Anniversary Throwback - #6: Clayton Flurry, Flurry's Market

As we near one year since starting In The Thick of It, we're working on a celebratory episode. In the meantime, we'd love for you to catch up on some founder stories you may have missed.

Clayton Flurry is the Founder of Flurry’s Market + Provisions, a beloved local butcher shop and grocery store in Flower Mound, Texas. After spending nearly two decades in the oil and gas industry, Clayton decided in 2020 to leave his career and pursue his entrepreneurial passion. Despite having no prior experience running a retail business, he bootstrapped Flurry's Market from idea to launch in just 9 months.

Opening amidst a pandemic came with plenty of challenges from supply chain disruptions to cash flow problems, but Clayton’s commitment to hiring knowledgeable staff, providing quality products, and serving the community with care has allowed the business to thrive. He's learned first-hand how perseverance, adaptability, and faith are key to overcoming the trials of entrepreneurship. Clayton shares his thoughts on surrounding yourself with the right people, treating employees well, and the importance of getting up every day to make a positive difference in people's lives.

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About Clayton:

Clayton Flurry is the founder of Flurry’s Market, a beloved local butcher shop and grocery store in Flower Mound, Texas. Prior to launching Flurry’s Market in 2020, Clayton spent nearly two decades working in the oil and gas industry, first as a landman in the field and later taking on leadership roles for energy companies. His experience in the corporate world gave him the courage to leave his career to follow his entrepreneurial passion. Despite no prior retail experience, Clayton’s commitment to service and community has made Flurry’s Market a thriving local business.

About Flurry's Market + Provisions:

Voted best Meat Market in Denton County, Flurry's Market is a specialty meat market, bistro & butcher shop located in the heart of Flower Mound, TX.  Our Mission is centered around quality, service, and value.

To learn more, visit flurrysmarket.com.

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If you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It, email us at [e-mail]

Creators & Guests

Host

Scott Hollrah

Founder & CEO of Venn Technology

Guest

Clayton Flurry

Owner/Founder, Flurry's Market + Provisions

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

Hey, listeners, this is Scott Hollrah.

It's hard to believe that we launched
In The Thick of It almost a year ago.

As we're nearing our first anniversary,

we're working
hard on a celebratory episode.

In the meantime, we'd love for you

to catch up on a founder story
you may have missed.

Not that I don't get excited
about every guest and every episode

that we launch, but today's is extra
special for me for two reasons.

First, as a business owner
myself, I'm always rooting

for other people who have taken the risk
to start something on their own.

Second, I'm kind of like Oprah

in that I love to share things that I love
with other people.

Maybe one day we'll do a live episode
with a live audience

and I'll give away all my favorite things,
but until then, this will have to do.

Today's guest literally feeds my family
several times a week.

Flurry’s Market is located in my town
and has quickly become a fixture

in our community.

I look forward to sharing the story
of Clayton Flurry, owner and Instagram

sensation behind Flurry’s
Market in Flower Mound, Texas.

Clayton has built a business on delivering
an exceptional experience, and he shares

what it was like in the early stages
of launching his business

at the height of a pandemic.

From running an oil and gas operation
to opening Flurry’s Market,

we talk about the importance

of learning from those who have done it
before you making quality hires

and never being afraid
of trying something new.

Welcome to In The Thick of It.

Well, man,

thanks for coming or glad to have you here
and look forward to hearing your story.

Tell me about growing up.

Where'd you grow up?

Oh, man.

You know, actually, my wife Katie
and I, we grew up in the same town.

Now, we didn't know each other growing up
in that town of Shreveport, Louisiana.

So just three hours due
east of here, driveway to driveway.

And so born and raised there
and was really able to stay in the state

all the way through
probably my mid to late 20s,

which included
military service and college.

So it wasn't until 2014
we found our way to Texas.

Okay.

So what was growing up like?

Did you go to private school?
Public school?

Did you play sports?

Yeah. No no no no to all those things.

So we didn't really have money, nor did
I really have the probably,

I don't know, the wherewithal
to hang in a private school.

And so I was what's called
a neighborhood kid back in the day.

I was went through the public school
system over my hometown.

And this isn't a knock. It's
just the truth. It's.

I'm glad I've survived it.

So I went to public school
and wasn't really focused on

college, wasn't really college driven,
didn't play sports.

I use my size at the time as an excuse,
but I was really more interested in

just hanging out with my buddies
and chasing girls

and really did the former the best across.

So, you know,
didn't really have many aspirations.

So I knew I needed to get out of school.

And that's when I also said one day
a recruiter,

I guess, came to our classroom said,
if you want to get out of class all day,

you can take this Asvab test.
And I didn't even know what that was.

Come on, do that.

And then I found myself in the military,
shot and boots on the floor.

And at 17 years old, which was one of
the best things ever happened to me.

So I went to the Army as a C student
and got out of the army.

And that's when I met my wife,
thank God, chased her to Louisiana Tech

and did four years there and stayed

in Louisiana there after that
and found myself an oil field.

Awesome. You big Terry Bradshaw fan.

To hear Terry Bradshaw, Karl Malone,
those are the two people say, you know,

losing tackle Terry Bradshaw and realized
Karl Malone was there Karl Malone yeah.

When the duck commander and I learned it
I think it's true.

I think it's true that Terry Bradshaw
actually played back up to Phil Robertson.

I have heard the same name.

And Phil

just decided he'd rather hunt and fish
and didn't want to commit to the game.

Imagine how different things would be.

Yeah, yeah yeah.

So college football really again,
not not chasing

a college or really having the aspirations
or being pushed to go to college.

I didn't really grow up with an alma mater
to root for LSU.

Louisiana State University was is kind of
like the state school like Texas.

You know, you've got so many different
large universities.

It's it's LSU or bust, really.

Anything outside of that in Louisiana

you wouldn't even go to your own home
game.

You still down Louisiana
at LSU's home games.

But I don't know a single person
from Louisiana

who doesn't root for LSU, regardless
of whether or not they went there.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

I mean, that's the state school
quote, unquote.

I wonder if there are more LSU fans
than Saints fans.

Oh, I don't know.

I think if you're 11A fan of either,

you're a fan of both
because it's always a special such media.

You see it, it's the kind of the traffic
that your home school, if you're

if you're a Louisiana Tech
and you win, great.

And then if LSU won extra, great.

And if the Saints won that weekend
bonus, it's the trifecta.

That's.

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of people here
in Dallas that don't like the Cowboys.

So you know that could go either way.

So 17 years old
you're finishing up high school

and you go straight into the Army.

Did what you talked about Shannon Boots.

But what kind of jobs did you have
in the Army.

I had many jobs.

My stepfather blue collar.

He gave me some wisdom early
before I left.

He said, get to know the cooks
and get to know the supply sergeants.

And I had no idea what that meant.

But I did his advice and it paid dividends
because you never went hungry.

You had access to food when others didn't.

In the middle of the night
when you really wanted it,

and you always had the equipment
you needed

when you got to know the supply folks.

But I didn't know what I was doing, Scott.

I just knew that that's where I wound up.

And looking back, it's
something I would never change

and also learn
that there's two sides of the military.

You've got the enlisted side
and the the officer side, if you will.

Or simply put, the educated side.

And I was on the enlisted side
and I looked around, my company

and I was one of few that non court
ordered people that were there.

It was a very interesting Crown Court or

oh man, I mean people are
I mean yeah, it's like, hey juvenile,

you can go in the military
or you can face this type of punishment.

And so it was just

there was a lot of people there that just
didn't have any other path to take.

And I mean, I guess hindsight,
maybe I was one

I could have stayed
in my hometown of Shreveport and,

I don't know, vocational school
or an hourly job or something.

I don't know, but it really opened my eyes
to how long, you know, any career

you kind of learn through life

what you don't want to do more
than what you do want to do sometimes.

And so I learned that

sure don't want to be a lifer in this,
but I excelled at it, humbly

excelled at it, I enjoyed it,
I got to meet all walks of life.

And had I not met my wife
while I was serving,

I was on the path to go to what
they called at the time green to gold.

Maybe it's called that now.

And it's, where you go from enlisted
to an officer status and go to West Point

and what have you.

And I was going through that process,
but I chased a heart

with Katie, and she was at Louisiana Tech,
and that's where, that's where I went.

I get that.

So he said something earlier
that really stood out and I don't know

that I've ever met anybody in the military
that stayed in the same state

throughout their entire time
in, in the military.

And I said, yeah, well there's a process
when you get to boot camp,

they say pick three stations.

Where do you want to go?

And you look at your choices.

And I was just really a homebody.

And I said, well, there's Fort
Polk, Louisiana.

I know where that is, but it's Louisiana
behind the name.

So one, that's choice one, I think.

Choice two I picked Hawaii just because I
was like, man, you go to Hawaii, why not?

And I don't even know
what choice three was.

And they said, you can go to Louisiana.
I was like great.

And so ended up in two hours
from my hometown of Shreveport.

And so any given weekend I,
I was not in the field doing something.

I'd just get in the car
and zip on back home and run around

with my running buddies from high school
that stuck around.

So really, my first two years
of full active duty service,

I got to spend a lot of time back at home.

That's and that's a. Rare yeah thing.

I've got a lot of military in my family.

And, you know, those six month deployments
they wear on the home front for sure.

So that's a huge, huge
blessing to be able to be that close.

Yeah for sure.

So you did your entire military time
at for Hulk.

Yes. That's
what I was my four years station.

That's where I was.
But I didn't get that lucky.

So I mean,
I literally showed up with papers in hand,

I don't know, call it
the end of the summer, end of a summer.

And they said, well, your unit's not here.

So go mow grass. Go get on this outside.

Okay. So.

Hey, mom, I made it.

I'm down here and I'm mowing grass,
but so.

But but what?

Well,
my unit's over in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

and so I'm going to be joining them here
in about 30 days or so.

And I don't know where Bosnia is, nor does
mama I don't think she does.

So yeah I spent seven months in Bosnia
right out of boot camp.

Wow. Which was interesting.

It was, towards
the end of the initial war over there.

And what year would that have been?

It was 97, 97.

Clinton was still in office.

And so that was quite the experience.

And and looking back at it, even today,
I was just a young 17, 18 year old kid.

I mean, you could put me on a plane
and say, this is where you're going.

And oh, by the way, where you're at.

Again, I didn't excel in high school
and world geography and stuff, and so

I just I'm taking you for your word.

This is where you're at
and this is what you're going to be doing.

And I was very simple
assignment had no idea the gravity of it.

Checks and checkpoints for war criminals
and confiscating weapons

and all this stuff.

It's like even in civilian world,
the jobs are jobs, a job.

You come back and you get all these,
all these oh, man service.

It's just a job at the time.

It's just a job.

That's fun.

Though I disagree with that, man.

I, I wholeheartedly disagree with that.

I appreciate the humility.

But man, it's not just a job.

there's sacrifice
and you're putting yourself in harm's way.

And some people, you don't know if you're
coming home and some people don't.

Yeah.

So it's not just a job.

Well, I think I don't know.
I'll speak for myself.

I mean, I'm really doing some reflecting
as we sit here talking through it.

You know, when you're 18 years old
and you're sitting over there, I mean,

and you don't really come from much from
the beginning of the in a loving family.

What do you have to I mean, you know,
if they going today, it'd be different.

I got three kids,

a dog house and all this stuff
that if I went over there today, I'd.

I'd be way more timid and go, man,
I got a lot to lose.

But then when you get to, you're over
there, just hard charge and man, just lets

go and you're trained and it's not like
I was on the front lines over there.

