot i remember the name of the big four accounting firm she was with um kpmg i think and eventually moved into the entrepreneurial realm and became ceo of play form where she and her colleagues are really at the forefront of the whole nft phenomenon especially from
1:13 the uh perspective of artists and using ai to create nft really jennifer is working to figure out what is this going to be it's like you know same with same thing with cryptocurrencies they're on everybody's lips it seems like these days they're probably here to stay there's opportunities there's challenges and entrepreneurs are going to work these things out and so i invite you to check out jennifer's episode it is excellent she is extraordinarily articulate and i think you will learn a
1:48 lot from the lessons that we distilled in talking about her professional art so i invite you to do that and let me mention next week my guest is going to be john rubino of jid investments i think i actually said this week was john but it's not it's craig um so john um is a navy colleague of mine who uh transitioned to the civilian life and started a real estate company and again i he's he's extremely knowledgeable i think you will get a lot of great information from john and so now we're going to turn to craig
2:23 noel so craig and i have known each other for i gosh it's got to be close to 30 years i think um at least three maybe 35 yeah yeah could be longer we met when craig was at foothill capital which um at the time was one of my biggest clients when i was in the real estate business prior to joining the navy and craig put to put together deals at foothill capital eventually foothill was acquired by wells fargo and i think soon after that you moved on and you moved to new york um and worked for one of the uh investment banks there um and
3:00 i don't recall the name of the event i i ran a division for goldman sachs okay for goldman sachs so so that's about as blue chip as you get you know in the uh ib world and and craig uh if you were to look at his linkedin uh profile you'll see he's a recovering deal junkie i think anyone who gets out of that world that's probably what you're faced with is recovering and now craig is involved in financing and running food companies in particular healthy food companies so you can see that he's he's had quite
3:36 a a professional arc as well and so craig thank you very much for coming on the way to wow people making money to talk about how you got from the beginning of your career to where you are now running a company and doing what you really love so thanks for coming on the show thank you it's my pleasure it's great to reconnect and catch up after uh you know sort of a 20-year hiatus i mean it didn't fall totally out of touch but social media and you know a career away in the military and stuff that was uh you know we weren't necessarily talking all that frequently
4:11 yeah they wouldn't let me put you in my haversack to uh take me along with me so so craig let's let's kind of start at the beginning maybe even before um your your days at foothill you know as a young guy figuring out what you wanted to do professionally in life what were some of the issues you dealt with and what were some of the the thoughts you had the challenges you you dealt with in in starting off on your career path yeah um well i grew up in a a very small farm town i had a graduated
4:47 high school class of 62 people um uh in a a fairly poor area i grew up in tulare county in central california which is i think has the distinction of being the poorest county in in the country even though it's here in california um and it's actually probably become more so that way over the last 20 years just because of some of the trends and policies towards the farm belt and stuff but um i i i got a good solid uh public school education there nonetheless um and uh
5:23 um you know you know their sats are very controversial but i always say that you know for me that was my ticket out to you know distinguish myself as you know yeah i had great grades in the class of 62 people what did it mean to anyone but you know having uh you know top scorers on the s.a.t meant that that a school like wharton would uh consider me and um you know i decided fairly early on that i wasn't going to be a farmer um and you know i think like most young kids you really have no idea what the
5:58 possibilities are and so you know i thought about science or doctor or all those things and that didn't seem like the fit to me and somehow business did and so um you know i ended up going from a small little town in california to philadelphia the university of pennsylvania and and studying finance and i actually thought that i was gonna be an accountant when i went there um and very quickly i uh my eyes opened i learned about venture capital and the whole idea of backing and funding new
6:34 companies and stuff like that and so i was hooked and you know graduated college and went into investment making and spent 30 years really ended up not with venture capital but primarily with with helping companies uh that were going through some sort of a um life change or whatever in their business cycle to help them restructure uh and some of those were companies that were over leveraged and some were just companies that for one reason or another uh trends or other things had moved against them and
7:09 um uh the old ways weren't workable and um we were frequently a bridge to be part of the solution to get them into the future so sticking with that kind of early time so you you grew up in a small farming community you know i think from my impressions and i used to do um some appraising in communities like that you know they're very tradition bound um there are expectations that uh you know the children are going to take over the parents you know business so to speak so what was it like for you to
