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Kris Carter: From Harvard Law to Africa · Uncommon Impact

• 0:01
  Nathan Whitaker: Welcome to Uncommon Impact.
• 0:03
  Nathan Whitaker: Today's guest is Kris Carter.
• 0:05
  Nathan Whitaker: I've known Kris for 32 years since I sat behind him in our property class at Harvard Law School in 1994.
• 0:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Kris has been a lawyer, a musician, worked in electronics and tech companies, he's worked in music companies, and now he's doing work with venture capital, but he's also started a number of businesses overseas.
• 0:25
  Nathan Whitaker: You'll hear about that as well.
• 0:26
  Nathan Whitaker: All along the way, he's been following the call in his life, sometimes more clearly than others, sometimes not really knowing what that meant, but figuring it out along the way.
• 0:36
  Nathan Whitaker: And then we've also been in a fantasy baseball league for 32 years, and for the last maybe 20, he has sent out a Christmas card that consists of, now it's a digital link, but it used to be a CD he would send us, of a song that he had written and recorded and performed, and now he does it with his daughter.
• 0:54
  Nathan Whitaker: So just a very talented, interesting person.
• 0:58
  Nathan Whitaker: Hope you enjoy it.
• 0:59
  Nathan Whitaker: You know, we've known each other for a couple of years.
• 1:02
  Nathan Whitaker: Um ever since.
• 1:03
  Kris Carter: Let's call it a couple, yeah.
• 1:05
  Nathan Whitaker: A couple years.
• 1:05
  Nathan Whitaker: Ever since those days in law school when I sat immediately behind you, and you had enough hair to where I had to look from side to side to see the professor.
• 1:15
  Kris Carter: Um I I was literally before we started this thing, I was literally going to make you sign something to not get in that exact story.
• 1:24
  Kris Carter: And I failed to do it.
• 1:26
  Kris Carter: So all right, there it is.
• 1:29
  Kris Carter: Yes, I had hair.
• 1:31
  Kris Carter: Okay.
• 1:32
  Nathan Whitaker: And the thing that made sense at the time that I didn't realize then and have come to appreciate is that you were this fancy contemporary Christian music icon that had you know, you had a look, and and now it makes it part of being a Christian music icon for sure.
• 1:49
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 1:49
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, you hit the top ten, right?
• 1:51
  Nathan Whitaker: On uh on one of those lists.
• 1:53
  Kris Carter: You're you're but I mean making the top ten in Christian rock is you know, it's like being the yeah, it's just it's not that big a deal.
• 2:04
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, you did that, you went to law school, and now you've done a lot of other things.
• 2:08
  Nathan Whitaker: Let me just jump in there.
• 2:09
  Nathan Whitaker: Your career, you've seen a lot of leaders.
• 2:12
  Nathan Whitaker: Uh just start maybe a little bit with leadership on sure.
• 2:15
  Nathan Whitaker: Just curious your thoughts, because you've you've been in some situations that I know firsthand from our friendship, yeah, were a little dicey.
• 2:23
  Nathan Whitaker: And then you've been in others where you've been surrounded by really solid leaders, uh whether it's been in law firms or businesses or whatever.
• 2:30
  Nathan Whitaker: Do you mind just sharing?
• 2:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Are are there some things you picked up on uh about leadership or things you've learned that you're never gonna do?
• 2:39
  Kris Carter: Um you know, I think uh I I had two particularly, and you you know about both of these, we won't be naming names or companies, but uh um but I had two particularly difficult uh leadership scenarios.
• 2:54
  Kris Carter: Sadly, they were one right after the other.
• 2:56
  Kris Carter: So it was a period of about six or seven years of my life that I was under these two particular leaders.
• 3:02
  Kris Carter: And I think the thing that I walked away in both of those situations, those sort of bad scenarios, was that to me one of the keys of a good leader is that he or she is actually the leader of their own soul.
• 3:17
  Kris Carter: Like they have some idea of who they are and who they are supposed to be, and they have control and leadership over that, and then once they have that, then they can exercise some authority with other people around them.
• 3:34
  Kris Carter: Um, and in both of these cases, I just felt like um both of these individuals, frankly, were not the masters of their own souls.
• 3:42
  Kris Carter: They were just kind of floundering, and in some cases I felt like they were sort of being led around by the nose by some vision of themselves that wasn't even real.
• 3:54
  Kris Carter: Um, and I think in both cases that vision came from uh extreme success, to be frank.
• 4:01
  Kris Carter: These were two folks who had both been remarkably successful in their careers up to that point.
• 4:07
  Kris Carter: Um, and it altered their personality in a way that they felt like they had to maintain this sense of who they were, right?
• 4:17
  Kris Carter: It's like I am the person who did this.
• 4:20
  Kris Carter: I grew this company to X size, that is who I am, that at my core, that's who I am, and I need to defend that now for the rest of eternity to somehow prove to the world that I am who I think I am, because they define themselves by this external thing as opposed to having some sense of who they were in relationship to God or in in relationship to themselves.
• 4:45
  Kris Carter: Um and that's just that was the thing that I walked away from both of those situations, just feeling that, man, I if I'm when I'm in leadership, and of course I I had leadership roles in both of those cases, but at times when I've been the leader of a company, um I'm always quick to sort of look at myself first and determine am I in control here and am I trying to defend my perspective?
• 5:12
  Kris Carter: Am I am I you know trying to be something that I'm not and therefore not able to listen and not able to hear the people around me that I'm supposed to be um supposed to be leading but also listening to.
• 5:26
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, that makes it so hard, right?
• 5:28
  Nathan Whitaker: I've one of the things I keep picking up is humility, trust, this ability to realize that I don't have all the answers, right?