Okay, this is church.

When my brother was still in active duty,
we got word.

I don't even know how he found out, but,
he was deployed and one of the

Hornets in his squadron went down.

And we didn't know who it was.

And waiting for hours and hours and hours
to hear back like that was hard.

And that was really hard.
And thankfully it wasn't him.

But there's obviously a family
on the other side

and the pilot and the Wizo, the back seat
guy, they were both thankfully okay,

and they pulled him out of the water and
and so they had some injuries, but

man, that's a long wait.

When you know something like that's gone.
Know for sure.

And I tell you it, I don't know
if it been more of a pleasant experience.

This is talking about the deployment,

you know, in 97.

It's crazy
how far we've come with technology.

There was no cell phones, right?

I mean, their cell phones
were really coming on the scene,

but there was no Facebook and apps
and all this stuff over there.

So if I wanted to call home,
it was a major process.

And you got to use the phone
every third day or so of the week,

and you had to wait your turn in line,
and you couldn't

just go pick up a telephone
and call the ten digit number.

No, you had to call a military post
and then give them your phone number.

You're trying to call
and you're in a different time zone.

And it was always echoey.
And you know, it's funny.

You know, Mom or dad would tell you a joke
and you'd hear the joke

and you'd start laughing about it,
but they're already on to something else.

And it was just it was so choppy
and so just inconvenient and good luck.

And usually the the times you got to use
the phone

is when they were out to eat dinner.

So you never got them right

and you weren't calling their cell phone,
you were calling their home phone.

So there was just a different time.

Interesting.

My wife and I were traveling
a few weeks ago.

We were in Vancouver
and kids were back home,

and my wife calls to check on them

and she facetimes them and it hit me.

We're in another country
thousands of miles away from home,

and we are driving down the highway
at 70 miles an hour,

and we're having a video call.

Yeah, with our kids. Like,
that's pretty mind blowing.

So think of it
and we take that for granted.

We do, we do.

And yesterday, finally, I have a brother.

I have a few brothers, but, the brother.

My half brother with my mom. Are we sure?

Mom? He's down in Houston.
It just hit me yesterday afternoon.

I said, why can't we just FaceTime
the two of us together?

Our mother. And we did.

I said, you know, it's amazing technology.

And we leverage the FaceTime
button ourselves yesterday.

Nice. Yeah. Very nice.

All right.

So four years in the Army. Yeah.

You met your wife. How did you two meet?

A weekend off.

Went back to Shreveport, and she was.

So we're two years apart

a year and a half,
and she was graduating high school, which.

Yeah, a few months left.

And my buddies, again,
they weren't really going anywhere fast,

and they're still hanging around, maybe
some high school kids here and there.

And so anyhow, I found myself at some high
school party and, she was there, okay.

And the rest was history.

I think she even had
a boyfriend at the time. And

a high school kid.

So. Yeah, that's where we met.

I just come back to Shreveport,
and so we hit it off.

Call it love at first sight. Whatever.

And so that was two years in the military
and then.

So we stayed together long distance
for two years until I got out.

Okay.

And she went straight to law tech.

She went straight to law tech.

And she graduated twice.

She graduated with her undergrad
and stuck around college

because I was there or whatever.

She we graduated from my first
time, had her second time.

I know five 2005. It's awesome.

When I was getting ready to graduate,
I did not know what I wanted to do.

And one of the things that went through
my mind was, I'm going to get a masters.

And for me it was,
can I buy two more years

to figure out what I want to do
anyway, I've always admired people

that go that extra distance
and things I did for her.

I was ready to move on because
at that time I did feel like I was behind.

I spent four years,

I leave high school, four year service
now, four years undergrad.

That's eight years.

I'm like in some of the friends that I had
that they had already graduated.

You know,
I felt like I was behind us behind.

They graduated college, correct? Yeah.

And so my and I've, I've seen
and I watched some of them already.

They've had their first job for four years
in the corporate world.

They're owning homes and all stuff.

I'm like, man, I'm still in college.

But I'll never forget my father in law now

saying, you're not behind
you just hang on and I didn't realize it.

So now 9/11 occurred.

You know, I got out the year of 911,
so I got out in June and then of 2001.

And so, you know, 911
it was kind of a huge favor for military

service members because there was
this all need renewed respect.

And we love veterans.

And so I kind of got out with
I got out and went to college.

You kind of

I was able to compete against guys
with their masters and stuff,

because I had that on my resume
as a veteran

and I, my father in law was right,
I wasn't behind.

Yeah, it was interesting.

You talk about that renewed respect
and I can remember that.

Were you ever disrespected?

Oh no, absolutely not.

But it was just one of those things
that there was just

if you wrote a check
the box of being a veteran,

and I say that humbly, I just
it just became true.

I mean, when I got out, when I graduated
college, enter the workforce again,

I thought I was behind that.

I was able to compete against guys
that had

that had internships through college
and specialized places that,

I mean, I could walk in and get some
just because I did have a little bit,

some different training.

It may not have been tailored
to that specific, career path, but

kind of put me on equal ground.

It's interesting.

I think there's a lot to be said, too,
for the life experience.

And I did not serve,
but I had the opportunity to intern

when I was in college, and that set me up.

I had jobs all through high school,
all through growing up.

I begged groceries at a grocery store
when I was 14 and worked retail

jobs and, you know, all this and that.

But I got to intern.

And just being in that environment,
being around other adults,

seeing how things work outside of school
and I don't really care

what you're doing, military,
working in an office, whatever.

There's so much growth
and so many little things

you pick up on just through the osmosis
of being around that.

Yeah.

So I my method of, of being a C student

in high school
didn't wash off in the military.

I went to school to Louisiana Tech
and I kind of stayed the same way.

Now, maybe that's
because that's who I am in my DNA.

But also I was in a fraternity and there's
just so many different distractions.

And I did maintain it
for almost a full time job.

And so my point of sharing that is it
goes back to the internships.

Obviously,
the school provided those avenues.

I was not aware of them,
or maybe I chose not to be aware of them.

And it wasn't
until getting into the corporate world

where the companies I worked for, publicly
traded companies, offered internships,

and I was able to be a mentor,
do those programs.

I was like, oh, these things existed.

I wish I had known that these guys were

they can come in here and work a summer
and just realize this isn't for me or not.

I wish I had.

Man. And there's so much to be said for
figuring out what you don't want to do.

Oh, yeah? Yeah.

I mean, I got to go recruit on the on the,
like, campus of like, OU and stuff.

And it was eye opening, like,
I didn't know this existed.

I got to do some college recruiting
at a company I worked for years ago.

And man,
that was one of the highlights of my job.

There definitely was my full time job,
but twice a year we go down

and we make the visits, and that was just
it was a lot of fun.

Some great.

There's some yeah,

I don't think the Dean was coming
knocking on my door to push me to go.

These recruiting events.

Well, what was your major business?

Okay.

And I'm really not sure
how I even chose that.

I believe I chose because it was business
with a focus on entrepreneurship

and some reason that just,
I don't know, entrepreneur.

It attracted me.

It also the fraternity had

the most prior tests
in their tests in business.

and so I, I don't know, it's
just kind of the path I went.

Down the get old test. Bank on the test
bank.

You know, now that I think most colleges,
their exams are online,

I don't know,
I don't know if test banks still exist.

Probably not. But I'm sure there's
something that's equivalent.

It's just different era, you know, where
there's a will, there's a way.

Yeah. Yeah.

So your business degree was a pretty broad
general.

Yeah. Business degree.

You got a couple accounting classes,

a couple of finance,
a little bit of management.

H.R yeah, it was.

And so if I had a frame of four years
at school, my first two years,

if you looked at my transcripts,
say I was failing, it was terrible

because I was having to relearn
what I really didn't learn in high school,

because I just didn't pay attention
to really learning

math and history and English,
you know, and how to study.

But man,
when I got into business processes,

not accounting, not accounting,
but the things that really mattered,

I mean, I said I became an a student,
you know, not economics

so much and not finance.

But man, the engineering

management process, you know, anything
to do with business plan stuff?

Well, I really loved
I'd say I almost excelled at it.

And so I believe I was
I went down the right path.

It's interesting to me.

What was your favorite class?

I'm trying to think
it was not quantitative analysis for sure,

but it was more of just, I think, business
planning and business processes,

those really stick out to me.

You can't do C before you do B,
and how do you do B if you do A run

those, you know, supply chain management,
those type classes.

So post college
where did you find yourself.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Yeah okay.

One of the people on our team
started at enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Yeah.

And man, I think
incredibly highly of that organization.

I think that they do such a fantastic job

investing and teaching young people.

And some people stay.

In fact, we've actually got a neighbor
who's been with them

since he got out of college,
and he's probably at least

my age, is broken up 20 years
and then within the whole time.

But everybody
I know who has ever worked there,

they're top notch people
and they know how to do things right.

Yeah.

And I fell into that
really by osmosis of my father

in law's neighbor was the regional guy
in Shreveport, Louisiana.

So I think he managed the region
being Shreveport Bossier.

It's neighboring city.

I got to know him and just, you know,
just have driveway conversations.

I'm going to be graduating.
Hey, you should check this out.

And I just observed his life and go, well,
I didn't know that existed

in Lyndon cars and sounds sexy,
but he's put food on his table over there.

So I scoped it out and really didn't
have anything else lined up.

So let's go.

And, their management training program,
it was very intense.

But three months of that, I quickly
learned it's not what I wanted to do.

I woke up,
I said I didn't go to school for this.

And that's no disrespect to that program
or that company.

It's very well ran, but wearing a long
sleeve white shirt and a tie

in the middle of the summer, washing cars
and running cars you don't have and just.

And it didn't help my friends,
some of my buddies that had graduated

college a year ahead of me,
they kind of found a different path

in the energy business and were working
half the hours, making twice the money.

It just.

And I'm a very curious person by nature.

And so I kept watching that going,
okay, summers not this is not right.

So I was there for a very short
three months, and when I left,

I was told by a very regional vice
president that I was making

the biggest mistake of my career
by leaving there.

Wow. Yeah.
Which challenged me to prove him.

Well, I didn't have, like, an I'm
going to prove you wrong.

Right? Well, he was wrong.

Does your father in law still live?

No. That day, I think it's one of those

you grow, you go that ladder
and then beyond regional.

Now you got to go to
wherever and. You get moved.

Yeah, well, I'm sure

there are many people who

have gone on to do incredible things
that have been told by somebody.

This is the biggest mistake of your life.

I was watching, it was like a documentary
about the making of friends, the TV show.

And Jennifer Aniston
was on some other sitcom on NBC

that was like about a pizza place
that was run by an alien.

It was some weird thing.

And the friends role came up.

Somebody came to her and they're like,
you'd be perfect for this.

She's like, well,
I've already got this same network.

I don't know
if they're going to let me go.

So she auditions and the friends
people called the other producer

and they're like, hey,
we want her for the show.

And he went and told her, I'm
not going to stop you, but

you taking that, that'll be
the biggest mistake of your life.

And look. Yeah, right.

Look at what happened.

And I don't know,

I think for a lot of people that's
that's motivating to prove people wrong.

Yeah. And that was the first job
out of her quit.

It wasn't easy.

In fact, I gave them A2I think I did that.

Oh, you know, here's two weeks notice

and you know, oh, man, I was, you
know, were about to promote you and stuff.

But that was the first job I'd ever quit.

But I sure didn't look back either.

You said it was the first job
you ever quit.

You're in the military.

