Welcome to GreatConversations, a podcast about leadership and life from GreatAmerica Financial Services. Mitch Leahy, Vice President and General Manager for our office Equipment Group hosts our first series of talks with thought leaders and innovators from across the business world.
On today’s episode of GreatConversations, Mitch hosts Brantly Fowler, Co-President of ZENO Office Solutions out of West Texas. Brantly shares his journey, from working in the ZENO warehouse doing odd jobs as a kid, to being the Co-President. We learn how Brantly created his “V-Formation” of people in his life, how he gives 100% to all things with his “no excuses” mentality, and how he carries that over into a professional career to create humility, commitment, and ownership in his work.
Listen to full podcast or read the abbreviated interview below!
Mitch: Hello and welcome to another episode of GreatConversations. I’m Mitch Leahy of GreatAmerica, and I'm excited to chat with another leader who is a second generation in their business. He’s playing a huge part in the future of their family organization, and genuinely having a fun time doing it. I’m happy to have my friend here, all the way from West Texas, Brantly Fowler. Welcome, Brantly.
Brantly: Hello, everybody. Glad to be on the show! I’m super excited to be here.
Mitch: I have to say when we were getting all our guests lined up for this podcast, I was preparing and thought to myself, “I’m going to be a little intimidated talking to Brantly. Not only is he doing a fantastic job in business, but he’s also way better at sales than I am, he played college football, he's a TikTok sensation, an airplane pilot, and he's got his own podcast that I didn't even know about until two weeks ago.
Brantly: That’s crazy. I've never even thought about that. You just made a resume for me. I appreciate that.
Mitch: We can upload that to your LinkedIn page later if you'd like.
Brantly: That would be good.
Mitch: So, how has 2024 been going for you so far, Brantly?
Brantly: It's been good. I feel like every other year it's been a fast start; you look up and realize we are already halfway through. But business has been great, personal life's been great, everything with the family is good and I'm doing good.
Mitch: That's great to hear. No complaints. Remind me, do you have two or three kids at home?
Brantly: Two kids; a ten-year-old daughter, Bailey, and a seven-year-old son, Brenner. God bless him, he's just like me, so that's going to be fun for somebody someday.
Mitch: Expand on that a little bit. What is he exhibiting that indicates he's just like you?
Brantly: If only you could meet this kid.
Mitch: Is it the caffeine?
Brantly: Well, he does occasionally drink Bang energy drinks, but I tell him it'll stunt his growth. So, he's not hooked on caffeine yet, but anyone that meets him just dies laughing because they see right away that he’s just like me. He’s just a little ball of energy. He kind of says whatever's on his mind and he's just kind of a weirdo like me.
Mitch: For anyone who doesn’t know Brantly personally, he drinks about 5,000 milligrams of caffeine a day.
Mitch: Let’s get into the business side of things. I have listened to every episode of your Winning Backwards podcast and kudos to you on that project. You talk about some great, real things on there. I enjoyed the episode with your brother, and I’m looking forward to the next one. In one episode, you talked about making sure you've got the right people “flying with you in your formation.” You also discussed if they're not the right people, how can you adjust and think about who's flying V along with you. I love that concept. Where did you come up with that?
Brantly: It’s kind of weird. I saw some birds flying around one day and I kind of thought of it; it wasn't anything too profound. The deeper thing behind that was just part of my life story and what I've been through personally through alcoholism and addiction, so that was kind of the reason why I did the podcast to begin with because I know there are a lot of people that struggle. I think through my experience of strength and hope, hopefully I can help somebody that's going through something similar by giving some perspective on life. Once I started to live life differently, life took on new meaning. There's a whole lot more to life than just business and work and I think it's important to make sure you're always riding with people that are going to help you be the best version of yourself. If you're not, you should probably evaluate.
Mitch: I think that's great because we can all head down a path and get stuck in a bit of a scarcity mindset where we aren’t recognizing the impact of our surroundings. We do have control over who we are surrounding ourselves with, whether that's personally or in business as part of your team.
Mitch: Let's talk about your involvement in your family business, ZENO, and how that came to be. Was that always the path that you and your brother Dale had talked about?
Brantly: That’s a great question. Like a lot of kids that were a part of a family business growing up, I worked there in the summers doing odd jobs. I think if your parents are trying to teach you good life skills, they are always trying to teach you the value of a dollar and that you have to work hard for what you get. So, I worked there, and I hated it. I didn't want to do anything that had to do with ZENO or the copier business. At some point, I became an adult and started realizing what a great business it is. It started to intrigue me. So, Dale and I started talking about it. I do have another brother and a sister, neither one of them are in the business. My brother's been fired twice by my dad, but that's a funny story for another time. He has his own business now and my sister's a schoolteacher so, we all embarked on different paths. However, for me, the ZENO path intrigued me.
