Business Colleagues on the Runway

May 2, 2022

In this episode of “The Runway Decade Podcast”, hosts and brothers Bill Bush and Pete Bush, advisors at Horizon Financial Group; talk with guests Todd Barlow and Chris King (entrepreneurs and Business Colleagues) about their early life and their entrepreneurial journey in their 50s..

Episode Highlights

  • 00:48 – Pete shares, both guests are his buddies and they both are entrepreneurs, but they also collaborate in business together in different ways.
  • 01:39 – Bill asks Todd about his early life like where was he born and where he grew up.
  • 03:13 – Chris talks about his early days.
  • 05:06 – Bill asks Todd about his successes and failures along the way.
  • 08:18 – Chris highlights that in his mid to late 20s, he decided to take his stab at being a business owner and tried to start his own business.
  • 11:20 – Life in ‘50s is kind of a roller coaster, sometimes higher highs, and sometimes lower lows, says Todd.
  • 13:00 – Bill enquires from Chris about the ways he would have changed.
  • 15:45 – Chris shares that he decided to invest in his health and the way he pours into his family and his relationships.
  • 17:12 – Chris is a Co-founder of the Cajun Army which a lot of people get confused with the Cajun Navy. There's only one Cajun Army and there are a lot of Cajun Navy groups that use that name.
  • 17:24 – They formed Cajun Army after the flooding in 2016. The idea was to give people hope after natural disasters, shares Chris.
  • 19:30 – Bill asks Todd, how they all met, how they all interacted, and how they’re helping them in their consulting.
  • 21:40 – We meet a lot of people, get connected, and try to solve problems, says Todd.
  • 25:19 – Todd has got some great relationships with guys who’re in their 60s and 70s.
  • 26:37 - Chris always tells his daughters and everybody around the company that his plan is to work until he doesn’t make any sense anymore.
  • 28:23 – Chris has no desire to stop working until he is just mentally not capable of it.
  • 32:03 – Bill asks Chris, what he would choose among exploring the ocean, traveling to outer space, or visiting 50 countries.
  • 34:06 – Todd mentions that he has got one assignment right now and still working on it with a firm out of Boulder called ‘E Source’ that was their latest acquisition.

3 Key Points

  1. Chris states that it’s been an avenue to focus on serving people to not make the same mistakes that he made.
  2. It's a lot more about just connecting with people that can take us from point A to point B quickly. If we know who to ask, and how do we ask, we could get there, says Todd.
  3. Todd states that it's about setting some boundaries about how much time one is going to go hard at it with work and how much time one can give to some other people and causes and so there are some time boundaries.

Tweetable Quotes

  • “I can remember having a craving for entrepreneurship at that age where I would buy these junk bicycles.” – Chris King
  • “I'm certainly very different from Chris, in terms of the risk-taker; I'm a little bit more of a calculated planner, a person who's going to take a calculated risk.” – Todd Barlow
  • “I'm 50, in 10 more years. The next one is 60 that just sound old.” – Chris King
  • “I realized that I was slowly killing myself and it didn't click for me until I realized that it wasn't me that I was hurting, it was my wife and my kids”. – Chris King
  • “It all started with this 11-hour boat rescue where we saw the destruction and decided that we needed to do something”. – Chris King
  • “We have a common friend and I learned from him the shortest distance between two points is wise counsel”. – Todd Barlow
  • “Now spending a lot more time with folks in their 30s and 40s.” – Todd Barlow
  • “We'd have to go with Def Leppard... Guns N' Roses and I don't know if these are the top three but these are three good ones”. – Chris King

Resources Mentioned:

 

The Runway Decade