Lessons in Private Equity and Leadership with Christopher Swing
Disclaimer: Ryan Kolden is an investment advisor representative of RPG Family Wealth Advisory. Kolden Wealth is a DBA of RPG Family Wealth Advisory. The opinions expressed by the host and or guests in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Kolden Wealth or RPG Family Wealth Advisory. No information on this podcast should be construed as investment, legal, tax, or financial advice.
Ryan Kolden: Today on the show, we have Christopher Swing. Chris is currently serving as the president and CEO of Vantage Surgical Solutions. Chris has extensive experience across logistics, healthcare, private equity, manufacturing, and finance. Prior to taking the helm as CEO of Vantage, Chris also served as Vantage's CFO and COO. and was senior manager of cost at Pinnacle Foods and serves on the board of directors at People's Bank and Trust. Chris has successfully completed an exit to private equity, is a member of YPO, Young Presidents Organization, and runs a podcast called Faithful that focuses on the intersection of leadership, business, and faith. Chris, welcome to the show and great to have you.
Christopher Swing: Yeah, thanks for having me, man. This is great. I'm sure excited to have the opportunity to interact today.
Ryan Kolden: I'm very, very excited for everyone to hear Chris's story and he's got a wealth of knowledge. So we're going to cover a lot of different topics today. But the first thing I want to cover is your background. So I thought this was particularly funny, but you were told by a college professor that you were never going to graduate from university. So how did you go from that? to the CEO of a medical device company and selling a portion of your company to private equity.
Christopher Swing: Now, I think I've talked about this in some of my podcasts, and I appreciate you bringing that up. So this was in junior college and it was a speech class of all classes, right? But I think one of the things that is a little bit different from me to your traditional student is I'm not a crammer when it comes to getting the best grade on a test. And as most of you know, a lot of your college and university scoring is around test taking. At that point, you know, how much of that information that you just crammed in to get a really good grade on that test do you really know later? And so my perspective was, I know what I know going into the test. I know enough of it because I'm a relatively smart guy to get a passing score. And I'm not going to go home and spend two or three hours to cram, or even longer for some people, to cram a bunch of information into my head to be able to regurgitate it for a test and then never have it again. Like that's just a waste of time. And so I think that's caused a lot of frustration with a lot of my professors through school, including that one. But that's just the way, that's just my perspective is I learn the information that I needed to be able to carry with me to this day from those classes, and I still know that information. But the things that weren't really important to me, I just wasn't going to sit there and spend a bunch of time just trying to slam it into my head so I could regurgitate it one time and then never see it again.
Ryan Kolden: Yeah. It's pretty insane how a lot of people, they just cram, cram, cram, and then they forget it all. It's like they didn't really even learn in the first place. You have a pretty extensive background in accounting and corporate finance. Can you kind of give your timeline of, of how you went from, uh, you know, basically college to where you are today and what roles you held?
Christopher Swing: Sure. So in, uh, 2003, I graduated from college with my bachelor's degree. I immediately took over as the head of an accounting department for a small business and graphics in Mattoon, Illinois. I started a GM training program in 2007, 2006, sorry, right after I got married. In 2007, they sold the business and I was in sales at that time and had just blown the doors off of the expectations. And so they wanted me to stay in sales. That really wasn't kind of my visualization for my long-term goals. So I took a job as a senior cost analyst for Lenders Bagels, which was a pinnacle foods company at the time. And let's see, March of 2008, I think is when I became the plant controller. So really shortly, I joined that organization in July. And then the next March is when I became a plant controller. For $120 million business in 18 months later, I became the senior cost manager, which is the equivalent of a divisional controller is how I would describe it for a $1.4 billion business, Birdseye Vegetables. When we acquired them off an S1 filing, they were basically going to go public.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. And one of the things that you just mentioned was you served a sales, in a sales position. So you're an accountant by trade. So how, how did that happen? How did you get placed in a sales position and what was that like? You know, basically being an accountant, going into sales, that's kind of a, you know, you weren't necessarily prepared for that role.
