Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- I think I was getting paid like $1.10 or 75 cents an hour or something like that.
- Oh, I think when, you know-
- I'm older than you, so yeah.
- I'm going to like junior high school days, we were getting paid maybe, my dad would say, "I'll pay you four bits an hour," that's-
- Yeah, there you go, four bits an hour.
- That's 50 cents, but.
- Hi there, welcome to "The Current" podcast. My name is Kelly Damphousse, I'm the president of Texas State University, and I'm especially excited about today's episode 'cause my friend Brian McCoy is here to talk about his life, also his parents' life, and also about the McCoy College of Business and even McCoy Hall, if nothing else because, you know, there's a lot of buildings on campus that are named after people, and sometimes, you walk by and you don't even think about who the person was that that building's named after, and you've got a building named after your parents here as well. And so Brian, thank you for being here.
- Oh, I'm glad to be here, Kelly.
- Well, let me introduce you a little bit to Brian just to give you some sense of his background as well. Brian worked over 47 years at McCoy's and he has held the title of yard hand and truck driver along the way to become president and also co-president for a while. And then he also presently serves as a CEO and chairman of McCoy's board of directors.
- I'm the chairman, but our daughter Meagan is the CEO these days.
- Yes, yeah, well, I'm glad to get the correction here. And we actually wanna have Meagan in here sometime as well because Meagan's outstanding, right?
- Oh, well, she would be the star of this show for sure. So you need to get her on. I agree.
- So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you end up getting here?
- Well, Kelly, I think it's fun to always tell the story how my family got to San Marcos.
- I think that's probably the best place to start because I think that's a fascinating story.
- And it's interesting. My dad grew up in our family business, McCoy Roofing Company, founded by my grandfather Frank. By the way, that was in 1927, so our family business is two years away from celebrating our 100th anniversary. So Texas State's at 125 and our family's about, you know, let's see, 27 years behind, so that'll be great. But in any event, post-World War II, my dad took over the business, started selling building products as a sideline to our roofing company. So McCoy Supply Company was begun, and Hurricane Carla hit Galveston, we had two locations at the time in 1961. An amazing time because we had the roofing company and McCoy Supply Company, very, very busy time. And the way my mom always liked to tell that, for the following whole year until the next summer, my dad was just putting in horrendous hours. And so by the summer came, she said, "We've gotta take a vacation." And so the vacation was taking the four kids in our family, my three siblings and myself, two of our cousins coming up to Landa Park in New Braunfels and spending a week here in Central Texas. My dad enjoyed that fresh water, it got cooler at night, all those kinds of things.
- The Hill Country's awesome, right?
- It is, and that's all he really knew, was the coast, having grown up there, and kind of fell in love with this area. And so sure enough, about a year later, they bought 300 acres between Kyle and San Marcos. And that established really our love for Hays County and San Marcos, and then ultimately, he moved our business, our headquarters, to San Marcos in 1972. So that's how we got here.
- That's how you got here, and then you just started expanding the business from there, right, so you started, the first shop was in Galveston, but then when did the next one, do you remember that or?
- Oh, for sure, oh yeah, we had four locations in the Galveston-Houston areas. Our store number five was in Austin. And I think my dad did have this thought that we would be growing throughout Texas. Certainly, San Marcos was more central, but the reality is he had a chance to move the business here while we were still quite small, and it's become really our adopted hometown, if you will and, of course, our kids grew up here, and that was really special also.
- Now, I mentioned that you started off as a yard hand, and that's actually a family tradition, right? Like if you're gonna get involved in the business or if you're just gonna be in the McCoy family, you're gonna be working in a store somewhere probably, right?
- You know, we work really hard to at least expose our children to the business. And so I would say this, you know, my dad didn't make my brothers and I work in the business, but I gotta tell you, if we were gonna drive our own car, you know, in high school, we were gonna have to pay for it ourselves, so we were incented to work in the business. And I'm always grateful to my older brother Mike, he really embraced the family business, and my brother Dennis and I just sort of followed along.
- Now, do you remember your first day on the job and being the boss's son, was it kind of weird, did the guys make fun of you or anything, or?
- Well, probably my earliest memory of truly working a schedule was really not in the store but actually, my younger brother and I were janitors for the little office building next to our store. So on Wednesdays and Saturdays, we were cleaning the office. I mean, my dad did put us to work, and then later would work in the lumber yard on the sales floor and so forth, yeah.
- That's funny, do you remember what you got paid? Like I'm trying to think back when I was that age, I think I was getting paid like $1.10 or 75 cents an hour or something like that-
- Oh, I think when, you know-
- I'm older than you, so yeah.
- I'm going to like junior high school days, we were getting paid maybe, my dad would say, "I'll pay you four bits an hour," that's-
- Yeah, there you go, four bits an hour.
