In episode 51 of Everything is Up, Tammera Hollerich interviews Mike Coffey, a Fort Worth native, HR expert, licensed private investigator, and successful entrepreneur. Mike shares insights on building his company, his community involvement, and his family life.
Tune in now to gain inspiration and practical tips for achieving success in various aspects of life.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:02:03] Three Successful Sons.
[00:07:09] Entrepreneurial Journey Ups and Downs.
[00:11:21] Embracing the Present Moment.
[00:16:31] Definition of Success Changes.
[00:18:01] Appreciating Valuable Life Experiences.
[00:25:05] HR Podcast with Recertification Credit.
[00:26:40] PI World Journey.
[00:30:53] Investigative Work and Interesting People.
[00:35:59] Yoga Instructor and Nutrition Program.
[00:41:00] Belief in Higher Power.
[00:44:29] Dealing with COVID Unconventionally.
[00:49:41] Navigating Differing COVID Viewpoints.
[00:53:28] Fort Worth's Small Town Charm.
[00:58:16] Fort Worth as a Hidden Gem.
[00:59:33] Revitalizing Historic Buildings.
In this episode, Tammera Hollerich and Mike Coffey stress that luck serves as the foundation of success, noting that being born with certain advantages, such as a healthy body, and a functioning mind. Mike acknowledges the role luck played in his life, recognizing the various fortunate aspects that contributed to his achievements.
Furthermore, Tammera and Mike discuss their experiences during the pandemic and how they maintained relationships and connections. Despite the restrictions and uncertainties brought about by the pandemic, they found ways to adapt and continue fostering relationships.
QUOTES
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Tammera Hollerich
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammeraHollerich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammerahollerich/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thollerich/
Mike Coffey
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikecoffeysphr/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imperative/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrcoffey/
WEBSITES
Everything Is Up: https://everything-is-up.simplecast.com/
Tammera Hollerich: https://tammerahollerich.com/
Imperative: https://www.imperativeinfo.com/
Good Morning, HR: https://goodmorninghr.com/
Welcome to everything is up a podcast about the real life stories of people who have created extraordinary levels of success These are conversations with people who are constantly striving to take things to the next level And now here's your host
All right, welcome to Everything is Up with Tamara. Joining me today is a colleague, but what's even more interesting here is he is also from my wonderful hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. Yay, right? Joining me today is Mike Coffey. Mike, welcome to the show today. Give us a little background about Mike Coffey.
Well, thanks for having me, Tamara. It's fun to be on, and it's fun to be on this side of the mic for a change. I'm a Fort Worth boy, raised here. I built my company here, met my wife, raised my children, a whole nine yards. So I've been in Fort Worth coming up on 55 years. I love the city, and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I'm an HR guy, and I also am a licensed private investigator. I own a background investigations company that serves particularly risk-averse clients with employment background checks, but also due diligence for business deals where investors are looking at the people that are on the other side of the deal. I'm an overcommitted volunteer. I'm on the board of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. I'm on the state HR association board. And I'm just a boy who can't say no. And so I've got an amazing wife who's very patient, who I've been married to for 27 years, and three boys, one who's an engineer at Lockheed, one who's a professional ballet dancer and lives in Norway. He dances with the Norwegian National Ballet. And my youngest is a sophomore at Oberlin Conservatory and studies clarinet performance. So he's my most expensive of the three educations and the lowest ROI, which is breaking my heart. You do what you got to do for your kids.
All right. So I read that you literally take pride in these three young men's success. And I can see why now that you are so proud. Those are some impressive accomplishments for all three of them.
They're pretty amazing boys and I always say I won't take credit for their success because I don't want to blame if they turn out to be serial killers So but they're amazing boys and they benefited from an amazing mom, too So but yeah, they're they're all doing their thing that we were we were really lucky that early on they all kind of fell into their groove and When they were little, they had to be doing something. They had to be involved in something all the time, whether it was sports or music or whatever, often multiple things. They all just kind of found their paths. I'm proud of them. They work hard.
They're honorable young men. It's hard enough to raise kids in this particular day and age. Going through high school with, you know, accomplished what sounds like overachievers. How was that as a parent?
Well, my oldest, who's definitely the most academically minded, he's my engineer, when we bought this house over 20 years ago, we were right over by TCE, we bought it to be in this feeder of this pyramid for the schools. And so he went to Alice Carlson Elementary, which is right across the street from us, and then he went to If you've got a high academic performer, Pascal is about as good a school as any place, public or private, in North Texas as you can send your kid. He was great and gave us very few problems, certainly fewer problems than I gave my parents. The number two son, though, you know, he took his first ballet class at eight years old. And after that first class, I was, you know, he was doing gymnastics before. So after the first class, I said, you know, so how was it, buddy? And he just looked at me wide eyed and said, Dad, that was amazing. And he never looked back. So he his freshman year of high school, he went off to the Houston Ballet and lived down there and studied at the Houston Ballet, lived in the dorms, downtown Houston. for three years and then went to Royal Ballet School in London and studied there for almost three years and graduated. He's definitely the most traveled kid his age I know because he's been all over Europe. But we kind of got off easy on him because he wasn't here, and we just made sure that he could do the things that he really wanted to do. And number three was, he's different than the first two, they're all really different, but he picked up an instrument in middle school and never looked back, and clarinet's his love. I always say that success in anything starts with luck, and then it's mindset, and then it's skill. And I think I'm a very low-skill parent, but I was really lucky that we had the you know, that we were born with healthy kids with, you know, the cognitive ability, you know, and self-management ability, all the things that come with success. And they just kind of did their thing. And so I'm proud of them. And again, they had an amazing mom who, you know, who was a full-time taxi driver and, you know, a ranger of schedules and all of that. So, you know, they turned out amazing despite me.