Christopher Swing: Yeah. And I wasn't. So to give you an idea, that company really invested in me. So in 2003, They actually paid for my MBA to go back to school to get my MBA. And that was great. They identified me as what they called their tier two team, which was the next generation of leadership for the company. And in that The president of the company just really took to me. I think it was because I had a skillset that he didn't have, which was the accounting side of it. And he realized how valuable that was to the organization. And he's like, I want to train you to be the replacement of the current general manager. And historically, as we've done this, we've used the sales department as the last department to run people through. And unfortunately, everybody has failed in the sales department. So we're going to start you in the sales department. It was a daunting task for me, but I kind of looked at it from kind of a project management basis. And I think most people that are in sales would kind of align if they've done any project management. That's really what the process is like is, you know, how do we accomplish these objectives and we develop strategies around them and we execute them by deliverable dates and So it really wasn't that bad. And it really, I think back and that really set me up well to be effective in Vantage, which is really, I think what's enabled me to become the CEO.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. They say that accounting is the language of business. I don't think anyone would dispute that. You initially served as CFO of Vantage, which I think everyone would agree that a strong accounting background is a requisite for that position. But you're also in YPO, so you get to deal with a lot of other CEOs. you know, their experiences. Based on your experience as having an accounting background and what you see maybe with other CEOs who don't have that accounting background, how important would you say that your accounting background has been in your success serving as the COO and CEO of Vintage?
Christopher Swing: So I kind of look at my accounting background similarly to the way that a non-accountant would look at the role of finding that really qualified advisor. You know, I think about like the bank board, we don't have an attorney on the bank board, but we have really, really good attorneys that are there to advise us. The benefit that I have that the average CEO doesn't have is that I don't have to have that advisor. I don't need someone to kind of explain to me how this stuff works. And I think it gives me the ability kind of from a next level to understand how my decisions affect the P&L. without needing that really high level consultant to walk alongside me. So I think it's, I think it's done two things for me. It's given me the ability to evaluate and determine, you know, where like the advantage was a good company to invest in because I could see before I invested, okay, here's the things that I want to do in order to make us effective. For instance, our focus was around, you know, we need to grow our business, but we also needed to grow our revenue per procedure. And so having those two things working together allowed us to hit Inc 5,000 from 2015 to 2019. And part of that was we knew that we were going to lose a key account in 2019. And so I really needed to build up the core business in order to offset that loss that was going to come.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. I kind of want to shift gears in talking about a little bit of leadership and professional development. So Young Presidents Organization. For those that don't know, YPO is a leadership community that's focused specifically on helping chief executives personally and professionally develop themselves. Additionally, YPO has very, very, very specific requirements on being able to apply and become a member. Can you tell me when you joined and what interested you in joining YPO and what you've got out of it?
Christopher Swing: Yeah. So it's a funny story. Actually, I was in Nashville, Tennessee at a big conference and we stayed at a friend of the president of the company at the time, her friend's house and her friend was really big in YPO and had just promoted me into a president role. So I finally actually qualified. I didn't even, I didn't even know what YPO was at the time. And I didn't know that there were requirements or if I met them or didn't meet them, whatever. I knew it was expensive, but besides that, that was all that I knew. And she made me promise that I would try YPO for a year before I left her house. And this was in 2018. And I'll tell you what, I've been on the board ever since for our chapter, and I've never looked back. Some of the training that you're talking about, if you guys want to see some crazy stuff, look up Mark Kohler. It's M-A-R-C. Kohler liked the engine. And then he does fast attack leadership. And that's the training that I just went to lately. I took my entire leadership team on the operations side to it. And it's really about, you know, he was a captain in a submarine and how do you make decisions quickly? And so part of it is, is like, you know, you can, you can either learn to make decisions fast and sometimes you're going to make the wrong decisions and you, you overcome those, uh, those failures or you choose to wait and you wait to the point where it's too late to make a decision. And so really it was about, you know, how do you make a decision between 40% confidence and 70% confidence and then The reality is that at 70% confidence, you're actually about 85% confident. So if you wait too much longer than that, like you're behind everybody else making those decisions. And it was just a really cool training. But if you look him up, a lot of his work is on YouTube.
