Otter Box’s CEO: One of Our Employees Got More Applause Than Peyton Manning

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And now it's time for Do the Right Thing series
about ethical dilemmas that's sponsored by the great folks at

(00:33):
the Daniels Fund. In today's Stories, from a guy named
Jim Park.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I come from a family. I'm the ninth of ten children.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Prior to my generation, nobody had gone to college. And
you know, I read a book in fifth grade about
the law and decided that I wanted to be a lawyer.
I'd never met a lawyer and thought that maybe that
would be a good thing to do in my career.
And I had really supported parents that never discouraged me
or said, well, you know, that's kind of unrealistic.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
But while I was in law school, I was.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Clerking for a big international law firm and things were
going really well, and I received an offer to be
an associate attorney and work in the litigation area, which
is what I had always wanted to do since i'd
been in fifth grade. And I had this kind of
moment of clarity because I was about to graduate from
law school. I'm married, I've got two kids, and I

(01:29):
look around and realize all the attorneys that I would
be practicing with have kind of broken lives. And that's
not me trying to be judgmental. That's many of them
are on their second or third marriage. They had significant
challenges in terms of their relationships with their kids. And
I had to ask myself, is that really what I want?

(01:51):
Is that the life that I'm aiming for, the life
of a litigator is brutal, and I have so much
respect for people that can do that and everything together.
But you've got to have a fierce competitive side to
do that, and it's a very contentious lifestyle, and the
hours are it's feast or famine. You either have no

(02:11):
work or else you're busy and around the clock. It
doesn't lead to a predictable life where you can be
there at the times that your family really needs you
to be. You know, when I sat down to talk
with my wife about it, I realized that there were
some things that for me were more important than doing
exactly what I wanted for my career. There was an

(02:31):
opportunity for me to maybe do something that I was
slightly less passionate about so that I could spend more
time and put more energy into the people that I
truly loved. So for that reason, after law school, I
decided not to go immediately into the workforce, but to
go and get a postgraduate degree and focus in tax law.

(02:51):
You know, one of the hallmarks I think of real
sacrifice is that a sacrifice should get.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
You more in the long run.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
It's giving something up to get something better, and it
requires a little bit of patience and setting some things aside.
But I think this is a really great example of
that setting something aside that I wanted in that moment
for something that I wanted a.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Whole lot more over a longer period of time.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I could have been very happy as a litigator, but
at the same time, I couldn't have been very happy
without my family. I've learned that happiness comes more from who.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
You're with than what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I think that's an important lesson in life. So I
was practicing law in Denver and I was referred to
a client up in Fort Collins, which is about an
hour north, and so started working with a wonderful couple
Kurt Nancy Richardson, who are the founders of otter Box.
And after representing them through my law firm for a

(03:49):
couple of years, at what point Kurt pulled me aside
after a board meeting and asked me if I would
be willing to leave my law practice and come and
just be the attorney for their family of companies. And
found that I really really enjoyed it. You know, four
out of every ten phone cases that are sold in
the country have our label on him. That's a pretty
cool thing because there's a lot of people here in

(04:10):
the US, and we even have higher market share in
some countries throughout the world. And about a year into that,
we were having another board meeting. Kurt Richardson walked into
the room and I could just tell he was kind
of beat and he said, I'm tired. I want to retire.
And I thought, oh my goodness. I left my legal
practice to come and work for this guy, and now

(04:31):
a year into it, he's going to retire and I
don't even know who I'm going to be working for.
They said, well, you know, we should probably get started
on finding who that next person is going to be.
Do you have any thoughts. And he looked at me
from across the table, and it was a fairly long table,
and I got this weird feeling and he kind of
smiled and he said I think I'm looking at him

(04:51):
and like in that moment, my heart sunk because that's
not something that they teach you in law school. As
his attorney, I have an obligation to tell him the truth.
And I had to say, Kurt, as your attorney, I've
got to advise you that's a really, really bad idea.
And he laughed a little bit and he said, you know,
I've thought about it, but I think that's what I
want to do. And he knows that I'm a person

