Today’s guest is a mentor and hero of mine who convinced me to give up on a career
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as a structural engineer in order to follow him to the dark side of sales.
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We talk about that along with a bunch of his favorite stories from a three-decade
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career in corporate leadership,
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including his interactions with Walter Scott,
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Tommy Frazier,
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Indomitian Sioux,
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Warren Sapp,
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Donald Trump,
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and King Kong.
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I’m very excited to present Gunther DeVanus.
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So you can do like,
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if you just wanted this particular type of mic,
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you can plug straight into your laptop.
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So you could like get started for like a couple hundred bucks.
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How do you find time to do all this crap?
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Seriously.
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I don’t know.
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I just, well, I don’t go into the office anymore.
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Yeah, that’s nice.
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Yeah.
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So before I forget, so I was at Prep Today yesterday and today, and I’m coming back in the fall.
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And I’m bringing Dean Perez and Tony Villan, do you know who that is?
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Tony Villan’s on our board.
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He’s an ex-Husker player, was on the 94-95 championship team, so he wears a big championship.
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So I took my grandson to the Colorado-Nebraska game two years ago when we beat them in Lincoln.
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My grandson lives in the shadow of Boulder.
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He’s taking basketball camps on campus.
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So he was kind of a Colorado fan.
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So I said, I got to fix this.
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It was a night game.
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Before the night game, I toured him through the new Keywood Hall building.
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I haven’t been in that yet, but I saw it under construction.
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Dean Perez’s office is on the top floor of that thing.
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I forget how many stories it is.
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He’s got a balcony.
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By C.S.
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Beaty
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But he’s got this big ring on it.
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I see Owen staring at his ring.
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Yeah.
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Because he’s got to be what?
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Is he 18 yet?
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No, no.
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He’s like, he just turned 13.
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13.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So he was, and at that time he was 11.
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Okay.
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So he’s staring at Belen’s ring and I said, it’s a pretty cool ring, huh?
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Owen?
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And he goes, yeah, that’s really cool.
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He said, what is, what kind of ring is it?
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And so Tony takes it off and Tony’s got big fingers so he gives it to Owen.
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He says, put it on.
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So Owen puts it on.
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Big red
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Yeah.
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Jewel in there.
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National Championship.
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And Owen goes, wow, how did you get this?
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And he explained it to him.
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He goes, I have two of those.
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And then Owen goes like, wow.
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And he goes, you know what else I have?
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And he says, no.
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He says, I have a Super Bowl ring, too.
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Oh, wow.
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But anyway, I’m bringing him, Tony Villan, and Perez to prep.
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But I’d love to have you come because I’m pitching Nebraska Engineering.
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And
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Most of the kids that go to prep, 99.9% of them all go to college.
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You can’t go to, I mean, it’s called Creighton Prep, prep you for college.
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And you have to take an entrance exam and all this other crap.
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But,
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so,
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a bunch,
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and they’re really,
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their robotics team,
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their high school robotics team came in fourth in the world.
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Did they go to the, they have like a national competition in Iowa.
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This was international.
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Oh, international, yeah.
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They came in fourth in the world.
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That’s crazy, yeah.
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And the kid that leads the team is,
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He’s been offered to go to Harvard and all these other places.
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And a lot of those kids that graduate from there,
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their parents have money,
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which my parents never had.
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I had to take a bus up there.
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But anyway, so a lot of them go to Ivy League schools or Notre Dame.
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And Perez graduated from Notre Dame.
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Did you know that?
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No.
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So Dean Perez has got his undergraduate and his Ph.D. from University of Notre Dame.
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Okay.
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He has Notre Dame football tickets, season tickets.
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Oh, come on.
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No, and he goes to the games.
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I mean, he’s a huge Notre Dame fan.
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Well, there’s more to root for than Nebraska at the moment.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So,
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but anyway,
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so my pitch to these kids is going to be,
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so I know a lot of you have parents that can afford to go to these great schools
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like Notre Dame and Carnegie Mellon and places like that.
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I said, but in my case, when I went to school, my parents didn’t have that kind of money.
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And maybe some of your parents don’t have that kind of money.
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And there’s a golden, there’s a gem of a school right here in Omaha and also in Lincoln.
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And so
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I’d like to pitch Nebraska engineering in general,
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and I’d like to have you talk about going to school here.
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Sure.
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I mean, you’re not from Omaha.
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No.
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Right?
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And how your career’s just launched off.
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Tell them some of the cool things you’ve done.
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I’ve been to Guam, this and that, you know.
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Because we’re just not getting our fair share of those kids.
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What put the icing on the cake for me is, you know, I was a kid from Grand Island.
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I knew about the engineering program here.
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I didn’t know much, but I met, if you remember...
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You recorded?
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Yeah, we’ve been recording for a while.
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This is good grade A content, if I can get my microphone to stop moving.
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If you remember Alma Ramirez,
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she was the main recruiter at,
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for Peter Kiewen Institute,
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for all the College of Engineering in Omaha.
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Her father-in-law is actually Johnny Rogers.
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She’s Alma Ramirez Rogers.
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Oh, really?
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So the Rogers is her, Johnny Rogers is her father-in-law.
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But she was the first person who told me about the AE program,
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the architectural engineering program.
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And the way she sold it was,
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She’s like, what do you want to go to school for?
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I’m like, well, I’m leaning towards engineering, but I don’t really know what.
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She’s like,
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oh,
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you go to architecture engineering,
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you don’t have to know what you’re going to do.
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I’m like, really?
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And so she kind of explained how it works.
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And I was like, we don’t want you to declare until your junior year.
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So then I went to the visit at PKI, the Peter Keywood Institute Open House.
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And then I was like, I was sold.
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It was fairly new then.
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Yeah, it was.
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So I think the building opened around, it was less than 10 years old.
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So my freshman year was the 10-year anniversary of the architecture engineering program.
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And I think it was the first year,
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I don’t know if the building was built yet or not,
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but it might have been.
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But yeah, I was about 10 years old.
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I mean,
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and I will say I did a visit at Lincoln and part of the main reason I didn’t go to
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Lincoln is because I thought their engineering building was terrible.
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I mean, compared to the two.
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You should see this new one.
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Yeah, but I’m sure the new one would have been, you know, it’s completely different.
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And that program has grown because of that new building.
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Yeah, I bet.
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So did you ever hear the story about how that school was started up, PKI started?
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I mean, vaguely, you hear rumors about it.
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So I was on the board, worked at Johnson Controls.
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One day I’m in Kansas City and I get a call.
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It’s from a lady named Winnie Callahan.
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I knew who she was.
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So she was the outgoing director when I came in.
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So people talked about Winnie, but I never met her.
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So Winnie,
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very aggressively energetic,
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aggressive energy about trying to make that school happen because it was in its
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infancy.
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Sure.
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And so I get a call from her.
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I’m at my desk in Kansas City and she says, hey, Walter Scott would like to talk to you.
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I said, really?
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He said, yeah.
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Wouldn’t it be a good time?
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So we set up a time and Walter calls me and he says, hey, I’d like to go to Milwaukee.
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Can you set up a meeting with your CEO?
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And the CEO at that time was Alex Mulneroli, a personal friend of mine.
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We grew up together in the company.
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Well,
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and this is back when Johnson Controls was like,
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I would always tell people that had never heard of us,
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we are one ahead of the Disney Corporation on the Fortune 500 list.
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And we were actually at Fortune 100.
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Yeah, it was.
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Well, yeah, Disney was like 76 and we were like 77 or 75.
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It was, you look at the list and I’d always point out like, look where Disney is.
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Oh yeah, we’re ahead of Disney.
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Yeah.
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We’ve spun off a lot of those companies.
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But anyway, so
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So Walter says, can you set up a meeting with your CEO?
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And I said, yeah, I suppose.
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I said, what do you want to talk to me about?
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And he goes,
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I’d like to talk to him about naming rights for our new architectural engineering
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school.
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I said, really?
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And I was on the board.
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And he said, yeah.
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He said, do you think they’d be interested?
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I said, I don’t know.
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I said, if we can position something in it for Johnson, it might be.
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So long story short, they set up the meeting.
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I set up the meeting with Alex and we fly up there.
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So I’m in Kansas City.
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Walter picks me up in his corporate, in his jet, in Kansas City.
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Because he was the, was he the CEO of Keywood at the time?
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He probably just retired.
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I can’t remember if he either just recently retired or was still the CEO.
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But he’s a billionaire.
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I mean, he owns half, his name was on half the things in Omaha.
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Were you a Scott Scholar?
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Yeah, I was a Scott Scholar.
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Yeah, so he paid for all my school.
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He paid for Ryan’s school.
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Yeah,
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I met him a couple of times and it was just,
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you know,
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I have a picture of me with him and his
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His wife,
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who both of them have since passed away in my office,
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my home office,
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a picture of the three of us.
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Yeah, it was just, it was a, it was an honor.
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Yeah, just being an affiliate with the guy.
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So they picked me up in Kansas City and fly on his jet to Milwaukee.
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Now, as we’re, as we, and on that jet was Ken West from DLR, Dr.
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Waters, Winnie Callahan, and a couple other Nebraska dignitaries.
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There’s a small group of us, like six or eight of us.
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And so Ronald Walters flying to Milwaukee.
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And Walter was kind of saying, you know, bragging about his plane, how nice it is.
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And I had just flown a bunch of customers like a couple months earlier on Johnson’s
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plane,
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which goes to China.
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And I didn’t want to tell him that.
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But it was still nice.
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So we fly into Milwaukee and meet with Alex and other dignitaries at Johnson Controls.
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When he does a pitch about...
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It was going to be called the Johnson Controls School of Architectural Engineering
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and Construction.
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Did you know that?
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I think you told me this story before.
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But yeah,
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it’s just so funny because it’s now the Durham School and it’s just like,
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how different.
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Yeah.
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So long story short, they...
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We leave and a couple days go by and I get a call from Max.
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He says, Gunther, you know, we’re really impressed with that school.
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We don’t really want to spend the money to have naming rights, but we will donate.
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They donated like $100,000 to PKI and then within a few months of that it became
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the Durham School of Architectural Engineering.
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I don’t know what it is.
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I remember somebody telling me the Durham School endowment before and it’s insane.
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It’s something like
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I don’t know the exact figures,
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but I remember they said like the endowment sheds like a million dollars a year.
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It’s just crazy.
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You know, whatever it is.
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So Ryan’s told me that as a Scott scholar, he got to visit Walter’s party house.
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Yeah.
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Hunting lodge or whatever.
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Yeah.
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So they call it the bar.
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I went there four times.
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He would have a party every year and it’s just this party house.
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They call it the barn and he had his own like embossed napkins that just say the
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bar and like stamped on the bottom.
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But yeah,
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he didn’t live there,
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but it was a functional,
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I mean,
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relatively a functional barn,
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but like he had a giant horse showing like track in the middle of it.