Ryan Kolden: That's very interesting. So, I don't know if I mentioned it to you when we briefly were speaking, but I served as an officer on a submarine and that is exactly true what he's saying. I definitely got myself into trouble a couple of times. The submarine is so big that it takes quite a while for any kind of decision to actually have like a reaction time. And so, I can only imagine kind of the stories he shared. But
Christopher Swing: And it's not his work, right? So, that's a Colin Powell training, I think, if I remember right. I think he gives credit to Colin for that. But, you know, just a very out-of-the-box experience. For those of us who are CEOs, like, that was really wild to go, you know, through a training with somebody who's been the captain of a submarine and just the ways that those things impact us and how we can look at our world differently through a different lens. And I thought that was a great training. So that's cool that you have that experience and thank you for your service.
Ryan Kolden: Yeah. Thank you. I loved it. In terms of YPO and Vantage, how would you say that YPO's made you a more effective or better leader or better CEO of Vantage?
Christopher Swing: I think that the two things that I'll tell you about YPO, first of all, it's like having your own board of directors, but they're not your board of directors. And so like the key behind forum, which is what I'm talking about at this particular moment is they're really your advisors. Right. And so the reason that I owned as much advantage as I owned was really because of them. Why they make me a better CEO is because we all deal with the exact same problems. Most of them are around people, process, or leadership. And, you know, they challenge, we challenge each other to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be, but it's not just as the business owner, as the business leader. We also challenge ourselves to be the best parents we can be. We challenge ourselves to be each other, to be the best husbands or, or spouses that we can be. I mean, it's, it's about how do you level up every portion of your being per se. And it's people that know you, like that know you personally. I mean, my group, I've been in forum with the same group of guys with the exception of a couple of changes since 2018. We meet once a month for four or more hours. I mean, these guys and in person, so it's not like none of its video except for a little bit during COVID, but I mean, these guys know you in and out and they can call your bluff and it's hilarious. You know, it's probably similar to a lot of the experiences that you guys did in team building with your, you know, with your submarine guys, because you need to be able to rely on these guys and you trust them. And when they say, No, that's not real. Like you, you can do better than that. It's kind of like, wow, somebody is really calling me the carpet that knows me well enough to know that that's true. And it's a, it's an amazing experience. It's made me an amazing leader. It's, it's really what's driven a lot of my podcast stuff. It's allowed me to realize when I'm the bull in the China shop. Cause that's my history. Like I've said that multiple times and I'm sure the people that follow me and listen to me all the time are like, would you quit saying that? But it's really true. I mean, I go back to my pinnacle days and like. it wouldn't be uncommon for me to like run into a meeting and just literally be like, destroy it all, like just destroy it all. We're doing something totally different. And, you know, it got done when I needed to, but I lost a lot of people. I lost a lot of the culture and the vision through that process. And there's just way better ways to do the exact same thing.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. Um, and one of the things that you briefly mentioned to me, was that you wouldn't be where you are today if it wasn't for other people. And the specific example that you gave was Anne. What have you learned about networking over the years and how has your opinion on cultivating relationships with people, networking changed as you've gotten older and progressed through your career?