(05:13):
of faith, and so he said, why don't you go
home and talk to your wife about it and pray
about it, and then we'll talk about it on Monday
when we have more time.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
And I said, okay, but I really think this is
a bad idea.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Immediately pulled out my phone and called my wife and said, Megan,
I think Kurt's having a stroke. He just asked me
to be the CEO. She said, yeah, that'll never work.
That's just not who you are. And i'd been on
the phone with her for less than a minute when
I got another call and I looked down and it
was Kurt. I just left the room with him. So

(05:47):
I flipped over and he said, hey, I just talked
to Nancy. She loves the idea. We're going to announce
it later. Congratulations. I got to go, and he hung up,
and so I flipped back over the call with my
wife and I said, well, we were going to talk
about it tonight, but I think the decision just got made.
I'm the new CEO, and I have no idea what
to do. So I think I'm the world's first involuntary CEO.

(06:11):
Not anything that I had ever aspired to be. But
I've often wondered why he would have chosen an attorney,
and a young attorney. I mean, I was thirty one
years old, and here he's got this family of companies
that are worth lots and lots and lots of money,
and he's willing to put it all in the hands
of somebody that has literally no business experience. You know,

(06:34):
when I've asked him about it, his response was, I
trust you. I've tried to live true to that, be
humble enough to admit when I need help and when
I need to bring in experts on things that I
don't know, but also to put in the time and
effort to really figure out how to do this and
to be guided by not just what works best in
the situation, but principles, principles that guide behavior and keep

(06:59):
people out of trouble.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
And you're listening to Jim Park tell his story, and
what a story it is, folks, and he talks about
principles right there, and trust and trust in the end.
Without it, I don't know what other principles even matter.
When we come back. More of Jim Park's story part
of our Do the Right Things series brought to us

(07:24):
by the great folks at the Daniels Fund. Here on
our American Stories Folks, if you love the great American
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(07:47):
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help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American

(08:10):
Stories and with Jim Parks story for our Do the
Right Thing series. And let's return to Jim on the
ethical dilemmas that he and his colleagues faced now that
he was CEO of two international companies.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Now, we work with factories all over the world, and
we don't do our own manufacturing. We have contract manufacturing partners,
and that puts a burden on us that we've got
to make sure that we are doing everything that we
can to ensure that they are living by our same
ethical values and standards. And every once in a while
we're surprised when they fail to live up to that.

(08:48):
And we got reports that one of our factories had
some allegations of child labor. Well, that's not something that
we're going to mess around with, and so we immediately
pulled away from that factory and said we're not going
to work with them any longer. Well, they decided to
send a delegation of people here to Fort Collins, Colorado

(09:08):
to convince us that they had changed their ways and
that everything was going to be great going forward, and
with it. They brought gifts for people, and it was
just a small box of cookies. And we have a
corporate policy that people can accept gifts, but something that's
deminimus in value, like a box of cookies, is an
exception to that. Well, the head of our supply chain

(09:29):
got home and when he opened his box, he saw
that not only were there these cookies that he was
excited to share with his kids, there was ten thousand
dollars in CRISP uncirculated bills. Now that's a challenging situation
for somebody. I mean, you think you've got a mortgage,
you've got student loan payments, you've got college to pay

(09:52):
for for your kids, and that money is not going
to be reported by anybody.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
You don't have to report it.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
The people that are trained to bring IBEW are never
going to report it. It's money that you can put
in the bank. And it seems like the perfect crime.
All that's ever going to cost you is your integrity.
And I wonder how many people get caught in that
type of a situation wherefore something that seems to be

(10:19):
a big deal in that moment ends up being the
thing where they choose to sell out you know, the
reason I love to tell this story is because this
employee did the right thing. He called up our legal
department and he said, I don't know what to do here.
Like I opened this box, there's all this money in it.
I'm scared to death. I didn't even eat the cookies.