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And so like you would go in and there’s,
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you know,
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it’s in the middle of kind of,
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it feels like the middle of North,
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but far North Omaha.
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So if you go like 72nd Street North,
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eventually you kind of run into this area where there’s not really kind of almost
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up towards Blair and you,
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there’s this long meandering driveway and you see horses like fields with horses
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and those are all his,
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but then this house,
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it’s just this giant property.
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Like a lodge?
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Yeah, kind of, but it’s a little more modern.
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It doesn’t really have a rustic vibe.
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It’s fairly modern looking.
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But like you walk in the first thing you see is this giant bar and he hires a
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bartender so he would have all the Scott Scholars for all four years there once a
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year and at that point it’s probably about 80 of us or so each Scott Scholar class
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had about 25 of us and then they would always you know you get it’s a four year
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renewed scholarship so he’d invite all of us and so there’s probably about I think
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about 80 of us there and then you’d have the first thing you do when you walk in
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you see this giant open bar and it has a bartender they’re making you I mean all
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non-alcoholic drinks because we’re all college students but
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One of my favorite memories of that was they had a shoe, just a big old shoe.
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And it was a Shaquille O’Neal shoe that was autographed by Shaquille O’Neal.
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And they took a linen napkin and shoved it in there and kind of forced it in there.
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And they filled it up with pretzels.
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So we’re all eating out of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoe while waiting for our Roy Rogers
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or Shirley Temple or whatever it was.
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Walter Scott was so iconic.
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I mean, what a great guy.
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And then he would take every single,
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so like I said,
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there’s about 80 of us,
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but if you’re a freshman,
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he made sure that you got a one-on-one picture with him and his wife for every
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single one.
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So it was about,
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you know,
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and you take about a minute to two minutes with each individual person.
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So, you know, he would spend probably about half an hour, 45 minutes.
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Just in a photo line.
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And then after that, he would take a group photo with everyone.
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So every single Scott Scholar got a personalized photo with him with this really
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nice,
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I still have mine too,
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a gold leaf certificate autographed by him.
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And then, you know, he shook his hand and everything.
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And then we got this group photo.
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So yeah, I still have mine in my office.
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I’ll show it to you later.
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And then you would have a
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This big barn would have all this random memorabilia like he had this picture of
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like they went and saw Elton John just like his autograph like whatever was poster
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of Elton John and their ticket stubs and random stuff he just kind of accumulated
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and then he the same meal every single year he would have tacos because he said he
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quotes likes Mexican food he’d like get this little speech and dilly bars
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Yeah.
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And I think it’s good.
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Dairy Queen.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, he was on the board for Berkshire Hathaway, which was the own Dairy Queen.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I feel like maybe he’s just, you know, inflating a stock price buying dilly bars.
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But yeah,
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they would walk around with a thing of dilly bars,
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just like at the,
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if you ever go to the Berkshire Hathaway meeting,
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they have dilly bars everywhere because Warren likes them.
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But Walter liked them too.
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So you just hand out just,
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they would have these people,
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these caterers and tuxedos walking around with things of dilly bars.
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We’d all be eating dilly bars.
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Yeah.
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So two stories I want to share with you that resonate in my mind as we’ve been talking.
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So on the flight on Walter’s jet from Kansas City to Milwaukee,
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in that time period,
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Frank Solich had just become the head coach at Nebraska within a year or two.
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So this would have been like, because 99 is when they won the Big 12 Championships.
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So probably around early 2000s or so.
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Yeah, somewhere in that time frame.
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But Solich was on the hot seat because we’d lost a couple games.
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So...
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I’m a huge Husker fan, so I’m trying to create conversation with Walter.
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A bit multi-billionaire, right?
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Yeah, what do you talk about?
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Exactly.
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And I’m sitting across from him on his jet.
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I said, so Walter, are you a Husker fan?
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He goes, oh, I’m an absolute Husker fan.
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And at that time, Solich was on the hot seat.
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I said, so what are your impressions of Frank Solich?
(00:15:32):
And his comment to me was, Frank needs to learn how to become more of a CEO.
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Coming from one of the best CEOs in the... Yeah.
(00:15:40):
At least in the construction industry, yeah.
(00:15:42):
They were actually shipping Frank in from Lincoln to Omaha to meet with...
(00:15:46):
I can’t remember who the CEO of ConAgro was.
(00:15:49):
Oh, wow.
(00:15:49):
At that time?
(00:15:50):
Yeah, I don’t remember.
(00:15:50):
Because if you remember, Frank was the running backs coach.
(00:15:55):
Well, he was a fullback as a player.
(00:15:57):
Yeah.
(00:15:57):
And then, yeah, he became the running backs coach.
(00:15:59):
Under Osborne, but had never been the head coach.
(00:16:02):
He’d never even been a coordinator because Osborne called all the plays.
(00:16:05):
Exactly.
(00:16:06):
Yeah.
(00:16:06):
So...
(00:16:08):
So Walter tells me that we’re working on making Frank more of a CEO,
(00:16:14):
but we’re not sure he’s going to make it.
(00:16:16):
And I’m like, whoa.
(00:16:18):
And he says, but we’re not giving up yet, right?
(00:16:21):
So fast forward like four months, Frank gets fired.
(00:16:26):
And I’m convinced that Walter Scott and those that he hung around with had
(00:16:34):
something to do with Frank getting eliminated.
(00:16:37):
But can you imagine Chip and Frank from Lincoln, Omaha to meet with the ConAgra CEO?
(00:16:42):
No.
(00:16:43):
To learn how to be more all-encompassing in terms of your leadership.
(00:16:47):
Yeah,
(00:16:48):
and I mean,
(00:16:48):
I don’t know if Frank sold each other any more than anybody else,
(00:16:50):
but just thinking about his personality,
(00:16:52):
it’s like,
(00:16:53):
yeah,
(00:16:53):
you’re not really a CEO.
(00:16:55):
You’re more of a football guy, you know?
(00:16:56):
But I think Tom Osborne was the same way.
(00:16:58):
I thought he was just kind of a good old football guy, but... Yeah, it was interesting.
(00:17:01):
I mean, literally, I’ll never forget that conversation.
(00:17:06):
He shared with me that they were shipping Frank in to Omaha to meet him.
(00:17:12):
He needs to be more of a CEO and not the running backs coach.
(00:17:14):
Yeah, which he’d never been.
(00:17:16):
Like I said, he wasn’t even a play caller until he got the head coaching job.
(00:17:19):
And what that said to me was the political influences that money has on that
(00:17:24):
football program is incredible.
(00:17:26):
Yeah.
(00:17:27):
There’s got to be stuff like that where you just...
(00:17:30):
when they fired Frost and all of a sudden he had this five million dollar buyout
(00:17:33):
and people are saying just don’t worry about it you know like we’ll figure we’ll
(00:17:36):
take care of it if they had waited three more weeks they would yeah the buyout
(00:17:39):
would have been less yeah it would have been at least half I think I don’t remember
(00:17:42):
I don’t remember the numbers either but three more weeks yeah and they could have
(00:17:46):
they could have saved millions yeah and Trev Albers is just like I don’t worry
(00:17:49):
about it you know like they so you know if somebody was in his ear saying we’ll
(00:17:53):
take care of that we just he’s got to go you know
(00:17:55):
Yeah, so I’ll never forget that.
(00:17:57):
You know, I specifically asked Walter, so what’s your view on Frank?
(00:18:03):
I mean, do you think he’s a good coach or a bad coach?
(00:18:07):
And he went in this whole discussion about Frank Solich.
(00:18:11):
I thought, whoa, he’s obviously in the know, right?
(00:18:15):
It was really interesting.
(00:18:17):
So that was an unbelievable opportunity.
(00:18:20):
What a great man, you know?
(00:18:21):
I mean, just a great man.
(00:18:22):
I met him a few times at his thing.
(00:18:24):
There was one...
(00:18:25):
it was probably two years his wife had already passed so it was between his wife
(00:18:28):
passing and him passing he was at some event at the school and I was there as an
(00:18:32):
alum just probably doing a recruiting thing he’s just walking around you know he’s
(00:18:35):
got this posse you know just probably bodyguards but just people kind of handlers
(00:18:40):
and I just went up to him I mean he’s just walking I just went straight to him not
(00:18:43):
through his people and I just all these people just got like on edge like what’s
(00:18:46):
this guy doing approaching Walter Scott and I just
(00:18:49):
I very simply said hey I was a Scott scholar I just want to personally say thank
(00:18:52):
you I mean the impact you had I mean it literally changed my life so I just want to
(00:18:56):
shake your hand and he you know he’s like oh so we shook shook his hands and I
(00:18:59):
didn’t stick around I got in and got out but it was just it was it was such a cool
(00:19:04):
opportunity to give him a personal thanks and he passed away a couple years later
(00:19:07):
but I just I’ll never forget just seeing all these faces like why is this guy
(00:19:12):
coming up to him and talking to him and then they saw you know I gave my little
(00:19:15):
thank you and they
(00:19:18):
He was on the Durham School Board when I was on there for a number of years when he
(00:19:22):
retired from that.
(00:19:24):
The whole demeanor of our board changed because Walter was super aggressive when it
(00:19:31):
came to the financials.
(00:19:34):
Being a board member, we review the financials every quarter.
(00:19:38):
I felt sorry for the people that managed our accounting system.
(00:19:42):
Because Walter would invariably find some issue with some number in the data that
(00:19:49):
was presented to us.
(00:19:50):
And he’s now long since been off the board and several of us had tried to pick that up, right?
(00:19:57):
But, I mean, the guy has such a keen mind.
(00:20:00):
And,
(00:20:00):
you know,
(00:20:00):
he was always one to not shy away from challenging the state of Nebraska because we
(00:20:05):
would see the financials and why does the state drop their coverage of our costs by
(00:20:11):
X number of dollars and
(00:20:13):
Walter jump in there and say, we need to go see so-and-so because he was so connected.
(00:20:18):
And my sense was a lot of times he would make a call.
(00:20:21):
Oh, I bet he would.
(00:20:22):
Right to legislators and say, hey, you can’t cut these finances for engineering.
(00:20:27):
You’re killing the state of Nebraska.
(00:20:29):
You’re probably tuned in to,
(00:20:30):
because I’ve been on the board for over 20 years and universities have gone through
(00:20:34):
a lot of cuts.
(00:20:36):
Last year,
(00:20:37):
we’ve got to eliminate faculty and they were going to eliminate the School of
(00:20:42):
Architecture.
(00:20:43):
Just shut it down.
(00:20:44):
Thank God it didn’t happen because somebody jumped in and helped finance that.
(00:20:48):
But the university is under a lot of pressure right now because of state funding.
(00:20:53):
It’s been cut.
(00:20:54):
So speaking of talking to billionaires,
(00:20:56):
I remember you told me once you negotiated with Donald Trump and worked at Tampa?