Christopher Swing: So I think the biggest difference was I came from a really big business, right? So when I was with Pinnacle, we were a multi-billion dollar organization and your title got you access to whomever you needed to, right? So like we could pull up a directory and we could call whoever we needed and we'd tell them who we were. And if we were important enough, they would listen to us. when I got to small business, what I came to the realization was, was that the value that I create is based upon the people that I talk to, the information that I gather from them and the insights that they're willing to provide me. And Anne is an amazing networker. She just, I don't know if I've, for those of you who listen, she's the founder of this company. She has owned more than 130 small businesses in her lifetime. She was the CEO of a family office that had a very successful entrepreneur that spun out five kids that all were extremely successful in different businesses. I mean, we're talking like private equity funds. We're talking commercial development north of 150 million a year, still 30 years later. I mean, we're talking like really significant, successful people. And one of the first things that I had to deal with as the CFO was her contacts and outlook were so much that it was like destroying. It was making the outlook not function. And so we were trying to figure out like, okay, do we do a CRM for this lady to be able to manage all of her contacts? Because it was like in the 20 some thousands of people that she had, you know, telephone and, and, and emails. And I'm telling you, like, she made notes in every person. So like she would go into Outlook where you and I are like, Oh, what's that guy's name? I have no idea what that guy's name is. What did he do again? I don't even remember what he did. And she would be like, okay, you know, this guy met him at whatever. And she had listed all of that stuff in their bios within Outlook. So it would actually search and bring up a list of all the people that met her search criterion. And so she could find people that like she hadn't talked to for four or five years, you know, because of the way that she had built this out. And it was just amazing to me. It was, it was eyeopening because I never had that, you know, when I was in business, especially at Pinnacle, if I needed something, you know, it didn't matter. I regularly talked to the CFO of the company. Our CEOs transitioned pretty regularly, so I didn't really mess with them too much because it seemed like it was kind of a revolving door and the CFO made most of the decisions anyways. We were backed by Blackstone and so a lot of the decisions were driven from the CFO office, believe it or not. And that just wasn't important. But when I got into the, to the smaller business, I learned that you make things happen by who, you know, and who's around your table. And that was true. Like in instances, I remember, you know, getting invited to a, a meeting where we were going to talk about buying a local building. And I got to that meeting and one of the, one of the partners that was investing in this organization didn't want me to participate. And it wasn't anything personal against me. They just didn't know who I was. And they literally, as soon as I walked in the door, like, Oh no, no, no. Like he wasn't invited to this meeting. And, and one of the guys like, Oh yeah, I'm the one that is the ringleader of this organization. And I invited him and they're like, no, no, no, he's not invited to this meeting. And I've literally was walked out like from this meeting. And it was because I didn't know any of these people had I taken the time to get to know all the other ones, like they would have never had a problem with me. I like, I mean, the one that threw the biggest fit then is, is a great guy here locally that I know really well, you know, 12 years later, but I just didn't have any of those networks. And so, and that takes time, you know, I'm, I'm not from this community. So the business that, that I operate in is in Effingham, Illinois. We also have a HQ too, and in Nashville and Brentwood, but, um, You know, this is a small community and I'm 30 minutes away. So I'm, I'm kind of an outsider. I'm not really as much anymore. I mean, they gave me a 20 under 40 here and, uh, I was the president of the chamber of commerce. I was on, you know, multiple nonprofit boards and things like that, where I've gotten to know a lot of the people that are, you know, the, the drivers of this community now, but at the time I didn't know. And, and so. as that became more important, I got invited to more and more things and I could participate in more and more things. And I just think it's really important for people to realize how valuable that networking is. And, and it's not, I'm an accountant, right? So it's not like something I love to do. It's, it's something that I do out of necessity.
Ryan Kolden: Right. Okay. The next thing I want to dive into and I want to shift gears again is your exit to private equity. So Chris has a very, very interesting experience with this. So I'll let him do the majority of the explaining here, but just a rundown as I understand it is you initially purchased a minority interest advantage. You did that a second time. You sold a partial piece to private equity. You thought about resigning and now you're the CEO of the company that you partially exited. So can you give a rundown on just that entire timeline so everyone kind of understands? And when did you initially acquire, you know, your, your initial piece of Vantage?