(10:39):
What do you want me to do with it? And
we were able to get that money and return it.
And it's actually a lot harder to return a bribe
than you might think. Our financial system and our banking
system isn't set up to really facilitate that type of
a transaction. So filling out the IRS disclosure forms on
that was a little bit interesting because we had to

(11:01):
disclose that we were returning money from a failed bribe,
which I'm sure raises some alarm bells in the government somewhere.
But it's so gratifying to see employees that do the
right thing. And when I heard this story, I thought,
we've got to use this as a teaching experience for
our employees. The next company meeting that we had, we

(11:21):
had this employee come up on stage and I was
able to tell this story, and then we pulled out
a check and we gave this guy a check for what,
after taxes, would amount to ten thousand and one dollars
to share the example in the story that it will
always pay more over the long run to do the

(11:42):
right thing. And I think that that message. You know,
it's a costly lesson. I mean, that's ten thousand bucks,
but at the end of the day, that's the best
ten thousand bucks we ever spent.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
The other fun thing is we had introduced a new
celebrity spokesperson.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
At that meeting.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
It was Peyton man You know, Peyton Manning gets a
lot of applause and that's pretty exciting for employees when
Peyton Manning walks out on stage. But do you know
who got the bigger round of applause. It was the
employee who got the check for doing the right thing.
And I think, if we really look at it, the
heroes in our society, the heroes in our lives, are
not the people that throw touchdowns in Super Bowls. They're

(12:21):
the people that live the values that we all hope
to stand by. And you know, that's my goal is
to try and live at a level where I can
be one of those people to raise kids that can
be those people to lead a company where you know,
we have a company full of people that make the
right decision, that can look in the mirror and be
proud of what they see.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
The other thing about it is if you look at
it from the perspective of that employee, he sacrificed the
chance to get some money in the short term, but
by doing that he gained something far.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
More valuable over the long term.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
I mean, now that the company knows his character, what
can't we trust him with? And how many you know,
I don't even know how many times he's been promoted
since then, and how his careers advanced. He actually has
moved on to a different company, but his career has
progressed in a really phenomenal way, and it's been done

(13:15):
in a way that is completely regret free. You know,
that's the goal of success in life, to accomplish your
dreams and not have anything to look back and regret.
At the end of the day, we were negotiating a contract,
and you know, one of my good friends is now
our chief legal officer, But we were negotiating a contract

(13:36):
to buy a company, and as we were working through
this deal, we noticed that the attorneys on the other
side had made a mistake, and the mistake was going
to make it so that we didn't have to pay
about a million dollars of what we had agreed in
kind of a handshake on the front end that we
would pay for this company. And it's typical that people

(13:58):
make mistakes when you're putting a deal like that together,
and that's why you trade drafts of documents back and forth.
And so we kindly pointed out, hey, you made a
mistake here, you might want to fix it, and they
declined and said, we don't want to make that change.
You know, we don't want our client to know that
we made that mistake. There literally would have been no
consequences for them saying yeah, it was a scrivener's error,

(14:21):
we changed it.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Everything's good now.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
But they were so afraid to make a mistake that
they were willing to let the contract just be signed
with this million dollar mistake in it. So we had
to go back to them and say, hey, look, we
really need you to change.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
This, and they said, no, we're not going to make
that change.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
So I had to call up the person that ran
and owned the company on the other side and say Look,
here's the problem. We're not going to go through and
sign this deal with contracts the way that they are
right here. Your attorneys are not representing you well, but
I'm not going to put my name on anything that
looks like I'm trying to do anything unethical, that I'm
trying to take something from you. And I realized that

(15:01):
that's a million dollars that would go into our bank account.
But that's not how we do business here.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
You know. It's a funny thing.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
They got on the phone with their attorneys and pretty
soon the documents got changed. But you know, I tell
that story to illustrate that even doing the right thing
sometimes gets met with negative reactions, and it's it's because
people are often more concerned about not getting in trouble
than they are about doing the right thing. If being

(15:28):
ethical and doing the right thing were always the easiest thing,
we wouldn't have to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Everybody would do it.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
If it was always the most immediately profitable thing, we
wouldn't have to teach classes on ethics. It would just
be a natural incentive that existed, and everybody would do
it all the time. It's always more nuanced than that,
and so We've got to figure out what are the
situations where people are going to get trapped. They're going
to get trapped when there's an opportunity for them to

(15:55):
compromise in a way that they don't think anybody else
knows about it, where they can make more money or
they can accomplish some goal, and all it takes is
them lowering their standards a bit. The result is always regret,
and that's what you want to live without.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
One of the other lessons I've learned in my career
is you've got to hire people that have at least
as high of a level of ethics as you do.
If you surround yourself with people that make bad decisions
and are willing to make compromises, eventually, like weight around
your ankles in a swimming pool, it's going to pull
you down. And so I knew this guy well, but

(16:33):
I wanted to test him a little bit and I said, okay,
so they've given us the draft of this agreement. You know,
we could make a lot of money here. My million
dollars is nothing to gloss over.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
What should we do?