Well, so all the while you're raising kids, having a family, you are also an entrepreneur. Right. And with, you know, some successful companies that you have grown. I think I read where you said when you were 24, you had your first exit as an entrepreneur. And is that how you ended up getting... So I read, correct me if I'm wrong, but I read where you failed forward, right, and ended up at Kelly Services in the HR field. And it's interesting that it was Kelly Services because Kelly Services has always been known as having the Kelly girls.
Right.
And here you show up as a Kelly girl. How did you end up just kind of walking in and saying, hey, here I am. I'm going to be a Kelly girl.
Well, my first business was a dry cleaners and I, you know, I, was really particular about my shirts and couldn't find anybody who would do my shirts the way I want them. Well, there's got to be a market, you know, for people who will pay to get those done well. And so three of the longest years of my life and exiting that company. Exit is a very polite term for flying an airplane into the side of the mountain, you know, because it really went down in flames. But I learned a lot. But yeah, I felt at 24, I thought I was a total failure. I was at that point where, you know, I closed the business on a Friday and I've got to pay rent, right? And I'm not a silver spoon kid. I didn't have that, you know, that background. So I got to go hustle and figure out. So I had to swallow my pride. The only motor vehicle I owned at the time was a dry cleaning delivery van. So I drive up and I'm sitting outside of a Kelly Services storefront kind of place in a strip shopping center. And I'm thinking, I'm a failure at 24, but I got to do something. So I'll get up and go and do this. Go be a Kelly girl, and that's what we called them, even in the early 90s. I walk in and do their test, and by gosh, within the next week, they sent me to work in an HR department at Harris Methodist H-E-B Hospital. And I just fell in there. And the next thing you know, it turned into a real job. And about a year and a half later, I'm managing a team of people in corporate. And it just, you know, I kind of just, you know, stumbled into stuff and did my best. But I look back at that morning in that parking lot, it's just burned in my mind. And I'm like, I thought I was a total failure then. But had I not closed that business on the day I closed it, walked into that Kelly Services, and been so lucky that they sent me to that job. I wouldn't have had that career, but that career is what led me to meet my wife. And so had I not taken that job at Harris, then moved to corporate, and then met my wife there, I wouldn't have her as a wife. I wouldn't have these three amazing boys. I wouldn't have this company. I don't know where my life would be, but I know I wouldn't trade that experience of walking into Kelly Services' office for a million dollars.
You just don't know what's out there. That's very interesting. in hindsight right because it's it's much easier to look back and go that pivotal moment led to this and this and this but in the moment right right that feeling of failure, that feeling of, I have to just go do something. And how many people are sitting here listening to us now that are going, I remember that day? Because at some point, anyone who has reached any level of success can look back and go, Oh, now I know why I did that to get that. And then that led to this. It's that six degrees of separations. I was jokingly joking around with a college professor one day. We very. interestingly found that we had gone to the same elementary school, we had had the same, and our parents were in the service. So this was in Alaska. So it's like these, and you're like, okay, I got to hang up now. I go, okay, now I'm thoroughly convinced there are seven people in the world and the rest of this is all mirrors. Because things that happen and you look back and you're like, was I alone? You just have to almost feel like there is this higher power that's marionetting us into where we're supposed to be going and doing. And when you look back, you can see it clear as day. But in that moment, You just can't. You can't see it. It's foggy around you. You're going through motions and have to hope that you're not alone.
I'm a big fan of the stoic writers. I, one of my many projects that'll get finished someday is I'm trying to rewrite Marcus Aurelius's meditations into a modern context and modern language that, you know, from my point of view and in the ways that I interpret it and impacted by it. But, you know, that idea, the only thing we have any control over is the present moment. And, you know, whatever's in the past is in the past. Whatever happens, happened. I can't do anything to change that. I don't have any control over what happens tomorrow, but I can leverage right now to do something. And so I remind myself of that moment in that parking lot a lot because I don't have any control of the circumstances, but I can turn this current circumstance to my advantage. I can do my very best to be the kind of person that I want to be in this moment. And then whatever happens, happens. But I'll know that I'm an integrity, that I'm maintaining my values and who I am and what I believe in as I move through. And certainly, I don't always live up to all of that. But I mean, at my very best, that's kind of the mindset that I try to approach things with.
Well, I also love, and you said it just a minute ago too, but I've seen that you've written it as well, that success sometimes is a lot of luck, mindset, and then skill, right? It doesn't start with your skill set or your mindset, but it starts with luck. And I think sometimes you'll look back and you'll go, I was in the right place at the right time. Right. Some of that may be divine intervention. Some of that might just have been you were just in the right place at the right time. And you just got lucky that you were there. But then what is your mindset in that moment? And then do you have the skill sets to pull it off? Because that's really kind of how it really works. I mean, in real life, if we're going to talk real life, that's how it works.