(00:21:00):
Not directly with him.
(00:21:01):
What was that story?
(00:21:02):
So I was living in Tampa.
(00:21:04):
Johnson Controls did a project somewhere on the east coast of Florida.
(00:21:08):
And I
(00:21:09):
We finished the project.
(00:21:10):
The project was done.
(00:21:13):
To my knowledge, there were no issues.
(00:21:15):
But Trump was the developer.
(00:21:17):
Okay.
(00:21:18):
And we were looking to get our retainage.
(00:21:21):
I’ve heard stories about Trump’s negotiations.
(00:21:23):
Yeah.
(00:21:24):
So we’re trying to get it closed out on the project, get our final money retainage.
(00:21:29):
And the offer that came back from the developer,
(00:21:33):
that’s like 50 cents on the dollar or something.
(00:21:35):
Might be even less.
(00:21:36):
I don’t know.
(00:21:38):
And so immediately we responded and said, so what have we done wrong?
(00:21:42):
I mean, why would you take money away from us?
(00:21:45):
And the response was, we have no beef with your performance.
(00:21:50):
We just don’t think we should have paid so much to begin with.
(00:21:55):
And Trump was never in these project meetings to my knowledge.
(00:21:58):
And I personally was never, but my guys that worked for me were.
(00:22:03):
And Trump always had lawyers there.
(00:22:06):
So they kept wanting to negotiate for something less than a dollar for a dollar.
(00:22:12):
And we stood strong.
(00:22:13):
And if you continue to do this and hold our attention, we’ll disable the JC 8540 system.
(00:22:20):
So you won’t have any temperature controls in your building anymore.
(00:22:22):
No, exactly.
(00:22:24):
So, but that was really interesting.
(00:22:26):
The other place that,
(00:22:26):
that’s the only time I can remember where we had construction meetings where
(00:22:30):
lawyers were present.
(00:22:32):
Trump had lawyers there.
(00:22:33):
And then the other place was Disney.
(00:22:36):
We did a lot.
(00:22:37):
Yeah,
(00:22:37):
Disney always had,
(00:22:39):
my recollection was Disney had lawyers sit in on our project meetings,
(00:22:44):
right?
(00:22:44):
Where normally there’s construction people,
(00:22:46):
but Disney had a construction manager or two there,
(00:22:49):
but they always had a lawyer there.
(00:22:50):
Interesting.
(00:22:51):
And so it was, they were another really difficult client.
(00:22:54):
I think at Disney,
(00:22:55):
like all the secretive for like their intellectual property,
(00:22:58):
and I had friends that worked at Disneyland,
(00:22:59):
and I had,
(00:23:00):
when I was in high school,
(00:23:02):
our band went and played at Disneyland,
(00:23:04):
and you know,
(00:23:04):
so we had to go.
(00:23:04):
You were a band guy?
(00:23:05):
Oh, yeah.
(00:23:08):
Did you ever think about playing for NU?
(00:23:10):
I thought about it, yeah.
(00:23:12):
I thought about it.
(00:23:12):
Honestly, if I wouldn’t have gone to engineering in Omaha, I would have at least tried out.
(00:23:17):
But at the time, UNO’s band just wasn’t.
(00:23:21):
The time commitment for the perks of being involved in the band just weren’t there.
(00:23:26):
I remember my first day going to the dorms and seeing the band out practicing, whatever it was.
(00:23:30):
Early in the morning.
(00:23:31):
Yeah, I’m like, I’m done with this.
(00:23:33):
Now,
(00:23:33):
if I was in Lincoln,
(00:23:34):
it would have been worth it just to go to the games and have that experience,
(00:23:37):
but
(00:23:38):
I yeah that was that was a big factor in choosing to go to Omaha over Lincoln it’s
(00:23:43):
like well I can’t try out for the band but uh I had a I had some friends that were
(00:23:47):
in the band actually did you ever see the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man yeah or know
(00:23:50):
what it is so he goes to Jim Carrey the whole premise is he just has to say yes to
(00:23:55):
everyone so he has this girlfriend that like is real outgoing and adventurous
(00:23:59):
they’re like we’re gonna go to the very first plane that’s you know the very first
(00:24:02):
flight out that’s where we’re going it was to Lincoln Nebraska so we’re like all
(00:24:05):
right let’s go to Lincoln and
(00:24:06):
There’s a shot with Jim Carrey going to a Husker game.
(00:24:09):
And then they like pan across the crowd.
(00:24:11):
There’s one shot of the marching band and front and center.
(00:24:14):
Like,
(00:24:14):
you know,
(00:24:14):
for me to you,
(00:24:15):
there’s a guy playing the snare drum and that’s one of my best friends.
(00:24:18):
Oh, really?
(00:24:18):
He was our section leader in Grand Island.
(00:24:20):
And so, I mean, it’s a shot of the whole band, but he’s right there in this movie.
(00:24:23):
So I remember going, I knew they had a camp.
(00:24:25):
I didn’t know he was in the movie, but I knew they went to Lincoln in the movie.
(00:24:28):
And I’m at this theater going, that’s Andy!
(00:24:31):
Did you go to the same high school that Scott Frost went to?
(00:24:33):
No, he went to Wood River.
(00:24:35):
But the Disneyland thing, I remember when our high school band went, they call it backstage.
(00:24:40):
So it’s like they kind of treat everything at Disneyland like the outside of the
(00:24:44):
park is on stage and then you go backstage,
(00:24:46):
kind of like a theater type of environment.
(00:24:48):
And the underground environment there, do you know about that?
(00:24:51):
Very little.
(00:24:51):
But I just remember that was the only, we weren’t allowed to take pictures.
(00:24:53):
And I mean, it was, like you said, security wise, like we just
(00:24:57):
We got like ushered into one little room and that was it.
(00:25:00):
We couldn’t take pictures.
(00:25:01):
They’re real hardcore about that.
(00:25:03):
We got dressed.
(00:25:03):
They shipped us off there and just like everything was so tight knit.
(00:25:07):
And I have friends that worked at the park just for a summer gig,
(00:25:11):
you know,
(00:25:11):
and they still won’t,
(00:25:12):
you know,
(00:25:13):
they can’t talk about certain things.
(00:25:14):
I think they’re under NDAs and whatnot.
(00:25:15):
And there’s things like they coach them on how to answer certain questions.
(00:25:18):
Like if you ever ask anybody how many Mickeys there are,
(00:25:21):
they always say,
(00:25:21):
oh,
(00:25:21):
there’s only one Mickey.
(00:25:22):
Because they coordinate the person, the Mickey Mouse outfit.
(00:25:25):
There can only ever be one Mickey Mouse outfit out of the park at any given part in time.
(00:25:29):
And so the question is if he’s in a whatever, an Uncle Sam outfit or a jungle, whatever theme.
(00:25:35):
It’s just that there’s always ever one.
(00:25:37):
And if somebody asks you how many Mickeys are there,
(00:25:38):
they always say,
(00:25:39):
their coach just said,
(00:25:39):
oh,
(00:25:40):
there’s only one Mickey.
(00:25:41):
When I was in Florida, we did the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure.
(00:25:46):
That park’s awesome.
(00:25:47):
It was seven different venues within Universal.
(00:25:50):
It was being built in Florida.
(00:25:52):
And we were the constant.
(00:25:54):
So there were seven different general contractors.
(00:25:57):
We were those constant HVAC.
(00:26:00):
So each park had its own general.
(00:26:01):
They just contracted separately.
(00:26:03):
And that was like managing that was very difficult because each GC had a different
(00:26:09):
Well, yeah.
(00:26:10):
I’m sure they had different schedules and different, you know.
(00:26:13):
One of the cool things was,
(00:26:14):
so one of them was the King Kong Pavilion or whatever they called it.
(00:26:20):
And I can remember we put in the fire alarm system in all the pavilions,
(00:26:25):
but that one was a real challenge because if you’ve ever been in that facility,
(00:26:29):
King Kong is there.
(00:26:30):
He’s like,
(00:26:32):
You know, three stories tall.
(00:26:33):
He’s fighting airplanes, fires everywhere.
(00:26:36):
We had to put a fire alarm system in that looked for temperature and CO detection.
(00:26:40):
And so we ended up,
(00:26:43):
we couldn’t find a place to put the temperature,
(00:26:45):
fire temperature sensor in that venue because it kept setting it off because there
(00:26:51):
wasn’t really no fire other than the fires that were there for the exhibit,
(00:26:54):
right?
(00:26:54):
Yeah, of course.
(00:26:55):
So I can remember we decided to put the fire sensor under King Kong’s left armpit.
(00:27:03):
That was the only place we could put it where fires wouldn’t set the damn thing off.
(00:27:07):
You’re worried about body odor.
(00:27:09):
Exactly.
(00:27:10):
So it’s left armpit.
(00:27:11):
We put the fire sensor.
(00:27:13):
It was crazy.
(00:27:15):
Man,
(00:27:15):
I can’t imagine that coordination meeting trying to figure out where to...
(00:27:19):
We were the constant between all seven venues.
(00:27:22):
Universal Studios.
(00:27:23):
Well, that park is crazy because one was Dr. Seuss, another one was like...
(00:27:27):
They’re all different.
(00:27:28):
Yeah, they’re all different.
(00:27:29):
The King Kong venue because of the flames and fires that happened with that.
(00:27:33):
As he’s fighting these airplanes.
(00:27:34):
Yeah.
(00:27:35):
So, all right.
(00:27:35):
So you’re from, you’re born of South Omaha, right?
(00:27:37):
You always made the distinction, not Omaha, South Omaha.
(00:27:40):
Was it a different city when you were a kid still?
(00:27:42):
No, it was at one point in time in its history.
(00:27:44):
Yeah.
(00:27:45):
I remember Warren Buffett.
(00:27:46):
That was his thing.
(00:27:47):
He was from,
(00:27:48):
if he wasn’t from South Omaha,
(00:27:49):
he at least got to start like selling newspapers to the people at South Omaha.
(00:27:54):
That could be.
(00:27:54):
I’m not familiar with that.
(00:27:56):
But at one point in time, South Omaha was its own city.
(00:27:59):
But, uh,
(00:28:00):
I’m not exactly sure when it became integrated into Omaha, kind of like Elkhorn now.
(00:28:05):
But yeah, it was basic.
(00:28:07):
Basically, when I when I grew up was meatpacking plant.
(00:28:10):
We’re the world’s largest stockyards.
(00:28:12):
I laugh and kid my wife’s wife and I’ve been married 52 years.
(00:28:16):
Right.
(00:28:17):
Dated her in high school at Creighton Prep and she went to Mercy, which is the all girls.
(00:28:21):
I was going to say, how’d you meet your wife in high school?
(00:28:23):
Go to all boys school.
(00:28:25):
And I dated some other girls in high school.
(00:28:27):
And we lived within, we lived on 33rd and T Street, six or eight blocks from the stockyards.