- That's 50 cents, but paid in cash in a little envelope and so forth, and really, I didn't start my clock as far as working for the company until I was really paying taxes and on the official payroll, and that didn't happen until 1972, so anyway-
- That's funny. So at some point, your dad starts to kind of step away from the business and give you more and more responsibilities, talk us through how that kind of happened for you to become eventually the CEO.
- Well, I'd like to brag on him first, but let me just, well, let me get to that story. Because really, what was happening for us would be things were really good for us until the big box store showed up.
- [Kelly] Yeah, that's the challenge-
- And our sweet spot were mid-size and smaller cities. So as a result of that, about the time really my dad was getting close to retiring was also the time that we were feeling the pressure of a different marketplace. And, of course, each new generation has ideas and so forth, and my brother Mike and I, backstory here, my younger brother Dennis had passed away in the mid-80s in an accident, so it was the two of us working with my dad. But at the time of his retirement then, we ushered in a great deal of change to our business plan. And that was important because we had to make up for some of the lost business from the box stores, and then added to that independent builder business. My dad retired in 1997, so that feels like not all that long ago, but I know to our listeners, that was eons ago. But he was a tremendous businessman, and then, of course, my father, when he retired, he got real serious about philanthropy. And it's like, you know, that's the second half of his story, if you will, which we're so proud of.
- Yeah, now, I wanna turn to that now. So I know when you're building a business, you're just waking up every day and you're eating what you kill and you're out there making deals and you're working ungodly hours and then you're done and you hand the reins over to your sons and then you're like, what am I gonna do now? What was it like for him to not be in charge for a while, and then what caused him to kind of want to get involved in philanthropy?
- You know, my father was always gonna be busy with projects, he was a builder, I think we all have that in our family and company, if you will. But for the first time, really, Kelly, he and my mother sold the remaining about 25% of the business to the family. So you might say for the first time in his adult life, he was liquid. He had some cash on hand because we always put it back into the business or into our ranch operation. So with that, he started making some of his own investments, but, you know, he just caught this idea that, you know, you need to give back. And my mother was behind that, of course, 100%. Just really a special thing for us to watch as a legacy in our family. So yeah, I was so proud of my parents.
- Yeah, wasn't there a friend of his who kind of turned him towards Texas State at some point?
- Oh, for sure. Dr. Gene Payne was a family friend, especially close to my sister, Brenda Remme, and her husband Kaare. But Gene and Karen would always come to family gatherings and this and that, and Gene's background, he had been both in private business, but he had also served in the administrations here at Texas State and also Texas Tech. So he had this background really on higher education.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So he's watching things that are going on in San Marcos, he and Karen were living in Austin, then understanding what's going on in our family. And he is the one that birthed the idea that said, I wonder if Emmett and Miriam, my mother, would have some interest in supporting Texas State University in a big way with the business school. And so as the story goes, Gene approach Dr. Trauth at the time and was given the OK to do that, and you might say the rest is history because my folks really did get interested in doing that, and couldn't be any more proud of them for that, and that was their legacy gift of their lifetime, of course.
- Now, we've talked about your dad a lot, but talk about your mom, because you and I both have married up in our lives, and we know how much an influence our wives have had on us. But talk about your mom and how he influenced your dad, but also the family as well.
- My father, that's, I really appreciate that because really, my mom was often sort of in the background.
- Yeah.
- But at the same time though too, one of the things that we watched growing up around the household, she was my dad's really confidant. We did talk about business things around the dinner table, you know, she would weigh in on that, but always just there to support my dad. And, of course, what that meant was a lot of hard work at home. She was the one that would buy gifts and, you know, allow my dad to be the hero, if you will, and just supporting him. They had a deep, deep love for each other, and that support went both ways.
- So now your dad and your mom are thinking about giving this gift, they have conversations with President Trauth and probably with you all as well. So are you involved in that conversation or were you surprised to hear about it later on?
- Well, we knew some things were being discussed, but actually, you know, that was their decision. And, of course, we got behind that 100% because, you know, that's what not only they wanted to do, but we were so thrilled for my parents. When you think about it, neither of my folks had the opportunity to go to university. And just a chance to engage then the university, make that gift, to be able to have the College of Business named after them and their family is just so very, very special, Kelly, and I think for my folks, you know, it just, it ushered in a new season. I so appreciate how this university just received them, got them involved and, you know, my dad always loved coming on campus, so.
- Yeah, he came quite often to campus, right, to the college and spoke with students and so on.
- Especially the Studies for Entrepreneurship class.
- I know you and Meagan still do that, right?
- We have, yes, we do.
- Now, let's talk about the college and the building and all the stuff that you all are doing, the Center for Student Success that you all help support as well. What are you proudest about about what's happening at McCoy College of Business?