Well, and let's face it, I was born with 10 functioning fingers and a healthy body and a mind that works. And that alone is winning the lottery. Plus, I was born in the late 20th century. And even with all my allergies and everything else, I'm still in so much better circumstances than I would have been a century earlier. And if I'm being honest, I was born white and male. And that gave me opportunities early on and gave people certain assumptions about what I could do and what I couldn't do, especially as I grew up in the 70s and 80s. So I was lucky. And then, like I said, I stumbled into the right place at the right time. But also the mindset that I'm going whatever is handed to me, I'm going to do the very best I can with it and not spend a lot of energy worrying about things that are outside of my control and then skill. And I know a lot of really competent people who are not successful because they don't have the the mindset, or maybe they do have the mindset and they've just not been lucky, you know, and they've got, you know, they're overcoming things that I've never imagined having to overcome. And so, I don't know. And I think our definitions of success matter too. I mean, I think the popular definition of success, the financial freedom or whatever you're using to keep score. And for me, it's having this family, having these boys who are amazing, having this gracious and loving wife. That's success for me. And then beyond that, the more freedom I can buy, the better off. I'm a member of the entrepreneur's organization, EO Fort Worth, and I've got friends in EO who are constantly thinking about how to 10X their business, how to continue to blow it up and get bigger and bigger. I may be a little older than some of them. that's not my interest at this point in my life. I'm buying freedom. I want the ability to travel, certainly, and to do the things, but to dedicate my time to things that are important to me, whether it's Fort Worth Chamber, or there's organizations like the Women's Center of Tarrant County, the Center for Transforming Lives, organizations that mean a lot, and I want to be able to continue to grow in my support of them and their important missions. So that's, for me, the idea of success. But if all the financial stuff went away tomorrow, if I was destitute, I'd still consider myself successful. I would find a way to live according to my values and do what I had to do to get by, but also make sure it was fulfilling.
Yeah. This is just a quick question. Has your definition of success changed over the years?
Yeah, for sure. When I was a kid and when I was a young adult, it was much more scorecard-y. I was much more interested in the number of zeros behind the dollar sign and and the esteem of others. And that's still one of my, you know, I, you know, we've all, you know, whether we, we write them down or think through them or not, we all have values. And one of my values is, is earned appreciation. And so I, you know, I want people to appreciate me, but I want it to be something I earned where early on, you know, it was more of a, you know, fake it till you make it kind of thing. And, and it was a lot more ego-y now. Now, now it's important to me that I have those experiences where I really bring value to somebody, and that's where the appreciation comes from. It's a recognition of the value that I brought. I think we all hopefully mature and grow beyond those early days. you know, who you end up with as your life partner makes a big difference there too. Oh yeah. And definitely my wife is the most down-to-earth person I know. And so she keeps me, you know, she's one of the guardrails around what's, you know, what I value and where I focus. She's the one who can pull me out of my anxiety sometimes.
It's interesting because I heard as one of those mantras that you hear that you become the sum of the five people you associate with the most. and product of environment, and all of those things that in the beginning, I would say, I was like, now when I start thinking about where my centers of influence are, who's around me, what energy am I absorbing or giving for that matter, those are things that I never even gave a second thought to in my 20s and 30s. I started to understand it a little bit more in my 40s. Now in my 50s, it's like, These are things that are incredibly important. I wish I had taken some of the early on advice that I was given by my elders, that I was just like, oh, yeah, that's nice. Thank you. Almost in a patronizing way, not that that was a good thing, but I can look back and just see where some huge mistakes I made were.
Right. Yeah. we have to be in a place where we can accept that kind of advice or we learn those lessons and the idea that just because you don't respond to something when you first hear it. I got my first job in fifth grade and I worked at a chinchilla ranch, an amazing, yeah, out in far, far west Tarrant County. And There was a man named Wade Watson, and he was a world-renowned chinchilla rancher. He lived just down the street from me. I knew he hired high school kids, and so I just went and knocked on his door one day and looked up at him and said, I'd like to come work for you. I was lucky. It goes back to luck. He had a need right then. And he looked at me dubiously, but he said, well, you know, come on in, let me show you. And I worked there from fifth grade through my freshman year of high school. And I learned a lot from Mr. Watson that I didn't realize at the time. And, you know, he had all these little gems of wisdom that he would spout out and I'd like roll my eyes, yeah, yeah, whatever, old man. And now I see my kids do that to me. But those things come back to you over time. So you're in a situation and you're suddenly, oh yeah, that makes sense. And so you never know what seeds you're planting when you share that, but also you don't know what seeds are being planted. And just being there and experiencing things and growing to the point where you can actually use that tool.
Yeah, no, it's huge. So you are the host of a podcast called Good Morning HR that you do weekly, yes? Right, yes. Okay, so I'm guessing all of those years of experience in the HR field, starting out as quote-unquote a Kelly girl, right? landed you here. Now, I mean, HR is a complicated role for any organization and yet organizations throw an admin most often into an HR role and go, okay, you're HR today because I've got this need for you to be HR. With all of the compliance, that is now being thrown at organizations, small and large, primarily more your bigger organizations. But your small organizations can find themselves in trouble in a New York Minute over an HR compliance situation. That value that you're giving back with good morning HR, it has got to be just empowering for you, but also such a blessing to the community that you are serving.
