The Modern Hotelier #120: Pelican CEO JC Curleigh & Brad Steward on Turning Moments into Momentum in Independent Hotels
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Steve Carran: We are now joined by Brad Steward from Caravan Outpost. Thanks for sitting down with us, Brad. How are you doing today?
Bradley Steward: Thank you for having me. Uh, we're at a beautiful spot, and the world is pretty good today. And, um, you know, I'm just coming off stage with my good friend JC Curleigh. He's got an exciting new role at Pelican and doing some pretty amazing things, talking about moments to momentum and what that means in hospitality, and I feel good.
I'm energized. Conferences like this energize me.
Steve Carran: I love it.
David Millili: Love it.

Yeah, so tell us more about Caravan Outpost. Caravan Outpost.
Bradley Steward: Uh, you know, it's funny. The dirty secret here, I don't know anything about hospitality. And I always look for an unfair advantage in any company I ever start. Been involved in several startups in the, uh, action sports business and so on. Sold them to some large companies, Salomon, Adidas, Billabong. And the question I am always searching for is, what's my unfair advantage?

And, you know, we kind of have this moment in time after 30 years in the sports biz, where we thought, you know, could get into another business. We could enter hospitality. Our unfair advantage would be that we're consumer marketers. We, being my wife Shawn and I, we're consumer marketers. She's a designer working for Nike, Patagonia, Adidas, several others.

And we kind of thought, well, so we're sitting in all these meetings and we're hearing people that were saying, okay, so now back to the product we made for you. What was it like? Well, you know, I wore it in this one bar, man, it was in Spain. And I met, and he had this girl with him, and she was kind of like this, and he was kind of like that. And then they start to go through these places they've been.

And we arrived at a very simple place about 15 years ago. What people own will be less important to them in the future. And we should immediately recalibrate because we make stuff and nobody needs stuff—especially if you look at the trends in the environment and where everything is going. I mean, we, we were in the plastic world, Gore-Tex, and you know, all these things are not sustainable.

Um, so we said, hang on, let's retool for the future. We, uh—family mantra is—how do we future-proof what we do? We thought, great, let's, let's do it. Design a place first and then see if we can create products out of that. So Caravan Outpost, that's our place. Let's inspire people. We're going to spend a little bit of money.

And the house rule is nobody gets to get their cancellation in college because we've lost all their money on mom and dad's dumb, you know, dumb idea.
And, uh, and we thought, maybe this will work, maybe not. The only inclination we had that it would work—we built it ourselves. It was important to me to build it as a living.

Our unfair advantage versus, you know, people who've been in glamping and all of those things—we're artists, we're not hoteliers. We built the place. That 50-foot palm tree? I put it in.
Steve Carran: How'd you do that?
Bradley Steward: I learned how to drive an excavator.
Steve Carran: How'd you learn how to drive an excavator?
Bradley Steward: By renting one and driving it a bunch of times and nearly killing everybody.

Okay, eventually, it got pretty good, and now I can excavate. Who knew? And so, that was really the genesis, you know, for the idea.

And as I said, the only, the only way I thought this might work is one day we're working on it covered in mud, literally putting the sewer system in. And this lady is looking over the fence, and I think, "Oh no, the city is here. Do we have our permit displayed properly? Does everybody have OSHA, whatever they need on?"

I look at the lady, and I think she looks a little familiar to me. I go up to the fence. I go, "Hey, can I help you?" And she says, "Um, no, I'm just looking. Is it all right? Anybody ever told you you look like Christie Brinkley?"

David Millili: I am.

Bradley Steward: Get out of here.
How did you hear about this? She said, I was at some, uh, studio, and I had to come up to Ojai today. And somebody mentioned there were these people like building these amazing palm trees, and they had some Airstreams and a big fire. I just thought I'd come by and see what it was, and that's really when it hit for me. I thought we might have something here. And then very quickly, our clientele developed into a celebrity-heavy component, and that really kicked us off.

David Millili: Yeah. That's great.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. And you just got off the stage talking about moments to momentum. How have you built moments and built momentum on that at Caravan Outpost?
Bradley Steward: Whew. Um, let me talk about a couple. Okay. A girl named Alicia rides her motorcycle down, checks in. Everybody's sitting around the fire pit talking. Somebody's talking about, yeah, I went to this concert here, here, and here. And Alicia says, yeah, I was, I was in Turkey once, and like, they literally had to take me off. What's Alicia?