(00:28:32):
And when the wind blows south, the whole neighborhood smelled like the stockyards.
(00:28:36):
Manure.
(00:28:37):
Yeah.
(00:28:37):
So I would bring home dates from,
(00:28:40):
I dated a girl from Benson High School and bring her home to meet my folks.
(00:28:45):
And she’d go, man, it really smells bad here.
(00:28:50):
And I go, yeah, that’s just part of living here.
(00:28:53):
My dad worked in a meatpacking plant.
(00:28:55):
So that dating didn’t work out, right?
(00:28:58):
You had to go to their place, huh?
(00:28:59):
Yeah.
(00:28:59):
My wife, Judy, she’s a Polish descent.
(00:29:02):
So her grandparents were Polish immigrants.
(00:29:05):
My parents were Lithuanian German immigrants.
(00:29:08):
So I’ll never forget bringing her home to meet my folks and never complained about
(00:29:13):
the smell because she was from South Omaha.
(00:29:15):
This is the one.
(00:29:16):
Yeah.
(00:29:16):
Well, and the other thing was my father never spoke English.
(00:29:19):
He spoke Lithuanian because our entire family
(00:29:22):
St. Anthony’s Parish Community was all Lithuanian.
(00:29:25):
St.
(00:29:25):
Anthony’s would sponsor people from refugee camps in Europe after World War II to
(00:29:30):
come to the U.S.
(00:29:31):
You had to have a sponsor to come.
(00:29:33):
And so our whole neighborhood was Lithuanian.
(00:29:36):
We did Catholic Mass in Lithuanian.
(00:29:39):
I went to grade school at St.
(00:29:40):
Anthony’s and we did,
(00:29:41):
we’d sing the U.S.
(00:29:43):
National Anthem and we sing the Lithuanian National Anthem.
(00:29:45):
Can you speak Lithuanian?
(00:29:47):
I was really fluent because my dad, that’s the only way I could speak to him.
(00:29:50):
But my father has passed away like 25 years ago, so I haven’t spoken it.
(00:29:55):
Now, I’m actually taking an online course to refresh my Lithuanian.
(00:30:00):
It’s coming back really quick.
(00:30:01):
That’s the thing about language I’ve learned even just having kids that spoke Spanish.
(00:30:06):
It’s all in there somewhere.
(00:30:07):
You just have to refresh it.
(00:30:10):
My mother was German.
(00:30:12):
So my father fled the Soviet Union
(00:30:15):
I mean, fled Lithuania when the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania and took it over.
(00:30:20):
And he was in his 20s at the time.
(00:30:22):
And men in their 20s in Lithuania at that time tried to resist the Soviet invasion.
(00:30:28):
And the Soviets had tanks and armament.
(00:30:31):
Lithuanians had sticks and they didn’t have much ammunition.
(00:30:35):
So when it became obvious that the Soviets were going to succeed in taking over
(00:30:41):
Lithuania,
(00:30:42):
my grandfather said to my father,
(00:30:45):
You need to leave.
(00:30:45):
Because if they capture you, you’re going to be put in a prison in Siberia.
(00:30:50):
So my father fled Lithuania and went to a refugee camp in Germany.
(00:30:55):
This is right after World War II.
(00:30:57):
And the refugee camp was managed by the United States Army.
(00:31:01):
And my father lived in that refugee camp for four years.
(00:31:04):
He met my mother.
(00:31:05):
My mother was a cook in this refugee camp.
(00:31:08):
She was German.
(00:31:09):
So that explains my name, right?
(00:31:10):
My first name is German.
(00:31:11):
My last name is Lithuania.
(00:31:13):
And so...
(00:31:14):
So they met there and they waited three years to immigrate to the United States.
(00:31:19):
You had to have a sponsor to immigrate to the U.S. after World War II.
(00:31:23):
And St. Anthony’s Parish here in South Omaha sponsored Lithuanians to come to the U.S.
(00:31:29):
So our whole neighborhood is Lithuanian.
(00:31:31):
So that’s how they got here and was born in South Omaha.
(00:31:34):
And so I make the distinction only because the culture in South Omaha,
(00:31:38):
there’s like a four-mile square area of South Omaha that’s Catholic.
(00:31:44):
St.
(00:31:44):
Anthony was Lithuanian,
(00:31:45):
St.
(00:31:45):
Stanislaus within flocks was Polish,
(00:31:48):
St.
(00:31:49):
Peter Paul was Croatian,
(00:31:51):
St.
(00:31:51):
Mary’s was Irish.
(00:31:52):
There’s like 10 Catholic churches within some small square mile area,
(00:31:57):
all ethnic,
(00:31:58):
that primarily were made up of immigrants.
(00:32:02):
Was it all around like the same kind of thing post-World War II?
(00:32:06):
I believe so, yeah.
(00:32:06):
Sponsoring just different parts of the country?
(00:32:08):
My recollection.
(00:32:09):
Different, I guess, countries.
(00:32:11):
Now today,
(00:32:11):
if you went to,
(00:32:12):
so the dioceses of the Catholic Church here in Omaha has since shut down St.
(00:32:18):
Anthony’s.
(00:32:19):
It’s the parish I grew up in.
(00:32:20):
As president of the Altar Boys, I mean, just gave me a great education.
(00:32:23):
And so today that neighborhood is mostly Hispanic.
(00:32:26):
Yeah, we go there.
(00:32:27):
There’s an amazing ice cream place.
(00:32:30):
I take my kids there all the time.
(00:32:31):
If you want great Mexican food, South Belmont is a place to go.
(00:32:34):
Oh, yeah.
(00:32:35):
You can’t compete.
(00:32:35):
Yeah, so it’s just amazing how that’s all changed.
(00:32:38):
And the Lithuanian Bakery, have you ever heard of that?
(00:32:41):
It’s on Pacific Street.
(00:32:44):
So that’s the Muscavich’s family that when I was a kid,
(00:32:47):
they started to make bread in the basement,
(00:32:50):
their basement.
(00:32:50):
When you go into their house, the whole house smelled like yeast.
(00:32:54):
But they started to make bread in the basement and they sell it to the neighborhood.
(00:32:59):
And from that,
(00:33:00):
it became so popular,
(00:33:01):
they decided to open up their own bakery,
(00:33:03):
which is on 33rd Avenue and Q Street,
(00:33:06):
the original one.
(00:33:08):
And now they’re out on Pacific Street.
(00:33:10):
But they ship their torts all over the world.
(00:33:14):
I’ve had them, yeah.
(00:33:14):
I think I’ve had them in like, I’m pretty sure I’ve gone to like Minnesota.
(00:33:19):
My sister lives up there and
(00:33:20):
had a tort there from the Lithuanian bakery in Omaha.
(00:33:23):
It started in their basement.
(00:33:24):
That’s crazy.
(00:33:26):
And so Miscavich’s family started that.
(00:33:30):
Within the Lithuanian community of St. Anthony’s, they were pretty prominent.
(00:33:34):
So did everyone go to Creighton Prep then?
(00:33:37):
No.
(00:33:38):
So when it came time to graduate St.
(00:33:41):
Anthony’s grade school,
(00:33:42):
eighth grade,
(00:33:42):
I’m leaving to go to high school.
(00:33:44):
And most of my friends went to either South High School
(00:33:49):
Or Ryan High School, which doesn’t exist anymore.
(00:33:51):
Not Brian.
(00:33:52):
Not Brian.
(00:33:53):
It was a Catholic school, and it has since closed down.
(00:33:57):
And so I did not want to go to Creighton Prep.
(00:34:00):
So Al Muscavages, the senior boy in that family, went to Creighton Prep.
(00:34:07):
And the Muscavages family, and he played for Nebraska.
(00:34:11):
He played for Prep.
(00:34:12):
He played for Nebraska.
(00:34:13):
He was a great football lineman.
(00:34:16):
Just awesome.
(00:34:17):
And I don’t know how many years he played for Nebraska,
(00:34:19):
but he was like all state and all that stuff.
(00:34:22):
So the word had gotten through our community that the best place to get a Catholic
(00:34:26):
education for boys was Creighton Prep.
(00:34:30):
And it was expensive back then.
(00:34:33):
I just asked today, what’s the tuition here?
(00:34:36):
$18,000 a year.
(00:34:38):
That’s more expensive than UNO.
(00:34:40):
Exactly.
(00:34:40):
You go to college for less.
(00:34:41):
Yeah.
(00:34:43):
When I went, it was $450 a semester, so $900 a year.
(00:34:48):
And I used to have to work the switchboard in a Jesuit priest residency to reduce
(00:34:54):
some of my tuition.
(00:34:56):
That was like a student job that they had?
(00:35:00):
Yeah, to help relieve some of the costs.
(00:35:04):
So I wanted to either go to Ryan or South because that’s where all my friends were going.
(00:35:08):
And my parents said,
(00:35:09):
no,
(00:35:09):
you’re going to get the best education we can provide,
(00:35:12):
even though they couldn’t afford it.
(00:35:14):
And you’re going to prep.
(00:35:15):
And so we didn’t have a car.
(00:35:17):
And I would take a city bus from South Omaha to downtown Omaha and then transfer
(00:35:23):
from a bus there to the crossroads.
(00:35:25):
Crossroads was 72nd and Dodge.
(00:35:27):
And then I would walk like the three-quarters of a mile from 72nd and Dodge to
(00:35:32):
72nd,
(00:35:33):
came around the street up to prep.
(00:35:35):
And my freshman year, that’s how I got to school.
(00:35:38):
How long did that take?
(00:35:40):
It was a few hours.
(00:35:41):
I mean, yeah.
(00:35:43):
My sophomore year,
(00:35:46):
I had a friend,
(00:35:47):
St.
(00:35:47):
Anthony’s grade school graduate,
(00:35:50):
that had his driver’s license and a car.
(00:35:52):
So my sophomore year on, I got rights because he had a license.
(00:35:56):
And our first car, my family’s first car came when I was 17.
(00:36:02):
My parents scrounged up enough money to help me get a driver’s license.
(00:36:05):
They bought a 1963 Chevrolet Impala.
(00:36:10):
It had rusted through the floorboard.
(00:36:15):
I put some floor mats in so you couldn’t see the road.
(00:36:19):
And it didn’t have air conditioning.
(00:36:20):
And no power steering.
(00:36:22):
Well, my first car didn’t have power steering, but it did have everything.
(00:36:25):
It had a floor.
(00:36:27):
But the exterior of it, I polished that thing like it was gold.
(00:36:32):
I waxed it.
(00:36:34):
Our neighbors used to tell me, Gunther, you’re going to rub off the paint.
(00:36:39):
You got to make up for the smell of cow shit when you’re taking a girl on a day.
(00:36:42):
Exactly.
(00:36:44):
Our family was so proud of that car, but that was our first car.
(00:36:48):
Did you always want to be a Husker then?
(00:36:50):
You didn’t go to Creighton, obviously.