7:47 move out of that environment how did your parents respond how did your friends respond what was the you know what was the general climate that you dealt with in making that first big decision to really take your life in a different direction um well my parents were always you know very positive about education and encouraging me to uh you know reach as high as i could i was the third or five kid so you know i don't know that taking over the farm was an option for me even if that's where my interests were and uh
8:23 you know i was you know i mean i was a bright kid i was a great student so it was natural that you know my energies get directed there what i think as with so many people you it's very hard to know what what is out there in the world and you know i think if you look at what someone does in life you know the leading indicator of what industry they end up in is probably what their parents were doing um you know whether that's the the the kid who's whose father's a cop and and he becomes a police officer or whether that's you know al gore you know and
8:59 your father is a senator um so you know that that just you know throughout the stratum that that sort of seems to be the uh the the sort of the leading indicator um but um my mom was a teacher and um you know as uh as i got into uh high school and started looking uh about what to do and where to go um i was fortunate i had a one of my brothers was five years older than me and uh um originally went to college to stutter study uh ag mechanics and design a farm
9:35 equipment and stuff like that and he ended up becoming an accountant uh and um and so first thing he said is well you know you should read the wall street journal so since i was a sophomore in high school like i subscribed and read the wall street journal and then he uh he sent me an article um that was the top 10 business schools uh in in the country and he had circled cal berkeley which was number three and i sort of looked at number one and said why would i go lower if i could go there um and so uh
10:11 i applied i was fortunate like i said that the the sat was i think a great equalizer um that uh showed people that i could uh compete and perform uh in the ivy league and um i was fortunate that that they took account to my you know we i mean we had land we weren't you know poor and in the strictest sense of the word uh but i got a a good scholarship package that allowed my family to afford it and uh and and off i went so so there you are in in philadelphia
10:48 at the um at the wharton school um and you mentioned that it opened your it opened you up to a lot of of um you know new ideas new options for for your professional life would you talk a little bit how did that process work how did you take advantage of being in that new environment to make it you know as as shall we say profitable at least in the intellectual sense as you made it well you know in some ways i would say that that you know my advice to my kids
11:23 would be very different from uh from what i did i i i went i went there and um of course i was very cognizant of of the financial burden to my family for doing that and so i uh i really um i graduated in three years and um you know i would say say to my kids you know um the the benefit and really i tell every young person that i talk to um you know don't don't just do school but you know go find internships and and other sort of stuff
11:58 you know related to your field even if you're not paid and you have to volunteer but you know get your foot in the door and get a feel for what it really is because for one thing you know what you think it is or what you're learning at school typically doesn't you know tie in all that directly to what you do once you get out and you you end up in an office or with a set of assignments relative to what it is and um you know i think there's a lot of people that you know pursue something for a lot of years and then you know i i don't know if dealing with it people every day as a as a doctor sort of you know what what what i meant
12:34 to be or whatever um or you know drafting legal documents or different things like that so up and down the thing you know there's you know school in the real world are sort of two different things the other thing is because of that um you know i did not get involved in a ton of activities during college so you know i like to write i might have been interested to be involved in the school paper or or the uh um the the they had a television station there on the university and different things like that and and you know i didn't necessarily um
13:11 uh fully take advantage of those to the way that um you know uh is possible for someone to access it and uh you know i mean we all make choices in life and and you know you don't get to run it again and so my advice to my kids is you know take it all in you know don't focus um on getting one more finance class if there's an art history class or or something like that and um you know i think you know today um the world is you know even more competitive than it was when i
13:48 was in college and i think it was well on its way to being uber competitive and sort of that you know cognitive sorting and stuff that was happening even then um but uh it's even more so now my oldest son who's now a freshman in college um had a great hard-working academic career in high school but it wasn't until his senior year um he that he had a quote-unquote elective and he took art appreciation um and he's like whoa that that's you know i've enjoyed this way more than
14:23 i ever you know thought that i could and uh yeah i was i was happy for him and you know i think it was a you know a well-timed thing that you know as he's heading into college that you know like i said you don't need to get you know that you know 101st finance class go go go learn about chinese history or you know something completely off the wall that that you think is you you'll enjoy and it will sort of broaden your background absolutely excellent so you're you're you know finishing college you've done some