Mitch: What was it that had you so turned off about it early on?
Brantly: When you're a kid, what's fun about having to work anyway? When you are working for a parent, it’s not always a lot of fun; in my case, I worked for my dad. However, I did learn a lot. Early on my dad had a partner, Larry, so during the summers, I worked with him. I also did work for my dad doing odd jobs, scrubbing toilets, working in the warehouse, breaking down boxes, doing deliveries, delivering toner, and whatever else was needed. As I grew up, I went into the military and as I was working my way through, I began to feel like I wanted more, so I started looking into sales and I thought to myself, “Man, you can write your own check and make your own hours.” That’s where it really started to interest me. But early on, it was not something that I wanted to do, I would just think, “I can't believe anyone wants to be an adult and just go to work every day.”
Mitch: Well, I feel like part of your exploits on TikTok, is trying to find the payment opportunity in that world as well, right?
Brantly: Anything to make a buck. I've heard it said in the copier business that we're all survivors, and I think it's very true, especially if you look through COVID. In the imaging industry or business technology industry there are so many people that own and start dealerships, especially family businesses like my dad, and they're all survivors who have grinded their way to where they're at in life. I think that's probably one of the things I appreciate so much about this industry, and I think is so cool.
Mitch: Yeah, I completely agree. There is such an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the entire channel, and obviously, every business today is at a different stage when you compare them.
Mitch: I've been impressed with your involvement dealer peer groups, like BTA for example, which is the bigger organization that supports the channel pretty consistently. Close to seven or eight years ago when I was going to more of these events, there weren't too many people in the 25-40-year-old range. It’s been refreshing to start going and seeing more people at the BTA events, some people like yourself who are taking leadership roles and trying to make sure we're thinking forward in terms of support of businesses. I was just at a peer group meeting earlier this week and it was great to see people bringing that next generation along, some who are part of the family and others who they have as key contributors in their C-suite. Is that something that your father was encouraging you to do, or did you just see an opportunity to become more involved and sort of lean into it?
Brantly: My dad served on the IBPI and some other industry boards. He would take me to those events as I was getting into the industry early on. To your point, one of the things I noticed was there weren't a lot of young people that were excited about the industry. I knew there were others out there, but at the time, it felt like I was one of the only ones. At some point as I've been in the industry for a while and made a lot of connections and relationships, it sort of blossomed into an opportunity to be part of a board, which grew into an opportunity to meet more people and become a bigger part of the industry. For me, it was more about giving back.
In 2018, after I went through what I went through personally and I started to live life differently, giving back to the industry and its people and try to get people my age more excited about what's going on in our industry. I'm super grateful to be able to be part of these boards and committees because the industry has given me a life that I thought I would never have. It’s why I do it.
Mitch: Well, I think that's great. That idea of giving back to something great for you and your family, and we're all trying to help perpetuate what we feel like is a great set of organizations. It’s one of the main reasons we are doing this podcast. There are a lot of folks out there doing some really cool things for their teams, their organizations and their customers, even if they're not the ones you see consistently when you go to some of these events. Part of that, too, is just the age demographic and you're balancing all those things as well, right? You've got two young kids who are actively involved in a lot of things. Plus, you have a bunch of your own hobbies while also making time with your family and running a business; it's like a bunch of spinning plates. I think some are thinking, “I'm going to choose to spend my time doing the other things and eventually if I find value in attending some of these events, then I'll go.” I think we're both trying to give people some additional exposure and make more connections, if that's fair.
Brantly: Yeah, that's absolutely fair. When you called me and told me you were doing this podcast, I thought that's just another thing that GreatAmerica does that's out of the box that's cool and I love what you’re doing.
Mitch: Well, I appreciate that. It’s been kind of humbling how many people have been willing to jump on and have a quick 30-minute conversation. But all that is beyond my involvement with GreatAmerica and is due to the reputation that Jennie, the Golobic family and others have built. We're just very humble that people are willing to help us create more exposure here. So, thank you again.
Brantly: Yeah, absolutely.
Mitch: When we think about all the different things that you've done, from being in a sales organization to cleaning and warehouse work, what are some of the things you've learned that stick out? Anyone who’s been in leadership for any period of time has a number of nuggets they’ve picked up from mentors that they want to try to replicate, or on the flipside, lessons on what not to do. What are some things you tell your team and give them guidance on one way or the other?
Brantly: The concrete foundation my dad built was unique. We consider ourselves a unicorn in how we approach business and industry. People that know us and our numbers or are in our marketplace, maybe they like us, or they don’t, but I think they would agree. That was something I didn't want to get away from when I started running the company. Even as I was learning the business, one of the biggest takeaways I had was that we really do things very differently at ZENO, from how we approach the service side, and the expectations that we have for our people. Those are two things that sound really simple, and I think that everybody would like to think that they do them well, but I believe nobody does that better than we do. Certainly, nobody approaches it more uniquely than we do.