Well, it's certainly, I enjoy it. I mean, you know, I always say my superpower is asking dumb questions of smart people. And that's basically what I do on the podcast. And so I have, you know, amazing HR practitioners and employment law attorneys and HR consultants on. We just recorded episode 139, I think. Nice. We're doing it weekly. But yeah, it means a lot. And, you know, again, one of my values and personal values is earned appreciation. So when I get that email or that note on LinkedIn, hey, I really appreciate it. Yeah, I really enjoyed this, this episode or even better, what you said here was really funny. Oh, I just, oh, stop, stop, stop. And, you know, I just, I love that stuff, but that's, you know, and that's really the reason to do it. You know, it's, It's ostensibly sponsored by Imperative, bulletproof background checks, but that's just because that's who's paying the bills, our company. But for me, it's fun. And I get to meet more people. I attend a lot of conferences. I speak on a lot of HR issues at HR conferences. But I realized COVID kind of woke me up that I can only go to so many conferences anyway. And then for a year and a half, two years, most of them were canceled. So, after a year into COVID, I was climbing the walls. And so I was like, I've got to find a way to meet some more people and just talk to people. And so we started the podcast. And I've got, again, an amazing career. I've got, like you, I've got an amazing producer. He handles a lot of all the technical side. My marketing coordinator for Imperative is Marianne Hernandez. She and her predecessor were so instrumental in putting it all together. I always thank Marianne at the end of every podcast for keeping the trains running on time. I'm your typical entrepreneur who's looking in eight different directions, all the little different shiny objects, and so she keeps me focused to make sure that the things that need to happen for the podcast. But it's just fun. It's Good Morning HR. That name, I was at a conference in 2010. And there was a speaker talking about something about, you know, internet marketing or something. And I just sitting there on my phone started registering domain names that I thought I might one day use. And now I own dozens of them and I pay way too much to maintain all these domains I'll never use. But Good Morning HR was one of them. And so we were trying to figure out what to call this thing. And of course, everybody wants to use the last name coffee as a joke, like, you know, your morning coffee or something like that. And I'm worn out by those, you know, I have to pick up. And so we were just going through those domain names and there it was, Good Morning HR. Well, there we go, let's do that. And so it's, but it's been great every, you know, most episodes in the first month have over a thousand downloads. And so that means I'm bringing value to people. And it's one of the few podcasts in the HR world where you get, HR professionals can get recertification credit. Oh, that's fabulous. So just by listening to my dumb podcast while they drive to work each week, they can, you know, they can, they can recertify, you know, get credit towards their recertification for their credentials.
That's fantastic. I mean, even getting the, just going and going through the process to get the podcast, to be able to give them those C's, that's impressive. That's, that's awesome that you do that. So that's, that's exciting. So Imperative is actually the company that you own and are actively working on instead of in. Cause I heard that you, at one point you were like, what's my, One of my things that I really want to work on is more working on my business, not in my business. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, because we wear so many different hats and we get so passionate about our business, we tend to work more in it than on it. And that is every entrepreneur I've ever talked to, that is the, if there was one thing I could do better, it would be more working on it than in it, me included. So we are one of the same. Yeah, so let's talk imperative for a minute, because as a PI, which that intrigued the fire out of me anyway, I was like, oh, this is going to be so fun. I've never had a PI on the show before.
Well, you're about to be disappointed. It's not nearly as exciting as I don't have the red sports car and the only girl in a bikini I've kissed in the last 47 years is my wife.
Yeah. Well, Remington Steel was one of my favorite shows when I was a teenager. And I love that you said, yep, got half of it, but didn't get the Devenir of Pierce Bronson. I was like, that is hilarious. So what took you into the PI world, even to begin with?
Well, I had an HR consulting practice, and I had a client that was a nationwide financial services client that had had a big internal theft. And I was involved there, but only, they brought me in to do an audit of their employee selection process to go through what was going on, you know, how they selected this person who had caused this theft. Because when the FBI is involved in pointing to the person's criminal history and saying, why did you hire this person? And so we went through that. And just one thing led to the other. And I'd run the background screening process for Harris Methodist with Texas Health Resources previously and also ran the North Texas Hospital Association, the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council's background screening company that they served to other hospitals. So I knew enough about it. And basically, their VP of HR, when we were going through all the issues, said, well, Why don't you just do this for us? And so I was like, yeah, I have to go get a P.I. license because it's required to sell background checks and I have to hire people. I'm not sure. And I mentioned to my wife that that evening and she was pregnant with our first son and she said, well, buddy. I'm not going back to work, so you better figure something out. I'm like, oh, OK. And so, you know, and you start with a client that size from day one, you're profitable. I had to hustle a lot to, you know, get things in order. But, you know, so that's why I have the P.I. licenses, because you have to have it. But then I've had the opportunity. And plus, like your average HR consultant. Legally, if they're doing investigations into sexual harassment or anything like that on behalf of their clients, they're supposed to be licensed as PIs. Many, many aren't.
Well, how many know they're supposed to be?
Yeah, anytime I bring it up, eyebrows raise. But I know quite a few who've gone out of their way to go get their PI license. And the problem with that, not having one, is if this investigation ever leads to litigation, And you have to testify as to your investigations quality and you're working on behalf of your employer client there and you have to testify. if the defense is savvy or if the plaintiffs are savvy and they come after you and they start to tear you apart, well, you committed a class A misdemeanor when you conducted this investigation. And so it just goes to credibility. And so it's not a difficult process to get licensed. But I have done when the company was smaller and I had more downtime. Some of my closest friends are attorneys here in town, and I started doing both civil litigation investigations and some criminal defense investigations, and I loved those. They pay almost nothing, but they were so interesting. And most of the time I went back to the criminal defense attorney and said, This witness is going to kill you. This witness is going to kill you. This witness is going to take the deal, whatever they offer, take the deal. But we had we had a few truly innocent people who, but for the fact that they got a good court appointed lawyer who went and got me appointed as the investigator. It goes back to luck. They probably would have gone to jail. And we were able to build enough cases to really demonstrate that they weren't. But that was the exception. But at least everybody got a fair trial. That was the thing. That's the whole point of the system. So I've loved that stuff. And someday, when I really intentionally exit this company, I think I'll spend more time doing that kind of fun investigative stuff because it's so fun.