All of a sudden, it occurs to everybody, Alicia is here at the outpost with her husband Cory, who's an old buddy.
David Millili: No.
Bradley Steward: Way!
You know, it's like, they come into our lobby.
David Millili: Is?
Bradley Steward: Is Alicia? I'm sorry, we don't disclose any guests. You can believe whatever you want. Her hair looks similar. I don't know, you know.

And we've had a bunch of little moments like that that have translated into Pink jumping on Instagram at midnight, putting something out on Instagram. "Hey, I'm at Caravan Outpost. I met a bunch of incredible people. Really cool." We had another moment where a very famous, uh, musician came.

We had some guitars around our fire pit. He said, uh, he was there with a group of people. Nobody knew who he was. "Do you mind if I play a little bit?" "Yeah, sure. Bring, bring, play a little bit." "You're pretty good, man." You know, some lady, "You're really, really pretty good." Says, um, "You might play a song?"

He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do know this one song on the radio." It's his song. Plays this massive hit song. The lady's like, "You could work in any bar in LA." This individual is, and I'm leaving him nameless because he comes a lot, and I want to be respectful of that. This individual fills stadiums. And it was so funny; he sat there and played four or five songs.

And so we've taken little moments like that, and we've tried to let our guests publicize them. I believe marketing is what you do when you run out of good ideas. So we always try to have good ideas. And when we catch ourselves marketing, we stop. Consumers are too smart. Everybody can get all of the information on anything.

Do not market. Create what's real. Give people something true to hang on to. That's a moment. And that's how you grow it and how you get there.

Steve Carran: Incredible.

David Millili: Yeah, that's great. So one of the things we're trying to dive deeper into, especially for next year, and maybe some things that you've come out of, what are some challenges that you think are coming up, or maybe some challenges that you've made it through in this industry and being independent?

Bradley Steward: My worst enemy in business is my own limitations. And I regularly ask my wife, who's my business and life partner, and my staff, I say to them, "Will you please hold me accountable for not thinking too small? Please hold me accountable. When you hear me diving in, thinking small, not projecting the vision of what we're trying to do to you, uh, to the business with you, hold me accountable." So, being careful not to think too small.

We launched, a little bit like JC went into. You know, when COVID hit, JC pivoted, and he realized, "Hey, we actually don't make guitars. We make a way for people to relate to each other. It's called music. We make a sound, and people like that sound. And they like the artists who use that sound to communicate."

And so, um, what I'm always searching for—the world is uncertain. You never know what your bookings are. You know, COVID has radically shortened the timeline. We would sell out a year in advance. Now, we sell out four days in advance, you know? And you're kind of like, "Ooh, okay, yeah, ooh, we did it again," you know?

And, uh, and so, you know, with all of that uncertainty, you know, what we look for is we just, you know, we try to say to people, "Is there a way we can build 51 percent of the experience for you, and whatever that 49 percent that you built to get the rest of the way across our brand, you did that, it was meaningful and true to you, and you had that moment?"

You know, and we try to—I don’t want to say we try to engineer moments—but we try to be a stage. One of our philosophies is we actually don't run a hotel. We kind of run a place where you can experience things. We think about it a lot like a movie set.

Very early on, The Bachelor came to us and said, "Do you mind if we start shooting a couple of episodes here?" We said, "Sure, go ahead." Shot some episodes of The Bachelor. I still have nightmares, but, um, it was fantastic. And actually, my favorite—if I can digress for a minute.

The guy who won chose his partner on the show and everything. A few weeks after, he stayed with us in Texas. "Hey, me and [blank] would like to come up." I'm like, "The show is still on the air. I know who wins." Let’s get on the plane and go to Vegas and place a 5-million-dollar bet on who I know. But again, you know, a little moment.

And then, one minute later, I get a text from him: "Oh my God, I just broke my NDA! Please delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete."

I'm like, "Alright, I'll delete that," you know?

But, you know, I just think this general environment of uncertainty—you can kind of lean in or lean out.

I do believe what I said on stage: how you arrive is critical to the equation. Uh, you know, it's the old thing—you can't change what happens to you, but you can change how you see it, how you perceive it.

So, we're kind of in the weeds on a lot of basic stuff like that. But we do try to maintain an absence of deep knowledge about hospitality and remain experts in delivering something to people that is meaningful. And, um, that's a big part of, uh, how we're trying to future-proof what we do.