One of the biggest things that I always tell my team is revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. People in this business get caught up in the revenue trap and their top line. You're in business for your customer and that relationship, but financially you're in business for profit. Our model is we want to be very profitable, but we want to do it the right way so we can reinvest those dollars and continue to do things in a unique way. The biggest thing that drives that is our “walk away button.” If the customer is not a fit for us, we walk away. There's not a lot of people I know that do that. Sometimes we turn away customers and sometimes we must fire customers if they don’t align to our values and who we are. It's just how we operate.
Mitch: It is certainly unique. Going back to what you've talked about on your podcast recently about who you've got in your formation, how do you make sure that all of you are aligned? It's your family business so you are in charge, but you've got a senior leadership team there, and you've got some other managers in place as well. How do you ensure those folks are aligned with each other and the company? When somebody throws a question mark up at one of those opportunities, how do you manage through that to ensure you all stay aligned?
Brantly: That happens and we're not perfect, but we hire, evaluate, and terminate based on our values. That is so richly ingrained in who we are in addition to our other values, but the customer must fit our values and vice versa. When the sales team is going out and doing a proposal with a customer, they’re presenting our values and asking them if the numbers are ok. We want to know upfront if there will be a problem with any one of our values, because of there is, we just shake hands and walk away. There's been times where there's a deal that's really enticing and we have to hit the pause button as a company and say, “Are we getting googly eyed over this because we think it's a good deal? Or is this truly going to fit who we are as a company? And are they going to value what we do every day and what we're so passionate about?” If they don't, then it's probably not a fit. And that's okay, we just move on.
Mitch: Is that a confidence that you've had engrained in you growing up or that Dale has instilled in you and the team? Or is it something you've had to work at to feel confident this is the right approach moving forward? When bringing in or transitioning new people into leadership, do you just understand that this is exactly where you need to be rooted for the future of the business?
Brantly: Yes. There's a lot of companies that have other things that drive them, but ours is being unique to who we are. When you’ve been around for a while, you see so many companies that are alike. But what is special about being like everyone else? A huge deal to us is being unique. It’s something you build confidence with over time. When you are a young sales rep trying to feed your family, it's hard to walk away from business and accept the sale doesn't fit, but you have to be dedicated to the values and the culture of the company and be willing to wait or walk away from dollars at times. Having everybody understand what we are trying to achieve as a team and how that profit helps us and our customers at the end of the year makes those decisions a little bit easier over time. It still takes time to build confidence to just walk away. I just had this conversation a couple of days ago with one of our sales leaders. We were talking about another reps’ deal, and I was laughing as I asked her if this really sound like something that we wanted. She goes, “You know, no, it does not. I just had to get reassurance from you.” I told her she needed to make the decision for herself, and so she did; she decided it didn’t sound like a good fit. Sometimes people need the assurance because we are human, and we are always inclined to take the path of least resistance. But it takes work.
Mitch: I completely agree. It sounds like you guys are rooted in a set of core values and always having those to refer to makes that easier for the sales leader to go through and check it against the list to get a feel for if it’s the right fit.
Brantly: I think when you do that you empower people to be the best version of themselves. In the business world they need to think like a businessperson. So, they need to be evaluating why it is or isn’t a good business decision to take that deal. They have to learn how to think through that every single time and ultimately it helps them be a better businessperson. Maybe that helps them end up being their own entrepreneur and owning their own company one day; it has to be bigger than ZENO.
Mitch: I completely agree. Do you all encourage people to pursue personal development? If they go and if they find a conference on a topic or something they feel like would be beneficial, are you encouraging that or helping support that financially? That's a question I'm genuinely surprised to hear the variety of answers across the channel.
Brantly: There is a variety of answers. It depends on the person. We're always willing to support financially or to do something that's going to help them grow personally or professionally. If there is something that helps somebody personally grow, we're always in support of that. We still ask the business question to make sure they've thought through why this will be beneficial for them, and how do they think it is going to benefit the team and the company. We also want to be sure the training or professional development program fits our values and is going to help them be better leader inside our values.
Mitch: As the younger generation comes out of college and into the workforce, they also want to know how their prospective employers are going to help them become more well-rounded even beyond their career path. Providing a good work-life balance, being a good human, and contributing to society is very important to them. What are you doing to support that? I think the priorities of this next generation is forcing organizations to think very differently and be more holistic about how we think about our team members and what can be done to support them, both within and beyond company walls.
