What drives someone to transform old, forgotten spaces into vibrant, bustling community hubs? This episode takes you behind the scenes of a visionary investor’s journey.

Discover how a passion for revitalization turned into a successful career, starting from farming roots and growing into real estate expertise. You’ll learn about the challenges of investing in downtown areas, the importance of mentorship, and the philosophy of balancing calculated risk with quality of life.

Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur, an investor seeking inspiration, or simply curious about how communities evolve, this episode offers practical takeaways and thought-provoking stories to guide your own journey.

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Kellen Ketchersid
Kellen is a co-founder of Stag Business Coaching, business strategist, and a systems thinker. He leverages his extensive experience in biotech and consulting to empower entrepreneurs to navigate complex challenges with strategic growth solutions.

Albert Gillispie
Albert is a serial entrepreneur, business efficiency expert and co-founder of Stag Business Coaching who has founded several multimillion-dollar companies. With expertise in optimizing operations and innovative systems, he mentors business leaders who want to unlock their business’s full potential.

🎤 George Hardberger

George Hardberger is a third-generation farmer turned real estate investor and community advocate with a passion for revitalizing downtown Lubbock, Texas. Rooted in his agricultural upbringing, he transitioned into real estate, where he has successfully redeveloped historic properties and invested in projects that enhance the city's cultural and economic vibrancy. 

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EPISODE 28 TRANSCRIPTION

Introduction

Albert And Kellen [00:01]: All right. We are live. Welcome to the podcast, George Hardberger. How are you, sir?

George [00:06]: I'm very well. Thank you.

Albert And Kellen [00:07]: Glad to have you, man. I've been wanting to have you on the podcast for quite some time now. Let's start off with the icebreaker. You have one of the more unique houses, especially as a former farmer. You have a pretty unique house in downtown Lubbock. Tell us a little bit about your house. Where is it at, and what's the story?

George [00:25.372]: We took an old building on Texas Avenue, 1602 Texas. It's been a lot of things in its time. It was a sales training center at one time. I've got a picture of that I got out of the Southwest collection. It looks very much the same as it did in 1953. There's a one-story part on the east side, which was a gas station. Now it's a conference room and a garage. The garage is where the garage was, and one of the walls is pretty much original.

George [00:51]: We had looked at things in our travels and seen a lot of cool downtown stuff in the big cities. We started thinking that, you know, our kids are grown. It's just us two, and it might be kind of fun to do that. So I found this building and actually had it under contract twice. Chickened out one time, and then I came back after a few months and bought it. The last business that was in there was Midtown Printing. There was a financial guy in the one-story part.

George [01:17]: I had to ask him to leave. He still gives me grief about that—we play golf together. He says, "Yeah, you kicked me out." But anyway, we took that thing, and I discovered one thing in this process: I was good at demo. The upstairs part was four apartments that hadn't been lived in, except by pigeons, for many years. So we ran all the pigeons off and completely turned those four apartments into a big open space.

George [01:41]: Then later, as things went along, we came back and built bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and all that stuff. But it turned out pretty cool. It's got a lot of flaws, but we left them that way. All the inside was covered in plaster, and we chipped it off by hand. We've got the old clay tile exposed, and the trusses are exposed. Anyway, it's been good. We've been down there eight years, and we've enjoyed it.

Albert And Kellen [02:27]: Sounds so cool.

Albert [02:28]: It is. When I first met George, we went in, and his offices are on the first story. It’s just a cool, unique, very industrial-looking space. Then he’s like, “You want to see my house?”

Albert [02:38]: We go upstairs, and there’s nothing like it in Lubbock. It’s super well done with a lot of industrial themes, exposed rafters, and the old clay and brick. All of that from a former farmer who didn’t live in the middle of town. Now, I couldn’t imagine you living anywhere else.