Speaker 3 (16:45):
And his immediate reaction is, well, we got to tell
him that they made this mistake, and I thought, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I've got the right person here.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
And then when they refuse to change it, and I
asked him, well, what do you think we do here?
The reaction was, well, I think we've got to walk
away from the deal. We can't do this. And you know,
it's a lot easier to do the right thing when
you surround yourself with people that are going to support
you in that. Peer pressure is a real thing, not
just on the playground in fourth grade, but as an

(17:15):
adult and in business as well, and so many people
make bad decisions because they've surrounded themselves with bad influences.
To the extent that people are in control, they need
to surround themselves with people that are going to elevate them,
that are going to hold them to a higher standard,
people that you don't want to disappoint because of an
ethical lapse. And you know, at the beginning of your

(17:39):
career that's really tough because you don't get to choose
who you surround yourself with. But the further you progress,
the more control you have in those sorts of situations.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
More of this remarkable story Jim Parks story are Do
the Right Thing series sponsored by the Daniels Fund here
on our American story, and we continue with our American

(18:10):
stories and with Jim Park's story for our do the
Right Things. Heeries sponsored by the great folks at the
Daniels Fund. Jim is the CEO of two international companies
whose brands include Outerbox and life Proof. Let's return to
Jim on the ethical dilemmas that he and his colleagues
have faced.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
I have a lot of sensitive information in my office,
so very few people have access to come into my office.
I showed up at work early one morning and there
was a gentleman from our facilities team that maintains our
buildings sitting outside of my office and he was just
beside himself. And I knew this guy kind of a

(18:52):
little bit, but we'd never had any substantial conversations before.
But I asked him if everything was okay, and he said, hey,
can we talk for a minute. Said sure, and I
invited him into my office and he said, I've got
to tell you something. I did something really bad. I'm thinking,
oh my goodness, what's happened here? And he said, I
was sent in to change some things with the windows

(19:13):
in your office, and I was given access to your
office last night, and he said, I came in and
as I was in here, I noticed on your desk
there was some papers. And sure enough, on my desk
there were some papers that I had not put away
the day before, and they contained some salary data for
people in the company. And he said, I knew that
I shouldn't have but I looked at the papers, the papers.

(19:35):
I don't think we're actually moved. He just looked down
at the papers and he said, I saw information that
I shouldn't have seen. And I went home last night
and I just can't forgive myself for what I did.
And I need to come and tell you, and I'm
you know, I understand that you're going to need to
let me go, but I would rather do the right
thing than keep my job. I you know, I've never

(19:59):
been more oud of anybody in business. I think in
my life. There is no consequences to what he did.
I mean, he could have never told anybody, but this
person had lived his life in a way that his
integrity was worth so much more than his job or
anything else, that he had to be square, he had
to be right in order for him to feel good

(20:20):
about himself. And I think a thousand people that that
would have happened to, you would have had almost everybody say, well,
no harm, no foul. I saw something, I just won't
tell anybody about it, and then it's not a problem
for him. It was more about he had violated his
own standards rather than standards imposed by the company. Now,
if he had seen the information and he'd gone out

(20:42):
and talked about it with other people, yeah, that would
have been a real problem. But he had set his
personal standards so much higher that he wanted to do
what was right by him, not just what was legal
or what was in compliance with the policy. And that's
a rare thing, a rare thing to have somebody whose
integrity is their highest priority. And that's I think the

(21:05):
foundation of principle based ethics, like the Daniels Fund teaches.
It's having something that you're trying to live up to,
regardless of what the rest of the world says, regardless
of what you think is best in that situation. You're
more committed to principles than you are to success in
any specific situation. He's a person that I now know

(21:25):
that I can trust with anything. You know, once you
realize that you can absolutely trust somebody, they're top of mind,
and whenever opportunities come up, you're looking for ways to
make their career better.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
You're looking for ways to help them.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
And this individual was in an entry level position and
you know, he's had several promotions since then, He's making
multiple times what he was making at the time.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
He's he's literally working in his dream job.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
You know, none of that would have happened had he
taken the easy path in that instance. There's been leadership
development that's happened. There's been He's in an R and
D role now that gives him the opportunity to use
all of his skill sets, and you know, I don't
think his life would be anything like what it is
now had he chosen the easy path there. So this

