Insights from a Corporate Fixer: Lessons in Leadership and Relationships

Keith Haney: 00:00:59

My guest today, Tom Haggerty, is a retired corporate executive and business fixer with a career spanning over 45 years.

He has made presentations at numerous public and private events, written articles and op ed pieces, and has been interviewed by a variety of print publications and electronic media outlets. He is Papa dad and author of the Business of Relationships, in that order. We welcome Tom to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast.

How you doing today, my friend?

Tom Hagerty: 00:01:34

I. I am doing great, Keith, and I gotta tell you, I've been looking forward to this for a while. You and I met by phone back on March 6th.

I don't know if you remember the exact date, but. But I do.

And ever since we engaged in that conversation, I said, this is a guy that I want to be on his show because I, I love the mission and I really enjoyed talking to you about what it is you're trying to accomplish with becoming bridge builders. So I'm really excited today.

Keith Haney: 00:02:03

I'm looking forward to having it too. I always love meeting new people, expanding my horizon, my scope, my knowledge.

And so I love having people on that will challenge that and also give the audience something to think about.

Tom Hagerty: 00:02:17

Good, good, good. Should be fun.

Keith Haney: 00:02:19

Should be. I'm going to ask you my favorite question. I'm sure you know this is coming. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Tom Hagerty: 00:02:29

The best piece of advice I ever received went way, way back into my past. And it was actually my grandfather who said this to me, said, always create options and never make the fatal mistake.

And, and what he meant by that was, obviously the front end is, is you want to be aware of what's going on around you and create options, either offensive or defensive in your life that, that, you know, move you forward. But the fatal mistake to him was whatever that is that you don't think you could ever recover from. You know, and it doesn't have to be the big one.

It doesn't have to be, gee, I was blind drunk and hit a grandmother in the crosswalk and killed her. You know, something like that. It can be, you know, flunking out of school, it can be getting someone pregnant in high school.

It can be a number of different things that all, all he said was, without expanding much on it, it was left to me to fill in the blanks as, as a good mentor will always do. But he said, just never make the fatal mistake.

Keith Haney: 00:03:38

Yeah. And you run across those so often in sometimes heated confrontation with people in the workplace.

I can think of a time in my ministry where I was confronted with an antagonist. And I had the choice of responding or to walk away. And, you know, if you respond, it may seem like a small thing, but you end up breaking trust.

And like you said, it becomes a fatal mistake you can't sometimes recover from.

Tom Hagerty: 00:04:04

Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

Keith Haney: 00:04:07

I'm curious, with all your experience and life experiences, who are some people that maybe served as mentors for you in your journey?

Tom Hagerty: 00:04:17

That was a question that you asked in the ones that you submitted to me as potentials, and it was one that, I think when somebody puts that as the first question, you often deem that to be a softball question. That's the lead in. That's the easy one. Right, Right.

I will tell you, of the questions that you submitted to me for consideration, that was the one that sparked the most thought, because we get to a certain age and a certain level of experience, and I think we don't think about that often. You know, who, who were those mentors?

So I put some thought into this and, and the first person I thought of, I already mentioned him, my grandfather. You know, he was a retired banker, very successful guy. He was the parent of. Of an only daughter.

You know, she had two brothers, but she was the only daughter in the family. And I was the first grandchild of that daughter. So I occupied this place for a while, not quite on a pedestal, but this was his daughter's son.

You know, it was special, and we had a special relationship.

And it was, it was interesting because to me, he took this scrawny, asthmatic kid that spent time and on an oxygen tent more than once, who took pills, who took cough medicine, who got booster shots and all the other stuff that we did back in the 60s to, try to, quote, cure asthma.

And he really nurtured me into a lot of the person that I am today by just having confidence, letting me know that he was imparting wisdom, that he was freely sharing that wisdom without any, any preconditions. And, and he held me accountable. You know, he, he. He was the one who wanted to see those A's on the report card.

And, and there were rewards for that, and there were not so good rewards for B's and C's. You know, you might not get to stay overnight at grandpa's house for the weekend if. If too many Cs appeared on the scorecard.

So he was, uh, he was a very, very good man. I, I think that would be the first one. I think I had a lot of mentors in business. You know, things that you don't necessarily take for granted.

But I always said that my business career was defined more by the people than it was by the companies I worked for or with. And I was really blessed, Keith, to have a lot of people around me that let me spread my wings.