Albert [02:53]: What I’m getting from that already is that you’re a little bit of an outside-the-box thinker in some ways. If you were a farmer at one time and now have a whole different venture—or series of things you’re doing—can you tell us a little bit about what you’re up to?

George [03:08]: Well, right now, I’m more of a real estate guy. I guess I’m just an investor, usually by myself or with some family or maybe a friend or two as a partner sometimes. I don’t know if you’d say I’m focusing on downtown, but I really like downtown—partly because I live there and partly because I think any good city needs a vibrant downtown.

George [03:29]: I’m happy to see development down there. I’m actually selling some property downtown too. I’ve been investing downtown for several years, and we’ve redone a few buildings.

Investing in Downtown Development

Albert And Kellen [04:49]: I'm partners with a couple of good guys in the old community health center, which is right across from where the new park is going to be. Our plan is to put a food hall in there, some offices upstairs, and a couple of rooftop bars. It’s been a slow process, but we’re getting there. I’m looking forward to seeing that come to fruition.

Albert [05:11]: Have you seen the renderings of the food hall?

George [05:14]: No.

Albert [05:15]: It looks incredible. It looks like anything that would be in any big city downtown. And I butcher it whenever I describe what a food hall is. Can you kind of briefly describe what is a food hall?

George [05:27]: Yeah, a lot of people confuse food halls with food courts. Food courts are what you see in airports, and it’s generally just fast food. Food halls are an industry that’s growing rapidly in the United States. There are lots of them, but it tends to be higher quality than a food court. It’ll be more chef-driven, but it’s not all food either.

George [05:49.473]: There’ll be coffee, there might be a flower shop, there might be a meat market. It depends. There’s one in Denver that I’ve been to several times called Denver Central Market.

Albert [06:02]: That old airport. The airport.

George [06:05]: It used to be an old airport.

Albert [06:06]: Is that the one you’re thinking of?

George [06:08]: No, this one’s right downtown. It’s called Denver Central Market. There are a bunch of them in Denver, but they have all kinds of things in there. They have a salad restaurant that does fantastic, a fabulous bakery, a meat market. I think they’ve only turned over one tenant in the time they’ve been open. It’s been a successful venture, and we hope ours will be too.

Albert [06:30]: I always describe it to my wife like, “Think of an antique mall where all these little ladies rent a booth. It’s like that, but with food trucks.”

George [06:40]: Yeah.

Albert [06:41]: It’s just like a big place where they’re renting a space and delivering some kind of high-quality food or whatever.

The Food Hall Vision

Albert And Kellen [07:09]: I'm super excited about that one. So what's the latest on that project? What step are you at right now, and what does the next little while look like?

George [07:18]: We've got our plans basically drawn. We don't have a full set of plans to get permits with yet, but we do have a contractor, renderings, and a floor plan. We hired the woman who runs Denver Central Market as a consultant, and she’s helped us a lot.

George [07:34]: We've got a couple of architects. Three Axis here in Lubbock is the main architect. There’s also a man-and-wife team from Texas Tech, who now live in Denver. They used to work with Lake Flato in San Antonio, so they’re accomplished people, and they specialize in food halls. They've helped us a lot too.

George [07:53]: Right now, we’re getting our papers drawn up. In fact, they're done. We’re preparing to seek investors, and we’re nearing the point where we can go out to investors to put this thing together.

Albert [08:03]: Very cool. Are you driven by helping things that are going to make the community, and downtown in particular, better for everyone? Is that what drives you?

George [08:12]: That’s one of our motives. All of us in this partnership are big downtown supporters and highly invested in it. So there's that. We also want to make some money.

Albert [08:22]: Yeah, it doesn’t hurt. How do you get into that? That’s such a specific thing. How did you find your way into redeveloping downtown and a food hall in particular? How’d you get there?

George [08:33]: Well, that’s a good question. My involvement in downtown started, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years ago. I bought the old Service Title building. I've always liked art. There’s a two-story part of it—it’s one of the oldest buildings in Lubbock, and it’s only a block from where I live. I bought that and rented part of it that had been a law office.