Brantly: That is a great point. As a second generation surrounded by those that are my age and those that are second or third generation, it’s easy to get caught in between the old and new generation. The ways of thinking differ vastly from one end of the spectrum to the other. The people you are talking about are essentially going to be the new lifeblood of your company, and they do force you to think differently. You must be able to adapt and pivot, but that doesn't mean you have to get away from who you are and your core values. I will say it’s a polar opposite way of thinking from how my father's generation operated a business. So when you're in the middle, you've got to figure out a way to not leave your core processes and values, but still be open to what the up and coming generation is saying, what their hearing, and how they're thinking, because at the end of the day, if you really listen to them, they are going to help you be a better company – even if you don't take a hundred percent of their ideas.
Mitch: Yes, and I think when you encourage people to speak up and share their thoughts and opinions it results in an opportunity for some education too, because they are generally curious. We are stuck in between, “My way or the highway. This is how we do things,” verses, “We think of this as a team dynamic and we want to understand where we're going and how we fit into that.” That is becoming a much bigger part as you see those shifts happening.
Brantly: No doubt. For sure.
Mitch: We are getting close to the end of our time here and I want to be mindful for you as well. From a leadership perspective, what is something you believe that maybe others don't feel is widely the popular choice or the right thing to do? In talking to your peer groups or other folks in leadership roles even outside of the channel, is there anything you feel like you're just not ahead of the curve, but thinking a little bit differently about moving forward?
Brantly: I don't see myself as a trendsetter. I think I do have a more old school way of thinking when it comes to how I operate as a person. But the basis of how I operate is a no excuses mentality. You either want it or you don’t. That's the core of who I am as far as what gets me up in the morning and what propels me. That mentality applies to everything, not just business. There are people that are super successful and then there's people that aren't. The ones that are don't have a lot of excuses. They find a way to get something done. If there is a task, or if they're dedicated to their family, to a hobby, or to their business, there's no excuses. They either really want it, or they don't. If they don’t, admit it and move on. That's how I operate as a person. If I don't really want something, I don't do it. I'm either all into something or I'm not. I see so many people in my life that have this kind of a ho hum attitude, but I don't want to live a mediocre life; I don't want that for myself. I don't want that for anybody in my formation. So, those people that are around me in my formation are going somewhere, we're not just coasting and we're going to help each other be better versions of ourselves. I'm not going to sit back and make excuses for anything in life. We will figure out where we want to go, get there one way or another, and there will be zero excuses for that. That at the core is what drives me. The people around me and my company know that's part of how we operate. If you want to be in the lifeboat, and you don't want to be thrown out into the ocean, you're going to take on that mentality with me. That doesn't mean it's going to come without challenges. It’s the same with my family and my kids with their activities as they're growing up. They're getting older and they're doing all these exciting things. I’m constantly preaching to them about not making excuses. You either want it or you don't, and they're ten and seven. But I want them to understand in life, you can make excuses for things, or you can have a passion for it and do it and be all in. But if you're not, then why do it? Why do it halfway? Life's too short.
Mitch: You put together a great three-part answer: humility, commitment, ownership. Maybe in 15 years we'll be interviewing your children, and they'll be talking about the time Dad was telling them at the football game or the dance recital: you either want it or you don't!
Brantly: Oh, they'll tell you that no doubt. I just want to say thank you because it's been an honor getting to have a relationship with you and your team. The GreatAmerica team is doing so many important and forward-thinking things. I always tell people that GreatAmerica is so much more than a leasing company. I know you all are always out telling people that, but I'm a huge believer of that because I've been a part of it. I don't know any other leasing companies that are doing a podcast interviews asking these kinds of questions, but it has nothing to do with leasing. I know you're a big part of that and you're the new wave of leadership like me. I think it's fantastic what you're doing over there, and I'm always rooting for your success.
Mitch: Thank you, that certainly means a lot. You have all been great customers for a long time, and I think you've got to see a number of different people playing different roles for our organization. I feel very confident in what we're doing going forward. We know what our values are, and we're trying to stay rooted in those as we continue to grow and really focus on how we help customers through education. We felt like this was a good opportunity to do that and get some exposure to some thought leaders doing some cool things in the industry. I appreciate all your kind words. It's been great to get to know you and build a friendship. That is the part people overlook is the friendships you can build through business. I've only been out doing it for seven or eight years here, but I've got some really great connections like yourself and others.
Brantly: Absolutely. I was talking to someone a couple of days ago, and he was saying, “We are men, God built us wired to build things.” Building a relationship is the greatest thing we can do. The greatest part about any business and life is getting to have a relationship with somebody. It just opens the door for so many things. I'm glad you're part of my flying V for that reason.
Mitch: It's official, fantastic. I appreciate that. It has been so good talking to you, Brantly. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this and come back to Iowa soon.
Brantly: Thanks so much for having me, I am honored to do it. Thanks, Mitch.
This has been Great Conversations, a business podcast from GreatAmerica Financial Services. We hope you found some helpful takeaways from this episode as you're charting your own leadership journey. We'd love to hear your feedback for future episodes. Reach out to us on Facebook and LinkedIn, or learn more at our website. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time for more GreatConversations.