I may have had a harebrained idea or two or an expansion plan or strategic plan to introduce a new product or whatever it was. And I had very smart people around me saying, don't get out of your head of your skis.

You know, that was a, that was a favorite saying of a couple of people in my life. Don't get out ahead of your skis.

You know, and, and that was valuable to me, you know, and I got to do some pretty neat things in my career because I had that support. But the one person, and if you got a drink of water, make sure it isn't within reach because I don't want you to knock it over when I say this. Okay.

I think when I reflected on this, the person who was the greatest mentor to me was my former wife, you know, and, and I'll give you a moment to swallow hard and say what? Because people don't often say that, but we spent half of our lives together, 35 years together. We raised three really accomplished children.

We poured a lot into them, and she was everything you would want in a mentor, but it was everything I didn't want over those years. And that was my failure. You know, I came up short. We're not going to make it to the finish line together because of me.

But when I look back on that relationship, which is not quite fresh, but it's not stale either, the period of time that we've been apart, it strikes me that if you want to pick one person in your life who was there in the, in the highs and the lows and offered wise counsel and held you accountable and believed in you and trusted you and all those other things that, that a good mentor does, I, I would point to her and say she did everything she could until self preservation needed to take over and she needed to say, I, I, I have to leave this relationship, you know, and I don't, I don't cast any blame on that. I was a, I was a jackass for a long, long time, you know, maybe a somewhat successful jackass, but a jackass nonetheless.

And yeah, it's, it's just something that your question, which may have been intended as a lead in and a softball, caused me to think a lot about, about that. And, and, and I would give Cherie credit for a lot of the person that I'm becoming today.

Keith Haney: 00:09:49

Yes, that's very interesting. Most people don't reflect that way and see even the people that were so critical in our lives and the role they play.

So I, I commend you for the wisdom that you, that you see in what she brought to that and to you and your development.

Tom Hagerty: 00:10:08

No, it was, it was absolutely critical. And like I said just a moment ago, she is a big, big part of who I am becoming and who I should have been a lot earlier than today.

Keith Haney: 00:10:24

Yeah. I am curious. I know what a fixer is because I kind of do that on the church side.

I go in and sometimes congregations are struggling and they call upon me. The first thing is give us the magic bullet.

But what does it mean to be a business fixer and what was some of the most challenging situations you encounter in your business fixing?

Tom Hagerty: 00:10:49

Well, a business fixer is, is not unlike what you just said. You know, you're, you're called in by some body of people.

In my case it was bankers, lawyers, accountants, somebody in a position of, of oversight and, or responsibility could be a shareholder and the company was in trouble. Usually financial, you know, sometimes tax trouble, sometimes just had lost their way in their marketplace and needed a, a course. Correct.

But you know, I, I, I think the press would say that a business fixer, we also know them as turnaround guys. We also know them as restructure guys.

You know, there was a, there was a bank that I used to have some dealings with that actually called their department that, that handled this internally because a lot of banks will try to fix things with one of their customers before they get an outsider involved. You know, they have some people that know what they're doing and trying to, to protect the loan for the bank as well as protect the business.

They used to call this their workout department. You know, it sounds like physical fitness, but that was the name of it.

You know, the, the guys had business cards that said Director, workout department, XYZ Bank. So, so that's really what it is.

I think one of the, I had a couple of them dating back in my career, I would say when I wasn't a workout guy or a restructure guy or a business fixer, I was a General Electric. And I had a responsibility for a small group of vendors that made highly complex, oftentimes single source.

You couldn't buy it anywhere else, you couldn't get it anywhere else. Engineering intensive kind of stuff, high cost stuff. And one of our vendors in the aircraft division where I was ran into Trouble.

And, and they basically called us and said, you know, we got about three weeks and we're out of business.

You know, we, we, we've, you know, mismanaged cash, we've done this, we've done that, we owe back taxes, and, and, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna close up shop. And we had to react very quickly.

And, and I actually proposed the idea with, with a, a young guy, we were both young guys, and he was a partner of mine in, and we went to our boss and said, you know, the only way we're going to make this thing work, the only way we're going to protect the engines being made is if we bail this company out, you know, and, and we become the debtor in possession, if you will. I think I read that term in a magazine article like a week before I used it, you know, so I wasn't a student of this stuff, Keith.