Getting Involved in Downtown Real Estate

Albert And Kellen [08:43]: The art gallery would make enough money to cover the cost of my assistant who's been with me a long time. It didn’t work out. Then I thought maybe it’ll make enough to pay the taxes and insurance. I had my office there too. That didn’t work either.

George [08:58]: Art galleries are tough in Lubbock, Texas, but we had fun. We met a lot of nice people and had nice art on the walls, so we had free decorations as long as it stayed. I was probably my best customer. Eventually, I sold the building. That got me started. I've bought a couple of other buildings and redone them.

George [09:15]: The building where Rouge is, it's on Avenue K. It's right south of the Pioneer Hotel. A friend of mine, a contractor, and I bought it; it was cheap. It was an old office supply store and was full of old electric typewriters. We threw away a thousand electric typewriters. We gutted it and did a nice job with it. My contractor friend knew what he was doing, and it turned into a cool building.

George [09:37]: And we said, okay, we can make a little money here. Let's sell it. Well, I'm pretty bad about seller's remorse, but I really have a lot of remorse over that one because it’s a really nice building. There was a sandwich shop next door, and so I bought that and redid it, and that's where Nashville is.

Albert [09:52]: Are you familiar with that?

George [09:54]: Yeah, I've been there. James owns that. So, I met a guy named Eric Lampert. You probably know Eric. He has been a proponent of food halls since the day I met him. I'd say Eric is to blame for us getting in this food hall business. He's got so much enthusiasm for it, and he's a good idea guy. So I brought him in, met my partners, and they became convinced that's what we should do. So Eric's still with us.

Transition from Farming to Real Estate

Albert And Kellen [11:58]: And he's with this partnership and he's done a lot of work on the pro forma. He's just everything really on this. And so that's kind of how I got in the food hall business.

Albert [12:10]: Very cool. I'm curious, because you drive around most towns or cities, especially in West Texas, and you go through downtown and there's a lot of really cool old buildings, but usually they're all boarded up or empty and haven't had anything in them for years, or if they do, a lot of them are older. What would you say to somebody who's thinking about getting into real estate, especially when it comes to downtown areas? What's a reason why they might want to do that?

George [12:40]: Well, I think what I would say about our downtown is that things are starting to happen. If you've got a plan and if you've got some vision to take one of these old buildings and do something nice with it, then go get it.

George [12:52]: You know, I had two buildings on Broadway on the south side of the street. Really, my boys did. But they sold them to Clear Rock Realty, and they have done a beautiful job. They took those old things, and they really did turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

Albert [13:12]: Cool. All right. I can't leave that one alone. We've mentioned it and alluded to it that in your past career, you were a farmer. Where did your career start before this? You don't just jump into real estate investor and developer extraordinaire. Where did your career start?

George [13:30]: Well, I wouldn't call myself a developer really. But I do like real estate. Well, it's an interesting thing to me. I'm really a third-generation cotton gin guy. My grandfather built gins out here in the early 20th century. My dad was a farmer and ginner.

George [13:48]: And I worked 13 years for a big cotton company that had lots of cotton gins, warehouses, oil mills, all that stuff—Anderson Clayton. I started in Houston, ended up in Phoenix for seven years, then Fresno, and then my dad passed away in '95. And so I came back; I really needed to.

George [14:14]: I enjoyed my time with Anderson Clayton. It was great, but it was time to move on and be my own boss and all that stuff. I came back and started farming the land that my dad was farming. We were in La Mesa. We moved there in '95. We had small children—well, we had one small child when we got there. We got married late and had another one in '96—two boys.

George [14:40]: So the other one was getting about school age, and we just felt like Lubbock had better opportunities. So we moved to Lubbock, and I'd drive back and forth and do my farming stuff. And over time, I started thinking that it rained more in Lubbock than it did in La Mesa.