Did you have jobs in high school?

Oh, my God. Yeah.

So you'd mentioned you'd work in retail.

So. Yeah, I mean,

my first car, I had to pay for it.

It was a it was a family hand-me-down
on my grandparents side.

I paid $300 for it.

If I wanted that thing to go,
I had to put gas in it that I paid for.

So I was working minimum wage, $4.25
at my buddy's daycare center.

His parents owned it,
and I was a maintenance man.

And so maintenance man in high school
does that look like.

Well, I changed light bulbs
and fixed toilet paper holders

and cleaned up spills
and wash the AC unit outside.

I mean, waxed the school bus,
you know, just.

Yeah, I was blessed to have that job.

It was a family business,
if you will, that I was able to go to

every day after school.

And I held that job
all the way through high school

and if I went to Taco Bell,
I had to go to work.

I wanted to pay my beeper bill.

You had a beeper, a beeper?

Yes. If they if I wanted
that beeper to be, I had to pay that bill.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Man, do you ever get the man one one text.

Oh, baby. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's.

I almost

got a beeper and I forget why I didn't.

What did I need
a beeper for in high school?

I don't, I mean, but that's
how you commute is how you communicate it.

It's you would get a page.

It's Friday night.

You're driving around in that 300 hour
car, friend pages.

Or you paid your friend
and you have to pull over

at the 7-Eleven or circle K
and used to pay for by the payphone.

That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How far we've come?

Yeah, I hear myself say all about it.

You think I'm like 100,
but my kids would say I'm 200.

43 years old.

So you talked about the maintenance work.

Are you handy person?

I can do things.

I can change my own oil,
rotate my own tires.

I can do small
electrical things around the house.

You know, I can clean up my own pee traps.

And I learned through that, through
that job and also my my stepfather.

He was very handy, very handy.

He worked for Halliburton, worked
in the railroad and summer jobs with him.

I was replacing roofs for family, friends.

I mean, so

I was exposed to a lot of simply call it
blue collar work, if you will, which

I'm glad you know, I still mow my own lawn
because I get joy out of it.

Really, it's not because I have to.

It's just it's that whole adage,
no one's going to do it like you do it.

Oh, am I handyman? No,
but I can do things.

Yeah, and I'm cheap
when it comes to certain tasks.

So it's always like, man,
I he pays me to do something.

I can do it myself.

All right.

So let's go back to kind of your career
progression enterprise.

First job you ever resigned from.

Where did you go from there?

I went to the oil field,
as it's called, as a land man.

my land man is responsible for everything

from running title
in a courthouse property title

to securing contracts from landowners
to get the rights

to drill or traverse across property,
to put a pipeline out.

settle damages,
meaning I you own 100 acres.

They want to drill on it.
You know, I need the lease.

I need the surface
rights, all these things.

And so that was what started my career
in the energy business was I left

enterprise, and I found myself
in East Texas in courthouses.

Check and title and check.

And title means, hey,

there's a piece of land I find who pays
taxes on it, and then I run it backwards.

You just run the history,
go backwards to find out

who owns the mineral rights
and every state's different.

And so I started doing that.

I did that for two years.

It's what's called a field land, man.

It's called a field land man

because you're out in the field,
you're in these court,

various courthouses,
you're all over the place.

You're not in the oil field.

No. Well, yes and no.

I mean, I'm in the county seat of wherever
these projects are that are happening.

And who's doing the projects?

Well, the corporate companies
or the operating companies. And that's

I say that kind of I
did that for two years, feel like I'm in.

And again, I'm a curious person by nature,
and I didn't feel like

I figured out the trade
or like the trade by all means.

But I kept going.

Who was sending me out here to do this
project, and why are we doing this?

But I do.

I need to go lease
this property from Farmer Smith or Susie.

And I just kept going back, tying it back
to, well, it's because someone,

some geologist somewhere or some engineer
somewhere

have figured out that there's a potential,

zone of interest that you could produce
commercial hydrocarbons.

And so I just kept going, well,
how do I go to that job?

And so after two years of doing the field,
I was blessed to again in my hometown,

found a publicly traded operating company
called Saint Mary Land and Exploration.

Been around 100 years.

I was able to get on as a junior land man.

Now what's called an in-house land man.

In-house outhouse. Outhouse
for your field guys.

Where you really you kind of you take a
step up the ladder and you're really

you're directing field land man to go
do the work that needs to be done.

And this is a different company
than the ones.

Yes. Correct. And timeline.

This is probably 2006, 2007
somewhere in there.

That's correct.

Okay.

And East Texas,
I remember around that time

the Barnett Shale was a big deal.

It just started kicking off.
That's correct.

That was kind of the mother
of the unconventional oil

and gas exploration,
if you will. So in North. America.

That was peak time.

It was I never worked the Barnett play,
if you will.

I did work with some fellow field, land
and brethren that had joined our team.

We were working something

different, more conventional stuff
in East Texas that had exposure

to the Chesapeake and McLendon
and all that stuff that they were doing

with the airport lease, the airport,
that was a big deal.

It's interesting.

Even today, I mean, I still

take notice of drama on the airport
and seeing those all those locations.

And but in Flower Mound, Denton County,
learned about all the fracking and stuff

that's going on.

And but then over Shreveport,
that's very pro oil and gas over there.

I mean, a lot of families
made a living from oil and gas.

And so we didn't have the people

storming the courthouses
with the anti-fracking and stuff.

That was happening over here.

But yeah, so that's really
when I jumped in from being in the field

to being in the corporate scene of the

all the unconventional stuff
that was taking place.

And boy, I wish I had a crystal ball and,
you know, knew what I knew now.

Yeah, well,
and maybe this is part of that.

But the energy industry, it's boom.

And bust. Oh yeah. For sure.

So all right,
so you go from the field rep to in-house.

What was that job like?

It was amazing.

It truly was I learned so much.

I was very nervous going into it.

And I was nervous primarily
because I knew I didn't know a lot.

I was probably way over my skis,

but I had to just say, Clayton, stop.

You don't have to know everything.

You work for a company that has resources,
resources, meaning dollars

that you're able to bring in outside

talent, lawyers and other people
that had the 20 years experience.

Get over it, Clayton,
that you're only 23, 24.

You've got resources.

Get surround yourself with smarter people.

And that's
what I had to quickly learn to do.

And I was fortunate to do that.

And I got to meet so many people
that were in the energy biz

back in the 80s, went through all the buzz
and learn from them

and how they managed, you know,
their personal life through that.

And I don't know where I'm going with that
other than I just

learned a lot
and I learned that I love the business.

It was challenging. It was very stressful.

Energy projects.

Initially, it was like, we're going
to drill this well, cost $10 million.

That's we're just one,
or we're going to do 20 of these.

This year, $200
million. We're going to spend that.

They got to where it's like
that was nothing.

If our region at the time was

where the wells were making the most
economic sense out of the whole company,

we could have a three quarter billion
to $1 billion budget for that year.

Just for drilling, just for. Drilling.

And some of that would be an exploration.

And you don't know if you're going to hit
or hit a drill hole.

No, no you don't.

But well, by the time in that business,
by the time you have a budget of that size

approved, you spent, again,
some pretty material dollars

on the exploration
side to prove the project.

The energy business really goes
into exploration and development.

And so I had the luxury of doing both.

Working on both sides of started with
exploration is just just mowing down wells

to stay in front of those rigs, staying
in front of them, which is a process.

It doesn't matter
where you're at in the country,

which state, what field you're working
in. It's all kind of the same thing.

You got to get the lease.

That's old saying no lease,
no grease, got to get the lease.

When you get the lease,
got to make sure it's a good lease

and then you got to get the land

all surveyed and everything
and just get the pipe you got, you know,

you start producing,
you got to have get it out of there.

And so the more you talk about this,
the more my mind is blown

that this actually happens
because you got to get the mineral rights,

you got to get the surface rights,
go through all the title

to make sure that everything's
clear, figure out where it is.

I'm sure there's city state permitting
that you got to go through, I mean.

Oh, and don't even bring up the subject
of drilling on government lands.

That's a whole nother process.

I mean, so with this same company,
they closed their office

down in Shreveport and they said,
your jobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I'm like, I don't even know where that is.

And I'm well, I'm going
I don't know what else I'm going to do.

Backing up a second, at
what point did you get married?

We graduated in
oh five, spring of oh five.

We got married
that September, September 10th.

Okay.

And my mind, I was blind.

I was. Waiting until, yeah, 1905.

And it was just before Katrina. Yeah. So.

And what was Katie doing?

She was educated in health,
fitness, kinesiology, and she was serving

as the regional YMCA fitness advisor.

Okay.

Yeah, she was teaching aerobics
and running the fitness program at YMCA.

And that's when I was doing field work.

And so our first two years of marriage,
I was living in hotels.

I gets your two days a week.

And that was part of what
drove the curiosity to it's like,

okay, how do I finish?

How do I, I love this business,

but I'm not going to continue
to sleep in in La Quinta every other week.

It's not going to happen.
How do I get home? How do I get home?

Yeah.

So you come home from work one day.

Hey, they're closing our office.

How do you feel about Tulsa?

Well.

I could that wasn't good,

because all of her family,
including siblings, all of my family,

which was much smaller than hers,
Shreveport, Shreveport.

And we had just had our second child

who was going to hindsight,

who did turn one the day we followed
that moving band out of Shreveport,

we celebrated his first birthday in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, in a place we did not know

anybody in a hotel with a little blue

bell ice cream cup and a candle
I found in the gift shop downstairs.

Yeah, that was. A match.

And there were some.

Yeah. She was.

Yeah, but I said it 100 times
because it's the truth.

We spent three years in Tulsa
almost to the day.

And the tears, her tears
leaving that town were larger

than they were going up there.

That's such a great place to live.

So you found you found community?

Yeah, we found a great church. Great.

I mean, the the the culture there at
the office that I worked at was fantastic.

Take our neighborhood.

We just got I had his hand in everything.

And so we met great people.

The climate there is phenomenal.

I don't know if you've been to Tulsa, but

it's almost like there's
a mother nature switch.

When the calendar says it's spring switch,
it feels like spring winter

switch, summer switch fall.

It's amazing you actually have seasons
you didn't like here in North.

Yes, it was amazing.

That's awesome. Yes.

So you touched on something.

You use the word culture.

You talked about how the office in Tulsa
had a great culture.

Was it different
from the Shreveport culture?

It was.

And again, this
the same company, same company.

But at that time it's a company. It's
100 years old. It's crazy.

So craziest thing I'll never forget
getting an email from the CEO.

I'm still in Shreveport.

Hey, this year we're turning 100 years
old as a company, and every month

you're going to get some sort of swag to
commemorate the company in its birthday.

You know what that company did
the next year changed its name.

I'm like, wait

a minute, we have all this stuff
in the reasoning behind it.

As I understand it, I get it was

that was when, you know,
we've talked about the Barnett Shale and

up until then, oil and gas drilling
was called conventional, conventional,

meaning straight holes.

Conventional way of drilling,
not used up and down or unconventional

is now you're turning these things,
you're drilling horizontal.

Well everyone starts
we're kind of rebranding.

We're no longer
this 100 year old conventional player.

We're now unconventional, and we're going
to shorten our name, a new logo.

So this

so the culture was different out there
because they kind of were changing

before everybody else in a newer office
space looked really nice.

Kind of like your place here, Scott.

And just it felt good.

So it was a different culture

primarily was driven
because the company was changing.

Interesting. Yeah.

And they're hiring a lot of younger people
at that time, too.