14:58 internships along the way how did you transition from finishing college to you know that first job on your professional journey how did how did that work well uh i really wanted to get back to california um after uh three winters in in the northeast um and uh i i was fortunate um security pacific bank uh was uh starting a an investment making group um it was the tenth largest bank in the country the
15:33 one of the two major banks in southern california and uh i had the uh um i i i had an offer there and you know getting back to southern california was was where i want to go so perhaps for better for works that you know that that brought me back to california where i've except for my few years with goldman sachs is really where i've i've lived um but you know at the end of the day they probably weren't really as well equipped to go head-to-head with the big guys as as as as their
16:09 interview bravado um made it seem um and so it it took a few years to uh really sort of get established um i i had a few different jobs and um and then i got the the job with foothill capital that you sort of mentioned and you know at the time um foothill had gone through its own sort of corporate transformation where they had really taken some hits in the uh in the texas sort of oil market and even though they didn't do that much directly in the oil
16:44 industry you know one of the things you find is that um you eat you know in any sort of small business that may have nothing to do with the oil industry if it's if it's in uh if it's in fort worth it probably is impacted by the ups and downs of the oil industry and so they went through a time of restructuring and uh fortunately for me they were sort of coming out of that and really uh in a um at a time of building and and just as the junk bond market would uh crash in 89 and 90 and leave lots of orphan
17:20 companies that needed to figure out how to restructure and so um they uh you know john nichol who was the founder of the company was was brilliant and that really um he and scott neil gave me a great platform where i was able to take you know my uh you know my unique skills of of you know partially as a marketing person but really as a as a i'll call it a financial engineer someone able to creatively sort of figure out how to how to solve problems and and
17:56 accomplish something that a lot of times other people just thought as as intractable and so i then spent um the next you know uh eight years uh doing that um i met donald trump and was involved in some stuff with him um uh you know and you know i i i've never been extremely bullish or whatever i mean he he's he's a a a salesman um more than anything else but the the chaotic nature of his presidency
18:34 you know was was no surprise to me i always say you know i don't know rudy julia and i took away different things from uh from from dealing with the man but um you know i don't think he's evil or anything else either so uh and you know there were just a number of of companies and and well-known sort of things where we were able to uh to get involved and and uh you know help help someone turn things right and you know it's it's it's interesting you know sort of the the motivations and
19:10 stuff i mean i can say you know that i believe there are a number of companies or divisions of companies that that still exist because we were there to uh do something at the right time um but i don't think it's necessarily a a higher calling that's just about saving jobs or doing good although i think you know like just about every part of capitalist system you know by by doing the right thing for for uh your customers the other counterparties you end up doing good um but you know sometimes you know the the
19:45 way to salvage value and and get it somewhere else is for it to be sold and for a division to be closed and people laid off and you know so i you know ultimately you know that's that's what economics in the market and figuring out how to make the best outcome is is all about so you mentioned that your expertise was really as kind of a financial engineer right is that something you learned at at the wharton school is that a skill you developed along the way and if so how
20:22 did you get to that point where you had the the you know the knowledge the um the skills and the experience to be effective in in that role you know i don't know that i um uh that i have a clear-cut answer to that you know we all tend to create a narrative about you know how we came from somewhere and how we became someone a learning disability or something like
20:57 that where i actually don't read um uh spreadsheets or things like that uh is very time consuming and differently even reading but i i i was always a sponge for information i always read a lot whether it was the wall street journal or um books or or whatever and i'm very good at retaining it and putting it in in context um and so you know i think for me for what i did you know it meant that i could walk into
21:32 you know any given company and frequently have an understanding of some of the underlying dynamics in terms of you know for example in the textile industry in the in the 90s it was largely being outsourced to uh to asia and you know having that just sort of context you know allowed you to to get to the bottom line and figure out how to uh solve things just a little bit earlier easier and so um i think that that that that was uh you know a personal asset that i had
22:07 uh an ability to really create a mental model um of what was going on as opposed to a spreadsheet model um and i think that the spreadsheets and models are worthwhile and good but um you know my experience is that people put way too much weight on that without sort of really understanding the dynamics and um there would be times that in my career where someone else would sort of sit in a meeting for me or something like that and we we'd get