David Millili: That's great.
Steve Carran: It's incredible.

Now, looking ahead to 2025 again, instead of challenges, what type of trends are you seeing that might be coming in the next couple of months?
Bradley Steward: Whew, I wish I knew all of the answers to that. I can tell you a few things that I see. Um, flexibility in how you think about your physical space, the emotional space of customers, and how you bring them into the environment is key.

We talk about our place now. Again, we don't actually use the word hotel. Um, we talk about flexible spaces. We allow people to participate in customizing. So rather than, when you come here, we've anticipated your needs. I don't believe in that. As a consumer marketer, I, I, that breaks down for me on many, many places.

I don't believe in a customer journey. I, I believe there is a reason why people do things, buy things, go places, and so on. It's fed by this constellation of things, ranging from, Aunt Sally said we should never go there, and I can't stand Aunt Sally, so I bet you it's the coolest thing we've ever been to.

Or, hey honey, uh, last week, uh, you said you didn't like my shirt, and I want to go to this little town and buy a new shirt and I found this cute little hotel. Or, hey, you remember that food we've never eaten? You know, I was at dinner with somebody the other day, they are the largest shipping family in Greece. Came to Ohio, we participate peripherally in a couple of restaurants in Ohio called Rory's Place and Rory's Other Place. Great write-ups, New York Times, Sunset, everywhere. And they said, yeah, I really, I really wanted to come here and have this meeting with you, um, because I hear in Santa Barbara, that I can, uh, get good conch locally here.

And, being a hotel guy, you know, um, I'm, I'm always looking for investors and ways to expand, and I thought it amazing that this guy is here because of like this bivalve, you know, who would have, who would have ever guessed that? So I think you have to be highly flexible and, and you can't have too fixed of a concept of your brand in order to succeed.

So we're trying to leverage that a little bit. Concrete term, uh, things happening. Everybody loves great food. The food experience, I think, is really gonna, uh, center what's happening. One of our old philosophies is look for cities to grow that have the three W's. Wine, women, and weed. Um, simple, simple, simple formula.

We created a customer archetype called the GNO. And everybody's like, what's a GNO? We're like, it's girls' night out. It's a major thing. We book GNOs. All our people in the company are like, Hey, we have a giant GNO group coming in. Great. They're high-end. They dress great, they buy our $500 dresses. They love meeting Alicia, who they discovered was pink. That's it.

We're all in, you know, even to the point where our customers, you know, will call me now for repeats. Hey Brad, it's Sheila. We got our GNO group all set up. Great. Come on down. You know, so we're, we're, you know, we're, we're almost by luck, you know, frankly, we've succeeded because we really don't know a lot, but I think those kinds of, those kinds of, uh, traveling with friends in fashion, you see twinning, you know, maybe one of the number one trends.

I actually think there's something to that word. People kind of want to duplicate experiences and so, we're looking a lot to that. We don't talk about how do we deliver luxury or any of that. To us, luxury is a behavior. It's not a product. So when I sit in the meetings here and I hear luxury is this, this, and this, and this, I think probably it is for them.

At our place, luxury, because our guests can stay anywhere. They can afford anything. Luxury for them is: Hi, I was in the Star Wars franchise as the girl holding the lightsaber. I'd like to run around with all my friends from high school in our pajamas. Could we just close your place down for three days and run around in our...

Steve Carran: Incredible. Incredible.

Brad Steward: Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Bradley Steward: Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Yeah, appreciate it.

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Steve Carran: We are now joined by J.C. Curleigh, CEO of Pelican Products. Thank you for joining us, J.C. How are you doing?

J.C. Curleigh: Absolutely, man. Just got off the stage here with my good friend Brad Steward. We did this notion of like, how do you turn moments into momentum? And I think, you know, the stories that we've been part of contributing in the past, but also just the, the, when you look back, you can connect those dots, you know. So it was a connect-the-dot moment for us. It was really—

Steve Carran: Absolutely. We brought in Jon. Jon is a huge fan of not only Pelican products, but Gibson and Levi's, pretty much all the companies you've been a CEO. So we're going to let Jon—