It was because the energy programs,
with the foresight of eight

unconventional petroleum engineers
at 8 a.m., hey, this is the new thing.

This is how you study reservoirs.

Now, all these new technologies.

Well, those, you know, when I came to
this company, to the company at the time,

I think I brought that average age of
40 people in that office down by 20 years.

Oh, yeah. Wow.

And so by the time I left,
everyone looked like me.

How many offices did they have?

at the time, I think there was
probably six across the country.

And culture
is just such a big, important thing to me.

And what you said earlier just kind of set
off this whole thought pattern

after the new brand
was kind of settled on.

Do you think that the culture
of the other offices

kind of leveled out
and had a similar feel, or was there just

a true, distinct difference
between HQ and the regions?

No, I think that company,
they did a very good job at.

You could walk in any one regional office
and it almost

it looked the same, felt the same.

So you didn't feel out of place
when you would go visit different places.

The only thing really different
was the food.

So you mentioned leaving Tulsa.

That was a hard thing.
How long were you there?

Three years in again,
here comes curiosity creep.

That's what really curiosity creep and
wanting to get a little closer back home.

We've now had her third child.

I learned that Katie had a plan
the whole time.

I had no idea
were gonna have three children.

We had a boy and a girl.
And what do we eat?

Why do we need more children?

But, one thing about Tulsa.

At least our friends group.

You have a litter, you don't have 1 or 2.

And so I think some of that influence
rubbed off.

And so we had our third child
and we needed to get closer back home,

these six hour, one way or 12 hour trips

back to see grandparents
every month was just off.

So where is that going to be?

I didn't really want to go back
to Shreveport won.

The energy business was quickly
fading away.

Their people were moving out.

And so where?

Where can I go?
Well, Dallas is pretty close.

It's three hours now.
I've just cut everything down in half.

And so I just started
pull out the Rolodex.

Who would I know in the business?

You know, just making some phone calls.

And I landed in Shreveport.

I'm sorry. In Dallas.

I'm sorry I landed in Dallas. Okay?

I landed in Dallas, and I left nine years
in the publicly traded energy space.

Two private equity backed energy space,
two different animals.

You do the same thing,
and you still drill the same wells.

But how you plan and budget
and in the projects

you take on or don't take on or two
are driven two different ways.

Mentalities totally do.

Yeah,
I call that my six year MBA, if you will.

What are the biggest differences
between the two?

Oh my gosh, it really comes down to
just how money's handled

and how you make decisions
when you're working for big three, $4

billion publicly traded company,
you move at a different pace.

Your risk reward
profile is completely different.

Is it safe to assume that the PE was spend
the money?

Let's move fast decision.

How quick can we get a return?

Yes, it's all return.

It's more ROI versus ROI.

I yeah, it's that rate. It's that rate.

Yeah, yeah.

And I came in
I believe kind of at the tail end of

it was very attractive
because when the energy business went

from conventional
to unconventional private equity

specifically there's a group called In
Cap out there that they got really good

at finding and taking young guns
from these big public companies

and putting together these management

teams, giving them a $300
million blank check and say, go.

And at that time, it was really more land
play driven of getting in front of these

public companies to move slower.

So the small, independent
little management teams, you know, say

me and you,
we just got 300 million our check

and we just go
we're very nimble, very nimble.

We can make our own decisions.

We could just get on technology
computer and say, well,

there's a bunch of rigs here.
It looks like they're moving this way.

Let's go. Lisa, plan in front of them.

We do that. Well guess what
Exxon needs to keep moving.

So they're going to go pay
you ten x on what you just paid.

And it was just very lucrative.

It was very attractive very sexy.

Now everyone was successful.

I mean there's
a lot of ways around that rig.

And if you get it wrong, you get burned.

And that's what made a big difference
between good and bad teams.

And so I kind of came in on the tail
end of that private act.

We're still doing that.

But the opportunities were getting few
and far between.

Is that because they're just the.

Land grabs were kind of over,
and now it was more a and of just

people's positions and companies.

And how does their balance sheet look,
and are they at the end of their cycle

of private equity.

Just it was different.

In, in the PE business
where you really just holding the rights

and flipping the rights
or you guys actually.

Oh no we were drilling. Yeah.

We're full blown.
Operating team is amazing.

Ten people in the office
doing the same thing that a office of 60

or 70 publicly traded guys would do. Wow.

Yeah. It's just it's amazing.

And it's not a knock
against my old company.

I just see it everywhere.

I mean,

but there's just a lot of fat out there
that can be trimmed

when you're doing anything.

Yeah,
I've learned mind the existing business,

I've cut labor in half and I'm still doing
the same thing I was doing last year.

Which did you enjoy more?

I like them both.

I wouldn't have found my way on it.

Private equity team starting out.

There's just no room for novice.

You've got to have
some sort of experience.

They were both great.

They were both great.

I think the most rewarding was the my last
call it three years

when we stood up our own company
when we being two engineers,

my last two business partners and I,
we wouldn't we wouldn't got our hundred

and $50 million check
and hired some very good people

and bought some assets, drilled
some wells, had some success.

I mean, that was very rewarding,
but very stressful.

So how long were you at the
the backed company?

Yeah.

So when I came to Dallas, when the family
we came down here, we went to work.

I went to work for a management team
that was already put together,

backed by natural gas partners,
and they had already had their commitment.

And we spent two years
I was on the land team

trying to find something to acquire,

trying to find some
that was already produce real quick.

It's like 2010, 11, 11.

20, 12, 13 ish.

Yeah.

I spent two years trying to find assets
to acquire that were producing

cash flow, cash flowing,
and we couldn't really find anything.

By the time you get a deal on the line,
commodity prices would drop down.

You know,
it's always like a falling knife.

And we finally said, you know what?

Let's go put together our own property,
our own deal.

And so we ended up putting together
a bunch of land leases up in Oklahoma,

drilling some wells
and our backer got tired of

call it the team, call it the properties,
and really wanted to sell them,

flush them. We weren't ready.

And so myself and two of the engineers
at work there said,

why don't we buy these properties
ourselves?

We believe in them. Still.

They've been mismanaged potentially.

So we need to find money.

And so we just we went to
our private equity provider at the time

and said, hey, it could be viewed
as we staged a coup, but we didn't.

We just said, you know, if these guys are
going to be done with it, we're not done.

And we don't want to just go down
with the ship.

So we're young,
we have families, and let's go for it.

So we went to the private equity
sponsored.

The town said,

would you allow us to go try to find money
and buy this from ourselves, from you?

And we got the green light
and that's what we did.

So you got three kids.

You're an early mid 30s mom.

How about late 30s now? Yeah. Okay.

And what was that like?

You've had kind of the safety
and security of a W-2 job.

Yeah. All these years.

What's going on in your mind.

What was the conversation
like at home. Is fight or flight?

It was, it was I did not want to go back
to the public world

because now I've kind of become
not my own boss.

But now I'm in a small world
and it's great.

And I didn't want to go back to
making widgets, if you would, I wouldn't.

I like being out here super nimble
and let's go big projects potential.

You know it's skin in the game.

So should the stars align.

You make a big lake or do a lot better,
if you will,

than sitting there collecting a paycheck
every two weeks at a public company.

Was nothing wrong with that. Energy
business is great that you make.

You can make great money
and not even have an education to boot.

I just want to go back
and I've gotten a taste of that and

I just saw a way of
and if if I've got the will

and I got two engineers here
that are truly trust, they have the will.

And so we literally we would as
things were kind of starting

to show themselves
that this thing's going to wind down.

We would our spend
our lunches down in the, public

now called dinner hall,
whatever the building, your cafeteria

space with a yellow legal pad say, okay,
what do you want to do?

How does this look?
What's our company name going to be?

What are we gonna get the money?

How are we going to do this?

Do we want to do this?

Here's the chart.
If we don't do it, you're going to go it.

And so we stacked hands and went for it.

For your two partners.

And were we all friends outside of work
or were you really just work?

Well, it's funny, we actually met

back in the public company days
in Shreveport.

We all worked together
back on an asset team way back in the day,

so we actually so
when we're making these decisions

and having these meetings,
do we want to go get our own money?

We'd actually work

together on and off through our careers
for about ten plus years.

Okay. Yeah.

And was everybody all in totally on board.

Yeah we were.

And one thing I learned to
that is I think it's very important

that you're kind of the same
like mind and position in life to County

because what we were viewing was
we had management,

our existing management at the time,
they were in different

it was kind of old and watery
and it just wasn't working.

And and I think some of our successes
we were having

once we got off and running,
we stacked hands, we'd got funded,

we were all like kind of
in the same part of our lives, you know,

young families and all like minded and,
and actually voted the same.

But just
we all had the same goals and aspirations.

Let's just

do what you say you're going to do,
put your head down, go to work and trust.

God's going to take care of the rest.
We're all believers.

It just all was just that.

We named our company okay
exploration, not the partners.

And it was biblical based.

Keisha would know it's right. Okay.

Very cool.

So what was it like
having two other partners?

How did you guys make decisions?

That's a great question.

I did not realize
until this current venture I'm in,

and this is no disrespect to my partner,
which is my wife

on paper of this, venture I'm in now.

But having partners, I mean, I've said it.

I've said it so many times,
I'm blue in the face now.

Hindsight.

I wouldn't do what I'm doing now.

If I could do over, I wouldn't
do what I'm doing now without partners.

Really? Yes, yes. Wow.

And that's just been my experience.

Because you have a sounding board.

You're not making decisions in a vacuum.

You're just kind of.

It's three legs to a stool,
if you will, yours.

Hey, Scott. This is what I'm thinking.

I woke up this morning.
I'm thought we need to do this. You go.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.

Remember? Wait.
This is not what we talked about.

Oh. Where?

I don't really have that check balance,
and I can be one I hear all the time.

Like,
then you do. You move a lot, you pivot.

Well, I just pivot.
And I don't really have those three legs.

You know, those two are the two legs and
and so what was the question.

How did you guys make decisions.
Was that a positive thing.

We sat around in meetings a lot
okay a lot.

I jokingly said a little rude up my butt
every day.

I felt like in chairs.

But yeah, it was great.

But it was also a natural.

It was natural is once a petroleum
engineer, was a reservoir engineer.

Himalayan guys,
we all brought different lenses,

if you will. You know,

it was three petroleum engineers,
three land men or three accountants.

So it wasn't a big echo chamber.

We all had different points of views and
reasonings of why we would make decisions.

Yeah, I think that's hugely important.

I assume you had a little bit
more of the business side

and they had the more execution.

Here's how we go about this
kind of you bet. I didn't know anything

about rock mechanics
or anything about volume displacement.

And so I respected them
and really, truly valued

and wanted to learn about that stuff
as much as I could on a high level.

But I also got the same respect
back from them of,

hey, we can't just go do that over there
on Farmer Bob's land, and here's why.

But the contract says we can't, but we are
good people and we're going to live.

We're going to be an operator of choice.

And so we always had this respect
and it worked out.

It's a good team, great team. That's huge.

Just because you can do something
just because it's allowed

by the contract
doesn't mean that you should.

And I think there's

a lot of

people out there, a lot of businesses
that don't operate like that.

Right? Yeah.

And we kind of borrowed
stole that public company that, that both

Brandon, Melissa and I, my two partners
that we're speaking of were at Saint Mary

Land and Exploration, that CEO Tony Best,
that was there while we were there.

Da tenure.

He just had some great,
just great mission statements.

And one of them being we're
going to be operator of choice.

It just always stuck with me
and stuck with my two partners.