Christopher Swing: Yeah, so I bought my first 6% in 2014, believe it or not. I bought my last piece in December of 2020 and we sold in September of 2021. And just to kind of connect all the dots, I bought my piece in December of 2020 because my board of directors, my YPO guys told me that this piece was available for sale and it may never be again. Now I had no idea that we were going to get into a transaction with a private equity firm. You know, we do what's called share back with all of our purchases. So the, the owner, the previous owner still got a huge additional chunk of money based on the value that incremented with private equity. The process was basically, I bought some in 2014. In 2018, I bought another chunk, so I'd own at least 20% by the end of 2018. By the end of 2020, I owned almost 38% of the business. September of 2021, we sold 69% of the business. I retained 18% and the founder retained 13%. Um, because I wasn't up, uh, you know, uh, I guess I would call myself, I wasn't a, uh, professional portfolio company CEO at the time. Uh, and I was still in a president and COO role, even though I was technically running the business at that, at that time, they decided to bring in a CEO over the top of me and they didn't really want to understand the business. And so they just tried to put their own spin on, on what we were doing. And I would say that. All the things that the private equity firm liked about the business was not a focus as the new CEO came in. And this is not anything against the private equity firm. I'll just be honest with you. They're great. Like I, as a CEO of their company, they have a hundred percent confidence in me. I meet with them every week. They bring to me their concerns. We have a very transparent relationship. So this is not anything against them. But I was at a point where I was like, okay, I'm not sure that the value of my equity is going to be anything. And I know that the value of my time is more than what I'm getting paid because I know I can create value. Like I've proven that through the purchase of advantage and then the subsequent transaction. And now I've got this experience where I've actually went through a transaction, which is a very complex process and you need lots of really good advisors, especially the first time. Don't skimp is probably my best advice for you. And there's a lot of things you don't know. So if you, if you know someone that's been through the process before, take them out for dinner or something and spend a lot of time understanding the pitfalls that you need to watch out for on that side. But long story short, they hired the CEO over the top of me and that happened right before the transaction. He came in as an advisor and then subsequently was, we were told that he was going to become the CEO. I thought for most of that process, I was going to be the CEO. or maybe I should say I wanted to be the CEO. And so I assumed that I would be the CEO. Two years went by and the organization just wasn't doing what it needed to do in order to be looked at as interesting. That's what the private equity firm likes to use as a barometer of whether or not they want to continue to invest with you is whether you're interesting or not. And we were definitely not interesting from their perspective, in my opinion. And so I just told the CEO at the time that I was going to resign and the private equity firm got in touch with me a couple of days later. And they're like, you know, we need to change direction. And we're, we would really like to have your leadership. What do we need to retain you? And I basically said, look, I can't work in this environment and I can't really add value in this environment because I don't have the authority to do anything. I've pretty much had my wings clipped to the point where I really wasn't in charge of anything. I just had a lot of title. And I was here to kind of keep everyone, you know, marching in the, in line with the expectations. But as far as any development or what we were doing going forward, it was, it was being called very, very close, closely by the CEO. And two days later, I was the CEO.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. You mentioned to me that when you were faced with the decision of having to buy the shareholder's equity. And I believe the timeline was 2018. You said that you bought that second chunk, large chunk. Why was that a difficult decision for you to make and what kinds of things were you thinking about and going through your head?
Christopher Swing: So the 2018 chunk wasn't the problem. It was the 2020 chunk that really stressed me out. And it was because I just bought so much in 2018. Uh, I think my 2018 purchase was around 14%. So I had a ton of debt still on that. My first purchase in 2014 was all cash. So I had took out a loan from a bank and, uh, and wrote a check. My 2018 purchase was 20% down 20% over five years. So I had, I was making huge payments every month or every quarter. I can't remember exactly how we structured it. But when the 2020 became available to me, it was like, this is a no brainer. I don't want to buy this because I have a ton of debt. And the last thing I need is more of it. Because every time, you know, if you think about it, like we also had business debt. So on top of it, I, as I incremented my equity, I also incremented my personal guarantees. So, so if this thing went to zero, not only do I lose all my investment, but I also have like a multiple million dollar note that I have to pay off to the bank and they're going to come looking for me. So it was just one of those things where it was like, from my perspective, from a rational financial perspective, it was, I have enough debt. I have enough personal guarantees. I don't think I need any more. And from my advisor's perspective, which was the YPO guys. They're like, look, equity doesn't become available all the time. And so you can pass on this, that's fine, but you may never ever have the chance to buy it again. Now at the time, I had no idea we were going to sell in September of 21. I can just tell you that that was a multi, multi-million dollar positive decision for me to buy it. Because even though I had to share a lot of the profit that we made off of that purchase with the former owner, I still made a huge amount of money because the valuation difference between what I paid and what we ultimately sold for was so great.