George [15:00]: Well, so I said, I've got to start farming up here. I'm going to start trying to trade some land. And I knew a guy in La Mesa who had sold land for the prison down there and made quite a bit of money. And he bought this farm on the north side of Lubbock.

George [15:18]: And he was always trying to sell me this farm, but he wanted $1,500 an acre. And I said, man, that's a lot of money. This is about 2005. And there was an old real estate guy in La Mesa named Bill Nix, who was a good friend of mine. And he said, you be careful, boy, that's a lot of money.

George [15:38]: And so finally, after dickering with John Dell Barron, who was a good guy, I said, John Dell, I've got a section of CRP in Gaines County, and it throws off X number of dollars a year. How about if I trade you that for your Lubbock farm and I'll throw in some cash? And he said, that sounds great.

George [15:55]: So we made a deal, and I started farming that land. And then I bought a piece right next to it for about $1,700. I think it was $1,800 an acre, which sounds really cheap now, but it was pretty pricey at the time.

Learning Through Land Deals

Albert And Kellen [16:43]: And so I ended up with a pretty good block of land. And it's right where the drive-in theater is now, right behind that and the John Deere house. Yeah. So I thought, well, you know, I can develop this someday, maybe, or my kids can. It might take 20 or 30 years. I don't know. But somehow, Delbert McDougall got a hold of me.

Albert And Kellen [17:03]: And so we started talking about it, and we became really good friends. I love the guy. He was so good to me. And in the end, his group bought it. So, you know, talking about seller's remorse, I don't really have any remorse over that deal. It's worth a lot more money now than it was then when he bought it. But they've also spent a lot of money improving it. Slide Road goes right through the middle of it now.

Albert And Kellen [17:27]: But I can't say enough about Delbert McDougall. I think he was a great man. Anyway, that really got me going. And so from there, I bought some other farms. I've been in the Hill Country with ranches three or four times, sometimes by myself, sometimes with a partner. And I used to have a ranch east of Post, but my kids didn't enjoy it as much.

Albert And Kellen [17:52]: They were a little small, and they didn't want to stay out there for days at a time or anything. So I sold that and bought some irrigated land in the Spearman area. Cotton was just getting started up there. And I had a guy that I knew really well. He was a mentor to me and to a lot of people named Larry Nelson. He convinced me that cotton was really going to be successful up there, and it has been.

Albert And Kellen [18:17]: It's been extremely successful up there. So I bought some land up there, and one day I had it for several years. I rented it to a farmer up there.

Albert And Kellen [18:27]: One day a friend of mine who's a realtor in La Mesa came to see me, and he said, would you be interested in selling that land? And so I said, well, I don't know, maybe. And he said, well, what would you take for it? And I gave him this high number, and he called me the next day and said, I've got a buyer for you. So I sold it and did well.

Albert And Kellen [18:47]: The problem is that now it's worth twice what I sold it for. But at the time, it was probably the highest price to that date of a farm up there. That's sort of the way I've done things. In 2008, when the financial crisis came along, I had some cash, and there were some distressed sales that I was able to take advantage of.

Albert And Kellen [19:07]: And so I've still got a couple of those. But one was next to the high school in Shallowater. I farmed that for several years, my partner and I did. And somebody came along and bought that. So, you know, I'm not trying to make myself sound smart because a whole lot of this was luck. A whole lot of it was just good timing.

Albert And Kellen [19:27]: It was a time when I was able to take advantage of a hard time, a downturn. And then things came back pretty quick, and I took advantage of that too. You know, really a lot of my success has been luck, I have to say.

Albert [19:41]: I'm going to push back on that. So you've rattled off several of these series of real estate or land plays that you've gone through, season by season, and been able to buy, sell, and trade.