And we carry that over to occasion.

We live by that.

We want to be an operator of choice,
and you're not operator of choice.

If you're mowing down

and disrespecting the people that you know
without their land.

Yeah, nothing,

you know, and that then they that's that's
really where the rubber hits the road.

The right thing to do
is the right thing to do regardless.

But when other people are looking
at leasing out their land

and they're talking to farmer Bob,
who who were on

when they hear, hey, who treated you well?

Who didn't?

I mean.

Well, it's also partner of choice
to are in business.

You partner with people, other businesses
and we always wanted to be the partner

of choice.

We wanted people to call us
because they knew

that if we said we're going
to do something, we're going to do it.

Even if it hurt, it's beautiful.

Like, man, we should have never committed
that. We do it.

I have carried that
into what I'm doing. Now.

If you're gonna say
you're gonna do some do, it means a lot.

I'm glad to hear the partner model worked
well for you, because there's

a lot of stories to the counter to that,
and that's great to hear.

When it works. Well, it does now.

Doesn't mean it's easy,

you know.

Oh, get a humble yourself a lot.

Sometimes you get into partnerships
that you,

you know,
as soon as that honeymoon's over.

You sure?

How do we get out of it?

Did you guys ever have any disagreements
that were really difficult

to work through?

Probably,
but I'll speak from my experience.

And if Melissa ever listened to that,
she would respect that and what I learned

or what we went through.

Brandon, Melissa and I,

and I guess we're talking about my last
three years in the energy business here.

My communication skills just sucks
sometimes and probably not sometimes.

Probably a lot of times I am a bad
swimmer, meaning I assume things.

I assume people know what I'm thinking
and can make

decisions based on what they already know,
or they know why I'm doing this.

And Melissa is a mother,
a wonderful mother.

Brandon is a father,
a wonderful father. I'm a father.

And when you got you inner dynamic of

you've got two men and a woman
in a, in a partnership, you got to treat

Melissa a little different than Brandon,
not treat that you talk different.

Right. And everyone has a different needs.

Brain has got different
needs. And Melissa does I have different.

And she taught me so much of
she's not Brandon right.

She's a woman.

And I hope this isn't coming across
as like sex.

But she need to be treated different
or she need to be talked to different.

Her language was different.
That's what I'm trying to say.

Not treated.

Her language was different than Brandon's
and I communicate.

Brandon
I could have five in the break room

and say, yeah, we're doing
say boom and not tell Melissa.

Well,
Melissa needed to be involved in that.

And if Melissa not half of
and made it to John Brennan,

it didn't really affect him as much.

Or maybe he'd share it as much.

And so Melissa, I got really close
because I could almost bank

about every six months
my door was going to slam,

and that's with her
it behind her for coming into office

and giving it to me,
just giving me the business.

And it resulted most of times
me in tears saying, I'm so sorry.

But those encounters just strengthened
our partnership.

It really did.

And she knew I never would do anything
or make any decision out of spite.

And I knew she wouldn't either.

But it was always just like,

here goes Clayton, assuming again
that she knew or it just

I don't know where I'm going
with that, but.

Being able to say you're sorry
yeah is really, really important.

And there's a lot of people
that pride just won't let them.

Yeah. So glad to hear that.

You weren't
afraid to say those words. Yeah.

So you were with them for three years?

Yeah. Three years.

And what caused that to come to an end?

Oil going negative in 2020
I think it was March.

I swore I would never forget the date,
but when oil went negative, we're at home.

I'll never forget where I was at.
We'd gotten funded.

Brandon was we'd gotten funded,
put the team together.

We got the old regime out the door.

No disrespect to them.

Just we bought the assets.

You know, one of the hardest things
I've done in that energy career was buy

my own assets.

Imagine spending $1 million in legal fees,
buying your own house

from you, from yourself.

In the next day.

You still wake up in the same bed.

Yeah.

So you know, but our own assets,
we got through all of that,

learned about what his day is
and all these women bank it was

we learned so much
and we got through all that

and stayed in our old digs
for about eight months.

And we release was coming due and we said,
well, we got to move our office.

What are we going to do?

And we settled over by the Galleria

grade office, put our touches on it in.

About five months later, Covid hits,
we go home and we're all network in

and we're now doing some consolidating
for our sponsor.

We're taking out other teams
and all through Covid, and I'm

watching all go negative
and that's what I'm going.

Our number is going to be up in it.

Sure enough
it was our number came up meaning

we were going to get consolidated,
meaning our team was going to go home.

And naturally you would say, well,
if it's the end of the road's near,

we'll do what you did earlier.
Go get some more money.

Well no, no, no.

All negative that year

and was giving anybody any money
and that space and so I knew that

and I was very fearful
of just sitting around and waiting

for that downturn, if you will,
at the time, to iron itself out.

Which would it ever?

We had an administration
coming in and killing energy

like, I'm not going to be part of that.
No way.

So when you say you got consolidated,
does that mean you're back

or pull the plug and said, hey, we're
going to take this and roll it up under?

That's right.

And so at that time I was Kane
Anderson was our sponsor and our backer,

our partner.

And we were operating
assets up in the Middleton in Oklahoma.

And there was also 2 or 3
other operating teams,

also royalty companies, mineral companies

under this in the same fund,

operating in the same base
and all had their own management teams.

And so I mean, you cut G&A deep,
put it all under one team

with the plan
of taking it public potentially.

And we we threw our name in the hat
to get those consolidators.

And I think we could have done it.

But one of my partners wanted to be done

for a little while
and completely respected that.

And it changed the dynamic.

And I said, well, if that person's going
home, I don't, hey, I love you.

But, you know,
I think I'm gonna do something different

to, you know, and and I'm just praying
about it like I did something different.

Was that a hard conversation now?

Not really. Yes.

But now Melissa, she want to go be mom.

And when she sat there and said,

I want to go home,
I said, we're going to help you go home.

And then that left her leaving the room.

And Brian and I looked at each other
going, well, do you want to keep going?

And we said, yeah, let's do it.

And we did.

It's not like we sat on her hands.

We'd pull out the Rolodex, you know, start
a good climb in every tower in Dallas.

Hey, what are y'all doing?
Do you want to sell this asset?

Need a partner? We got a team.
We're gonna end up going home.

But we can do these things.

We can operate your assets, a non
operator, and nothing would really stick.

And I just kept looking, counter
going. I'm not.

I'm going to give this thing till about
October and I'm going to make a decision.

That's what I did.

And Katie was on board. Yeah.

She's wonderful.

She'd jump off the bridge with me I think.

Well no she wouldn't but she's that type.

She just you know,
she knows I'm a dreamer.

And I kept thinking about now
what else could we do.

And she's been a big fan.

I can relate to that.

Before we get deeper
into what you're doing today

you talked about oil going negative.

And I remember that being all over
the news for the uneducated like myself.

Does that mean that oil companies are
literally paying people to take the oil.

Yes, yes, that is true.

And there was even a bigger issue is
there was no one to take.

The oil storage was full.

Cushing I mean, we were blessed to be
where our assets were.

Cushing we could still get oil out,
but it wasn't at a pace we needed to,

and we were having to build a huge,
which was very risky.

Like, lightning could strike one tank
and you lose everything.

We were having to stockpile oil,
but we were hedged.

So in the energy business, you can hedge,
you can hedge that commodity.

And so but you're only as good
as your counterparty.

But oil went negative.

We were still selling barrels at $56. Yes.

So it didn't affect our balance sheet.

But it sure affected
the sentiment in the industry.

If you go oh come on. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So when you talk about the storage
was full, you had no place to put it.

Is that because, hey, we're in Covid.

People weren't driving,
their cars were not earning.

And we don't we just don't need it.

So there was no draw.
It was a demand issue.

And it was no draw in the industry
got really good at what was doing,

is producing a lot of oil
and that's what happened.

The energy business is his own worst enemy
and you're always chasing the price.

Natural gas is starting to trade up.

Well, let's go produce gas. Well,
we're so good at it.

We put too much supply out there.

Guess what?

Price goes down
and it shuts projects down.

People
lose their jobs or oil starts going up.

And that's what happened was Barnett Shale
big gas unconventional and everyone's

will get natural gas was trading $15
an m you know, and boom we crushed gas.

It went down to $2.

Guess what? Oil.

We can do that same stuff in oil.

It didn't take a loss man, to figure out
we're going to do this.

And then they did.

Going back to what
we're talking about earlier,

just how long it takes to actually
get something through the whole process.

You're looking at the spot price today,
but it's going to be six months,

a year or two years before you actually
start pulling stuff out of the ground.

So you're making decisions on price today.

That may not be that price by the time
you actually start pulling it out.

Yeah, there's it's what the industry use,
what's called a strip

and the strips never. Right.

But it's a guidepost of well,
the industry says in 12 months

it'll be this 24 months will be this, 36
months will be this.

And you plug that in your model.

And if the project works based on strip
with some sort of discount,

typically you go
and that's where your, your,

your risk profiles by different companies
and tortures change.

I mean some people take strip
and don't discount

anything and go, you know, I was like,
oh my God, they're idiots.

But hey,
sometimes those guys are geniuses.

It's it sounds like luck.

Timing
is everything in that industry fail.

So how does Clayton go

from the energy world to flurries market?

Yeah, I don't know, really, I don't know.

I mean, I wanted to do something,
I had to do something.

And so I just literally came home
from church in November of 2020, I think.

Yeah, I'll never forget coming home
from church in 2020 and sat on

the couch, turned on some football
and looked over.

There was a purple spiral notebook.

The thing is, my daughters
and I just flipped

to the back to some free paper and said,
what do I know?

What have I done?

Who do I want to be?

I'm 42 and so I just started penciling out

the whole pros
cons and, you know, don't stay in energy.

Yes. No. And I kept going.

Energy just didn't
I didn't see a path because I just knew it

would take some time.

No one was hiring,
it was firing was no money.

And so I really just

that pencil, the paper just immediately
just went bent to something different.

And I didn't want to go
to real estate school or I have to go,

well, what have I done?

So I had to actually go,
what have you done in life?

Why wouldn't I go back in the military?

So, well, and I worked in a meat market.

When I got out of the Army, I did that.

I really enjoyed that.

I still know the guy that owns

that same meat market that I worked in.

I, worked in a prep kitchen or bartended.

I wash dishes in college for four years.

I like food, I like service,
I really like my town.

What does this town not have?

Well, I would I would.

One of those meat markets work over here?

This is truly.
This is exactly how it went.

Yeah. I'm. I want to be market.

That's what I'm going to do.

So you put that purple.

So that was it.

Look down and you go find Katie and say
here's what's next babe.

Yeah well I think I reached over
and grabbed my laptop

with the next to the purple notebook
and I said, do meat markets make money?

Google?

Well, I didn't get any results,
so I just started making phone calls,

made phone calls, and I called my buddy
Ross that owned Maxwell's Market,

Shreveport, Louisiana,
that I worked in back in 2001, I think.

So, Ross,
you've been doing this for 20 years.

Would you do it again?

And, you know, I have to preface
before I made that phone call and I shared

Katie with the idea, she said,
I don't want to be married to business.

I don't want to be married to a store.

I don't want to do it. Okay, I hear you.

Hey, Ross, would you do this again?

He goes, well, you know, I'm I'm married
and I his wife, we don't have kids.

And so I live here at the store.

And it's easy for me
because I don't have kids.

And that's like, oh my God.

The first thing he told me
is what Katie said.

You don't want to do that.
You know me. I'm smart.