Ryan Kolden: So it sounds like YPO has really been pivotal in all aspects, going from transactions to leadership. It really sounds like they are, it's been pivotal in your career.
Christopher Swing: So I drink the Kool-Aid, but it's one of those things where, okay, let's say that it's, I don't know what the cost is, like eight or $9,000 or $10,000 a year, and it may be different in different chapters. But when you look at, even if I'm a member for the next hundred years, I'm still way ahead. And so I think it really just comes down to what your situation is. It's not for everybody, probably. But for this guy, like, I don't have anything but positive things to say. And I just, I think back to, you know, when I went into this, I was very skeptical because as a financial operator of a business, like I'm all about the pennies, like the pennies matter when you have tons of people out spending money on your behalf on company credit cards and doing dumb things like pennies matter. And so, For me to invest, you know, nine, 10, 12, 15,000, whatever that amount was to get in to begin with, because you have to pay, you have to pay some initiation fees. And it's like maybe three or four or five or six grand more. I was just like, this is a big thing for me. And finally my partner said, look, I trust Cordia to the nth degree. If she says you need to do this, like you just need to get over it and do it. And so that's really, so really my partner, Anne, was the one that ultimately drove it to happen because she's willing to say, look, I know you don't want to do this and you don't have to stay in it. So if it doesn't pan out after the first year, we'll just suck it up and say that was a waste of 15 grand and move on. But I'm sure thankful I did it. It's been great for me.
Ryan Kolden: I was speaking to last week, a gentleman named Eric Malka. He sold The Art of Shaving to Procter & Gamble and he had a really good analogy. He's like, hey, a business owner in a transaction for the first time, like M&A, it's like you're a quarterback and you got airdropped into the Super Bowl and you have no idea what you're doing. And the advice he gave was to surround yourself with good advisors and you definitely did that. And it paid off for you. The final part of today's show I want to go over is philanthropy. So as you kind of progress through your career and you're financially successful, people just generally speaking, start to give back and charitable work starts to become a more important aspect of individuals lives. So what role does philanthropy and nonprofit work play in your life?
Christopher Swing: So first of all, let me tell you that a lot of my success, I still attribute to all of the nonprofit work that I did over the years. I've always sat on lots of boards. I've always, you know, volunteered for lots of organizations, big brothers, big sisters, just lots of different entities. I support missions in Ghana, Africa, and the Eastern Dominican Christian Mission and the DR, the Dominican Republic. All of those experiences gave me different perspective and I think is part of what made me successful. So it's only natural at that point to start to give back. Philanthropy to me is more about money today than it is about time because my time is so valuable. And that's not, let me digress a little bit. So I have the resources that nothing I do from this point on is going to affect my lifestyle. My lifestyle doesn't change. So everything that I make, today forward is for the benefit of a charity. But think about it this way, like how many people in the world have the ability to earn the kind of money that I can earn, whether that be in my investments, being on the board of directors of a $600 million bank, which is not a big bank, but has insane amounts of returns. Whether that's being in a med tech company like Vantage, where my valuations that I bought at compared to what we're valued at today is not even in the realm of reasonable. I've just been blessed beyond measure. So basically everything that I do from here out, for profit is for the benefit of some nonprofit organization. And part of my vision behind that is I really think that a lot of those organizations are what caused me to be successful. But beyond that, like there's nothing better than supporting an entity that hasn't done anything to deserve a gift from you, but can do so much with so little. You know, I think about like, you know, we want to put up an office somewhere. It's like two or 3 million bucks. know, I'm dealing with Ghana where they want to build a school for middle school and it can hold like hundreds of kids and it's like $1.1 million or something like that. And I mean, we're talking about like, that's including the desk, the computers, like everything that they need in order to be effective. And so to me, That's why I do this today. I do it today because of the impact that I can have in the, in the world. And, and I love to be able to give back to organizations and especially those that know, invested in me along the way. I know they didn't look at it that way, but like every nonprofit organization I've participated with has done some sort of training or strategic planning or something where it's like those experiences give you the ability to be more effective as a leader of a for-profit organization that you know, sometimes we're the last ones to invest in some of those things. And, you know, I'd go to, to a nonprofit meeting where they have no resources, but they still provide those because they feel like it's important that we have a vision and be committed to, to what their mission is. So philanthropy to me is everything.