But, you know, long story short is we, we got senior management to basically buy into a position where we fronted the company money, a lot of money, and in return for that, we protected the, the manufacturing process for the parts that the US Navy needed, you know, to, to run. And I'll never forget the meeting I had with a senior vp. We all went into his office at ge, and he was a big shot and he was a nasty individual.

I mean, he, he had a reputation, you know, longer than Moses for being nasty. Right. You know, and I never forget presenting this to him.

And he gave us the green light to do it and cleared the way for the, the financials to get put in place and so forth.

But as we were sitting there, he looked at the three of us and he said, all I can tell you is you better be right, you know, and we took our marching orders and, and, and we spent a year in there, Keith. But we, we basically turned the company around with not knowing we were doing it.

And years later, I would drive past their facility on my way to a golf course that I played about two or three times a year, and, and I would see that place and I would say, we, we, we did something there. I don't know if the, the same owners were there, but the company is named the same.

I don't know if the family sold to a, another group over time, whatever, after I left ge, but that was really neat.

And that I would say is one of those where you say, that's a feel good, that's a win, you know, that we stepped in, we protected GE's interest, we protected the company from, from Going out of business and putting, you know, 100 or 200 people out of work. And then there were other nastier ones, you know, that just, they, they just rub you the wrong way from the beginning.

You know, I think if, if your listeners are at all interested in, in the kind of work that I did, I would say to them, look really hard in the mirror because you have to realize in that line of work, you are never going to be the most popular guy that walked into that company. You know, there isn't an entrepreneur alive who says, you know what?

I want to found this company, I want to build it up, I want to do these great things, I want to have wonderful employees, and I can't wait until I get in trouble and the bank sends in a workout guy, you know, like it never happens.

So there were some, plenty nasty ones along the way, and there were ones that you just have to make some moves for the betterment of the company to protect the, the bank, you know, etc. Etc. Or, or work with the attorney for the company to affect some change. And it's, it's, it's hard. So, but, but there are some glimmers of hope too.

Keith Haney: 00:16:44

Yeah. Early in my ministry, I, I, all of my congregation would turnaround churches. They were churches that were in decline.

They were in desperate situation. As I did that work myself, I grew a lot from the first one I did to the last one I did.

I'm curious, as you did this work, how did you grow and become more effective at managing this than maybe the first time you did it?

Tom Hagerty: 00:17:12

I think the biggest growth area for me was simple and that was understanding the people involved.

I, I think when I, when I came into the first one, the, the GE one, let's say, if we count that as a turnaround, because we really were in there every day managing the company to GE's best interest after they fronted a lot of cash. I probably went into that as a younger person and said, you know, it's all about, you screwed up. It's all about how in the hell did you do this?

You know, it's all about maybe not publicly dressing you down as a manager or as a, an owner, but very much there was a feeling of superiority that if we weren't here, you'd be dead. Okay.

I think as I grew in that role after GE and, you know, and into private consulting and advising companies on a number of different issues, I became a lot more sensitive to the people and to value them more because there are very, very smart people at companies that are well. And there are very, very, very smart people who are at companies that are sick. And they didn't do it intentionally.

And a lot of times they didn't even do it on their own. You know, this was something that was blessed, that was, this was conduct that was, that was okay in the culture.

And so when you appreciate that and appreciate people for their best instincts versus their worst, I, I think that's a growth for me. It was anyway, it was, it was a growth in terms of just recognizing the value of the people and helping them help you get back to health.

Keith Haney: 00:19:16

I love that.

So let's get into why you wrote the book the Biz of Relationships, because I think it's you just kind of morphed into that by talking about what you learned. So share with us about your book.

Tom Hagerty: 00:19:28

Well, the, the book is called the Business of Relationships. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble ebook and print form.

But I will tell you, it was the book that was never intended to be a book is the way I describe it. It started out as, you know, I'm a quote collector. I, I love to get inspirations from quotes. They can be scriptural quotes.

They can be quotes from politicians, musicians, business leaders, sports figures. I, I have a pretty good dossier of a lot of those.

And I started thinking about the transcendence of some of those quotes, especially in business, that go beyond the boardroom or beyond the shareholder letter. And I started to think about how they might apply in some cases to personal relationships that we all struggle with.

And I did a lot of research into the qualities of personal relationships that you and I have. You know, it's not Tom Hagerty or Keith Haney saying these are the qualities you need.

It's the Harvard Business Review and it's the Northwestern School of medicine and it's marriage.com and it's, you know, it's a variety of different sources that I looked at and they seem to, Keith, gravitate around, you know, 10 or 12 qualities that, that you need. If you're going to have a thriving personal relationship with somebody, you're going to have a sense of perspective.