Jon Bumhoffer: Usually I'm behind the camera running sound and everything, but I saw you were, you know, speaking, I saw Pelican, Gibson, Jeans. I was like, oh, I use all that stuff. So that's cool. Very cool. So let's talk about Pelican a little bit. So first off, for people who don't know, because unless you're carrying around gear, you might not know what Pelican is, but you probably have seen it everywhere, you know. So tell people what Pelican is, and then we'll get into like what you got coming, because I know there's—

J.C. Curleigh: Yeah. It's interesting what you say, you know. After Levi's was an amazing, you know, we talked about everything we did there. And then Gibson was the rebuild of that. And then, you know, I joined Pelican, and people were like, Pelican? And then I'm like, you know it. And they go, and they kind of give you that exactly that look. And I said, you know, the folks at the airport that are definitely cooler than you, they're going somewhere on a mission. They have a case that something is really valuable in there. It could be camera equipment. It could be they're going to an offshore oil rig with tools or they're, in a lot of cases, military, like Navy SEALs, Special Ops, Rangers, going on mission-critical situations to places where literally their livelihood depends on their gear being protected. And I said, oh, and by the way, those cases have a few cool stickers. And if you could meet the people, they would tell, oh, those things. Oh yeah. I don’t—oh yeah. Those Pelicans. So, and I've used Pelican cases too. And the whole opportunity to take a brand that's synonymous with protection—just think of that for a second—it already, we start where most brands wish they could get to, you know. And we've been synonymous for 50 years almost, since 1976, of building to protect, to equip for the mission. And we're not the heroes. The heroes are the folks that go out, and the creators, and the military folks, and the first responders, and the particular protectors, and the outdoor explorers. We basically empower them to accomplish their mission. That's who we are. Built to protect, to equip for the mission.

Jon Bumhoffer: It's amazing. Yeah, and I was saying my uncle's a photographer. He's retired now, but he's still got his Pelicans from when he started back in the day, and they're still using them.

J.C. Curleigh: That. So, 1976 is when we started. We have a warranty department in Torrance, California, which is where we started. We still—that's where my office, the headquarters, are. So I walk out there, I'm going over to another building, this older guy, cool older guy, sitting there on like a bench, like on the side of the warranty department. I'm like, hey, can I help you? Is someone helping you? He goes, oh yeah, I just want to—I need to get a little work done on this case. And he looks up and he goes, oh, but you're the J—you’re the guy, like the CEO. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's cool, man. What's your name? He goes—he got a little nervous—he goes, I'm Gary. I said, well, what do you need? How can I help you? He goes, well, I got this case in the late seventies. And like, imagine that was one of the first cases we ever did. And he goes, and I just need to get a casket—like a casket, like the guy's old. But I'm like, well, what? We don’t do caskets. He was so, in an awesome way, nervous. He goes, oh, I meant a gasket. So we do O-rings in there. He goes, oh no, no, I meant an O-ring. And I thought like, this guy wants to be buried in a Pelican. I'm like, that's about as good as it gets, you know? Built to protect. So, but it's been an unbelievable ride. And the team there is amazing. And we, you know, we've come a long way in the last 50 years, but a little bit like those moments to momentum. If you think about built to protect, and then, you know, what you do and what, first of all, all these folks who are on a mission, I'm like, man, like, I look at people now differently in an airport. I look at people in an audience. I look at people when I'm traveling, and I'm like, I think everyone's on a mission, they just don't know it. Think about that for a second. And I'm like, why can't we not just be built to protect for mission-critical? Why can’t we enable and empower everyone to be on a mission?

We're going to get into a few cool things with, um, travel. We're doing Pelican Shield, which is a much lighter weight travel collection, backpacks, carry. We're doing a proper Pelican case, four-wheel spinners, organized inside. So, and the same person, and I, I, I, we haven't met until today and I could see you in an airport. You're rocking that case, Pelican case. Your personal belongings are in something you stole from your wife or your girlfriend. You got a backpack you've had for a few years, and you pretend that it actually does everything you need, but you wish you had a better solution.

That's right. Right. And, uh, and then I look in the future and in one year from now, you're going to have Pelican choices, and not only because they're Pelican choices, good choices. Inside, we've got this whole packaging system. We're, we're, we're, we've worked so much with the military around this MOLLE, this modular, lightweight, load-carrying equipment. Why can't we bring that to more people? Think about what NASA did to innovation. Think about the military innovations. Think about first responders, SWAT teams. They all rely on critical mission equipment. Why can't the rest of the world have access to that?