Mentorship and Building Relationships

Albert And Kellen [20:55]: Obviously, you've had success in that. Looking back now, what do you think is unique, you know, a unique gift within yourself that you feel like is, aside from luck and timing—we all either bear the brunt of that or benefit from it—but looking back, what's kind of a unique gift within yourself that you feel helped you achieve so much success over those years?

George [21:17]: Man, that's a hard question to answer. And I'm asking you, so it's not bragging. I'm good with numbers. I think I've developed a pretty good skill at knowing what things are worth. And I've missed it some too, you know, but I would say those two things. I'm not a big risk taker, but I think the times I've taken some risk, they've been fairly calculated.

George [21:38]: So I don't know that I've got any unique abilities. I don't really, but... that's... I don't know how to elaborate further on that.

Kellen [21:46]: Well, something else you have said, or I noticed as you were telling your story, is about all the people that you had in your story. You know, Delbert McDougall, Larry Nelson, Skeet Norrie. Something that struck me was that you know how to build those relationships with good people, and the wisdom that maybe some of them contributed might have helped you along the way. Would you agree with that?

George [22:08]: I would agree with that. And I've had a number of people that have been good influences on my life. When I first moved to Lubbock, I rented an office from a guy named Skeet Norrie. Skeet owned theaters and lots of farmland. Skeet was one of the smartest guys I've ever met. And I was in his office for seven years.

Lessons from Failures

Albert And Kellen [23:01]: He would just come in and sit down, and we'd talk. He told me some great stories about how his dad taught him to make money. The stories are wonderful. One thing I learned from Skeet—and I don't know everything Skeet knew by any stretch—was through one of my failures. I got into a high-tech startup, and I put a lot of money into it.

George [23:25]: Skeet put a little money in it and never thought about it again. It failed. I'm sure Skeet never lost 10 minutes of sleep over it. But it did me pretty good, and I learned a lesson there. The lesson I learned was if it's something you don't really know, just don't put a lot of money in it. It's okay to take a gamble, but don't load up on a startup because most of them fail. Once in a while, you can hit it big, but I've done it twice. I didn't learn my lesson the first time.

George [23:55]: Anyway, Skeet was a good guy to be around—just a wise man. When I was in Arizona, the president of the company I worked for at the time, Ruth Baker, was another one. He was honest and calm, even when things were bad. When something bad happened, he was still calm.

George [24:15]: He told me one day, "If you just do the things you say you'll do, that'll take care of most of it." I've always remembered that. Just a great guy.

Kellen [24:27]: I'm thinking about people who might be listening—many of them are younger, maybe 25 to 35 years old, early in their careers. They might be looking for a mentor and thinking, "Man, I wish I knew a Skeet." How do you go about building those relationships? How do you meet those people? What are your thoughts on that?

George [24:49]: Well, I knew Skeet from La Mesa. He was a La Mesa guy. He owned theaters in La Mesa and also up here. I don’t really remember how I got connected with him. I didn’t know him that well growing up, but I grew up with his daughter and had known him pretty much all my life. I needed some office space, and someone may have told me that he had a spot available.

George [25:11]: He rented me an office. It was a pretty good little office. The family still has it. I remember being there three or four years when he came in and said, "I hate to tell you, but I got to raise the rent." I said, "Okay." He said, "I need $350 a month." I said, "Okay."

George [25:29]: But it was so much fun being there with him.

Kellen [25:33]: That’s cool. I can't let the name Skeet go. A farmer who owned movie theaters? That's straight out of a book—a movie character right there.

George [25:42]: His dad got started in the movie theater business. His dad had a dog that was in Hollywood and could respond to 200 commands.

Kellen [25:50]: Wow.

George [25:52]: I think it was a pointer—an English pointer. Skeet had a picture of him in his office. He said, "You know, he was about to hit the big time until this dog named Rin came along."

Kellen [26:03]: I've heard of that one.

George [26:05]: Yeah.