I mean, the things that you learn about people would be so interesting because there are millions, obviously, of people on this planet. We interact with, what, a couple hundred thousand in our lifetime, if that many? And then, like I was saying, this professor that literally I went to grade school with, I had decided to go back and get my master's and get my MBA. And she ends up being my counselor. Like 50 years later, we're having a conversation and she was like, what? Like you live in Alaska, what? Like, and we found out we had the same kindergarten teacher, like two years apart from each other. It was like, we both were like, I'll talk to you next week, click. I mean, cause it was so crazy and how bizarre that really was. I was just like, okay, Dr. Warren, I gotta go. Like I've got things I've got to get my mind on and this just blew my mind. So I got to go. But all of those interesting people that you interact with, some you will never even know you interacted with them. And then you'll have stuff like that, that'll come back 50 years later. And you're like, we walked the same hallways together. We probably sat at the same lunch table together, like, you know, weird stuff like that. You know? So you're just like, all of these incredibly interesting people that, like you said, during COVID, we all kind of isolated. I went stir crazy, you know, because I'm that social person like you are. So it's like, Oh, I got to get back out and around. And it's just, I can imagine how much fun it would actually be Doing some of these investigations just because of the stuff you learn about people.
Yeah, it was and just applying. And the way you think about things and. Very little of it was great detective work. It was hardly Sherlock Holmes, but a lot of it was just gathering a lot of information and doing the work and then putting it all together. Either it makes sense for your client or it doesn't. that's kind of the cool thing about the investigative side versus being, I would be a horrible lawyer because I'd have a hard time advocating for people I didn't really believe in, the criminal or the plaintiff or the civil side. But as an investigator, that's not your job. And so I can really just go get, gather as much of the facts. And that's what I really like. Like our employment background checks are, we do them pretty deep and we do really deal with, we deal with family offices and, you know, I and regular mom and pop even in small companies who've been burned doing it, you know, just buying cheap background checks online or whatever. But what I really, what I really enjoy is the due diligence stuff, like because we'll get a due diligence project from an investor and maybe they're going to put hundreds of thousands or maybe a few million dollars into a deal and they want us to go look at into the people that are involved in the deal. And it goes back, we can hire people, it's just on the employment side, you hire people for skills, but you always end up firing them for behavior. And most of your investments, when you look at especially startups, a lot of them go south, not because it was a bad idea, or the financial simply didn't work, but they just didn't have the, the leaders of the organization didn't have the right, behaviors and, you know, experience. And there's so many people making claims about their education and their past successes. I mean, you don't ever see a prospectus from somebody seeking capital that says, oh yeah, I've had these failures and I've struggled here and I've got restraining orders from my ex-wife against me and all this. But when you, you know, if I'm investing that much money into a project, I want to know about that person. I want to know these things. Is this somebody that I want to associate with my name? I've got a client that's very high profile, big name in the sports world. you know, they don't want that partner in an investment who, you know, down the road is going to be, you know, in the news because even if this person is a minor person who wouldn't be in the news otherwise, because they're associated with my client's name, it's going to be news and they don't want that. So that's what I really love because there's so many different angles to approach that information and to try and just identify and most of them, you know, most people are honest and most of it, you know, checks out. But every now and then you get somebody who you just catch in a bald face lie or they're just a really, you know, not a good person. And those are the ones that I just, you know, this is the value I bring. I just need one of those with each client and they'll be clients for life.
And they'll be clients for life. Yeah, exactly. So we have talked HR, we have talked about podcasts, we have talked about imperative and kind of the legal background type stuff that you guys do. What we haven't talked about is what I love, love, love about you. And that's that you're a yoga instructor. Oh, yeah. I love that. I love it. So one of the other companies, I own a fairly large balloon company here in the DFW area, which most people know me for having the balloon company. But I also wrote and developed a seven-week nutritional weight loss program with a company that I did as a startup called Healthy Lifestyle Secrets. And so I am the girl that will argue that food is 90%, exercise is 10. And I get a lot of pushback from that because sometimes I'm like... You cannot outrun your diet, right? Well, my little ditty on that is you can't out-exercise a bad intake. You just can't. You can't go eat pizza and think you're going to get on the treadmill for the next 10 hours because that's what it's going to take, right? Because they think they can go get on it for an hour and the pizza just miraculously goes away. I'm like, this doesn't work that way. But I love that you teach yoga, that you're a certified yoga instructor. I love it because yoga Pilates, even some of those lower impact, but impactful muscle movement activities. We are learning now, years after the ridiculous aerobics that we did in the 80s and step aerobics and all that kind of crazy stuff that we've done to our bodies over the years, thinking that that's the best way to do it. Yoga and Pilates have not gone away.
Right. And I've pulled so many of my friends who are in a CrossFit and have injured themselves. And I'd started yoga 15 years ago after I tore my knee doing jumping jacks while doing P90X. And I was only 40 then. And it was after that that a friend of mine talked me into the yoga to help. After they had fixed my knee, it was still crunchy and had some scar tissue. And so here I am 15 years later, and I'm pulling my friends in when they've got an issue. And I've kind of become that person that I always try to avoid. You know, that person, I've got an answer for your problem. And it's always yoga. But for me, I'm in there at 6 a.m. almost every morning during the week and two or three times over the weekend. And between that and my, I'm at the core power yoga that's over on university right there by. Yeah, it's close by where you live. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, they've also got a weights class, a high intensity interval top training kind of class that is still lower impact on my knees than what I used to do is CrossFit and all those things. And so, so I get several of those in, but I'm a believer. It's taking an hour. And for me, it's in a hot, sweaty room where I'm controlling my breath. I'm focused on the immediate moment right now. Whatever's happening outside the room before class or after class isn't even a consideration. I've got an hour. And I like the incremental improvements. I mean, I've been practicing 15 years, and there's postures where I make this much improvement over months or a year but you can feel that little tiny improvement and so as long as I keep going forward I'm big into reading about healthy longevity and lifespan. Everything's about strength and balance and mental cognition. I'm getting the strength and balance side and the focus out of my yoga practice.