22:43 together and recap afterwards and and they'd say well you know you know it's doing about 30 million dollars in sales a month so they must be carrying 45 50 million dollars of inventory and they look at their notes and say yeah how do you know that it's you know because there was a mental model there of you know how those things sort of came together that you you could sort of extrapolate and know what's going on and quickly sort of maybe cut through things and say well if it's so much higher what's what what's going on um and so those you know those things i i don't know how to
23:19 tell anyone how how to do it but um you know really you know taking a you know a a look and an understanding of companies that's that's beyond just the numbers i think is you know um and having that mental model was a you know a great assistance to me in that in that process so one of the things that that i find very interesting about your answer is you started out describing essentially a disability which by its very name would seem to be
23:55 something that would hold you back and yet you turned it on its head and turned it into something that actually helped you be more effective by you know sort of put pushing to the side that which was difficult for you to do and really focusing on that which you could be best at and sort of doubling down on on you know those those skills or those abilities you had that could really add value to a situation so i think too often we tend to focus on oh i need to know this i need i can't do that and it
24:32 holds us back and you you really flip that on it on its head so i i you know i remember when from one of the projects we worked at that i worked on at foothill um i was always doing the real estate you know collateral review and um one time i went to visit a company i don't want to say where it was because i don't you know want to give it away but um i i then called the person i worked with that at foothill later that day um dave evans um and i and i you know kind of gave my preliminary report as i always did and then i said by the way i
25:07 said i i think you want to take a look at the fact that the guy who runs this company has basically all the knowledge in his head and his next layer of leadership down i don't think they can function if he's not there you know and i'm not saying that's why foothill ended up passing on the deal but they did end up passing on the deal i think for a number of reasons that really didn't have anything to do with the collateral and later i found out that a competitor did that deal and absolutely lost their shirt on it and i think it's because like you were saying
25:42 there's more than a spreadsheet to this kind of analysis it's very easy to get lost in all the you know cells and numbers and such and lose sight of the overall picture and i think we can do that in our lives as well right we need to be able to have that ability to step back and look at our careers so moving from now from foothill onto you know what you what we might call the big leagues right goldman sachs so what was it what was it that um drove you if you will or impelled you to move on to this next thing and and to move to new york i mean that's like i said
26:18 that's really the big leagues there must it seems like there must have been something inside you saying hey i i i want to do more or what was that about yeah uh so i spent eight years uh with foothill we had you know done phenomenally well i think we had you know grown our assets by eight times over the course of the that time that we were there um and uh you know but but at the end of the day even though i was by far their their their biggest rainmaker you know i i
26:54 still felt like i was pigeonholed into you know go make more rain not you know a more you know holistic contribution to putting things to work and um uh i was it was a time where where goldman was looking to move into sort of a special situations area and deploy capital sort of doing that um i had a couple conversations with other people but uh i i i really loved the uh um the ethos i think that that drove goldman and um i was only there for
27:30 for a few years um but uh you know it's um it's probably the most fantastic place that i ever was in terms of the the way they um work as a team and and um you know their their commitment to to doing well and doing great but also by and large um uh uh you know a values driven company i mean one of the things that led me to go there was that you know at the uh you know on their website they had a set
28:06 of corporate values that said what they were about and it would be my view um and you know i've helped met other people who felt differently and certainly there have been you know some bad eggs who have blemished the name along the way but uh by and large i i felt that you know that statement of values was something that even radiant you could see that it was reflective of their business when they talked about you know um you know their their capital base and their employees and their reputations being the three pillars of their
28:41 business and reputation being the most important thing you know you knew because of who they were and what they were that that that they had realized that and and and had seen for that and you know the first commandment was was to not go do that and so you would see other things where somebody from say a you know a a 28 year old kid from bear stearns would you know somehow end up in the newspaper or on tv you know talking about the fact that he's making 250 000 um and no person you know
29:16 at goldman would would would talk about their firm and who they were in that way that did it even if they were were were making that sort of thing there was just a a a greater humility of uh you know a commitment to customers but you know also very much a commitment to being the best and and to uh being profitable and um you know in that sense you know i've never you know been in a more exciting environment to work and do stuff