You're going to have humility and honesty and trust. You're going to have some sense of priority of that other person or those other persons. You're going to have commitment.

You're going to have resilience. You're going to have to bounce back from things in a relationship just like you do in life all by yourself.

You're going to have to be able to bounce Back, you're going to have to have a healthy sense of risk and a commitment to change. So you know, there were about 12 of these qualities.

And I started to look at some of the business quotes and say, I think this would make a good essay on the subject of perspective. What this person said in a decidedly business context that had nothing to do with relationships could be interpreted differently.

You know the old saying about taking the quote out of context, you know, that our politicians all complain about, right? You took my quote out of context.

Well, I took every one of these quotes out of context and I tried to say could they apply to, to a personal relationship? And I started to write some of these essays.

I gave them to my kids, I gave them to a few friends and somebody, I don't know who it was, my daughter swears it wasn't her. She said, I never said that, dad. But somebody said to me, we think these could be a newspaper column.

And long story short is it took a couple of years. And I said no, no, no, I'm not interested in that.

I kept writing them, kept shipping them out to people and I finally had lunch with a friend of mine who writes for the business press for a big conglomerate weekly business newspaper here in Cincinnati and part of this big conglomerate. And he said, man, I, I really like these.

You know, with your permission, I'd like to, you know, see if my editors would be interested in making this a weekly column. And as the story goes, the editors got back and they said, well, we really like them too, but we're part of this big conglomerate.

We're a fact based newspaper. We don't have an advice column, we don't have op ed pieces. But tell your friend that, that if he had enough of these, they'd be a good book.

And, and I poo pooed that idea too. I wasn't wanting to be an author. It wasn't in the sweet spot.

But as, as life and destiny and, and in divine providence takes over, you end up getting in touch with a couple of publishers.

A few of them that he gave me, a few of my dependent or developed rather on my own, got referrals and so forth and, and one of them wrote back and said, we'd like to, to do this thing with you. When are you going to have the rest of it?

Well, the first half of the book that I shipped off to him was probably done over eight years, you know, very casually. They weren't about to wait for another eight years, so we agreed on three months for the second. So, you know, that's, that's how it came to be.

And I think for me, if I'm going to get interested in something and you would, you would talk about this, you know, in, in the line of questioning about why did I begin to speak, why did I begin to write, why did I begin to, you know, do various things? I think, I think fundamentally you have to have the passion about the subject.

If the subject isn't fun, you know, if the subject isn't interesting, then it's really, really hard to give a speech about it. Right. So I, I think fundamentally I was interested in the concept and whether I could spin it into something of value to other people.

Keith Haney: 00:24:30

I love that.

And you have some quotes I really love to hear, like the one by Steve Jobs where it says, remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the biggest choices in life.

I just love that because if you think about just that quote in the, in the context, it's like we can waste so much time with the what ifs that we don't ever implement anything.

Tom Hagerty: 00:24:55

Correct. Correct. And I think that's what he was saying. And I say this to everybody.

you are not familiar with his: 2005

And, and he also said something interesting in that same speech. He said, when I look in the mirror and ask myself if today was my last day, am I about to do what I would want to do?

And he said, when the answer is no, a number of times, I know something has to change, you know, so that was his motivator, that, that if I'm not doing the, the, the crap that I want to do today, and it was my last day, and if that answer is no, a number of times I want to change. And in the remembering I'll be dead soon was after his first bout with cancer, but he had been cured. Told, told the students he was.

So he wasn't in imminent death, but he said that is a perspective that he hasn't.

And frankly, that's the chapter it ended up in, was on perspective, because he was saying that nothing you do today, nothing you will ever do, arguably, is so big that you shouldn't make the decision to do it, that you should, to your point, second guess yourself, question yourself, play the what if game until the opportunity goes away. I think a lot of us do that. We play what if. And finally the opportunity dies and you say, well, I'm glad I didn't do that because look what happened.

Well, yeah, you let it go for eight years and didn't do anything. And then it finally went away.

Keith Haney: 00:26:50

Are there key themes in your book that you think are qualities for executives to learn about interpersonal communication?

Tom Hagerty: 00:26:59

I, I think the keys for me to the book, you know, I'll, I'll give you a couple of, for instances, you know, there is a, there is a quote that I really resonate with from Jack Welch from ge. As we said earlier, I worked there. I was, I was there in the Welch era. And Jack Welch said, change before you have to.