(00:36:52):
Graduated in 71 from high school, and Nebraska won our first tournament.
(00:36:55):
So that’s a good year for a Husker fan.
(00:36:57):
First National Championship in 70 and 71.
(00:37:00):
So I became hooked.
(00:37:01):
And what’s interesting,
(00:37:03):
so my father,
(00:37:03):
who never spoke English and was Lithuanian,
(00:37:07):
became a huge Husker fan.
(00:37:09):
I mean, he could understand English, but he couldn’t speak it.
(00:37:11):
And so, I mean, he was glued to the TV.
(00:37:14):
And so I became that too over time.
(00:37:17):
People at John’s Controls would swear I have a Husker tattoo somewhere in my body.
(00:37:22):
And a John’s Controls tattoo, right?
(00:37:23):
Yeah, well, I could believe it.
(00:37:25):
But I don’t.
(00:37:26):
I look back on getting you to come to Johnson Controls.
(00:37:29):
I still can’t believe we pulled that out.
(00:37:31):
I can’t either most days.
(00:37:32):
Because you were kind of a civil focus.
(00:37:34):
I was structural engineer.
(00:37:35):
Structural, yeah.
(00:37:36):
So what I remember,
(00:37:37):
and I don’t know if I’ve ever talked you through my perspective,
(00:37:39):
or maybe if you could compare notes.
(00:37:41):
So I was a structural engineering emphasis.
(00:37:44):
So we have structural.
(00:37:45):
Which really fits with Johnson.
(00:37:46):
No, yeah.
(00:37:48):
So there’s mechanical,
(00:37:49):
electrical,
(00:37:50):
acoustics,
(00:37:51):
and really like any of those would make a better fit.
(00:37:54):
More sense.
(00:37:55):
More sense working for an HVAC manufacturer or low voltage company.
(00:37:59):
But I was structural, but I wasn’t really like a passionate structural person.
(00:38:02):
It’s just we,
(00:38:03):
the faculty at that time was very,
(00:38:05):
the quality of faculty and structures was not the same as it was in all the other
(00:38:09):
disciplines,
(00:38:09):
especially like mechanicals kind of at a little
(00:38:11):
So, there’s this professor, Dr. Gary Krause, who is this icon, and I took every single class.
(00:38:18):
He retired about three or four years ago, too.
(00:38:20):
But he was like,
(00:38:21):
him and Clarence Waters were my two guys,
(00:38:24):
and Waters didn’t teach as much as,
(00:38:26):
at the time,
(00:38:26):
he was the director of the Durham School,
(00:38:27):
so he had a very low teaching load,
(00:38:29):
because he was doing a lot of administrative things.
(00:38:31):
So, I took a couple classes, but not a lot.
(00:38:34):
But I took every single Gary Krause class,
(00:38:36):
and I just felt like I understood it better,
(00:38:38):
because he was such a great teacher.
(00:38:39):
Well,
(00:38:40):
I started to take a couple of other classes from other professors,
(00:38:42):
realized I didn’t actually like structural engineering that much.
(00:38:45):
It was just kind of the professor was that good.
(00:38:47):
I got to my senior year of the program,
(00:38:49):
not really sure what I wanted to do with it,
(00:38:51):
and just assumed,
(00:38:52):
all right,
(00:38:52):
I’ll become a structural engineer.
(00:38:53):
And we started that Architectural Engineering National Conference.
(00:38:57):
And I had known you for a while from just doing... Because I was on the board.
(00:39:00):
You were on the board and as a student I would do... You were super active.
(00:39:03):
Yeah, so we had like a student advisory board and I was the chair of that.
(00:39:07):
ASLAC?
(00:39:07):
Yeah, ASLAC.
(00:39:08):
Yeah, still around.
(00:39:09):
Architectural Engineering Student Leadership Advisory Committee I think is what it stands for.
(00:39:14):
ASLAC, yeah.
(00:39:15):
I had been involved for all four or five years I was in the engineering program.
(00:39:19):
I was on that,
(00:39:19):
but I was the chair for one year and different committee leads at different points
(00:39:24):
in time.
(00:39:24):
And so I remember going like presenting to that board and
(00:39:27):
Doing the student update, whatever.
(00:39:28):
So I got to know you.
(00:39:29):
I got to know a lot of people, but I got to know you pretty well.
(00:39:31):
And I remember going to that, we started an engineering conference, a national conference.
(00:39:35):
We got Johnson Controls through you to sponsor a bunch of stuff.
(00:39:38):
You guys did some tech sessions.
(00:39:40):
I remember you pulling me out in the hallway.
(00:39:42):
I was just walking around trying to make sure everybody’s like,
(00:39:44):
hey,
(00:39:44):
you got everything you need kind of thing.
(00:39:46):
And you just stopped me and said, hey, what are you gonna do when you graduate?
(00:39:48):
And I said, well, I don’t know.
(00:39:50):
And he’s like, you’d be a great fit for our company.
(00:39:52):
And put that idea out there, just kind of left it alone.
(00:39:54):
Well, you were so extroverted and so energetic.
(00:39:58):
And I knew you were structurally focused.
(00:40:01):
I thought, man, we need this kid.
(00:40:03):
Now that you’re with Johnson Controls, I mean, that’s what you need to be, right?
(00:40:07):
Energetic and outgoing and that type of thing to do the job you do.
(00:40:11):
And I thought it was a long shot, but we’ll give it a whirl.
(00:40:13):
Well, you had the benefit of...
(00:40:15):
So 2008 was my freshman year.
(00:40:19):
So the economy was in the tank.
(00:40:21):
And so when I took my tour to PKI...
(00:40:24):
Just the year before as a senior,
(00:40:26):
they had an entire third floor of PKI just to deal with all the internship requests
(00:40:30):
they had.
(00:40:31):
A guy’s full-time job was placing people in internships and entry-level jobs,
(00:40:35):
and they hired him,
(00:40:35):
and that’s all he did.
(00:40:36):
My freshman year, they fired him.
(00:40:37):
They laid off that entire group because there wasn’t that much demand anymore,
(00:40:41):
and just the market fell out,
(00:40:43):
especially construction,
(00:40:44):
right?
(00:40:45):
And so by the time I was graduating in 2013,
(00:40:48):
five years later,
(00:40:50):
the jobs were just starting,
(00:40:51):
and so I had
(00:40:53):
You know,
(00:40:53):
you would hear stories about people that came before us have five job offers,
(00:40:56):
they’d be comparing benefits.
(00:40:57):
I had an internship at DLR Group as a structural intern,
(00:41:01):
but no commitment to not only just,
(00:41:04):
I didn’t even have commitment to work during the school year because they didn’t
(00:41:06):
have enough work.
(00:41:08):
And now it’s like they hire a freshman and they have to work all year round for the
(00:41:11):
five years that they’re in school.
(00:41:12):
But I couldn’t get an internship in engineering proper until my senior year or
(00:41:17):
between my senior and grad school year.
(00:41:19):
And then during the school year,
(00:41:20):
they couldn’t justify keeping me on because they didn’t have enough projects.
(00:41:24):
And then you at a career fair,
(00:41:28):
I was writing an article that got published in the Journal of Architectural
(00:41:31):
Engineering.
(00:41:32):
We wanted you to be a
(00:41:34):
By C.S.
(00:41:34):
Beaty
(00:41:43):
And so we interviewed, so Clarence and I wrote, really I wrote it, but it was Clarence’s idea.
(00:41:47):
He said, here’s just kind of what I want.
(00:41:49):
You go ahead and write it.
(00:41:50):
I actually got some, I got college credit for writing this paper.
(00:41:54):
But we interviewed you and we interviewed Todd Feldman because you had- HDR.
(00:41:57):
From HDR, yeah.
(00:41:58):
So Todd was, he was a part-time faculty member.
(00:42:01):
So we want to talk a little bit about that experience of being a part-time faculty member.
(00:42:03):
We want to talk to you about the board and kind of how that works.
(00:42:07):
And I remember going up to you at the career fair because we’re going to pull you
(00:42:11):
aside and do an interview while you’re in town for the career fair.
(00:42:14):
And I were saying, hey, we still on for tomorrow?
(00:42:16):
And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(00:42:17):
Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?
(00:42:18):
I’m like, well, I don’t know.
(00:42:19):
You’re like, take an interview.
(00:42:21):
And so you had a sign-up sheet.
(00:42:22):
And I couldn’t tell you no because I just asked you to do an interview for me.
(00:42:26):
And you’re like, well, take an interview for me.
(00:42:27):
I’m like, well, I can’t tell him no because he just said yes to me.
(00:42:29):
So I signed up.
(00:42:31):
And you had already put that idea in my head of coming to work for you,
(00:42:33):
which it’s not that I ignored it,
(00:42:35):
but it’s like,
(00:42:35):
yeah,
(00:42:36):
you know,
(00:42:36):
whatever.
(00:42:37):
And then it really was in that first interview where you started talking about the job.
(00:42:41):
That’s when you told me about negotiating with Donald Trump.
(00:42:43):
I remember that.
(00:42:45):
And then talking about the job, talking about what it was.
(00:42:48):
And just like you laid out the timeline for the hiring decisions.
(00:42:52):
Just like I could have a job and have it figured out by Thanksgiving.
(00:42:57):
And going into my final semester of college, just have that done with it.
(00:43:00):
You didn’t have to worry about it.
(00:43:01):
You didn’t have to worry about it.
(00:43:02):
And so I ended up going, getting the interview.
(00:43:04):
The interview event at that time, they flew us all into Milwaukee.
(00:43:07):
We had this reception at Miller Park is what it was called with the Brewers.
(00:43:10):
Yeah, getting a tour.
(00:43:11):
I was a Brewers fan.
(00:43:13):
Oh, you were?
(00:43:13):
Yeah, I still am, but I’m not a diehard.
(00:43:15):
But that was my height of my fandom.
(00:43:17):
So super impressive.
(00:43:18):
Just seeing John’s Controls everywhere at Miller Park and getting a tour of the
(00:43:21):
dugout and everything.
(00:43:22):
The back, you know, the clubhouse and just this amazing show.
(00:43:26):
This kid that’s living off of ramen noodles now being treated like a celebrity and took the job.
(00:43:32):
You offered the job, took the job.
(00:43:33):
And I didn’t get another job offer until...
(00:43:36):
There’s three different engineering firms I was really courting.
(00:43:39):
HDR?
(00:43:40):
HDR was not on my list because they just, they never showed an interest.
(00:43:43):
Really?
(00:43:44):
I applied several times for an internship and they always had,
(00:43:46):
they would take one intern a year kind of thing.
(00:43:50):
Today, that’s not the case.
(00:43:51):
I know, I know.
(00:43:52):
It’s crazy because they would take like one and I would get the interview but not
(00:43:56):
the job kind of thing.
(00:43:57):
And that happened to me all the time.