That's fabulous. There is a Netflix documentary on the Blue Zones. Have you had a chance to see it yet? It is phenomenal. I mean, the tie in these six areas of our world, I mean, and they're so remote, like just crazy remote. I mean, here in the U.S., Loma Linda, California, come on. Right. I was like, of all places. But I get it. So the Blue Zones, for those of you guys listening that don't know, are the six concentrated areas in the world where there are more centurions than anywhere else. and concentrated those individuals over the age of 100. They've been studying them now for almost 30 years. It's been a long time. There's a big documentary on Netflix now about these six areas and what they do and some of the commonalities. It's the controlled breathing. They don't talk about it in the form of yoga, per se, but it is the controlled breathing. It is the family interaction. It's the things that are giving people longevity. It's amazing, but it kind of ties into this whole conversation. Food's a big one, obviously. But, you know, controlling your breath and what are your relationships like and the higher spirit. The one thing that got me when I was watching it was they all believe in something of a higher power. every one of them. And so I was like, huh. But it doesn't say it's, you know, God per se, but it's something bigger than themselves, I think is how they put it in the documentary.
Community or, you know, relationship or, you know, those kind of things. And the other big thing is, they're always moving. They're not sitting at a desk all day and I'm going to turn the tables. During COVID, I was going nuts. What did you do during COVID to have relationships and fill your cup when half our restaurants were closed and all of that?
Yeah. Well, so interestingly enough, talking about like restaurants and stuff, I've always been pretty picky about foods anyway. We eat out very, very little. So that wasn't the impact. I was worried about the restaurants not going under. So trying to figure out how to get the healthier foods, but still keep them going was a challenge, I will say. But I would, I'm the rebel. I am the rebel of the group. I was like, We are not, I mean, I have a benefits consulting firm. So I do a lot of consulting for like self-funded employers, large employers, getting their benefit packages, doing a lot of cost containment strategies for these employers. So in a time where we potentially, employers were letting people go, but didn't want to let their benefits go, right? Because we're in the middle of a pandemic. What if somebody gets COVID and ends up on a ventilator? So we were in a very unprecedented time. So I said, we're not going home. So first and foremost, I kept my office in my office. Everybody has their own individual office anyway. But with the balloon company, believe it or not, in our little suburb area of White Settlement, the mayor and the city manager said all of our businesses are deemed essential. So even within Tarrant County, White Settlement said all of our businesses are deemed essential. So we did so many drive-by birthdays. And all of those crazy things that we did, I built more arches, balloon arches, for outdoor birthday drive-by parties. And we kept our distance, but I was able, because I was going, I'm not shutting down, one, our employers in that segment of my businesses, that they need us now more than they've ever needed us before, because it's so unprecedented. What is an eligible employee by definition? They have to work 30 hours, but what if they're not working 30 hours? Then what? And do you take their benefits? So do you put them on FMLA? We didn't know how long that was going to last. Did we do COBRA? I mean, there were so many things from the legal side of definitions that We just didn't know what to do. So we were like consulting attorneys from all over the country. I mean, I don't know if you know, do you know who Esquire Jen Berman is?
Jen Berman, no.
She's one of the leading consult attorneys, compliance attorneys in the nation. She owned MZQ. On the benefit side primarily? Yeah, the benefit side. She does a lot for Kelly Services. Okay. That's why I wondered if maybe you knew who she was. I developed that relation really quickly because if we didn't know what we were doing, we needed some guidance. And so I was the rebel in the group big time because I was just like, I knew it was a virus. I suspected. And this is like what you said earlier. I'm that guy that I've got an answer for everything. I'm that girl too. So I was just like, it's a virus. And if it's viral, there's no antibiotic. There's no vaccine. Nothing is going to hit. It's going to have to run its course. I'm like, you guys, go be around somebody and get it so that we can get over. I told myself, I'm like, go get COVID. Because I need you to let your body build up the antibodies so we can just all keep working. So I was, you know, I was a little unconventional about it during COVID, but... Well, we're in Texas, too.
I mean, by June, we were kissing strangers on the mouth.
I mean, you know, I mean, you know, it's a bit, you know, and, you know, it's... Well, my analogy was, go lick a doorknob, please, because I need you guys licking doorknobs. I mean, so we jokingly said, you know, we're the doorknob lickers, but we're not going anywhere. But you're right. In Texas, we were just kind of Anyway, we were not going to let the fear. Now half of Texas let the fear hit them. I mean, so it was it was just. I just said, OK, here's a virus. We're going to have to deal with it. It's not going to go anywhere. Common Cold's been here since the beginning of time, and it hasn't fixed yet either. So I just was like, we're just going to have to deal with it. So I was the rebel, and we kept working. So I really nurtured a lot of relationships. we I started doing more zoom than face to face virtually than what I had ever because I'm like I want to see you in person if I'm doing business with you and you're handing me a two million dollar health care spend you want me sitting in the room with you like you don't want like that's probably your second largest expense on your P&L. So why are we having a conversation in emails? That didn't make sense to me. So I've always been that face-to-face person. So Zoom really became a go-to so I could still see people. But nothing replaces that in person.