I, I think that is a tremendous guide for people in general. But when you, when you peel back the onion, so to speak, and you look at the context of that quote, Jack was a very famous guy for being blunt.

He was very driven.

He was, you know, voted the executive of the century back, back in the day, you know, in the 90s, he was, he was voted the executive of the century, not of the year, not of the decade or whatever. And there's a lot of revisionist history that can go on about all of us. And he's no, no stranger to, that was no stranger prior to his passing.

But when he said change before you have to, Keith, it was in a speech to his business leaders of the various business units. And he said to them, if you're not number one or number two in your marketplace, I will fix you, close you or sell you. So change before you have to.

You know, that, that was a mantra. You know, one of your, one of your thoughts on the, on the questions here, talked about mantras. Well, that was Jack's mantra.

Change before you have to. You know, another one was see things as they are, not as you wish they were. You know, he was very much a realist.

So I looked at change before you have to. And I said in the context of a relationship, could that mean change before you have to?

That budding addiction, that bad temper, that passive aggressive nature that gets you nowhere with your friends, you know, that aloof demeanor that upsets your wife and children, the financial irresponsibility that drives the, the, the family car off the road and into the creek.

You know, those are the kind of things that we have to be fearless about looking in the mirror and say, I, I, I better change before I have to, before I'm forced. So if that's, if that's helpful to your audience, I think that's certainly something that I recall change before you have to.

Is a, is a, is a big deal.

Keith Haney: 00:29:27

I love that. Yeah. What are some of the most challenging aspects of relationships that you cover in the book?

Tom Hagerty: 00:29:36

I think right now the most challenging aspects of a relationship are societal. You know, we are, we are in the midst of this redefinition of relationships without knowing what we're trying to define it to be.

You know, it's, we're, we're taking steps or taking actions or, or accepting behaviors. And it, it simply is, is kind of shooting in the dark.

And, and I think that the stats that I look at, Keith, that are particularly troubling to me on the personal side, I would say that, that right now in America, in the most powerful country in the world, the richest country in the world, the most democratically free country in the world, the technolog, the most technologically advanced country in the world, you say, we've got all this going for us, but our kids are currently three times more likely than the worldwide average to grow up in a single parent household. You know, that's a tragedy. I mean, you know, if, if the worldwide average is 3%, we're at 9%. If it's 4%, we're at 12%.

You know, it, it's, it's almost shameful.

And you say that in addition to that, over two thirds of our people, which is a dramatic increase over the last 50 years, but over two thirds of our people say that. I fundamentally don't believe that people can be trusted. You know, there, we, we've lost our sense of accountability and reliability.

We have 60% of our people, you know, saying that my constant companion is loneliness. And I think when we look at the causes of all that, on the personal side, you say, well, you know, we're, we are digitally overloaded.

You know, we're very fragmented society. We live in silos and, and, and this thing that fits in my hand makes me God.

I don't believe I, I don't need you, Keith, because every, every answer is right here at a moment's notice. You know, I can play God with, with this thing in my phone or in my hand, rather.

I, I think a lot of our people, especially younger people, not as an indictment, but just a statement. We've lost our column conflict resolution skills.

You know, it's easier to bail out, it's easier to ghost somebody because we do it all day long on Facebook, right? We just quit communicating. So why don't I just do that with my boss?

You know, when I quit, why don't I just quit and don't say anything about it, you know, so I think conflict resolution is in short supply. And then I think we have a whole host of societal things.

You know, the, the economic disparity breeds distrust, you know, the political polarization for the first time in, in my memory anyway, and I'm probably older than you are, but in my memory I don't, I don't ever recall a time in America. And I grew up during Vietnam and I grew up during the Nixon Watergate years, you know, and, and, and we thought that was polarizing.

I grew up in the Reagan administration, you know, when, when, when everybody thought he was the, the devil himself in terms of what he was, you know, going to do to America.

And I saw those things, but there was never a time when I said, I can't sit down to have dinner with that neighbor or I can't play golf with that guy because he's a Democrat or because he's a Republican. You know, we have got ourselves into this bind of, of basically creating a 50, 50 silo in America.

You're either with me or you're against me, you know, and, and I think that's a dangerous place to be. So I would, I would say that's, those are some of the challenges and if you will, threats.