Kellen [26:06]: I mean, you skated over it, but mentorship is such an important concept. I think, especially when I talk to college-age kids, they think of it as this really formal, transactional thing where you're sitting down for an interview and saying, "Will you be my mentor?"

Kellen [26:21]: That is rarely the case. A lot of times, it's just about getting proximal—getting close to these people and developing real relationships.

George [26:29]: That’s right.

Kellen [26:30]: Just getting to know them. The mentorship sort of happens on its own. That’s something I’ve always found true. I keep a list of probably a dozen guys that I consider my mentors, and none of them know it.

Value of Mentorship

Albert And Kellen [27:52]: It's all my secret, but it's just people I have relationships with who have done what I want to do. They've done it longer, bigger, and better. They've taken their licks, and really, just getting to know them and being close to them whenever I'm getting my butt whooped. I'm like, "Hey man, I'm really struggling with this. Have you done this before?"

Kellen [28:15]: And it's just an organic, relational conversation. You've obviously done that for decades.

George [28:22]: I don't know that I ever went to any of these guys and said, "Help me with this or help me with that." But it sort of happened like osmosis—just being around them, watching them, and hearing their conversations with people.

George [28:35]: One thing you were talking about with Skeet—he's interesting in that he's both a theater guy and a farm guy. He said, "I've never had a farm buy me a theater, but those theaters have bought me a lot of farms."

Albert [28:49]: That's a good one-liner.

Kellen [28:51]: Yeah, you have to know which direction to move things in. We've talked to business owners involved in different ventures and the seasonality of certain business types. A lot of these guys have their version of that—a theater or a farm.

Albert [29:05]: They have their fingers in different things, different pies. You've alluded to some failures and lessons learned. What are some other licks you've taken and had to learn a lesson?

George [29:15]: Well, I learned a lesson in the denim business. Some of my friends, including Larry Nelson, and I bought a denim mill in Liberty, South Carolina.

Knowing Your Industry

Albert And Kellen [29:58]: And we thought, well, we're getting it so cheap, it's got to work. But we found out it didn't. And we didn't lose any money, but we came really close, and we kind of got out by the skin of our teeth. One of our partners bought us out. It's a cool old building, big old mill that you would see in the South. But the textile industry in the United States was shrinking.

George [30:18]: Yeah, you know, it was going to the Far East and so forth. And it just... we probably just got in over our heads a little bit. Thankfully, we didn't lose a bunch, but it was... we'd go to Liberty and have meetings, and we were quite involved in the operation. But it just wasn't to be.

Albert [30:38]: Makes me think of something I read the other day, which was talking about when somebody tries to sell you something, they're selling you their problem. You better be able to figure out what that is before you buy it.

Kellen [30:50]: It also kind of ties to what you said a minute ago about not getting into something that you don't understand. I think that's just a great takeaway for me from this. It's okay to take risks, calculated ones, and especially when you don't know as much. Just kind of having some wisdom there.

Albert [31:06]: That's hard, because as an entrepreneur or business owner, that's how you get there—by seeing a problem, not knowing how to fix it today, but figuring it out. So I guess now looking back, what are some of those... I don't know if rules of thumb is the right phrase, but what are some of the guardrails you've put up? Where do you decide, "I don't know enough about this, but I'm going to figure it out," versus "I don't know enough about this, and I don't need to do anything with it"?

George [31:35]: Well, I've invested in a number of oil wells and drilling projects. They've all failed. So I've discovered that that's not my cup of tea.

Fire Round

Albert And Kellen [32:30]
I think I need to concentrate on land and just really mostly on real estate. I've invested in a lot of things that don't require my management, that would hopefully have good management. And most of those have been okay. But I've always been debt averse. It's not that I've never borrowed money, I do occasionally, but I never borrow money that I don't know how I'm going to pay back if something goes wrong. So that's kept me out of trouble. It's also kept me from getting really rich maybe, but a lot of people have built fortunes on debt. It's not my thing. I don't like it. I don't like a lot of it. So it kind of keeps me up at night.