Right? I'm like,
oh, well, I'm not going to tell Katie.

He said that
he's going to be married store

because I'm going to do this thing
corporately.

I'm not going to run the scene
like a traditional mom and pop where

the man or woman's name that's on the door
is the butcher has got to be there.

I'm going to I'm going to do this

kind of more of a,

a white collar corporate fashion, and
I'm going to hire people to do this thing.

Oh, they're for Jeff Bezos.

He's not the butcher at at Whole Foods.

He runs Amazon.

He just opens our own Whole Foods.

And I still haven't given that up.

I still haven't given that up.

I haven't seen the light in the tunnel.

But so I said, okay,
I can get beyond that.

What else? You go as well,
if you can get past that.

It's been one of the most rewarding things
I've done.

This is Ross telling me this.

I said, okay, tell me why.

He goes, well, you're going to meet
families, come in these doors.

They're going to bring their kids in there
on a Saturday after soccer practice.

They're going to get a ice
from the ice machine,

and you're gonna get to watch those kids
grow up

and their kids are gonna have kids.

And it's just and everything you describe.

So that's what I'm looking for
in life service and part of the community.

And, you know, I'm kind of my boss
and it's my store.

And it's not a new concept.

Meat markets and corner stores
have been around for centuries,

you know, or century,
you know, King Sugar,

go get a pack of smokes
and sugar down the street.

I don't sell cigarets with sugar,
but I was like, okay, well,

Ross, do you mind if I come visit
you and see it again?

And he did.

So the summer
we made the commitment to do this thing.

I said, okay,
I think so we're going to do.

And so I went to my standing business
partner, said, I'm out to buddy.

I'm going to go be a meat man in Flower
Mound, Texas.

That's what we did.

And so my neighbor,
an attorney, he's a good friend

and said, man,
how do I stand up an LLC on my own here?

So he helped me do that.

And in March of 2021,

formed Flurries Market and Provisions LLC.

A year after the pandemic.

Yes. That everything down. Yeah.

What gave you the courage to do that.

My experience in the energy
because I was scared to death

when we moved to Dallas I was working for

private equity company
number one management team.

I was scared to death
when I saw that thing winding down

and said,
okay, this is where I can either be scared

and just ride this wave until it hits
the shore and I have no job or

go work back for making widgets
for big public company, or let's

go do this ourself.

And man, that was such a hard process.

That was I really think
it took years of my life

because we found the funding,
the deal died,

it revived itself,
it died again, revived itself, and

we got through that and said, well,

we know this is and I just kind of
and I fell in love

with the process of starting
a company is like, man, this is great.

So, man, I don't know how to do this.

No, I'm a corporate
go format on paper and go, you got it.

So what do you need? You need
you need capital.

You need people.

Both resources will get the resources
you need and roll.

So what we did.

So November of 2020 you have the idea

March of 21 is when you form the LLC.

And I turned out my lights March 31st
at the energy company walked out.

How long from then
until you opened the store?

Yeah, we opened December 13th, 2021.

On paper, I was supposed to be open
September 1st.

We had some conversations running
each other around town or school events

and I got to hear a little bit
of what it took to get the doors open.

Talk about that for a minute.

In this podcast.

Go on another six hours.

It was a very expensive

learning experience and I wish hindsight.

There's a lot of things I wish I had done
and use that time more wisely.

I wish I had a partner going into it.

Did you wish that at the time
or I don't know.

It's a reflect.
These are reflections. Reflections.

So and here's why I just left
the energy business of 1718 years.

I'm starting a business
in a whole different industry.

I don't know anything about

my experience and it was

as a hourly earner,
not an hourly owner, if you will.

And so I'm, I'm sitting here
building a company on spreadsheets

and building margins and proforma
based on what I get off Google.

What's the margin on groceries,
what's hourly wages these days?

I was wrong on all of it.

And so man, I sure wish I had someone

that was alongside me
that said, you're an idiot.

Margin on beef isn't that

you're going to be paying people twice
what you have on that piece of paper

right there.

Payroll taxes.

This I came from that company
that Brandon Mills are running.

Well, we had a straight up
CPA down the hall as our CFO.

I mean, our CFO down the hall,
you know, took care of that stuff.

So I do all that now.

Yeah.

Sourcing a payroll provider.

I mean, all these things
that standing all that up was such

a tremendous learning experience and

getting equipment timely.

People are net we're still, you know, now

we're on the back end, I'll say the back
and we're still kind of on the running.

The masks are starting to go away.

The supply chain screwed up.

Everything's screwed up.

Need sheetrock. Can't get it.

You need refrigeration.

Can't get it ten weekly times
we can 20 weekly times.

And so how do you timely hire
through all that?

Oh, you do the best you can.

We literally carried payroll

for almost 90 days
without a dollar coming in that door.

So you had hired. Oh yeah.

And to retain the talent that I'm sure
you had to search long and hard for.

Oh, yeah, you had to pay them
even there, there wasn't really a.

Job for them.

To me,
there's nothing to do. I'd make up stuff.

Hey, you asked me at the coffee shop.

Go home. Here's homework.

Come give us a presentation
on how to cut a fish.

Or come tell us about the history of dry
aging beef.

It was purposeful.

I didn't really add much value,
but yeah, in

between equipment
in town, regulations and rules.

And you can't do this.

You can't do this.

Oh, by the way, this is just man,
it took a lot longer than I sure

thought it would,
but in all lessons cost, right?

I had a mentor tell me all this is cost.

That one cost cost a lot,
but we're still there.

We're figuring it out here.

And you talk about, I need a time clock,
I need a payroll person,

I need this and that.

I think a lot of people underestimate
all of the little things.

Like,
there are plenty of big things, right?

Get the LLC form.
That's kind of a big thing.

Get the lease for the building done,
get the permits.

But there are so many of those little

things that I think people just think
and they just happen.

No they don't.

Somebody like you
has to figure it out and get it done.

Oh yeah.

I mean tax filings,
I mean insurance and you just state of

Texas is the only state in the country,
at least it was last year.

Whenever for this thing that you do not by
law have to carry worker's comp.

Right.

And so as a business owner
you could be like,

well I can save that money.

Well I'm like, well I'm, I got guys
that are running meat saws and grinders.

I better not skip out on that.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

Hey, I need ice.

Well, I need an ice machine.

Well, restaurants have coke.

How do I get a
how do I even get a Coke machine?

What do I do? Crawfish farm?

I don't

there's a lot of self-teaching through
that process, but that sounds good.

See, I had a lot of great people
to shop in my life.

Who are some of those people?

Oh gosh.

So my food suppliers, my vendors, it's
amazing how you just make one phone call.

There's a well-known restaurant over
in the Flower Mound, Bartlesville area

that he champions
a particular farm, 44 farms beef.

I said, okay, well, I'm a meat shop

and I'm going to leverage and ride
his wave of marketing.

This town already knows that farm.

It's Texas, it's local.

Thomas, sell that beef.

Oh, how do I get it?

I don't know, Google 44 farm phone number.

So I call 44 farms.

Get Ahold of a gentleman.

He said, well, hey, yeah, that's cool.

You're going to open a butcher shop.

We'd be glad to talk to you,
but we don't self distribute our beef.

You got to go through this company
said, okay, well who do I call there?

We'll call this person.

And it's just that messy of of
just that chain of people

that now I'm talking to a food supplier
that doesn't just sell that beef.

They sell tortillas and toilet
mince and everything.

You know, everything you need
to kind of supply

a restaurant or a grocery store,
if you will.

And and then those people
have their suppliers and it's just this

big chain and, and it really is funny
as one phone call to 44 farms said, yes.

Interesting. Set the trajectory. Yeah.

So I hadn't even thought about that.

So you got
the distributor is for for that.

How many distributors
how many partners do you have.

Because you don't just sell me.

You got beer and wine, you got produce,
you got candles.

I got, you know.

Yeah. I'm the only meat shop in the world.

Smells like candles
when you walk in there.

That's Katie's influence.

That's Katie's influence.

So I was naive.

There were so many things that I came up
pound in the table.

In the beginning,
I was like, I'm never going to run ads.

I'm not going to run discounts.

I want to be the Rolex meat markets,

but be for every man
I saw all these things I'm going to do.

I'm only have one supplier.

I just wanted to have ones

that was stupid, that
not oh man, you have a bunch of suppliers.

Keep those guys honest.

Took me a while to figure that out
because you have one supplier.

How do you know
you're getting the best price?

I mean, the guy's looking. You're asking.

Yes. Good price.

Well, I learned no, no no no, you get
multiple suppliers, sell the same thing.

Keep those guys honest.

And then I learned later
that you can even put contracts in place,

that kind of lock in your margins
or the percentages

above what their costs are,
what you're going to pay for goods.

That sure helps with your balance sheet.

But I learned a lot.

But yeah, I used to bang on the tape
because I want it to be simple.

If one thing went wrong, didn't show up
on time, it was one person I'm calling.

Not like which vendor was that or which.

Now more is better.

So you start paying people in September
and you don't open till December.

The night before you opened,

what was going through your mind
of the butterflies in your stomach?

Are you are you able to sleep that night?

You know, my pants didn't fit anymore.

Not because I got fat.

Because I'd lost so much weight in Katy
did two.

Our mirrors kind of reflect each other
in the bathroom,

and then we both at the same time, like,

we've lost like ten, 15 pounds
the past 2 or 3 months.

We're running ragged.

I mean, just. It's just the stress.

Yeah.

I mean, because it's the putting

on finishing

touch, it's
going to open the doors, all this stuff

and there's just so much wants
the running.

Okay. Now we got to stock.

You got to get the food and other
and that's who it is for our product.

Yeah.

And the timing of getting that ordered and
getting it cut and getting it filled and

and not changing the opening date and it
just to get your certificate of occupancy.

I mean tell me say yeah you're going
to get approved more of it until you do.

And then it's just hey
they don't deliver food on Sundays.

And so it was just a
it's just man that coming together,

opening those doors that first day
I think I did sleep

I don't know I know I lost a lot of weight
and I have to give credit to my team.

I mean, remember what I said when I first
went in-house at an energy company?

I was scared to death,
but I quickly realized

I just got to surround myself
with smart people.

Well, that's what we did here in hiring.

I hired probably one of the best
young butchers in the metroplex.

I hired two great
fishmongers. Fishmongers.

They just know everything about seafood
sauces, how to cut them, everything.

Some really good counter
help a chef at the time.

And so they were really there
and they kind of

helped me stay balanced, if you will.

I will look to realize this.

Not only do we have this,
and they they taught me so much

that if I brought in this isn't anything
against the butcher shop back home.

But if I brought the butcher shop
culture of hometown Shreveport,

Louisiana to Flower Mound, Texas,
I got crucified, I got buried.

It would have worked.

It's just done.

It's just a different demographic.

Things were done
different over there in my hometown.

They could sell what's called no raw beef,
meaning it's not graded

by the USDA inspector and get away with it
just fine.

But here people want prime,
people want quality.

Not that that's not quality,
but it's just different market.

And that's what I knew.

That was the education
I was bringing over here.

But I was surrounded by people that knew
better, that worked in this market

for several years,
if not more than a decade in some cases,

that it got us across the finish
line of opening.

Knowing your customer

and knowing that the customer

and flower amount is different than
the customer in Shreveport, that's huge.

Oh, yes.

That's huge.

so opening day
didn't meet your expectations.

Do you remember the day I.

Do, I do, I do, I do remember it.

It was wild.

I think I cried in the bathroom
several times, of just more of just joy.