So we're gonna launch some really cool stuff next year. In fact, we're gonna launch more new Pelican products next year than the last seven years combined. Yeah, it's gonna be cool.

Jon Bumhoffer: Exciting.

Steve Carran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you'd mentioned you just got off stage giving a talk about moments to momentum? I usually see, you know, applause come after the talk. You got multiple applauses during your talk. It was a phenomenal, phenomenal speech. Can you just kind of summarize that? Like what, how have you built those moments to momentum? Maybe at Pelican's or Levi's or Gibson?

JC Curleigh: Yeah. I mean, it's such a simple concept when you think about it. And I think in today's world where things happen so fast, everyone wants to go for the big bang moment or like, oh, how do you get to, how do you get to be an Olympic gold medalist? And what people — and it's always been proven — like you got to do thousands and thousands and thousands, but it's all those moments that collectively lead up to creating momentum.

And so, I did a talk about Levi's being a 140-year-old startup, but then understanding that denim was challenged by other solutions of comfort, casualisation, contemporary style, whether it was Lululemon or premium jeans, so really understanding all of those moments and synthesising them into a course of action. And easily, you could say, oh, well, dismiss Lululemon, that's a fad. Not quite.

And my great friend Brad Steward, who we've been on a journey for almost 30 years together, I mean, we've seen so many moments teeing up to momentum, and he's, we've gone such different courses, but that's our common denominator. I think we both can see and see these insights. And by the way, we're not geniuses; we're just, I think, insightful, and we learn to ask good questions, but don't just leave the question out there, answered or unanswered, synthesise it into a vision.

So the vision of Levi's was let's go after Sheriff Closet. I mean, this is a Levi's jacket. We make belts. We make, we went on to do that and became the leading lifestyle brand again.

Gibson guitars. Okay. We're a guitar company synonymous with every genre for 130 years. Let's be the 130-year-old startup. Let's put moments to momentum with artists, with the Gibson garage. Let's tie in, tie in the obvious, but create synergy.

And one of the starting points with a lot of companies that are struggling is they have this notion I call inverted synergy, where the whole of Levi's was actually less than the sum of its parts. They invented blue jeans. Gibson basically were at the forefront of every genre. Well then what happened? It had inverted synergy.

So one of the visions I have is to, is to, how do you create inspired synergy? And it's taking a series of moments that could otherwise be dismissed, undiscussed, or avoided. And you, you bring them together and synthesise it into a course of action that starts to create momentum. And when you get momentum, it's powerful. And then you got to keep it.

Steve Carran: Absolutely.

Jon Bumhoffer: Yeah, and you talked about those moments of momentum, you talked about what Pelicans can do. What do coming in the future here? What do you see as the challenges as you start to roll that stuff?

JC Curleigh: Yeah, well, let's start with As you can imagine, I'm an optimist, so let's start. I'm literally reading the Wall Street Journal, and I'm coming to this conference.

This conference is about reimagining the experience through the lens of independent hotels, of which I'm a customer. And I'm reading in the Wall Street Journal an article about the future of travel. It says people want to go to more extreme places, unknown places, they want to explore, they want to bring fewer things that are more valuable, and they want to trust that they can get, you know, the last mile—everything is there.

And so I'm like, Pelican, Mission, Check. Valuable, Fewer Things, Better, Destinations, Unknown, Uncharted. Like, this is setting up for us to be a perfect time to really not only just get into the travel category but take everything we've done and learned about millions of missions and set people on their mission.

So that's one dimension. But I think some of the challenges are, you know, this notion of premium, and I think there's this luxury, right? For me, Pelican's not a luxury premium brand, and there's a difference. What I want to make sure of is that people understand: If you have thousands of dollars of camera equipment, there's this built-in ratio in your head. You're like, "I'm going to spend three to four hundred dollars to protect three to four thousand." It's a ratio that you probably have, and then you trust—and we have unrivaled credibility and trust with Pelican.

But the person that doesn’t know Pelican? "What is this $500? And this other plastic case is only $100?" And so I think one of our challenges is to take what we've learned—earned—over time and reveal it to those. You know, to you first and foremost, you're our future guy: like the backpack, the four-wheel spinner, the Pelican Shield, the Mod Pack—all of that. But of equal importance is how do you create a new fan base that doesn’t know your brand? They don’t know that you've done missions. And so that's going to be our challenge.