Some people would say opportunities, you know, the SWAT plan, you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Well, I, I want to look at that as an opportunity, but I think it's a big issue that we have to confront and it, and it cuts across, you know, all demographics, all socio, economic, demographic, you know, strata and so forth. I, yeah, I, I think that we are deeply at risk.

And, and when you look at, you know, you say, well, if that's on the personal side, then what's on the business side?

You know, there, there are Gallup polls that are now saying that the disengaged, disaffected employees create an 8 trillion dollar global loss in productivity every year.

You know, there is workplace ghosting and quiet quitting and bare minimum Mondays and all these slogans, you know, workforce being, you know, less, less than engaged and, and you know, the spin off of that to corporations, to companies that I would have consulted with.

If you have that kind of workforce, then it is likely that they are 37% higher in their absenteeism and they are over 60% more likely to quit abruptly. You know, the two weeks notice is gone to a lot of people. Right. You know, I may not even tell you I quit. I just quit showing up.

Keith Haney: 00:35:17

Wow, that's horrible. I'm curious as you have given us so much great content, what do you want your legacy to be?

Tom Hagerty: 00:35:29

This was another thought provoking one. You, you, you, you bookended this thing.

You said, well, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna throw him a softball question, going to make him think about that and then I'm going to make him think about this legacy thing. I, I, I reflected on that too. And I think when it comes to legacy, I, I think some of that, Keith, is up to other people to define.

You know, I'm not going to be around to see if my legacy was lasting or not, but I don't want to bail out on the question because it's a, it's a worthy one.

And I think what, what I thought about was I would like to be remembered as someone who was grateful, someone who was supportive, someone who was open minded and inquisitive and, and, and willing to challenge the status quo in, in a variety of different, you know, areas. So I, I would say that.

And also when I talk about legacy, there was a, there was an author that I was reading recently, one of his books, and he talked about something called the Uncomfortable Truth.

And, and he said the uncomfortable truth is that not only will you and everyone you know die, but everything you do and everything you say is likely to be remembered by only a very few people for a very short period of time.

And when I look at that in, and unpack the various layers, I think when it comes to legacy, if I was using that quote as a springboard into a conversation about legacy, I would say that those very few people are largely going to be my family and my close friends and I would like them to remember me as somebody. Like I said at the front, he was supportive, he was grateful, he was inquisitive and he was open minded.

And if I can, if I can have those four, you know, I'll, I'll take it. How about you? How about you? What's your legacy?

Keith Haney: 00:37:52

I think my legacy is my kids, honestly, and my family. So where can listeners find your book and connect with you on social media?

Tom Hagerty: 00:38:04

They can find my book at Barnes and Noble and at Amazon. It's in both ebook as well as paperback. It is called the Business of Relationships. And on social media they can find me on Facebook.

Just look for Tom Hagerty. And if there's more than one of us, just look for the ugly guy with the bad haircut and that's me. If, and I'm also on LinkedIn.

I, I've, I've got a tribe on LinkedIn and a tribe, if you will, on Facebook. So, yeah. And, uh, and I'm in the process of putting a website together that's going to have some weekly inspiration and some other features to it.

And that's at the tomhaggerty.com t h e tom hagerty.com.

Keith Haney: 00:38:51

Well, Tom, as we wrap up, what key things you want to leave with the audience?

Tom Hagerty: 00:38:57

I think what I'd like to leave the audience with, Keith, is, number one, if you're in relationships and you want them to thrive, it takes work. You know, there's no substitute for it. There's no easy pill that you can take.

There's no machine that is going to strap you up and get your legs in shape and your relationships in shape by sitting at the desk and just letting the pedals work for you. You know, those stupid commercials that we see. So I think relationships take work. I think you got to be in it for the long haul.

You know that there will be disappointments in this culture of immediate gratification and immediate satisfaction. If you don't have that perspective of being in it for the long haul and weathering the ups and downs, then relationships are going to be transient.

They're going to be transactional, they're going to be, you know, situational. So I'd like to leave the audience basically, with just work at it, because it's worth. Really is.

Keith Haney: 00:40:05

Well, Tom, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

Tom Hagerty: 00:40:12

Keith, thank you so much. This was a real, real pleasure. And I love the mission that you're on, the person that you are. And it's just. It's been a great day.

It's a great Thursday in Cincinnati, Ohio. I got to be with you.

Keith Haney: 00:40:27

Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom Hagerty: 00:40:29

All right. You take care.