29:52 so was it a conscious decision on your part then at that point in your career to align yourself with a firm that um perhaps more closely reflected your own values because you you spoke about you know the value statement that goldman has on their website etc um i think this is an often time overlooked aspect when people are you know job hunting or even when they're starting their own businesses this idea what are the values underlying the business what is the culture there right so
30:27 you know would you talk a little bit more about that and and how you made the decision you know vis-a-vis your own values versus those of other companies that you you were talking to yeah um well at the time i was i was talking to you know a couple different hedge funds and you know if i compare and contrast um you know what one of the others was you know uh named after a three-headed dog from greek mythology and um you know when i would go to visit that them and you know i probably had you
31:04 know eight or ten visits over a couple months uh period where i was going back and forth to new york the um the person that sat at the front reception desk um who's now seen me five six times would give me a blank stare when i came in you know you know would you think you know at a certain point in time you'd start to to say whatever and it's not that i was an important person at all relative to the people coming through but just you know at a certain point you sort of do that and you know and you know i think different stuff like that just sort of
31:40 you know you know gives you a vantage point on on what it was and so you know later after i i left um goldman and uh when uh i started a a a management firm with a money management firm with a couple of people we we chose the name signature um because i thought that you know it you know it was the the compare and contrast to the three-headed dog sort of thing of you know um you know you know something that that that could
32:16 solve problems and and and um you know that at least you know in in effectation you know gave off a you know a positive buy so you made that so then after goldman you made the transition to essentially being in business for yourself or in business with partners is that am i understand that correctly yeah we raised a small amount of capital and and we started buying distressed debt this was uh um i guess 2004
32:53 and so you know we've just been through uh a protracted recession and and we uh we did like 25 deals in the first two years and then you know it all sort of um dried up as you know the the economy went into a protracted growth period and and uh uh banks uh decided that they'd rather keep their problem assets than than take a discount to move them off their balance sheets and you know i think that's a you know a reflection of the fact that that we were in very liquid times and a lot of growth
33:29 and and that capital was very easily available uh to the financial system um and so uh and then even as the uh the recession of 2009 hit um uh you know we still didn't see the uh the um uh the the the resurgence of distressed opportunities and that uh led us to get involved uh with a company called fremont financial
34:04 which had been a 10 billion dollar thrift and they were one of the first people to crater when uh um uh you know when when the real estate market started to collapse and so they uh had lost a billion dollars um had been able to really liquidate most of their assets uh and and what they had was a billion dollars of tax loss carryforwards that could be used to uh um offset future um uh future earnings and so we got involved we were really ended up in a
34:40 competitive process where we were i wouldn't say we were a hostile better but we were an unsolicited bidder where you know other people had their own ideas for what to do about it and ultimately we were able to prevail and persuade creditors to uh back us we ended up uh cutting a deal with with one of our competitors and sort of bringing them in as a partner to what we were doing um and uh um and so we reorganized with a public company that uh had a hundred million dollars of cash and a um uh and a billion dollar net loss carry
35:16 port um and uh you know i remember you know at the time you know getting the congratulations for people uh you know uh for having prevailed in that and um thinking to myself well this is really just the entry part because now we have to to go you know put that money to work and and make it worthwhile to do that and you know as fate would have it um we ended up in a cat fight where we had uh we had nine directors
35:52 and each of them sort of had a vision that that they could be ceo and you know have the best idea for for what we should do with that hundred million dollars um and um uh and uh you know we really just had bad mojo for lack of a better term and um spent three years sort of spinning our wheels you know with you know with with everyone sort of fighting for their own uh uh idea of what we should do and broken into fashionalism and um you know
36:27 and each of the directors taking a hundred thousand dollar salary for you know for for for what they were doing as a director and of course you know when when we had put it together we had taken you know we had not taken um you know corporate type salaries for ourselves and you know expected that directors and and stuff would sort of do the same um but you know uh that they had their own you know sort of thing so um you know we went through several steps uh sam zell uh the chicago grave dancer
37:02 was uh our largest shareholder with with nine percent one of their guys was was on the board um and um uh they uh you know brought us an opportunity uh something that they had bought a couple of years before for you know 65 million dollars and and uh had had taken almost all of their purchase price out by liquidating certain assets and thought that we should pay 165 million dollars and um i looked at the company i i thought it was a good company but uh