Ryan Kolden: That's fantastic, Chris. Thank you so much for sharing everything today. I want to kind of wrap up the show now. Do you have any last words that you want to leave people with or any thoughts on anything we talked about today that you want to hit on one more time?
Christopher Swing: Yeah, I'll tell you on the M&A side, both on the buy side and on the sell side, the first deal is a nightmare for both and they're not the same and they're not the same issues. So I would encourage people to make sure they invest in the right advisors and that they spend the time and understand the language. I've got both a buy side deal that's been a struggle. The sell side, we spend a ton of time really trying to understand what we didn't know because It's really the process of managing the unknowns. And part of it is you don't know the buyer and you don't know the seller. Right. And so understanding, you know, the level of integrity that the organizations have, understanding what it is that they kind of build into their agreement, understanding the capital stack, like How all that stuff works is really important in an M&A side. From a money side, I'll just tell you that for those of you who are listening that maybe aren't to the point of feeling successful yet, Millionaire Next Door is a great book. Money doesn't work like people think it does. It's actually the opposite of the way people think it does. And take some time and anything you can do to support local nonprofits will return you tenfold long-term. Uh, that's been a huge blessing for me. Uh, I had a, a mentor. I don't know that he's formally a mentor of mine, but, uh, one of my wife's business partners, Mike Metzger, early on in 2008, I think he convinced me to get on a Clearwater Service Corps board and I'm, I'm still on it today. That's been a huge, uh, you know, guiding light for me as a leader. And I actually interviewed the CEO yesterday on the, or I released it today on the podcast. So I'd encourage you to listen to that. You know, that put me on a path to really focus on the philanthropy side of things on volunteering and on, you know, building value because the different organizations are so different and understanding like different people's perspective and what they're trying to accomplish. All those things were amazing as far as really rounding me out as a leader. But thanks, Ryan, for having me. I hope that your listeners enjoy the episode, and if they have any questions, feel free to reach out.
Ryan Kolden: Thank you so much, Chris, for coming on. Really enjoyed hearing you today. For anybody who wants to learn more about Chris, to listen to his podcast, I'll go ahead and put a link to Faithful, which is the podcast he runs in the show notes. And Chris, if anyone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do so, to get in contact with you?
Christopher Swing: Yeah, probably through LinkedIn, LinkedIn, whatever, forward slash Christopher Swing, but that's all linked through that faithful podcast website. So if you want to go there, you can also drop me a note in there.
Ryan Kolden: Beautiful. So I'll put those in the show notes. Thanks again, Chris, for your time. It was a great show. And that's a wrap for today. Take care. Hey, real quick before you go, thanks for listening. And please remember to hit follow on your podcast player. You won't miss any episodes and it helps support us bring you the show. Today's show notes and resources are available to you by clicking the link in the description. The opinions and views expressed here are for informational purposes only, and is not tax, legal, financial, investment, or accounting advice. This material is educational in nature and should not be deemed as solicitation of any specific product or service. All investments involve risk and a potential for a loss of principal. Should you need such advice, please consult with a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional. Neither host nor guest can be held responsible for any direct or incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information offered.