(22:20):
is a story that I tell, and it's not one
that I would necessarily call bribery, but it's what I
would use as an example of a conflict of interest.
So there was a very large accounting firm that we
were not getting the level of service that we had
hoped for, and it came to a point where we
were looking at moving our business elsewhere, and I got

(22:42):
a call from one of the partners that we had
worked with saying, hey, I really appreciate your business. We'd
like to send you and your wife to Rio de
Janeiro to the Olympics, and we'll pay for everything. It'll
be just a great trip for you guys to go
and be there and have this experience, and we just
want to thank you for being a great client. Well,

(23:03):
the reality is what was going on there is they
were trying to get me to put my personal interests
above those of the company. If I get some benefit
out of it, then I can accept a lesser deal
on behalf of my company.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
I don't own the company. I'm an employee of the company.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
And what that means is I have a fiduciary obligation
to do what's best for the company in every instance,
not what's best for me or what gives me the
most benefit. I think so often in business people get
trapped in that kind of a situation where you get
offered tickets to something that seems really innocuous and then
all of a sudden they're asking for favors on the
other side. I mean, the saying is there's no such

(23:41):
thing as a free lunch, you know, very rarely, unless
it's your grandma that's serving you lunch. There's probably some
expectation of something on the back end, and you've got
to be really careful about that, not just in what
you accept, but what you offer.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
I've got five.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Kids, and each of those kids looks at me like
I am the greatest person in the world.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
They are proud of their dad.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
And I have to ask myself, am I afraid of
them finding out something during my life or after I
pass that would destroy that conception of who I am.
I have to live my life in a way that
they can truly be proud of me, and that if
there are any surprises, it only increases their esteem for me.
And more than that, I need to be able to

(24:26):
look in the mirror and say, am I happy with
what I see? And that doesn't have anything to do
with mail pattern baldness. It has everything to do with
the idea of am I proud of what I'm seeing
in my reflection? Are there compromises that I've made along
the way that I am ashamed of that I can't
go back and redo? And you know, everybody makes mistakes,

(24:47):
but some mistakes are a lot more complicated and a
lot more costly than others. Have I sent an email
that maybe I shouldn't have sen that was harsher than
it maybe should have been. Absolutely, I've not done it intentionally,
but everybody, you know, makes mistakes of judgment. But have
I ever done anything that would have been dishonest, that

(25:08):
would have treated somebody abusively?

Speaker 2 (25:10):
No?

Speaker 3 (25:11):
No, because I have to. I have to hold some
lines really sacred. You know, my highest obligation isn't to
the law. It's not to a board of directors. It's
too you know, a God. It's to somebody that I
believe and know exists. And so there's a set of

(25:33):
standards that I have ascribed to because of my religious beliefs,
and you know, I've made promises to him that I'm
going to live those standards. And so my first filter
in any situation is not, am I going to go
to jail for doing this? It's not what is the
board of directors going to say? It's how does this
align to some of those baseline fundamental principles that are

(25:54):
taught in the New Testament? Is this something that somebody
else would look at me and say, Wow, this person's
a hypocrite? And what I found is that if I
live to the higher standard. I never really have to
worry about whether I'm going to go to jail for
doing something. I never really have to worry about whether
I'm going to violate some corporate ethics code. Those things

(26:15):
become ancillary and to some extent, much less important because
I'm already living to a higher standard than what those
things would require of me. But if people don't have
that same religious background, that's okay because they can focus
on living to the corporate standards or the legal standards,
and that'll keep them out of trouble. I've just found
for me, it's a lot easier if I focus on

(26:37):
being the best that I can be and fulfilling those
promises that I've made to the higher source of accountability.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
And you've been listening to Jim Park and what would
seem like little ethical dilemmas, right, a free trip from
a great client. What's the harm? Well, there's a harm
if you're about to fire the client and you know
what the client's doing giving you your free trip right
around that time. And so it was an easy decision
for him, not a hard one, because of the principles
he lives by, and we're doing our do the right