(00:43:59):
But I interned at DLR and
(00:44:01):
And I was told after the fact they had every intention to offer me a job,
(00:44:05):
but they didn’t have a job yet.
(00:44:07):
I tried very aggressively to court HGA.
(00:44:11):
They had an office in Milwaukee, an office in Lincoln, or not in Lincoln, in Minneapolis.
(00:44:15):
In their headquarter, Minneapolis.
(00:44:16):
Yeah, and I actually went to their office, my family in Minneapolis.
(00:44:21):
And so we were up for Thanksgiving to visit family.
(00:44:23):
And I reached out to HGA and said, hey, can you give me a tour while I’m here?
(00:44:25):
And they were on our board.
(00:44:27):
Yeah, and that’s how I got to know them.
(00:44:28):
So they gave me a tour.
(00:44:29):
They interviewed me.
(00:44:30):
They
(00:44:31):
Laid out the spread.
(00:44:32):
I was very impressed, but they just didn’t have a job.
(00:44:34):
And then Leo A.
(00:44:35):
Daly at the time,
(00:44:36):
Ryan Curtis,
(00:44:36):
who’s actually the chair of the board now,
(00:44:38):
him and I got to know each other really well.
(00:44:41):
And he sent me an email.
(00:44:42):
I think it was six months into my job at Johnson saying, hey,
(00:44:45):
By C.S.
(00:44:46):
Beaty
(00:45:11):
I had all the mentors that I needed,
(00:45:14):
even though I didn’t know anything about mechanical engineering or anything at the
(00:45:17):
time,
(00:45:17):
really in construction.
(00:45:18):
It’s like I had everything I needed.
(00:45:20):
I remember going to the first...
(00:45:22):
Husker game with Tommy Frazier in our Nebraska suite yeah and you were there
(00:45:28):
obviously but Tommy Frazier’s in there not even paying attention to the game
(00:45:31):
flirting with the hostess or whatever he was doing and being like it was a it was a
(00:45:35):
pinch me self moment I’m like here I am this diehard Husker fan with Tommy Frazier
(00:45:39):
the greatest quarterback of all time in a Nebraska uniform just hanging out and I’m
(00:45:43):
watching this game and I’m eight you know I was eight I’m 22 years old you know
(00:45:47):
doing this kind of stuff and it was just a surreal thing
(00:45:50):
Johnson made me the executive in charge of the African American Affinity Network.
(00:45:55):
I would meet quarterly with 50 to 100 African American Johnson employees to be a
(00:46:02):
resource to help them advance their career.
(00:46:04):
And so once a year at that time,
(00:46:07):
we would hold like a conference and bring all these African American employees in,
(00:46:11):
try and help them
(00:46:13):
advanced in the company so because I was in charge of that I brought Tommy Frazier
(00:46:17):
in to speak he just authored his book about his career and I mean he came from
(00:46:22):
pretty tough beginnings his brother was in prison group in Florida right Bradenton
(00:46:27):
Florida yeah and so uh brought him in to speak to the to the group and it was all
(00:46:32):
about you know don’t worry about where you came from focus on where you’re going
(00:46:36):
right
(00:46:36):
Actually,
(00:46:37):
do you ever heard that when Nebraska played Miami in the Orange Bowl in Tom
(00:46:42):
Osborne’s first national championship,
(00:46:44):
who was the big tackle for Miami?
(00:46:46):
Warren Sapp.
(00:46:47):
Warren Sapp, yeah.
(00:46:48):
Warren Sapp, yeah.
(00:46:49):
So at that time, Brooke Berenger and Frazier were sharing time as quarterback.
(00:46:56):
Yeah, the blood clot issues.
(00:46:57):
Yeah.
(00:46:57):
Or Tommy did, yeah.
(00:46:59):
So because Tommy hadn’t played much, Berenger started the game.
(00:47:03):
And then later, we weren’t doing so well, so later...
(00:47:06):
Osborne brought in Tommy Frazier and so when Tommy stepped up to take snap from
(00:47:12):
center for the first time in the game Warren Sapp said so where you been dude or
(00:47:17):
something to that effect and Tommy’s response he’s told me this personally he said
(00:47:22):
Tommy’s response was hey badass it’s not where I’ve been it’s where I’m going I’m
(00:47:27):
going to the end zone
(00:47:29):
And he scored, right?
(00:47:31):
Yeah, of course.
(00:47:32):
But it was those exact words that Tommy shared.
(00:47:35):
He goes, hey, fat ass, it’s not where I’ve been, it’s where I’m going.
(00:47:39):
Yeah.
(00:47:39):
And we’re going to the end zone.
(00:47:40):
Yeah.
(00:47:41):
And we ended up winning the game.
(00:47:42):
Oh, yeah.
(00:47:43):
So I had him speak at that African-American affinity that we did in Oklahoma City
(00:47:47):
and flew a bunch of people in.
(00:47:49):
And Tommy gave them all signed copies.
(00:47:51):
He personally signed copies for like 50 or 80.
(00:47:54):
Oh, that’s so cool.
(00:47:54):
Pretty cool.
(00:47:55):
So that’s how I got him in the suit.
(00:47:57):
You would fly in from Kansas City on a small private jet with your friend that
(00:48:02):
shared the suite with us every morning.
(00:48:04):
And they would have crockpots of little Smokies or whatever in the jet.
(00:48:08):
And you guys would cook them in Kansas City, fly up for the game.
(00:48:11):
And we’d hang out at the tailgate and then go up to the suite.
(00:48:15):
One of my favorite stories that I tell all the time was Adi Kanolic and Zach Lee
(00:48:20):
were at the tailgate.
(00:48:21):
Frequently.
(00:48:21):
Yeah,
(00:48:22):
but there’s one specific time,
(00:48:24):
so Zach Lee,
(00:48:24):
who was the Husker quarterback back in the early Bo days,
(00:48:28):
I think,
(00:48:28):
or during Bo Pelini days,
(00:48:30):
and Adi Kanolik was the,
(00:48:31):
he was the kickoff specialist,
(00:48:32):
the guy that always put it through the uprights,
(00:48:34):
you know.
(00:48:35):
Personality-wise,
(00:48:36):
my audio is kind of a,
(00:48:37):
he thought a lot of himself,
(00:48:38):
you know,
(00:48:39):
very confident,
(00:48:40):
very outspoken.
(00:48:40):
And Zach was a lot more laid back, very humble kind of thing, but Adi Kanolik wasn’t.
(00:48:45):
He was telling this story about
(00:48:47):
Oh yeah,
(00:48:47):
I’d always,
(00:48:48):
I’d go into the huddles,
(00:48:49):
but I’m putting this one through the uprights,
(00:48:51):
and you know,
(00:48:51):
I’m F this and F that.
(00:48:52):
These go through the uprights.
(00:48:53):
And then your friend,
(00:48:55):
Bob Eckhold,
(00:48:56):
he looked at him and he goes,
(00:48:57):
so what happened to the Big Ten Championship game?
(00:48:59):
Everybody always talks about how they put the one second back on the clock,
(00:49:03):
you know,
(00:49:03):
so Texas kicks it.
(00:49:04):
This kickoff went out of bounds.
(00:49:05):
That’s the reason why they’re in a field goal position to begin with,
(00:49:08):
because they always talk about how they put one second back on the clock,
(00:49:10):
because Indomitian Sioux is pass rush,
(00:49:12):
Colt McCoy gets it off,
(00:49:13):
it should have been zero,
(00:49:13):
Nebraska should have won.
(00:49:14):
By C.S.
(00:49:15):
Beaty
(00:49:33):
Bob,
(00:49:33):
who is the suite owner who just isn’t intimidated by anybody,
(00:49:36):
goes,
(00:49:37):
so what happened to that game?
(00:49:38):
And you just see Simon just go, oh, like just shrunk down to nothing.
(00:49:43):
It was so great.
(00:49:44):
Audie was very much a fan favorite, right?
(00:49:46):
Yeah, I know.
(00:49:47):
He was the first, that’s the first time I can remember students taking off their shoes.
(00:49:51):
Yeah, that started with him.
(00:49:52):
They’d take off their shoes and hold it up.
(00:49:53):
That was all because of Audie.
(00:49:54):
Yeah, Audie Canolic.
(00:49:55):
I loved him,
(00:49:56):
but yeah,
(00:49:56):
it was such a weird,
(00:49:58):
you know,
(00:49:58):
five years later,
(00:49:59):
I hear the story at the tailgate and stuff.
(00:50:01):
So my friend Bob Eckholt, did I ever tell you the Indomicon Sioux story?
(00:50:05):
Told me you interacted with him a little bit.
(00:50:07):
So my friend Bob Eckholt,
(00:50:09):
living in Kansas City,
(00:50:10):
and he said,
(00:50:10):
hey,
(00:50:11):
would you like to go see a summer workout,
(00:50:14):
Husker summer workout?
(00:50:15):
And this is just after Indomicon’s last season, so he’s working out to get into the NFL.
(00:50:21):
When he was about ready to be the number two overall pick,
(00:50:24):
but people thought he would have got number one,
(00:50:25):
yeah.
(00:50:26):
Yeah,
(00:50:26):
so he’s working out with the Nebraska team who’s working out to get ready for the
(00:50:30):
next season.
(00:50:31):
Bob and I go into Lincoln,
(00:50:33):
we watch the workout,
(00:50:35):
and that day we watched them run 40-40,
(00:50:39):
the team,
(00:50:39):
the entire Nebraska team,
(00:50:41):
all the way across the field,
(00:50:42):
like 100 guys,
(00:50:43):
running 40-40 yard wind sprints.
(00:50:47):
40, one after another.
(00:50:49):
And Indomicon won every...
(00:50:52):
He’s the biggest guy on the field.
(00:50:54):
One of the biggest.
(00:50:54):
And he won every heat.
(00:50:56):
Well, that’s the thing that I don’t think people understood.
(00:50:58):
So he was a soccer player before he was a football player,
(00:51:00):
which means he had this insane cardio.
(00:51:02):
Yes.
(00:51:03):
Playing soccer, you’re just running the whole time.
(00:51:04):
But he just got too big for soccer, so he switched to football.
(00:51:07):
Yep.
(00:51:08):
So anyway,
(00:51:08):
we watched all that,
(00:51:09):
and we watched him work out,
(00:51:10):
and then they went in the locker room.
(00:51:13):
Bob said, hey, let’s go in the locker room.
(00:51:15):
And so we go in there, and Bob was Damakon’s tax attorney.
(00:51:21):
Well, he was like the taxidermy for like Sergio Garcia and CBA to the stars.
(00:51:25):
So he said, let’s, I’ll introduce you to Indomicon.
(00:51:29):
So we go in there, you know, and this is before the NFL.
(00:51:31):
In the NFL, he had this really bad reputation.
(00:51:33):
He hit people and shouldn’t have.
(00:51:35):
But, so we go in the locker room and he’s toweling off.