37:38 i was dubious that it was worth uh what they uh what they thought it was um and the long and short of this is you know we never uh made that uh acquisition uh but it ended up frying my relationship with our largest shareholder and and i ended up taking a severance package and moving on and so it's like many things in life you know i i say you know we we really aren't the author of our own story but we're a co-author and you know that that chapter turned out different from the way i envisioned the plot line sort of going uh but you know it was a point in time
38:13 where i i've done very well in life but i had a nice uh exit package and you know that's the way it was um and i really at that time thought that i would uh move into uh sort of being a research professor and writing and doing other things and i did an international uh program with with duke university that took me to shanghai and istanbul and different places but along the way i you know also
38:48 started to uh think about my own health and raising three kids and you know my doctor said you know you should make some changes he says i know nobody ever does but i feel like i have to tell you that and you know and so i started to you know talk to him and think about what that would be and eventually i ended up on on a low carb diet and when i did that i lost 35 pounds in four months um and uh it really happened with without trying uh and i kept it off uh really until the pandemic where a little too much chinese food and whatever you know
39:24 some of it's come back on um but uh as as i started to look at that and sort of think about you know what what we're told you know is the subtle science or whatever for for weight loss and metabolism and stuff like that uh it turned out that you know what we've been told you know since the early 60s you know wasn't really grounded in science i mean there were lots of quote-unquote scientists and md's and stuff that you know we're espousing a certain view but um you know but the
39:59 um but but slowly but surely it had become obvious that that what was there didn't work and so that's sort of what led me to starting um uh doing what i doing and and backing really the principal investment that's a company called halo healthy tribes and um what halo is about is not necessarily being the best food company but with partnering with the best food companies and um across the top of the packaging i think you know if you look there that's that's the halo
40:34 that would go across the um uh top and it it tells you that uh um that's part of the halo healthy tribes family uh that it has no added sugar um if it's plant-powered it you know tells you about that uh likewise most of it is is low carb so carb careful is sort of the moniker there and then you know underneath there there's a row that tells you the the calories and net carbs and protein and backgrounds that are in the product so that without turning around the package you you really know
41:10 the the 9010 i would say of what you're ever going to know about it and uh on the back if if you're interested more there's what we call the allergen battle that makes you aware of any allergens that might they be there because the thing with food is this you you can't create a brand that has no allergens because we did you're not going to have food but you know if someone's got a nut allergy or they've got a dairy allergy or they've got a soy allergy um uh you uh you know about that and so that's been in our um how we've uh how we've approached things
41:49 so so you had kind of a multi-step entrepreneurial journey going from creating a fund to buy distressed debt and working through that and now working in pain you know working in your business halo one of the things you mentioned along the way was you ended up having to work with some people that you know perhaps in in retrospect you wouldn't have chosen to work with right um and i i think it's it's probably true that we oftentimes learn more from our mistakes than we do
42:26 from our successes so as as you think about that transition what were some of the things that you would do differently if you you know kind of had it to do over again or as you look to the future of halo and other ventures you may you may get involved with what are what are some of the things that you would do differently um now having been through this this transition experience well i you know i i think you know cohesion is probably one of the most important things about you know a business and
43:02 contributors success and you know and that's that's not to say that that diversity and diverse opinions uh and diverse people aren't aren't important aspects of that but um to be successful uh you know a business really needs to come together in a cohesive way and and execute on it when i think about some of the instances uh like that where we um you know you know ended up with a board of directors that um uh was was very non-cohesive um
43:38 and that was very disruptive but you know you know people say was there something you would have done different in in in the legal agreements or in different things like that and you know the way we came together was was you know out of a you know a contentious process and and and bringing people together into what we thought was you know a very well articulated plan and and and taking people at their word that they were going to back it um you know there might have been things that we we could have done different but i think you know it's really very
44:13 you know it's very difficult you know rumsfeld had had the thing of the the known unknowns and you know the unknown unknowns and you know in in my experience you know knowing about those those known unknowns and and um and being prepared for them is important but um you know if if i look at my experiences and and and you know i have a friend that was involved in in um a private equity investment in a company that did stuff uh in the uh um was a component supplier really to the