(27:06):
things series brought to us by the great folks of
the Daniels Fund and their Ethics initiative. Well, they dig
into the core principles of life, accountability, respect, transparency, integrity,
than fairness and viability. When we come back more with
Jim Park's story here on our American Stories, and we

(27:37):
continue with our American Stories and with a final portion
of this remarkable story for our Do the Right Things
series about a great American company called Outer Products whose
brands include outer Box and life Proof. Let's return to
their CEO, Jim Park and his story about their founder,
Kurt Richardson.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Our mission statement is we grow to give and for us,
what that means is we want to grow, and we
want to grow in terms of profit, and we want
to grow in terms of revenue, and we want our
employees to grow. But there's a reason that we want
to grow, and that's to give back. Giving back is
one of our core values, and so we put this
into action in the way that we not only structure

(28:21):
our business and give time off for volunteering to our employees,
but also we put our money where our mouths are.
So I think in the fall of twenty seventeen, there
was a series of hurricanes that swept through the Caribbean
and just absolutely decimated the entire area. And you know,
at first Puerto Rico wasn't hit, and then shortly after

(28:45):
that and the second wave of hurricanes, Puerto Rico was hit.
But we have an island that we have quite a
few employees on, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, and
when the first storm came through.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
It just, I mean it ravaged that island.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Every single one of our employees ended up without a home,
and that island was in a really tough spot. And
it was several days before we could communicate with them.
And when we were finally able to, one of them
was able to get a satellite phone and call us,
we found out just how dire the situation was. I mean, basically,

(29:20):
they had their entire power grid was wiped out. All
of the government offices were just completely destroyed. The government
was still there, but it wasn't able to function the
way that it needed to, and there were no supplies,
no fresh water, very limited food for the entire island.
And we're talking between twenty and thirty thousand people on
this island, depending on the time of the year, and

(29:44):
because so many different areas and islands had been hit,
all the international relief was going to these other areas,
including Texas, had been hit by these same series of storms,
and so there was a lot of focus from the
US on helping people in Texas, not necessarily these small
islands in the Caribbean. And so we realized that we
had a responsibility to make a difference here, and so

(30:07):
the first thing we did is we said, what's the
quickest way to get supplies. Well, we had quite a
few boats for one of our businesses down there, and
all of the boats had been destroyed in the storm
except for one, which happened to be the biggest of
those boats. And we said, okay, let's send them over
to Puerto Rico to get supplies. And at that point,
Puerto Rico hadn't yet been hit by the second round

(30:29):
of storms, and so we called anybody that we could,
and we didn't have any real contacts in Puerto Rico.
We don't do a ton of business there. But I'm
a member of the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter
day Saints, and there's quite an organization that goes along
with that church everywhere in the world. There's a very
standardized organization and if you need to know who to

(30:50):
talk to, there's that person in each area. And so
we called up an individual that was the stake president
who presides over that area, and we said, look, here's
the situation. These are people that are not members of
your faith, but they are suffering and they are in need,
and we need help. We've got a boat that we
can transport supplies on, but we need help getting the supplies.

(31:11):
If we send you money, will you arrange for your
members to go and buy supplies and help us load
them on the boat.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
And he agreed to do that.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
So we started buying as many supplies as we could
and loading them on this boat and shuttling them over
to Tortola. And Kurt Richardson himself found a way down
to Tortola and he was personally involved in handing out
all of these supplies and it was just a heroic
effort on his part to be there on the ground.

(31:41):
That's not something that you have to do when you
are a self made person that has more money than
you know, any other one hundred people. That he could
have been very comfortable in retirement, but he felt an
obligation to go and help. So while he's there giving
out supplies, we're doing everything we can to buy some
applies in Puerto Rico and get them loaded on boats

(32:02):
and sheltered over there. Well, because of kind of the
disorganization of this amateur supply chain that's going in Puerto Rico,
they end up buying a lot more than we can
ship over, and so they start storing them at the
local meetinghouse. And we did this for a few days,
and then the second wave of storm comes through and

(32:22):
it hits Puerto Rico, and it was every bit as
bad in Puerto Rico as it had been in Tortola.
And after a couple of days of this storm passing
and people were starting to dig out. This individual that
we had been working with, the stake president in Puerto Rico,
a man named President Rosas he was going around visiting
members of the congregation and realizing how truly desperate things were,

(32:47):
and as he was going through this situation, he know,
he had this moment of despair in the cab of
his truck. He he prayed and he said, you know, God,
how can I help these people? I don't have any
way to help these people, and the thought occurred to him,
I've already provided the way for you to help these people.