- One of the things that I reflect on as a business student myself, I went through school in three years, we were first-gen students, we have so many of those. I worked in our lumberyard in Lubbock at the time that I went to Texas Tech, just like my brothers. So I understand our working students too.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- But at the same time, when I think about the student experience today at Texas State versus what I think was pretty common in a lot of the public universities in the '70s, that experience was good, but I think today, it's better.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- What I see would be that our faculty are more engaging to our students.
- [Kelly] I think you're right there, yeah.
- There's tons more organizations for students to interact with and be a part of, which is special. I also love to tell students when I'm around them that I was a shy guy and I didn't engage really much until about my last or third year. I encourage our students to really, in the midst of all the busyness and all those things, but if they could kind of think about their life as being a scholar too, to really be in this learning mode. And I think our students get a lot of encouragement from our faculty. So I'm really proud of what's happening on campus. We love the fact that we're serving students from all over the state. Our family does business all over the state of Texas. That really hit a chord with my parents and my dad especially. And then also to just celebrate the fact that an awful lot of good in this world comes from the business community.
- Yeah.
- So being connected to that, we're very proud to be in business in our state.
- You know, 77% of our students work at least 20 hours a week, and we have a lot of first-generation kids, a lot of kids who are Pell-eligible. We're lucky to have a lot of businesses here, especially with the mall, so it affords the opportunity for our students to work, but they all have to work, and so scholarships is a huge issue for us because we're trying to help people not work 40 hours a week, 20 hours a week is manageable, like you did. And I think most students understand that 20 hours a week is probably pretty manageable. But when students are working 30 and 40 hours a week, at some point, something's gotta give, right? And so scholarships become a big issue for us. The other thing you mentioned is kind of interesting, how many kids from Texas go to Texas State, 95% of our students are from the state of Texas. And so, you know, you're feeding a population that's very important to the future of Texas, not just the current and the past, and so that's pretty interesting. Now, let's talk about you and your leadership style at McCoy and also with the College of Business as well. One of the things that's kind of interesting to me is about how personable a person you are, because I think sometimes, a CEO is seen as like hard-driving and hard-nosed and kind of, you know, pounding their fist on the table and getting stuff done, and you certainly got a lot of stuff done, you all faced a lot of challenges and got through them. But you were one of the most personable and frankly, just nicest people I've ever met. And one of the things I love about you is how you treat your folks that work for you. And I remember hearing you talk once at a presentation you were making about how you will send a voicemail to someone on their birthday so that, when they get to office, they punch their voicemail and there's a message from you telling them how proud you are to have them working there. I've gotten countless notes from you and gifts and encouragement over the past couple years. What is it that drives you to be that kind of leader versus the other kind? Is it something you were born with or something you saw from your dad or something that just kind of evolved?
- Kelly, about the time that my dad retired, and we did have to make a bunch of adjustments to our business, and that was a chaotic time, but it was also really critical to do that. But also, the other thing that I realized would be we had a strong culture in our company.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- My dad stood for high integrity. He had a focused business plan which we ultimately, we needed to tweak and change. He was just a hard worker, all those things that were a part of our culture, but also, we came to realize that we were not doing as good a job serving one another in our company. And we really weren't doing as strong a job to serve the customer. And at that time, and my brother and I co-led the business for four years together, started ushering in some training for our management team, our business was getting more complex. We knew that we needed to add to of the ranks of our, and the size of our crews, and that meant more complexity and building up our management team, and we sent them off to different training kinds of events. And frankly, none of that really stuck very well. But I did have a good friend in Austin that was helping some of the tech companies there work in leadership development and personal development and such, his name is Dr. David Ferguson. And I talked to David about, saying, "David, I think we need something stronger about this whole idea of stronger relationships in the workplace." And he was my subject matter expert for that. And you might say the rest is history, because that was about the time then that we ushered in our own internal training program, we call it Business as Unusual. And what's unusual about BAU, we call it just in simple terms there, but Business as Unusual to us means that really, people are just as important as profit or productivity. You have to have both. I love telling people this, when I was CEO, every single morning, I knew that we had to make money at McCoy's, I mean, I did. But at the same time, could we put a people-centered focus on our business, so let me give you an example of that. One of the things early on in my tenure, I realized that we needed to celebrate people. And this morning, like every morning for the last 25 plus years, anybody that's got an email address at McCoy's gets this email that's got everybody's birthday today that's got a birthday, we've got about 3,200 team members at McCoy's. And then if there's an anniversary, company anniversary, we've got that list too. So just as a quick example, this morning, one of the earliest things that I did, Richard is one of our long-term leaders in our company, he's part of our loss prevention team, 28-year veteran with McCoy's. Felt so good to send to him an email this morning wishing him a happy birthday today and, you know, that got fired off and I've already gotten a response from him, and I love starting out my day with a people-center focus first, if you will.