44:48 cell phone industry and it turned out that something came together and you know all of a sudden you know things fell into place and they were making a hundred times more money than they ever dreamed they would make of on this investment and it wasn't you know that that they had been smarter than the rest that sort of things up it was you know good luck and you know likewise you know you know i i know somebody that was running a uh a sugar manufacturer in in uh on the texas louisiana border when uh
45:25 hurricane katrina hit and you know they got swamped and put out of business for 12 weeks uh you know and you could say well you know i mean we get hit by a hurricane but what are the odds that you know the one really hits i mean you know they've been around through a lot of hurricanes before that but the one that hits you directly and swamps you for 12 weeks is is not really you know i mean you could say that's a that's a risk out there somewhere you know most of us probably wouldn't be that good at identifying how acute it could be um but but then it's also just a a matter
46:01 of of random chance and you know that's that's one of the things you know i think in general with decision making is you try and make the best decision but you know with any decision you make versus the other one you know there are things that could go wrong with the decision you you make there are things that can go wrong with with the other decision and hopefully you're you're picking the one of the best odds of succeeding but you know a couple of those you know random things that may happen uh you know can uh you know can hopefully drive you know uncharacteristic success or or disaster
46:38 um and you know we all you know tell stories in a bit after the fact about how we uh you know you know how we got there and how we were smart enough to sort of figure that out and capitalize on it but um you know it's it's it's not true and i i used to have a friend that said oh you know my my track record's a 40 percent irr and then you said well what about this or that well that one doesn't count because you know who could have known that the storm was gonna you know take out their factory and who could have known that this was happening but then again you know
47:13 another one that they were in and uh all of a sudden you know two big industry people you know decided they really you know wanted that little niche business that had been ignored for years um you know that was not predicted either if you're totally honest so you know we all want to be you know what is it um you know uh success as many fathers you know failure as a pastor so i mean honestly the lesson i'm i'm distilling from from what you've just been saying
47:48 is that um we have to accept um you know good and bad luck with the same sort of grace if you will and and and just you know move from the point that we're at to hopefully uh a a better point whether that's you know a hurricane that wiped us out or whether it's you know some completely unexpected rush of business that uh you know was really not due to any particular thing that we did but it was you know
48:23 fortuitous timing or something like that yeah no i i think you know i mean life's a deck of cards at the end of the day and uh you know so sometimes you you you you draw straight and sometimes you're you're one card away and you draw four and um you know you you you got to take the hand that's dealt and deal with it and you know i think that you know obviously there are people that start with uh you know with uh better uh opportunities and stuff and and uh uh and there are uh
48:58 you know people that that that aren't but uh at the end of the day um you know you you you gotta take what what god gets you and that's that's that's really the truth so so i we we have just a um few minutes left so i want to if i can kind of summarize what i think are some of the lessons we can take from your life and first of all you know craig you started out as you know as a farm boy you know i mean i kind of have a picture of you you know barefoot you know right around the farm i'm maybe not so you know inaccurate and
49:35 and really reaching you know goldman sachs the absolute pinnacle of you know corporate finance really in the world i mean we're talking about one of the world's greatest companies right that's that's an amazing um uh you know career progression um that i think shows us that if if if we're clear-minded of purpose and we're willing to put in the hard work that we we can we can make even these really huge leaps so that was one thing i heard you talk about another thing was this is
50:11 something i think from from your brother saying we'll read the wall street journal if i would expand that i might say if you're really interested in a particular industry or a particular clear career path we should really dive into learning about that that industry learning about that path and and and that's just part of the cost of entry if you will we're not going to get paid to do that nor this is something that you mentioned in common with my guest guest last week jennifer she also
50:46 um talked about doing unpaid internships just taking whatever opportunities there were to be involved in a particular industry or business and learning from it and giving you know as much value as you possibly could even in a situation where you're not being compensated uh and and and and it really comes back to you maybe not in the near term but over the long term it comes back to you really in spades and i think the last couple of things is it seems to me and correct me if i'm wrong there were times in your career that you
51:22 were really willing to step out and take some risk and sometimes the risk paid off and other times maybe not how you thought it would but you know you kind of rolled with the punches and and you made the best of the situation in which you found yourself and use that for a springboard to the next you know the next step in your professional journey so i think you know to the extent that all of those are are you know accurately portraying