(00:51:39):
He’s got,
(00:51:40):
I mean,
(00:51:40):
so when he’s running these wind sprints,
(00:51:42):
he’s got just gym shorts on and his socks and tennis shoes.
(00:51:45):
Just built like a brick house, you know.
(00:51:47):
And so we walk up and Bob says, hey, I want you to meet my friend Gunther.
(00:51:51):
And Domicon shakes my hand and Bob says, Gunther works for Johnson Controls.
(00:51:57):
And Domicon asks Bob, so what’s Johnson Controls?
(00:52:00):
He goes, well, they do a lot of HVAC type stuff.
(00:52:04):
And so it happened,
(00:52:05):
I didn’t know this at the time,
(00:52:06):
and Domicon’s dad was a mechanical contractor in Portland,
(00:52:10):
Oregon.
(00:52:10):
Well, he was, and he was an engineering, well, a construction engineering.
(00:52:13):
Yeah, he got
(00:52:14):
Yeah, graduated from the Durham School.
(00:52:15):
Yeah, construction management, I think.
(00:52:17):
Yeah, construction management.
(00:52:18):
Bob, my friend, explains in Dominicon, Gunther Company has a lot of HVAC business.
(00:52:23):
He’s a, in Dominicon says, oh, my dad’s a mechanical contractor in Portland, Oregon.
(00:52:27):
He said, do you, do you work in Oregon?
(00:52:29):
I go, in fact, Oregon, part of my responsibility for Johnson Controls.
(00:52:32):
And he said, wow.
(00:52:33):
He goes, do you have a business card?
(00:52:35):
I said, sure.
(00:52:36):
He said, my wallet gave him a business card.
(00:52:38):
And he said, would you mind if I give this to my dad to, uh,
(00:52:42):
Maybe you guys can connect and do some business.
(00:52:46):
Have at it, man.
(00:52:46):
So I gave him the card.
(00:52:47):
I think nothing’s going to happen with us, right?
(00:52:49):
A few days go by and I get a call and it’s his dad.
(00:52:52):
It’s Adomicon Su’s dad.
(00:52:54):
What was, do you know his name?
(00:52:55):
I can’t remember his name.
(00:52:56):
Because they all have these crazy first names because they’re from, you know, African descent.
(00:53:00):
Yeah, I honestly don’t remember his first name.
(00:53:02):
But he calls me and he says who he is, you know, whatever his first name was.
(00:53:06):
Sue.
(00:53:06):
And he says, hey, is this Gunther?
(00:53:09):
I go, yes.
(00:53:09):
He goes, my name is such and such, Sue.
(00:53:13):
I’m Adomicon’s father.
(00:53:16):
Don’t know if you... You met with Indomicon recently.
(00:53:19):
Don’t know if you remember him or know who he is.
(00:53:22):
Yeah, he leaves an impression.
(00:53:25):
I said, Mr. Sue, there’s nobody in the state of Nebraska that doesn’t know your son.
(00:53:31):
Right?
(00:53:32):
He’s very popular.
(00:53:33):
He goes, oh, I’m glad to hear that.
(00:53:35):
I mean, he was so...
(00:53:36):
Both Indomicon and his father were so humble.
(00:53:39):
I mean, literally he said to me, I don’t know if you remember him.
(00:53:43):
There was no bigger name.
(00:53:44):
He was just a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, you know.
(00:53:47):
Came in second.
(00:53:47):
Yeah, whatever.
(00:53:48):
Yeah.
(00:53:49):
And so I was like flabbergasted.
(00:53:51):
So long story short, I met him in Portland.
(00:53:53):
He did mostly residential, so we never did much with him.
(00:53:57):
But how cool was that?
(00:53:58):
And Indomicon,
(00:53:59):
when I talked to him for those 15 minutes in the locker room,
(00:54:02):
it was yes,
(00:54:03):
sir,
(00:54:03):
no,
(00:54:03):
so polite.
(00:54:04):
Then he goes to the NFL and he becomes the bad boy of the NFL.
(00:54:07):
And I heard those stories too,
(00:54:09):
but I mean,
(00:54:09):
you’re not the only person I ever talk to that’s interacted with him in person.
(00:54:12):
They always say the same thing.
(00:54:13):
It’s just very humble,
(00:54:14):
very soft-spoken,
(00:54:15):
you know,
(00:54:16):
but I think part of what made him so great was he was able to flip that switch on
(00:54:21):
the field and became this other person,
(00:54:23):
which I feel like to be that good,
(00:54:25):
you got to kind of play with that edge.
(00:54:26):
But I mean,
(00:54:26):
I know some people have thought he was a dirty player or whatever,
(00:54:29):
but I mean,
(00:54:30):
I’ve heard a lot of people have similar stories about how kind he was,
(00:54:33):
you know,
(00:54:33):
in person and whatnot.
(00:54:34):
Hey, I really enjoyed it.
(00:54:35):
I love you.
(00:54:36):
You know that.
(00:54:36):
I was thinking about this the other day.
(00:54:38):
With the exception of my wife,
(00:54:40):
I don’t know if there’s anybody that changed the trajectory of my life more than
(00:54:43):
you.
(00:54:43):
Like just going into- Steve Hitts.
(00:54:45):
Well, Steve, I know, but I’m saying like where it started, right?
(00:54:48):
Like just even thinking about what my life would have looked like if I hadn’t met
(00:54:50):
you,
(00:54:51):
going from even just being an engineer,
(00:54:53):
but the career I have,
(00:54:55):
the career path,
(00:54:55):
all those things.
(00:54:56):
I mean, you were such a big impact, especially from a professional career standpoint.
(00:54:59):
Yeah.
(00:55:00):
I think it was our career was interesting in that like five years in a lot of weird
(00:55:05):
stuff happened and the company completely changed.
(00:55:08):
Yeah,
(00:55:08):
you and I personally but even just like I think that it was heartbreaking because
(00:55:13):
There was a lot of stress in that period of time on both sides.
(00:55:16):
On both sides for you and I but also like
(00:55:19):
The company changed and you went on to different roles.
(00:55:22):
And so we never,
(00:55:22):
I think I learned as a young person and I have the perspective that I do now where
(00:55:26):
like these big jobs,
(00:55:27):
just stuff just goes wrong.
(00:55:29):
You get upset with people.
(00:55:30):
People get sideways.
(00:55:32):
And you just make it up later.
(00:55:34):
You patch things up.
(00:55:35):
It’s like family, right?
(00:55:36):
Yeah.
(00:55:36):
So you get crossways with family, but you still love them.
(00:55:38):
Yeah.
(00:55:39):
But you may not talk to them for a while because you’re upset.
(00:55:41):
And we didn’t get the opportunity, though, because you went on and did something else.
(00:55:45):
And I don’t think it wasn’t on your terms, which is heartbreaking to me.
(00:55:48):
And it took us a while to do it.
(00:55:50):
In my mind,
(00:55:52):
Dawson smoothed my head over and got me back on the right track that,
(00:55:56):
hey,
(00:55:56):
Chris is a good guy.
(00:55:57):
Yeah.
(00:55:57):
Well, I need to say, I remember texting with Dawson, so I go to work for him.
(00:56:01):
I remember having a comment like you know I just I need to make things right with
(00:56:05):
Gunther and then he goes you know what he said the exact same thing about me to you
(00:56:09):
not even a month ago he’s like I’ve never had this experience where both people
(00:56:13):
said the same thing where they didn’t make like so I finally remember one day I had
(00:56:16):
a real rough running with the guy that I was working for at the time and you know
(00:56:20):
it’s just it was it was a bad situation and I remember just calling you and saying
(00:56:23):
you know what Gunther I’ve seen what a bad boss looks like now I just saw I
(00:56:27):
witnessed it in my own career
(00:56:29):
That was never you.
(00:56:30):
Even when you and I weren’t on the best of terms, that was never you.
(00:56:33):
You always acted with character.
(00:56:34):
And I always knew you were on my side, even if we disagreed.
(00:56:36):
And I think that that conversation ever since then has been a little different.
(00:56:40):
That got patched over.
(00:56:41):
I mean, I don’t even think about it anymore.
(00:56:44):
But Steve was a big part of that.
(00:56:45):
Because I didn’t know how to patch it up with you.
(00:56:48):
And Steve was kind of the intermediary.
(00:56:51):
And I love him like a son.
(00:56:53):
I love him like a brother.
(00:56:55):
And he’s told me that I’m kind of the father he never had.
(00:56:58):
Well, that’s true.
(00:57:00):
That’s true.
(00:57:00):
Because him and his mom are so close.
(00:57:03):
He does everything for his mom.
(00:57:05):
He never knew his dad.
(00:57:06):
His dad died right after he was born or before or something.
(00:57:10):
What a great guy.
(00:57:12):
He’s a character, too.
(00:57:14):
Makes me laugh.
(00:57:15):
He’s so much fun.
(00:57:16):
That’s the thing.
(00:57:17):
You and him have the same quality where there’s different styles of leadership.
(00:57:21):
Some people are the smartest person in the room.
(00:57:23):
Some people are this or that.
(00:57:25):
But for you and him, I think it was always just like, I always felt I knew who you were.
(00:57:29):
First and foremost, there’s nothing fake about you.
(00:57:31):
If you said something you believed,
(00:57:32):
if you said the YK chiller with an open drive is the best chiller in the market,
(00:57:36):
I might not agree with it.
(00:57:37):
But if you say it, at least I know you believe it because you’re such a genuine person.
(00:57:42):
And in a sales role, I think that’s why both of you had such successful careers.
(00:57:46):
But I...
(00:57:47):
I just felt like I could be myself with you and me as this young kid and like I
(00:57:50):
could just hang out with these people not feel odd or awkward have to suck up or
(00:57:54):
kiss ass or be somebody else and you just put me at ease always and it’s just such
(00:57:57):
a fun even the hang out with you and him and the three of us it’s just some of my
(00:58:01):
favorite moments working with you.
(00:58:03):
I was so I mean you know I got pretty high up in Johnson Controls and it was only
(00:58:07):
it wasn’t me it was guys like you and Dawson and others that Sean Maher people
(00:58:14):
Tommy Anderson
(00:58:15):
I just had such a great team.
(00:58:17):
I used to get criticized at JCI because they would do this data analysis that
(00:58:25):
people on my team were paid more than the average Johnson Controls guy.
(00:58:30):
HR would come in and go, here’s some data I want to show your people are making X percent more.
(00:58:35):
I go, how’s our profitability compared to other regions?
(00:58:38):
They go, well, you’re generally number one or two.
(00:58:43):
I go, so what’s your point?
(00:58:44):
They go,
(00:58:45):
Well,
(00:58:46):
you know,
(00:58:46):
we just,
(00:58:47):
you know,
(00:58:47):
you’re giving out two big of raises because they give us a budget and I would spend
(00:58:50):
the whole budget.