I really fundamentally believe that in 10 years, we're going to look back at Pelican and say, "We literally energized, enabled, and empowered people that didn’t know they were on a mission to go on a mission because of Pelican."

Jon Bumhoffer: And you said something in your talk about, you said the phrase "rugged."

JC Curleigh: Yeah.

Jon Bumhoffer: So is that kind of the—

JC Curleigh: It is. And again, so many things in life come through personal experience.

Yeah, we have a place in Costa Rica. My favorite thing about it is the last 30 miles—it’s a dirt road. And my kids, as soon as we hear that dirt road, we don’t go, "Oh, hang on for the bumps—it’s dusty and noisy." We know we are literally 30 minutes away from a rugged luxury experience. We carry our boards through the jungle. There's a 200-meter setback. There are no hotels on the beach. And we’re like, "This is rugged luxury."

We’re part of the local community. The surf instructor kids are now working the bars, and we’re at their weddings. This notion of rugged luxury is something I sign up for, but I think it's a Pelican dynamic as well. It’s not just luxury; it’s rugged premium, you know?

What’s interesting is—and not to name names—but there’s a brand out there, a luxury brand, starts with an "R" and ends with "Mowa." They’re amazing. I mean, their heritage and quality and build. But I’ve seen people literally cry when it gets dented at LAX. They’re afraid to take their luggage on a mission.

The Pelican rolls off. It falls, it rolls over, it’s got stickers on it. The Pelican scars tell a story—it’s the mission. I love that. That’s rugged premium. If your Pelican case could talk, it would tell really interesting stories about what you’ve created.

Jon Bumhoffer: Yeah. And you want it to have the scars. As a Pelican owner, you want those—that’s like a badge of honour.

JC Curleigh: 100%. You and I are like, "Oh, you’re my guy." Try telling that to someone who doesn’t know Pelican, doesn’t know that it’s going to get a little scratched. It’s not going to break. You can drop that thing from a helicopter a hundred feet.

But we’ve got to condition those who don’t know they’re on a mission to act like they’re on a mission—and know that it’s okay if your case goes through life like you do: a few battle scars on the mission.

I’m super excited about it. We’re going to do a whole bunch of really cool accessories—hydration and coolers, AirTags that can velcro in. We’re really leveraging the mission to not just be like a variation on a Pelican case. If we say "equipped for the mission," we’ve got to really equip for it.

We’ve built this new product pit at Pelican. If you get down there, be my guest. We’ve got the Pelican Innovation Lab—it didn’t exist. It’s connected 50 feet from the factory. All of this comes together to create moments.

Now at Pelican, I guarantee you there’s momentum there.

Steve Carran: Absolutely. You’ve been CEO of some big companies, right? What advice do you have for somebody out there who’s aspiring to be a CEO?

JC Curleigh: Well, first of all, don’t try to be one.

Brad will tell you this—he’s seen me in the early days. He would say, like, I don’t—we never talked about, "Hey, I’m going to be the CEO." I kept failing upwards. And I mean that in a positive way.

Like, I would try things, and a few people would see what we were doing. It was a little different, but it wasn’t luck, and it wasn’t high risk. It was moments that we could put into momentum.

A couple of things I would say to people:

First of all—and this is JC—don’t take yourself too seriously. If people aspire to be a CEO, they think you’ve got to be serious. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but take your role in whatever job you have very seriously. Don’t confuse the two.

I saw that through my dad. He was a general in the military. He took his role as a general very seriously. But he was the funnest dad, the most engaging guy, loved music, and was the life of the party. But come mission time, he was on.

Another one: Learn to be aggressively patient. All of us—who here has made a decision they regretted because they made it too fast? Who here knew they had to make a decision, delayed it, deflected it, and hoped it would go away, and they go, "God, I wish I had done that sooner?"

So, crafting the balance at an early stage of your career—where to be aggressive when you have insights and know what to do—and exercising patience is critical.

The final one: None of us can guarantee success. But as leaders, we should guarantee we set better conditions for success—for your brand, business, team, or family.

And lastly, ask the right questions.

Steve Carran: Well said. Thank you so much for sitting down with us.

JC Curleigh: Thank you. Belt to Protect—let’s go on a mission.

Jon Bumhoffer: Thank you so much.

Steve Carran: Great to have you.

JC Curleigh: Thank you. Awesome.