It's kind of like. You finished.

Yeah. I mean, I've never run a marathon.

I've run A5K or two, but just that you've
worked so hard on something for so long.

I mean, it's literally,

I mean, from the time I sit down
with that purple spiral notebook.

It's been over a year now, right when we
open those doors on December 13th of 2021.

And so it was just a lot.

And my balance sheet shows that
I didn't know what the hell I was doing

because we were just been I had the awful
mentality, just spend money, just just go

that boy in that in this industry

and he's matter about pennies matter.

And so I was just so it was just a lot
it's a lot of moving parts.

I remember coming in within the first week
or two, I wanted to come the first day

and I think I was traveling or something,
but I feel like a weekend.

You had a refrigeration problem?

Yeah, that was a little bit
further down the road.

But yes, we did have one of those.

But it's interesting
you've made all this investment.

Yeah.

And your equipment
just goes. On a Friday. Yeah.

So in the, in the meat industry or in the,

corner butcher shop industry Friday
you live and die by Fridays and Saturdays

and we are open Sundays
now, those days too.

And, I'll never forget coming in
and one of my employees said,

hey, boss,
we got a problem on a Friday morning.

I said, what's the problem?
He goes, man, the meat.

And there's like 80 degrees.

Oh, come on, really?

That's 24ft of meat case.

And we had just started the night before
trying to get ahead of the weekend. And,

and we lost a lot of product.

But is your stomach just turning.

You know, I had to laugh about it.

What are you going to do about it.

What are you going to do?

Okay, well what is working?

That case is working.

That refrigerator is working.

Well, we open in an hour.

Guys, get the stuff out of here.

Get that one returned over.

You know, and take to fill that one
full of beef.

Get those potato salad out of there
and do this and do that.

And we just did the best we could.

And you know, it's funny.

It was a Friday.

We operated that day

with 24 less feet of product,
which is a lot of product, by the way.

We made more money that Friday
than we had any Friday job up to that day.

That's awesome.

And that taught me a lesson
that our product mix was wrong.

We didn't need some of those products
and so we got rid of them.

It was interesting.

There's a lot that came out of that day,
a lot.

You know, we had some teams and particular
guys on the team came and said,

you know, boss, you handle that real well.
We've had some bosses in the past.

I just lost it. So well,
thank you for that.

I just, you know, asked
do I've probably just going stir crazy.

It looked like I was happy,
but it really wasn't.

But I also learned a lot about p mix and
there's a lot of things we're carrying.

We didn't need to carry.

P max.

Product products. Yep.

And you know what I did to that same day?

I called my old mentor Ross at Shreveport,
Louisiana.

Butcher shop is a.

Have you ever had this happen to you?

Yeah, you'll get through it.

So did you have, like,
call insurance and file claim on that?

No, don't do that. You'll probably need it
for a bigger disaster later.

I said okay, well I didn't heat that.

I called insurance and I called my broker.

I said,
what do you think? He said, just file it.

Was it got a thing that it did
because cash flow got real tight.

About four months later in the summer,
and I went and checked the mail one day,

and there was a check
that it covered our rent that month.

It was a blessing

had those cases not gone down
and he filed that claim, I don't know.

I, you know, a lot of credit.

So it was just it was one of those things,
you know, you're like

kind of life gives you lemons,
make lemonade.

So how it goes if.

You've roll with the punches.
Yeah, quite a bit.

Have to. Man.

Are there any other standout stories in

but coming up on two years
it's all been open, man.

You know?

Yes, probably none.
That just comes to mind.

I mean, it's really been just more to me.

It comes from a man has experience.

It's just been quite the experience
got because I left a world of

I didn't really
know what was going to happen every day

because you really don't know or feel, but

you didn't know you're going to come home
when you're kind of ready to.

And if you didn't call any land owners,
you know you're all going to get yelled

at. But,
you know, in this industry, it's service.

It's not energy, it's retail.

It's not energy.

And consumers with social media,
they've got a lot of power.

And you can do a lot of things right.

But if you misstep at the wrong time

with the wrong customer, wrong consumer,

it could be like a big stick
out of nowhere.

That's just damage control.

And I don't have any specifics
that come to mind, but

you just got to be on your toes every,
every second of every day.

And you layer with customers
because, again, one star review

or you didn't have this or this,
this product

didn't meet my expectations
or that employee looked at me wrong or,

you know, that's just from the customer
facing part.

Well,
now you got to deal with the employees

and then the,

you know, I'll come in every day
and the lights flicker

and I got to get up there and hammer
these these LED lights, man.

They just don't make things
as they used to.

You're back in the working
the day care days.

Those lights started acting up.

If you change the balance

and you're good, it's
always something mechanical or something.

And it's it can wear on you.

Where on you.

You touched on social,

but you touched on a different aspect
than I was thinking about.

You guys kill it with social.

You've always got fresh posts

and they're always fun and funny.

Who does your social? Is that you?

Yeah, it's me. And that's funny.

That's a good question,

because the strategic plan was Katie,
my partner, who owns 51% of this company.

People always ask, do I own the say, no,
Katie doesn't just work here.

You handle social media.

And that was a touchy.

So it kind of became touchy because
that was what we were supposed to do.

She does social media well,

I became kind of the
in the grind of things every day

behind the meat counter,
in the cutting room, in the kitchen.

And I would kind of do some social media.

There's like, well, wait,
you're supposed to put on it.

And so it's really a transition
to where I do it now, just naturally.

And there's been a lot. Of learnings
there.

And was that something you knew
a lot about? No.

I still don't know a lot about.

It's funny you ask that question
because yesterday I was so happy.

My daughter just turned 15.

I said, Brennan, did you know that you
could record your screen on your iPhone?

I did you see my post?

I recorded my screen
checking on our website.

Just like that. Really.

And yeah, I think out those thing.

But yeah, there's there's a lot to learn.

But we're blessed to live.

And that's a change
that we've recently made.

I mean, we were running print ads.

You know, we're doing a lot print
advertising a lot.

We were running print advertising.

And I looked at a panel last year
and I, I just started

looking at it go, man, I feel like I'm
getting more bang for our buck.

No buck really to three social media.

And I could put out there, hey,
we're giving away bacon.

And what better have a lot of bacon?

Because people look at that
and they're in the store.

Within seconds.

My wife set me up here.
They saw your thing.

It works. Amen. It's awesome.

So one of the things you talked about
at the beginning of the story about

starting flurries was getting to watch
the family come in after their soccer

game on a on a Saturday afternoon
and watch these kids grow up.

Have you got to experience some of that

and other things
that you were hoping for that you've seen?

Absolutely I have, I say a lot.

This is a hard business in a sense.

You're dealing with.

Okay,
let me back up. I'm building a brand.

I've literally entered a market
surrounded by big box stores.

Good ones.

Whole foods, sprouts, Walmart.

Neighborhood grocery is right
across the street from me.

There's a few Kroger's Tom thumb's.

And here it is.

I'm coming in here saying,
hey, Flurries Market.

That's my last name.

You should come buy your food from me.

Even though I know
it's gonna be inconvenient

because I don't have kitty litter
over there, too.

You have to make another stop.

You got to come up to me.

And the point of me sharing that is it's
been a slow process to build cash flow.

It's a monthly business.

It's a monthly man.
How are we going to do that?

We're going to do that. Well, maybe.

Now granted, year over year
we're up 2,030%.

It's great. It's working.

It's actually working, the models working.

And where I'm going with this is
if I didn't have to worry about that.

Bottom line, I'm convinced I'm
where I'm supposed to be,

because on the days I don't have to worry
about the bottom line

and child number one comes in

or marry, who just became a widow,

who intentionally drove to our store
to tell me that Bob passed away.

And she wanted us to know
and to be able to hug her and embrace her

and then sit down to have coffee with her
in our store and share and cry with her.

Pray with her.

That's it.

It's everything is everything.

And so should the store start being able
to throw off cash and then that we can.

My goal here

literally, and I tell my employees,
and I probably shouldn't

have told them so early
because I don't want them lose.

Trust me,

I want this to be a profitable business,
to give them the opportunity

to in a industry

that you don't really make money
and make money,

give it back to them because they're
the ones that make it work.

They're the ones that come in and make
and get the job done.

Most of them.

And so, man, there's a girl,
she came in, Ava,

she brought me a picture
and it's still hanging on my front.

I there's nothing on my front glass.

It's just a it's a eight and a half by 11.

She, she brought
she came in the other day.

Mr.. Flannery, Mr.

Fleury, I brought you something and
she drew a picture of most stick figure.

Her name.

She's got blue long hair.

I've got blue crayons, curly hair.

It's meant the world to me, you know?

That's all.

It's just. I mean, to me, that's joy.

That was the crux of me saying

life is more than trying
to get a three eggs

on sell on an oil and gas property,
which is probably never going to happen.

You only read the headlines
about those guys, right?

There was there's so many management
teams out there.

So, you know, it's not about the money.

The money's meant to be there.

Come it to me.

It's about service community.

Well I want to encourage you
any kids sports event

that I'm at there's a flourish logo
because you've sponsored it.

You guys really have become an important

part of the community
and it's awesome to see.

The other thing I wanted to say,

you talked about your people
and how you treat them.

Man, in retail and in food service,

turnover is incredibly high
and in the last few years

it's gotten out of control
how bad turnover is.

And when I go in,
I'm there about once a week,

if not, if not more for not traveling
and the faces don't change.

You've done an excellent job
keeping your people.

Yeah.

And you know, I found my people through
that initial phone call to the farm,

you know. Yeah.

And then the suppliers as well.

And it's no different back.

I mean, it's the same tools, same process.

I learned back in the energy business.

We all used the same Halliburton
to go practice.

Well, the frack the competitors.

Well he was like,
hey Halliburton, how are they doing it?

Hey supplier,
you call on these businesses.

Who's got some good people out there
that probably want to go somewhere else,

I know Jim-Bob over at Butcher Shop

X, he's probably one of the best
you want to sell number?

Hell, yeah, I do.

Yeah.
Guess what? Jim-Bob works for me now.

True story. I like to share this

when I'm still scoping.

This is a little at home.

When I'm still scoping.

Do I want to do this meat market thing?

And I was like, well, almost look up some
local meat, some metroplex meat markets.

I'm gonna call and ask the owner
and ask them if they would do it.

How's it going?

And I'll call it one
particular meat market in the metroplex

and say, hey, I'm quite Flori.
I live in Flower Mound, Texas.

I'm thinking about opening a butcher shop
there and Flower Mound.

I've gone to your website.

We kind of look like
we're in the same stage of life.

You got a beautiful family, by the way,
and I've been in your meat shop.

I went and looked at it
before I made this phone call.

I loved it.
Get great customer service there.

You think you want to have coffee?

Maybe you could help me, you know.
Would you want to talk to me about it?

I was not prepared for the response.

I got the response
I'll just boil it down to was,

well,
you're not going to be able to do it.

I'm planning to open one in Flower
Mound myself one day,

and you'd be better off
coming to working for me.

Well,

it was no different
than the enterprise guy

that said, biggest mistake
in your life. I said, okay, all right,

I'm opening a butcher shop right here.

Challenge accepted. Well,
you know who's been my number?

Who? My number one hire was his best guy.

I wouldn't take him.

Yeah,
not really out of spite, but it just. Hey.

Yeah,
it was just funny how it all worked out.

Have you had any.

No follow. Up conversations? No.

Hey. No.

Yeah.

Do you ever think about franchising this
or expanding it out?

And that's crazy.