Kellen [33:26]
There's a lot of people that have lost a lot in the downturns because of debt.

Albert [33:30]
Yeah. That's one of the main reasons that I like that line. You know, I don't borrow what I don't have a plan to pay back if everything goes wrong. I really like that. Well said.

Kellen [33:42]
Absolutely. Well, as we're getting here close to the end, we want to have a little bit of a fire round.

Albert [33:48]
Let's do it.

Kellen [33:50]
All right. So we like to wrap up with these questions that are really apropos of nothing, but it's just fun to ask. Tell me, what's your favorite movie?

George [33:58]
My goodness. I'll surprise you. Cinema Paradiso.

Albert [34:03]
Okay, what's that?

George [34:05]
It's an Italian movie. It's about this kid that runs a theater in Italy.

Kellen [34:10]
Okay, tie back to your theater stories.

George [34:12]
Cinema Paradiso.

Kellen [34:14]
Right, we'll check that.

George [34:15]
Subtitles.

Albert [34:17]
I expected nothing less. Aside from the Bible, what is your favorite nonfiction book?

George [34:25]
Well, there's a writer that I love that writes fiction and nonfiction. His name is Abraham Verghese. He wrote his fiction pieces—let me think—The Covenant of Water, that's the latest one. It's a novel. He wrote Cutting for Stone, but he wrote another nonfiction book called In My Own Country.

Kellen [34:44]
What's that about?

George [34:46]
He's an interesting guy in lots of ways because he's a fine writer. He's also a very accomplished medical doctor. In fact, he was affiliated with the Texas Tech Medical School in El Paso at one time. Now he's at Stanford. But In My Own Country was basically a memoir of his time in Appalachia when the AIDS epidemic started. It was fantastic. He treated AIDS patients when people wouldn't even associate with a family member of an AIDS patient. The world was terrified, and he did it. It may have cost him his marriage; it certainly didn't help. But he's a brave man with a wonderful sense of humanity and ability to tell a story.

Kellen [35:27]
Cool.

Albert [35:28]
Okay, I've never heard of him and I've never heard of those books.

George [35:31]
Those books are great. I highly recommend them.

Albert [35:34]
We're two for two on home runs now.

Kellen [35:37]
All right. What's a piece of advice or wisdom you hear commonly in your industry that you don't necessarily agree with?

Albert [35:42]
I like this one because you get the contrarian takes.

George [35:46]
In my industry... I don't even know what my industry is.

Albert [35:50]
You've got seven or eight to choose from. You pick.

George [35:55]
Maybe I would say that you just have to keep getting bigger to be successful.

Kellen [36:01]
How so?

George [36:03]
Well, there's a certain quality of life that's important. And the bigger you get, the more of your life you give up in many cases. I never wanted to be a big farmer that farmed 10,000 acres just because I wanted to play golf. I wanted to be with my kids and all that stuff.

Albert [36:29]
The wisdom in knowing when enough is enough.

Kellen [36:33]
Yeah. It makes me think of the book Small Giants, where it's about making that decision at the onset of what is the quality of life, what am I pursuing, and getting there and being really excellent at that.

Albert [36:46]
Yeah. There's a lot to be said there.

Kellen [36:48]
Okay. And then finally, how can people get in touch with you if they want to do business with you or learn more about the food hall or other projects you have going on? What's the best way to get a hold of you?

George [37:01]
Probably by email.

Albert [37:03]
Email?

George [37:04]
Yeah.

Kellen [37:05]
Okay. We can share that in the show notes if you're good with that.

George [37:08]
I'm good with that.

Albert [37:10]
Man, I appreciate you coming on. It doesn't surprise me; you were full of good stories and some great West Texas names.

George [37:18]
Man, I sure appreciate it.

Kellen [37:19]
Yes. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Albert [37:21]
Thank you.