Well, and you know, we went remote. We were on spring break in Bentonville, Arkansas at the Walton's, you know, museum there, the name of which escapes me. And, you know, we had been in the UK over New Year's and they'd already had their first cases in London. And I was like, ah, yeah, this COVID thing. And then in February, I've got a couple of buddies I have breakfast with. you know, we were hearing about this COVID and it was up in Seattle. And I was like, yeah, well, we'll see what happens, but it's not gonna be that big of a deal. And then we see it, you know, get serious and things start shutting down. And we were, you know, in Bentonville and I was like, I called my IT guy and said, hey, this is our disaster recovery plan where we all work remote. Will that really work? You know, we spent a small fortune on it. And he said, yeah, it should. And I said, well, tell everybody to pack their stuff up and take it and we'll shut, you know, we'll, you know, on Friday and we'll open up remote Monday. And it worked flawlessly. And because my people are doing basically really high-level data entry, real detail-oriented, but it's 90% data entry, then the 10% where you get somebody with a criminal record or an employer who's never heard of this person or a school that's never... Then it's the 10% of that higher-level problem solving. But they're all introverts. And so, I'm hiring the exact opposite of me because I couldn't sit there all day and do that job. And so, they loved going remote. And our productivity was as good as it ever was. And so, I owned our office building over on Berry Street. And we stayed remote permanently. And it worked and made more investments in the infrastructure for that to work. I sold my office building and it's worked great for us, but my guys who I have coffee with a couple times a week at a minimum. Our coffee shop was closed, everything. But the one place you could go was there's a Starbucks in the Kroger over by TCU. And Kroger was open. So we would go get a coffee and then walk the aisles at Kroger just to have that time together. And we were messed up and we were respectful of distance and everything with other people. And then we were working out over on the, you know, the yoga studios were all closed. So we were working out on the field at TCU and every now and then they come run us off. And then we set up with using Zoom. We set our corporate Zoom account. I went out to all the teachers who are yoga teachers and said, hey, do y'all want to teach on Zoom? And we set that up and people and we, you know, they had you know, 50, 60 people sometimes on Zoom doing yoga from their homes with them and then just, you know, pay what you, you know, Venmo the teacher, whatever you want. And I think the teachers made more money than certainly than they would, I can promise, than they would have had they just actually been teaching in person. So, you know, we were flexible, we responded. And, you know, the, I think I'm, you know, for a lot of people either, you know, pro-shutdown, pro-vax, pro-mask, or anti-all of that, it became a line in the sand. And I just, I think, I feel like we didn't need to do that. I mean, you know, we need to, you know, you do you and whatever you need to do, you know, I've got a 90, now 95 year old grandmother and I, you know, To this day, I'm very cautious around her. If she got COVID, that would be a really bad thing. And I spend Sunday afternoons over there. And so I'm pretty cautious. But I dodged COVID until last fall. The whole household had it at one point, and I never got it. And I thought, oh, I'm Superman. I'm immune. Right.
Yeah, there are some that are.
And then I picked up my buddy, his wife came back from Australia last fall. And he called me the next morning and said, dude, I'm so sorry. I just tested positive. I'm like, ah, no problem. And then the next day, I had a little scratch in my throat. I thought, better test before I'm around. I don't want to be the guy who gives it to anybody. And sure enough, I was positive. And the only, I never had a temperature. And the only bad thing I had was this for about a day, an itch in my throat. It wasn't even a sore throat. But I tested positive, so I stayed away from everybody for a week, and I was dutiful. We had our quarterly planning session for the company, and when I sold the office building, I built what I call the garage mahal. We live over here by TCU, so I've got a detached garage, an 85-year-old house. And so we built a pair of tiny homes on the back of the garage, and one side is the world headquarters for imperative, and so I've got my conference table in there and all that. And so we were doing our quarterly planning, and I sat on the front porch out there while they all worked inside, and we did our quarterly planning just to be safe. You know, people need to take their, you know, take their health seriously and do what's right for them. And we like to, you know, so much of it became, unfortunately, politics and virtue signaling on one side or the other. And I don't I don't think anybody wins there.
No, and you're right. I mean, but think about it from the perspective that you have just even in the HR world, how difficult it became for companies, HR, HR got stuck in the middle of all the political wars between everybody. I mean, When we look back, hopefully we will all have learned something from it. But since we're getting ready to repeat four years ago, I'm not sure we've learned anything.
Yeah, I don't think our discourse has gotten any better. And I think that's why They're going to do what they're going to do. And we need to focus on our local communities, on our local relationships. Who can we help and how can we make our... And if everybody nationwide would just focus on making their own communities healthier and safer and educate, figuring out ways to educate our children, we'd be so much better off. And the rest of it will work itself out.
Of course. Of course it will. You know, I think we also have forgotten that we are a nation of for the people, by the people. Unfortunately, I think we may have lost sight of that, and hopefully we gain that back in the next six months to some degree. I don't think we need all the rioting and all that kind of crazy stuff that we had before, but I do think that we absolutely need to sit back and look at where because you're right at a grassroots level that is how our entire nation was was born right at a grassroots level it wasn't you know from the top down it was from the bottom up and i'm hopeful i mean i am this is everything is up so we have to be up about everything but i'm i'm very hopeful that we will We will get it together and we'll get it together pretty quick because we are about to have a repeat.