(00:58:51):
I didn’t, whereas a lot of my colleagues that were vice presidents would hold back some money.
(00:58:57):
Like to, I don’t know why.
(00:58:58):
I mean, I never wanted people to leave for money, right?
(00:59:03):
If they left because of a better opportunity,
(00:59:05):
because Johnson wasn’t paying them,
(00:59:07):
that made sense to me.
(00:59:10):
Or because maybe their boss was an idiot or something.
(00:59:13):
But I always try to make sure
(00:59:16):
Everybody that worked for me was paid really well, and they were treated well.
(00:59:19):
I remember when I started working for Steve,
(00:59:22):
it was my first big promotion,
(00:59:24):
and so I was going for whatever my entry-level salary,
(00:59:26):
which was already,
(00:59:27):
in my opinion,
(00:59:28):
great.
(00:59:29):
I always told people my first paycheck working for Johnson Controls multiplied my
(00:59:34):
bank account,
(00:59:35):
I think it was 2.6.
(00:59:37):
There’s a little signing bonus in there in a couple grand, but
(00:59:40):
It was whatever I had in savings.
(00:59:41):
My entire net worth was multiplied by 2.6 in my first paycheck.
(00:59:47):
So I always felt I was treated well.
(00:59:49):
And then I go to work for Steve,
(00:59:52):
and it was a promotion,
(00:59:54):
but it was a little bit of a lateral move.
(00:59:56):
And I remember talking to him about the new offer, and I remember trying to talk him down.
(01:00:00):
I’m like, that seems like way too much, not what I’m worth.
(01:00:02):
And Steve made a comment like,
(01:00:05):
You got to take it but also you got to understand the reason why we’re doing this
(01:00:07):
because we want you to feel like you know we’re taking care of you and that’s
(01:00:11):
starts at Gunther you know includes me and everything take this you know and know
(01:00:16):
the reason why we’re doing this because we care about we believe in you we think
(01:00:19):
this is what you’re worth we don’t want to pay you less just because you’ll accept
(01:00:21):
less yeah exactly I mean the last thing I want to do is people feel like I need to
(01:00:26):
look elsewhere because I’m not being paid and that philosophy did well for me I had
(01:00:31):
less turnover than any other region because we treated our people
(01:00:35):
And even those that we couldn’t pay more because maybe they weren’t performing as
(01:00:37):
well,
(01:00:37):
we always treated them very civilly,
(01:00:39):
right?
(01:00:40):
And never made it personal, tried not to.
(01:00:42):
Well, I was, I remember being told this story.
(01:00:44):
I went to the office in, was it Bozeman, Montana?
(01:00:47):
One of the Montana offices, not even the big one, just one of the small ones.
(01:00:51):
And I was just there on a sales call and I made some comment about who I was, where I was from.
(01:00:55):
I think I said, I work out of Omaha.
(01:00:56):
I’m like, oh, you know Gunther?
(01:00:57):
I’m like, yeah.
(01:00:58):
She said, well, I got laid off.
(01:01:00):
I don’t know when, you know, it was a down, it was a layoff thing.
(01:01:02):
One of the,
(01:01:03):
one of the secretaries or I might’ve been a COA or somebody,
(01:01:05):
an admin type of person,
(01:01:07):
an older lady.
(01:01:09):
And they, and it was, you know, after a while they, and then they brought me back.
(01:01:13):
The first person to call me was Gunther thanking me or making sure that I was treated well.
(01:01:17):
I was just like,
(01:01:18):
you know,
(01:01:18):
that was to have the regional vice president at that time,
(01:01:21):
you know,
(01:01:21):
you’re what two seats below the CEO.
(01:01:23):
Yeah.
(01:01:24):
You know,
(01:01:25):
the first phone call she got when she got rehired as a,
(01:01:27):
whatever it was,
(01:01:28):
a secretary or whatever.
(01:01:29):
I actually remember that.
(01:01:30):
In a small Montana office.
(01:01:32):
And she’d been there for like ever.
(01:01:33):
Yeah.
(01:01:34):
She’s the mother of the branch.
(01:01:35):
And we decided to let her go.
(01:01:37):
And I was able to get that reversed somehow.
(01:01:39):
I remember how I did that.
(01:01:41):
First thing she said when I said it was from Omaha.
(01:01:42):
And she’s like, oh, you know.
(01:01:44):
Everywhere I went, I’d hear a Gunther story like that.
(01:01:46):
You know, everywhere.
(01:01:47):
I was there for 40 years.
(01:01:49):
Oh, yeah, but still.
(01:01:50):
I knew a lot of people that had been there for a long time that didn’t have good stories.
(01:01:53):
Yeah.
(01:01:55):
Johnson was really good to me and I’ve said this multiple times in my life that it
(01:02:00):
was like family to me and I didn’t ever want to leave there but the politics of
(01:02:04):
after we acquired Tyco was so bad that it just became my Judy my wife of 50 some
(01:02:09):
years now so I was at Johnson 46 years but married to my wife at that time like 48
(01:02:15):
years or something and Judy would always remind me dude I knew you before you knew
(01:02:19):
Johnson Controls because I got married when I was in college joined Johnson and uh
(01:02:25):
And I thought I’d work there,
(01:02:26):
the last job I ever had,
(01:02:27):
but the politics got so bad that I’d come home and not be happy and say,
(01:02:32):
you need to do something because it’s affecting your health.
(01:02:35):
She thought she was afraid of that.
(01:02:36):
Yeah, well, and you had survived cancer not long ago.
(01:02:39):
So Judy, it was interesting.
(01:02:40):
She said, we need to talk.
(01:02:43):
We’ve been married a long time, and I’m thinking, oh, this sounds good.
(01:02:47):
It’s never a good way to start.
(01:02:48):
Yeah, so I said, what’s up?
(01:02:49):
She goes, you know, you come home, you’re not happy anymore.
(01:02:53):
And she said,
(01:02:55):
You got like three choices here.
(01:02:57):
She said you can suck it up buttercup and shut up and just it is what it is and
(01:03:03):
maybe you outlast whatever the problems are or you can find something else to do
(01:03:09):
that maybe you’ll be happy again.
(01:03:11):
Or you can retire.
(01:03:12):
Because he said, you don’t have to be working.
(01:03:14):
You don’t need to work anymore.
(01:03:15):
We have a financial advisor.
(01:03:17):
He told us that a couple years prior to that.
(01:03:20):
But I did it because I enjoyed it.
(01:03:22):
And I liked the people I was working with, right?
(01:03:24):
So I ended up taking a job with AVI Systems after that.
(01:03:29):
Did that for three years.
(01:03:30):
And then COVID hit.
(01:03:31):
And I just had enough after that.
(01:03:35):
They were so good.
(01:03:36):
My brother was there for 30 some years.
(01:03:39):
Tommy Anderson was there for...
(01:03:40):
I mean, a lot of the people I hired were there for... Well, and your brother, that was always...
(01:03:44):
He was a tech technician.
(01:03:45):
People didn’t believe we were brothers, right?
(01:03:47):
Well,
(01:03:47):
because you were the guy in the sports coat running the show,
(01:03:51):
and then Werner,
(01:03:52):
your brother,
(01:03:53):
was the guy in the scruffy beard and the earring wearing literally the blue-collar
(01:03:57):
Johnson Controls tech shirts.
(01:04:01):
Once you figured it out, you could see the family resemblance, but I mean, just...
(01:04:05):
But you’re both seems perfectly happy and at like where you wanted to be,
(01:04:09):
you know,
(01:04:09):
like personality wise.
(01:04:11):
So there would be like LSS positions.
(01:04:13):
So he was a tech, right?
(01:04:14):
Like a senior tech.
(01:04:16):
It elevated to that point.
(01:04:17):
But there were positions that opened up that where he could get promoted.
(01:04:20):
And I would know about him before he did.
(01:04:22):
Right.
(01:04:22):
And so I’d call him and say, hey, there’s an LSS position open up in Omar Lincoln.
(01:04:26):
You should apply for it.
(01:04:27):
He’d say, brother.
(01:04:29):
I don’t want to manage people.
(01:04:31):
I work eight to whatever and I get on call sometimes,
(01:04:34):
but I’m home with my family and I don’t have all these headaches about having to
(01:04:38):
manage people like you do.
(01:04:40):
And actually,
(01:04:42):
I told him this,
(01:04:43):
he was a better father than I ever was because he was home with his kids all the
(01:04:47):
time and he was doing things with them that I was either traveling or busy or
(01:04:51):
working late or something.
(01:04:53):
Not that I was a bad father, but he was a better father.
(01:04:57):
He just never wanted to do that.
(01:04:59):
I could have helped him big time.
(01:05:01):
I just never wanted to do it.
(01:05:02):
People would go, I met your brother.
(01:05:05):
I didn’t believe it was your brother at first.
(01:05:07):
I said, yeah.
(01:05:09):
My mom used to say this.
(01:05:10):
My mom used to say that I was her pride and my brother was her joy.
(01:05:16):
My brother was a character.
(01:05:18):
Telling jokes.
(01:05:20):
I was her pride and my brother was her joy.
(01:05:22):
So that’s just the way it is.
(01:05:24):
It’s not bad to have both of those.
(01:05:27):
So I told Judy this.
(01:05:32):
Someday I’m going to read about you winning an Academy Award.
(01:05:36):
I’m dead serious.
(01:05:37):
You’ve got so much freaking potential.
(01:05:39):
You’re so freaking talented.
(01:05:41):
Between being an author,
(01:05:42):
podcaster,
(01:05:44):
sales engineer,
(01:05:45):
father,
(01:05:46):
all these things,
(01:05:47):
you’re freaking amazing.
(01:05:49):
I’m just restless more than anything, but thank you.
(01:05:51):
No, but seriously, I’m blown away.
(01:05:53):
Just totally blown away.
(01:05:55):
That means a lot coming from you.
(01:05:56):
I appreciate that.
(01:05:57):
I know that, I don’t know.
(01:05:59):
I try to do everything.
(01:06:00):
You have an intellect and a personality that not many people have.
(01:06:04):
Thank you.
(01:06:04):
I’m dead serious.
(01:06:05):
I know you are.
(01:06:07):
I thought you were a long shot.
(01:06:09):
Probably has no interest in Jordan Johnson Controls, but somehow we pulled that out.
(01:06:14):
Yeah, well, you asked, and that’s all it took.
(01:06:18):
All right, man.
(01:06:19):
I’m going to get out of here.
(01:06:20):
Interesting People is produced by Chris Beaty in his basement.
(01:06:24):
Thank you to Gunther DeVanis for being such a big part of my life and for spending
(01:06:28):
some time chatting.
(01:06:29):
If you want to read that article Gunther and I co-authored,
(01:06:32):
it’s on my website csbeaty.com under the tab titled Boring Nerd Stuff.
(01:06:38):
Signing off from the greatest city and the greatest state on earth, Omaha, Nebraska.