51:57 your you know your your professional arc these are all lessons that we can apply you know to our lives um and and in getting to where we want to go professionally so i want to sort of hand it back to you to comment on my summary whether i was accurate or inaccurate and anything you'd like to add to that um in the last couple of minutes here before we have to wrap up yeah i think that's a a great summation um you know my view on life is is that uh you know there's there's nothing like hard work and preparation
52:33 as a as a driver for success um and obviously having some blatant talent and the rest of that stuff you know has an impact on on it as well um but you know the other thing is is that uh you know um you know you know you're gonna get some cards that are unexpected and you know um not not everyone that's a billionaire did it because of how brilliant they are not that they didn't build that so to speak but that you know there's there's a lot of contributors uh to it and and likewise you know um and i think this is
53:10 one of the great things that silicon valley has realized is that people uh you know people fail and that's not necessarily a personal reflection on them and you know the the key is to get up and dust yourself off and and keep going and um you know there's uh there's a lot of challenges in life and and you know business and working is is only part of it you know the personal relationships and uh you know the the personal tragedies that can intervene and stuff like that are you know there and and and you got to sort of keep that in mind
53:47 absolutely absolutely craig if people want to know more about halo and and the work you're doing with with healthy eating healthy foods and and promoting brands um so that we know about them and know how they commit where can they where can they find out about that do you give a url for a website or something yeah we have a website it's halohealthydrives.com uh and um that that'll take you to uh um a little bit about us and then there's there's five different brands that are associated with the company right now and there's there's links that
54:23 will allow you to uh to visit each of them as well um and then you know if anyone wants to get in touch uh craig halohealthytribes.com is my email so it's fairly uh fairly straightforward okay and are you looking for more brands to team with are you looking for more capital what is what is kind of what are you looking for is the future of halo healthy yeah well we've been um you know at it for two and a half years and really had expected to go uh and have our coming out party in uh march of 2001 at uh the natural food
55:01 expo which is this huge event that takes over everything at the anaheim convention center and um of course march of 2001 uh we were literally my son and and one of the other people were there starting to put together our booth uh when the news came down that because the coveted had been canceled and so you know um we are now you know really having that that coming out party uh this march and um uh have been through you know two years of you know by and large good stuff but you
55:36 know the delays the difficulties and you know the supply chain and all of that you know are real challenges that we've had to grapple with so um but uh we're we're excited um that's that's a place for us to tell our story and it's a place for us to recruit more brands to become part of what we're doing excellent well craig thank you so much for coming on the way to wow people making money and talking to us sharing your story and and the lessons that we can glean from it i i really appreciate it well my pleasure i've got my fingers crossed that we're going to be making
56:11 money soon as we uh get out to market so thanks for having us on you're welcome so folks thank you very much for joining us marty um thank you for uh thank you for being here and for all of you watching online thank you for joining in if you have any questions or comments please feel free to drop them into any of the comment boxes um right after we conclude this session we'll be up on our youtube channel the way to wow show on youtube and you can always leave a comment there and you can also feel free to go to our
56:46 website the way to wow show.com and you can contact me through the website if you have any thoughts ideas on how to improve what we're doing if there's someone you think would be a great guest for the show i'd love to hear about that even if especially if it's you um love to have you come on and tell us about how you found your way to wow um professionally so a couple things before we wrap up one is a week from tomorrow march 3rd my my friend and colleague leah siegel will be launching her weekly show it's called the way to wow securing your
57:21 financial foundation her guest is going to be jeff condon one of the absolute top realest um not real estate one of the top estate planning attorneys in the country and uh so leia will be kicking off 1 p.m pacific time 4 p.m eastern time i invite you to to join her i'll be co-hosting with her probably at least for the first couple of weeks i think you will find that she has a tremendous amount of knowledge and information that she can pass along to you next week again my guest is john
57:56 rubino of jid investments so i invite you to um to join us to hear john and to come and ask questions about how to um get involved professionally in the real estate business um john has has had tremendous success at his company with his partner david and he's also got a very fascinating journey that starts out at the merchant marine academy of all places so again thank you very much for joining us appreciate it and we'll look forward to seeing you next wednesday
58:31 i don't know what the date is off the top of my head because i can't keep the calendar in my head let's see what's today today's the 23rd so it'd be there it is it's got to be like february 2nd i guess wednesday february 2nd of course because thursday is the third so wednesday february 2nd 12 30 pacific time 3 30 eastern time the way to wow people making money thanks for joining us