Yeah, it's going to be the same thing all over again. But, you know, and I'm I'm I'm lucky that I was born in Fort Worth. I mean, it's my favorite city in the world. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. And I'm in a position where I could live anywhere else in the world. But this is where I want to live. And and Fort Worth is still I mean, it's, you know, now the 12th, I think, largest city in the country. But it's still a city that knows its roots, is open and welcoming. I talk to people around the country and they think cattle and cowboy boots. And all I own is tennis shoes and cowboy boots, to be honest. But we've got Lockheed Martin. We've got a lot of really cutting edge technology stuff. But it's just an amazing place. But I think the thing that Fort Worth avoided that a lot of cities did was a lot of that strife. Fort Worth, by and large, is a really friendly community. And it's not perfect, but I don't know where it is, but it's also the only place I would choose to live. Right.
you know what's nice about it? And I say this to a lot of people, you know, when I travel or wherever I am is for, because they're like Dallas. And I'm like, no, it's no, it's 30 miles away and it's Fort Worth. And I said, I get it. The Metroplex is bigger than the state of Connecticut it by, by geography. I said, but here's the thing about Fort Worth, Fort Worth still has this small town charm in a big city.
and it's got everything you'd want. Everything you need. I mean, we've got amazing restaurants. I mean, you know, and, you know, thank God for John Bunnell. He's, you know, we're so lucky to have a chef like him who's built all these great restaurants. And Tim Love, too. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Tim Love, yeah. I mean, we've got some amazing chefs in the area.
And we've got amazing museums. In our culture district, we've got some amazing hotels now down there, and what we've done up in Stockton. I mean, I could talk all day about how much I love Fort Worth, but, you know, you talk about Dallas. people say, oh, you're from Dallas.
I'm like, no, Dallas is our ugly suburb. Dallas is just very transient. I don't know another way to describe it. It's industrial and transient. Fort Worth is home and it's It's stable, like that only other way. And people that like, I have my personal assistant actually lives in Highland Park. And so she drives over here to Fort Worth and she's just like, you know, my grandparents lived here. So my dad would be so proud right now. And I'm like, yes, so when are you moving back? And she's just like, right now I can't, you know, it's funny, but she's like, I love it over here.
You know, it's interesting because, you know, always, you know, with the chamber there are always looking at attracting new businesses to the city and, you know, and I'm really involved in the retention and business retention and expansion efforts to try to keep companies here and help them grow inside of Fort Worth. And one of the challenges is young people straight out of college, young professionals wanna be in Dallas, because that's where the party is, that's where all the nightlife and all of that is. But then when they get ready to have kids, they look around and are like, oh, this isn't really where I wanna raise my kids. And you see a lot more of them start moving mid-career, moving back to Tarrant County.
Yeah, we get a lot of the 30, that early 30, mid 30 range that starts to come back over in this direction. I mean, this place is, it is growing, but it's growing at a very manageable pace. Like our infrastructure was well-planned, so we don't have the same kind of construction that you have from Arlington over to Dallas. I mean, so I think we've done a really, like the development, And even with the Trinity River Project, you know, and all of that that's happening now, I know how excited I am. I just had on the podcast, the CEO of the Trinity conservatory with the big Harold Simmons Park that's getting ready to break ground in Dallas last week. So, I mean, there's a lot going on all the time. But Fort Worth is a hidden gem. It really is a hidden gem. And I try not to say that too loud. But we've had some amazing businesses come in, too.
Sure. Yeah. And, you know, one of the real challenges, and I think it's solving itself slowly with as things realign post-COVID, is one of the real challenges the city's had is we don't have the contiguous office space for headquarters. And so where are you going to build? Well, so you build up at Southlake or you build up, you know, Alliance territory because there's there's more space up that direction. But and unfortunately, and this is one of the things drives me crazy, is the, you know, one of the few places we had that was a lot of contiguous office space that we could put headquarters in was the Pier 1 building, and now that's going to be our City Hall, and it still doesn't make sense to me. But anyway, the, you know, we need that office, and so I'm hoping as we see the downtown, a lot of, you know, companies are moving to smaller office footprints, and I'm hoping they can shovel that enough that we can, that the the buildings can get multiple floors and maybe have a place that companies can relocate and land in for.
There's also been a lot of intercity apartment growth. A lot of people living really in downtown too as well, which you know the old TMP building going into the condos. I mean what a beautiful building. I mean we still have I think one of the oldest post office buildings. Oh yeah, it's a beautiful building. Actively, yeah, the old post office, actually as a post office in the country, I think we have one of the oldest active working post offices in the country, which is, and it's such a pretty building, it's just amazing.
And I'd love to see somebody come sink a small fortune in that and modernize it and turn it into something really cool, because it's such a cool building.
Yes, I mean, all of it's fantastic. So, you know, if anybody's listening and you want to dump a half a small fortune into anything, Fort Worth has got some buildings that need revitalizing.
And we've been so lucky because both the Bass family, but also the Simpsons with XTO, you know, he's saved so many old buildings on the south end of downtown. And I don't think a lot of Fort Worth people even realize what Bob Simpson's done about just saving the, you know, some of those historic buildings, those older sky, you know, making them very modern on the interior. And like even the Bank One Tower, right? I mean, you know, the tornado in the 2000, the tornado hits the Bank One Tower and it's every, all that glass is broken and it was empty for years. Then they turned it into high rise living and it's still, it'd be a wonderful place to live.
Yeah, just fantastic. Well, we could probably talk for hours, Mike, I'm sure. Like I said, when we first jumped on, I was like, we have so much to talk about. And I just looked at time and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to be respectful here. So everybody, please, thank you so much, Mike. Mike Coffey with Imperative, also with Good Morning HR. So for any of you who are in that HR business or follow HR for any reason whatsoever or employers who need to know what's going on in your HR business. Make sure you guys tune in to Good Morning HR with Mike Coffey. And then thank you again, Mike, for joining me. It has been such a pleasure and I've had such a great time visiting with you.
Thanks for having me, Tamara.
not a problem at all. All right, everybody, this is everything is up with Tamara. Make sure you like you share and make sure we make this a great day. Thanks everyone. Bye Mike.
Be well.
Be well.
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