(33:09):
All the supplies that you stored at the church that
you were sending to Tortola are the supplies that you
can use to help the people here. And he called
us up and we said, absolutely, use the supplies to
help the people, and it turned out to be a
huge benefit to them, not just to the people in Tortola.
We then had to figure out a new supply chain

(33:31):
to get down to Tortola to continue helping those people there,
because for a period of several weeks, we were the
only relief that was being provided to that entire island.
And I think, in ways that they may not truly understand,
Kurt Richardson made more of a difference in that country's
history than perhaps many other people have been able to

(33:52):
simply because he was there for them in their hour
of greatest need. He fed them when nobody else was
there willing to do that, when their government didn't have
the resources to be able to make that difference. He personally,
because of the way he lives his life and he
ran business and made money, he was able to do that.
And I'm giving a lot of credit to him, but
the reality is his wife, Nancy was here in Fort

(34:15):
Collins making all the arrangements, and she was the one
running the coordination and the logistics of everything so that
he could distribute the supplies on.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
The ground there.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
One of the other things that Nancy Richardson did is
she arranged because there were several pregnant women on this
island down there, I mean quite a few, and she
arranged for them to be transported off the island and
brought here to Fort Collins, Colorado, and then arranged for
free medical care for them so that they didn't end
up having their baby in a basically a war zone

(34:48):
that had just been decimated by a series of hurricanes.
There were no functional or operational hospitals there, and how
terrifying would that be to have a baby in that
type of circumstances. Was willing to think of even those
types of details and how we can make a difference
in people's lives, and I mean just phenomenal examples of

(35:08):
what it means to do the right thing for the
right reasons. You know, sometimes wealthy people get the idea
that their contribution to society is writing a check.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
And that's great.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
I mean, and I don't want to diminish the value
of that, because that money does a lot of good things.
But in a lot of cases, what helped them make
that money is actually their greater contribution. So in that
story with Kurt Nancy Richardson, the things that put them
in a position to make all that money, the skills
that enabled that to happen, are the things that really
made the biggest difference in that situation. It was the resourcefulness,

(35:45):
it was the thoughtfulness. It was the compassion and the carrying,
and the organizational skills, and just the willingness to find
a way to make something happen when everything else seemed
to be impossible.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
If they had just written a check, things.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Be very very different on that island right now, and
there's a lot of people that simply wouldn't be there anymore.
They are a fabulous team, and they are an example
of exactly what capitalism should be. Really good people living
by solid principles that make a difference in the world,
not just because they have money, but because of how
they choose to use money to bless other people's lives.

(36:23):
You know, here's the other thing that's so impressive is
Curt Nancy Richardson didn't ask.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
For credit for anything that they did.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
There was no like donor agreement saying you have to
name this after us if we do this. It wasn't
about what they got out of it. It was simply
doing the right thing. And I think so often that's
what we miss is we look at I'll do the
right thing if I'm sure I'm going to get something
out of it. That's not what builds character. Character is

(36:52):
built when you do the right thing because it's the
right thing. And I would characterize that as very kind
of biblical giving giving an way that your right hand
doesn't know what your left hand is doing. There is
power in anonymous giving. There's power not in having something
named after you, but having the sense that you are
a legitimately real person and that you're not in it

(37:15):
for other people's acclaim or to.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Have other people pat you on the back.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
You're in it because you want to live up to
set of standards that make you who you are. And
the confidence that you get out of those types of circumstances,
it's just unreal.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
He really is.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
And even listening to Jim Park and he's the CEO
of two international companies whose brands include outer Box and
life Proof. And by the way, all of the storytelling,
well at least so much of it had to do
with ethical dilemmas. And that's what we do here and
are Do the Right Thing series is show you how
life can be lived out by example. Here are the principles.

(37:53):
Here are some examples. And that's really important because that's
how we learn at the end by story or Do
the Right Thing series about ethical name as is sponsored
by the great folks at the Daniels Fund Danielsfund dot
org are Do the Right Things Series. Jim Parks story
here on our American Story