Opening other flurries.

Mark I was. Getting those questions
week one.

Were there other ones of these.

Are you do more of these.

You should do more of these.

And you know Scott, I don't know.

I still stand
until I can make this one profitable.

No, but I do look at other things.

Right? I am looking at other things
along the way.

They're industry related.

Call it the
A&E experience in me of just curiosity.

I just I see a product set in my store,
who owns it, who manufactures it,

do they want to sell it?

I like it, I believe in it.

Could I scale it? Stuff like that.

There's a lot of great mom and pops
out there that have created cool products

that they don't know how or don't
want to take it to the next level.

And I kind of don't know how, but I sure
would like to because I believe in them.

And I think you could make some money.

And so I was telling Katie,
the day where I'm at right now

with flurries market and it's not
where, it's where I personally it's

I want to I think this thing,
Lord willing, we continue to slowly

grow slowly become a part of the community
again, Lord willing. And,

you know,
I just and let it do that over time.

But I'm a little impatient.

I'm going to try to find other things
and just kind of diversify.

If you will flourish.

Spice Co flourished Beef Jerky Co,

Larry's Dog Food Co,
whatever doesn't need to be flurries.

But sure you know just
put some more corporate boxes out there.

So you want to tinker. Yeah.

You want to have
multiple irons in the fire?

Yeah I do, because I think one of them,
one of them, Shirley, work.

So you touched on a few things
that I think are consistent

with what other entrepreneurs have said.

You had a mentor back in Shreveport
who who came alongside you.

You talked about surrounding yourself
with good people

and people that knew more than you did
about certain things.

And that right there.

I think it takes humility,

because I think there are a lot of people
that don't want to admit

that they don't have the answers,
you know?

So recognize
that you don't have all the answers

and that you need other people around
you treat your people well.

And what else would you tell somebody
who is thinking about starting a business?

Well, this may fall on
some on some deaf ears just because

of everyone's different beliefs.

And last time I checked,
we're in a free country and we can believe

and have faith or no faith.

However we choose.

But for those believers,
I say, just listen to God.

Ask God and I stand on that, Scott,
I just do, and I don't wear on my sleeve.

I'll never forget calling
my father in law was so knotted up.

Do I make this decision?

I don't know, I mean,

just so just I can't even think straight,
almost dizzy, fearful.

And he simply just said,
have you prayed about this?

I said, man,
that's such a simple solution.

And it's not like it gave me the answers.

I said, hey, God, I don't know what to do.

And he said, go do this.

No, but it did just help me
get in the mindset of, well,

practice what you preach.

I mean, if you believe there's

someone that's created and do these things
and you know, God put you here and put,

you know,
put the wife, your wife in your life and,

you know, he's in the truly loving
is you know, it may not feel good,

you may not make the money you want to
make, but put your faith there.

So that's that comes
that's the first thing I mean, really.

And then rest of it
just kind of falls in place.

You may not see it at the time,
but man, I can look back at almost every

single move, every fork in the road
and say, man, that makes sense, man.

Sitting in all those different

private equity providers offices
and getting told no.

So many times
I used to think that it was us.

It was those just were failures.

But no, that was getting experience.

It was just learning
how to do it better the next time,

how to go sit over that bank and forth
and say, yeah, I'm not a meat man,

but I want three quarters,
$1 million, go open up a butcher shop.

You know how to not sit
in those boardrooms.

I have known how to do that
or had the courage to do it.

So learn from experiences,
every experience,

whether it be good or bad, learn from it.

If there was one thing,
you would go back and do different.

If you were starting all over knowing what
you know now, what would it be?

I don't think there is one, cause
I don't think there's any one thing

that I would do different
that would change much today

other than the
maybe the experience partner,

but I don't know how
that really would have turned out because

I'm again, very curious person,
and I think I needed to learn

the things I've learned
through this past year and a half.

The way I've learned it the hard way I do.

And it
doesn't mean I have all the answers now,

because I know I sure as hell don't.

I'm still every day trying to figure out,
well, should I open more hours?

Do I need to do this?

Are chef hires are fired? Do that.

You know that I and Melissa
you know there's just a lot. But.

So Scott I can't give you the answer
I don't know.

I don't think there is one.

I think I mean the partner thing
sticks out that having deeper pockets

know who wouldn't want that opening
in a different location now?

I mean, who knows if that would have been
better or worse or in a great location

experience.

Certainly that changed experience,

but I knew that I was
I knew going into it, I don't have it.

So I'm not supposed to sit here, Dago man.

Everything has been bad.

Well, I should have been bad. Kind of.

But I tell you.

But that's what I can
of course correct it, though, Scott is,

you know, we now sell barbecue.

Well, I don't do the barbecue.

I had somebody who does barbecue.

Does it really well, who's 64 years
old, who's own 14 restaurants.

I didn't just do barbecue to do that.

I joined with him
because he's got a lot of wisdom,

and his wisdom to me is
I've shared with him some of our numbers.

He says, man, for you to do what
you've done so far, that's great.

Just keep doing what you're doing.

If you keep doing,
you just keep doing it. So

it'd be nice to kind of have that
from the beginning

along the way
to have some of that encouragement.

But I've had Katie, she's encouraged me.

Thank God we we all need that. Yeah.

So I think the just the experience,
if there's anything I'd change

would be the experience.

But I knew I didn't have it going in.

But I think the lack of experience
just got us where we are now.

It's made us, it's
forced us to figure it out and bootstrap

it versus someone telling
us, based off their experience,

which is value to that,
right, can save you money,

save you some missteps,
save you some time.

Don't do it that way. Hey,
be careful there.

But so far, I mean, I don't follow that
insurance claim up and I'm glad I did.

I don't
why did you slow to hire quick to fire?

I probably should do better
at that sometimes.

Are you a
go with your gut kind of person or you.

no, I gotta I gotta analyze this.

No, not in the spreadsheet.

No, I, I am a buy it now
figure out what a bought later type guy.

Just go for it.

Make the move with my gut. Tell me

which is

probably all washes, and it's
been good and bad in my life, but

I pivot fast. Man.

If something I feel like it's not working,
I want to know

what's the alternative and go same way
I always like.

Back in my corporate days, I would change
my office around every 30 days.

I just like change or to be different.

So if I'm not making money this month,
well, let's throw this at the wall

and see if it sticks.

And one thing I'm learning with that
in this particular industry is some people

perceive that as you're failing,
you must not be doing good.

And I had a lady, I had a customer

look at me in the ass and said,
you're not closing, are you?

So yeah, we close in about 30 minutes.

She no like closing closes
and no, she's most people out there

think that you're not doing well. I said,
well I've heard that.

I hear some people have been so far taken
as because you're always doing

different things like.

Yeah, because what's what I'm doing
isn't what I want it to be.

I want it to.

In your world, though,
there's so many knobs to turn.

Yeah. And the knob you need to turn today

may not be the knob
you need to turn tomorrow.

Yeah, there's several things like,
the loyalty program.

I, you know, you go to any grocery store
at whatever.

People have loyalty programs
to create loyalty, I get that, but.

And so I did that early on our POS system
allows us to put a loyalty program

in place. You get a discount
after you earn loyalty points.

Well, that was stupid because
is it really making people loyal to us?

If you've got a really good product,
good service, good quality,

do you really need to incentivize them
to be loyal to you?

Probably not.

And you're already
operating on razor thin margins.

And so to give more discount,
it took me a year to figure it out.

And so when you go take that away,
yeah I can see why people go,

oh is that doing good?

No. It's just if you want me to be here,
I got to do this.

And so there's things like that.

I mean, it's little things along the way.

Oh, I wish I'd never done that.

I mean, just someone forgets
to get their points or mad at you like me.

I'm trying to do your favorite.

You know, the program.
There's there's so many things.

You got
a lot of people you're trying to please.

They're a. Lot.

We're running a big sale
on, prime grade brisket.

Right now. I'm giving away.

I call it
the Robin. I do a lot of Robin Hood.

Robin hooding, and it's.

And I'm doing it
intentionally at the stage where it.

I'm trying to create foot
traffic and brand awareness.

Who is flourish because we care 40,000
cars drop by every day.

I don't think a day goes by
that we're open.

So how long have you been here?

You're have what, year and a half. Yeah.

So we're
always finding deals in the market

that we could super leverage them.

We could use them.

Some people would call it gouging.

But I choose not to say
well I know what my price is.

I can use this

as a marketing tool, cost me
nothing and just pass it on to consumer.

But if it only that easy consumer

site to sometimes can booger that up.

Example. Hey, I'm gonna say this for 399.

I'm only making a penny on it,

but they're going to want you
to do a little bit extra to it.

And it's like, well,
I didn't make that labor in.

I didn't do it.

And the nephew says, no, it's oh, well,
then you suck.

And your service is terrible. Like,
wait, wait, you're missing the thing.

It's the best deal in the world.

I'm better.
I'm cheaper than H-e-b at the big box.

Guys, what do you.
What about that guy? Doesn't matter.

You didn't care. It's.

It's that balance in.

It's an easy balance
when you get the right people.

That's the key.
Gotta have the right people.

We've covered a lot. Yeah.

What else would you want people to know

about you, about your story,
about your store.

They haven't. Shared?

Well, I don't think there's
anything special about me.

I don't know, I'm just a big believer.

I think it's I'm a big believer in taking
advantage of the free market world.

We live in.

If you want to go do something,

don't not do it
because you don't have the experience.

If you're in your gut or have prayed or

just you were convicted,
you need to go do something different.

I don't care how old you are,
I don't know.

It's easy for me to say,
sit here in my mid-forties.

I really don't care.

I think you should go do it now.

Don't go blind.

I'll jump off the cliff.

But at least Google

get the purple spiral notebook out,
pen to paper, man, and just go for it.

And I think if you go for it
and you surround yourself

with the right people
and think you do anything,

I tell these young kids
that come in the store, not in.

We have high school guys and girls
that come in workforce.

And so what do you where you get in school
against the joy I have.

This is what I love, what you want to do.

It's okay man.
You don't know. You don't know.

And but just know that you can do anything
you want to do.

Just know in 20 years
you think you're going to be a doctor,

but you're going to own Amit Shah.

I mean, things are going to happen.
You're just so.

I don't know, Scott.

I think that's if that's an answer of
and just live your dream.

And no meat owning meat
market was not at my damn dream.

I can promise you that.

But my joy is people.

And I think I've found a way to be around
people a lot and influence them.

Not that I'm trying to influence people,

but I do believe that my heart
is in the right place

to be a light and cast hope in a world
that really needs a lot of that right now.

Whether you intend to or not,
you influence people

just by being who you are.

I mean that the general sense,
if you're intrinsically good natured,

that influences people,

if you're intrinsically bad natured,
that influences player. So.

Well, Clayton, thank you
for being a guest on In the Thick of It.

Thank you. Appreciate it man.

Proud of what you're doing.

It's awesome.
You got a beautiful place here.

You really do.

The whole time I've been talking
I feel like a Saturday night Laughs get

the radio station

I don't remember what.

It's two ladies two ladies.

So I know exactly what you're
talking about.

It's real song. Yes. Low.

Yeah. Monotone.

Yeah well keep up the good work.

Thanks for having me Scott. Appreciate it.

Thank you man.

That was Clayton
Flurry, founder of Flurry’s Market.

To learn more, visit flurrysmarket.com
and be sure to follow them on Instagram,

where you will be entertained
and your taste buds will be watered.

If you or a founder you know would like
to be a guest on In The Thick of It,

email us at [e-mail].