- You know, your customers are important, but the staff and employees, that's really what the company is. It's not the buildings, it's the people who are doing the work that are, again, you work really hard to bring customers in, but they're the ones who are bringing customers back, right?
- Well, Simon Sinek says this, you know, "Customers will never love your business. until your employees love it first."
- Oh, that's great. You know, there's another kind of business motto about how culture eats strategy for lunch.
- Oh, that's a Peter Drucker quote.
- Yeah, Peter Drucker, and so the idea there is that culture is so important, and you've developed this culture of caring for people. And can you imagine being an employee somewhere and your boss writes you a happy birthday email or a happy anniversary or thank you for doing that-
- I think it motivates us, Kelly, and also too, I love telling students this, that that brings balance to my life. And I think it has kept me from getting burned out in business, because a lot of people do, if you will.
- Yeah.
- So yeah, it's been important.
- Yeah. Talk about the changes that have happened in your business over the years, you mentioned the big boxes, but you all, you had to, you know, somehow evolve the business to make it a success, it's still a booming success now, you're still opening stores and so on. But talk about the process of like unraveling the strategy that got you to where you were, to keep you there and keep you moving forward.
- You might say this, you know, I will say this, anytime that I walk into one of our big box competitors, I always feel intimidation. Because they are this huge company and they have incredible resources behind them and plenty of buying power and all those kinds of things. But what I love about American business and capitalism would be we have to think that, regardless of how big our competitors are, and they're doing a great job in so many realms, we can do certain things better. And if we know that and execute on that and have a plan to do it, we get a right to exist in the marketplace. So that's really our focus, is to earn our right in the marketplace. You know, I love to tell our team a lot, you know, I would put our delivery service up against anybody in the business.
- Well, there you go, you found something, yeah.
- That's so critical to the service of people that are on job sites that we're serving, as an example. Certainly, service down the aisles in our stores or how we answer the phone or just our engagement with customers. If we can look at customers, and I don't care if they're a builder, a repair or a model contractor of any kind, or a homeowner, if we can look at our customer base as not as dollar signs, but they're people to serve, when we land that at McCoy's, it's pretty good.
- Yeah, and it's worked well, yep. Well, let me turn our attention now for a second to Meagan. So there's a succession from your grandfather to your dad and from your dad to you. And then just recently, in the time of our relationship, transitioned from you to Meagan to your daughter now, who's now the fourth generation.
- Well, Meagan, you know, we exposed both of our kids to the business, our son Reed is involved in the business too but also on our ranch operation. But the very first time that Meagan as a little girl wanted to go visit one of our locations, Kelly, and she was like eight or nine years old, it was a summer. I made sure that we walked in to Brownwood, Texas first because it was the only woman-led McCoy store at the time, and I wanted her to make sure that she knew that a woman could be in charge in our company. And you might say that kind of stuck because she just loved the business, loved the people in our company. And when she graduated from university, got her master's as well, came back in, she just started gobbling up responsibilities, we got to co-lead the business really together for, I don't know, 18 years. And then she was the obvious choice to lead McCoy, so couldn't be any more proud of her, and our family and our team is proud of Meagan as our fourth generation leader.
- Brian, one of the fun features of the podcast is we invite viewers and listeners to submit questions for me. And so I'm gonna turn the table now and give you some of those questions, I've not seen the questions, so I'm not sure what's in there. But I'll ask you to pick one of those cards and just ask me the question and I'll do my best to answer them.
- Oh, I love this question, so here it is, Kelly. If you could start college over, what would you study and why?
- You know, I was a law enforcement major in a community college, and then I did criminal justice and then sociology later on. You know, but I took a class, I took a history class one time from a guy named Phil Perrotti. And it was stunning to me, this is as undergraduate class. And I didn't know you could major in history, I thought you had to major in something that was named after a job. And I really wish, I wish I would have a chance to go back and major in history, I'm doing it now. So, you know, as you get older, you have a little more time to be reflective, I think about how I got here, about how we all got here, and I do a lot of reading, I read a lot of biographies, I'm into presidential biographies right now is kind of my thing, and World War II, it's two areas I'm kind of studying. So I'm becoming a lay historian, but I really wish I'd kind of gone into the history track and done that. What about you, what would you have majored in if it wasn't business?
- Oh, goodness gracious. I have to say that I really enjoy reading as well. So, I don't know, I can't imagine majoring in English, but I might.
- Yeah. Well, you know, one thing about English is that teach to be a good communicator, and that's a great skill to have, so. Yeah, Brian, thank you so much for being here today, learned a lot about you and your parents and your family business, but also about your passion and love for what's going on here at Texas.
- Well, Kelly, I've learned a lot about leadership from you as well, so we are so grateful for just your hand around here on the hill.
- Well, I appreciate that, thank you for what you do to, to help Texas State get our students from here to there, and that's what we're all about. And so thanks, I appreciate that so much.