• 5:35
  Nathan Whitaker: And when you're when you're coming into it with the opposite that I do have all the answers, um then why have anybody else around you?
• 5:42
  Kris Carter: Yeah.
• 5:42
  Kris Carter: And the fear that somehow or another not having all the answers is an invalidation of who I think I am.
• 5:49
  Kris Carter: And that's a that's a just a dangerous spot to get yourself in.
• 5:53
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 5:54
  Nathan Whitaker: All right.
• 5:54
  Nathan Whitaker: So you go through six or seven years like that.
• 5:56
  Nathan Whitaker: What's it like?
• 5:57
  Nathan Whitaker: How hard is it as a person, as an individual, to not internalize and or get home and take it out on everybody around you when you have right and you know, every day, right?
• 6:10
  Nathan Whitaker: You're getting beaten down, you're getting because they've got all the right answers.
• 6:12
  Nathan Whitaker: That means you don't.
• 6:13
  Nathan Whitaker: Right.
• 6:14
  Nathan Whitaker: Um, so what did you have any did you figure anything out along the way of of how to deal with that?
• 6:19
  Nathan Whitaker: Or was it like every day it was just like trying to keep your head above water?
• 6:22
  Kris Carter: And you know, it it it it's funny because it's I think what I had to figure out for myself was kind of similar to my diagnosis of them, which is that I had to know who I was, and I had to know that my self-worth wasn't defined by a boss or a CEO that I was working for, um, but was defined by, in my case, my relationship with God and and how I understood that.
• 6:49
  Kris Carter: Um interestingly, interestingly, during this that six-year period was kind of a fascinating period for me because it was a time when I walked away from my Christian faith.
• 7:00
  Kris Carter: Um, and about halfway through that period, I think totally unrelated to these but these two particular jobs, but you know, probably not completely unrelated because nothing is in life is completely unrelated.
• 7:13
  Kris Carter: Um, I ended up coming back to faith, but I came back um, I think in a very different way, and it really impacted a lot of how I thought um uh thought about the world, but also just thought about the people directly around me.
• 7:28
  Kris Carter: And and I think I I what I called my Christian 2.0, um I sort of had this, my Christian 1.0, and then I had this sort of five-year gap.
• 7:39
  Kris Carter: Um, and in my what I call Christian 2.0, um, I really had, I think, a much clearer sense of less about you know religious dogma and more about just my place in the world and what I'm supposed to be and who I'm supposed to be.
• 7:56
  Kris Carter: And that really helped me survive uh those those two particularly, you know, challenging situations was just having a good sense of who I was, um, and you know, having a family that frankly was sympathetic and and you know, a willing ear and willing to guide me through it.
• 8:15
  Kris Carter: So I didn't feel like I had to take it out on them.
• 8:16
  Kris Carter: They were actually helpful to me when I came home from up from this.
• 8:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Okay.
• 8:21
  Nathan Whitaker: And then it, you know, if you don't mind delving into a little bit, what was part of the transition when you say you saw them in a different light because of your 2.0 or you saw yourself in a different light?
• 8:31
  Nathan Whitaker: What was part of that change mindset?
• 8:35
  Kris Carter: I think the the simple thing is if you're a person who believes that there's a God and that God is personal and cares about us, um, then your allegiance is centered there.
• 8:48
  Kris Carter: So I have a whole variety of allegiances to, you know, to my family and uh, as you know, to Oklahoma Sooner Football.
• 8:58
  Kris Carter: And thank you.
• 8:59
  Kris Carter: Um but the reality is my ultimate allegiance is to God, and that sort of becomes if that defines who I am, that that alters my my perspective on how I navigate the world and the people that I'm you know coming in contact with.
• 9:18
  Kris Carter: So I think I think for me that was the that was the shift because again, in the beginning, in the first of these two particular scenarios, most of the period I was in that particular position, um, I was not living a life of faith.
• 9:32
  Kris Carter: And so the only thing that mattered to me was what the world could deliver, right?
• 9:38
  Kris Carter: I was a I was in a senior position at a very large, well-known company in the US, and and um so my self-worth was derived nearly 100% from that situation.
• 9:53
  Kris Carter: So the destructive nature of the CEO of this particular company toward me had a much more profound effect than once I switched my faith back into a context where I was like, oh yes, I'm I'm really dependent upon and my allegiance is owed to somebody bigger than this job or this boss or the CEO.
• 10:21
  Nathan Whitaker: Got it.
• 10:22
  Nathan Whitaker: All right.
• 10:22
  Nathan Whitaker: So just skipping ahead a little bit then, because you you've done a variety of things.
• 10:27
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you then walk me through Right, right, right, and and you're not even you're not just a person who's held a number of positions, but it's like totally radically different industries or endeavors, um, different continents.
• 10:43
  Nathan Whitaker: So um just walk me through a little bit of of of your journey of of you know all these 90-degree turns you've taken in your career and and and that kind of because it to me at least part of that feels like a walk of faith.
• 10:56
  Nathan Whitaker: Um yeah, it certainly is.
• 10:58
  Kris Carter: Um and and you know, coming out of that time period that I referenced it, I I I believe that my you know my faith perspective, you know, part of it is as a Christian, I came to sort of read the words of Jesus much more closely, and I just found out that he would not shut up about the poor.
• 11:21
  Kris Carter: He talked about the poor all the time.
• 11:24
  Kris Carter: And in my early version of my upbringing of my Christian faith, uh that was kind of a nice thing that was, it was a it was sort of an add-on that was kind of like, oh yeah, Jesus cares about the poor.
• 11:37
  Kris Carter: Isn't that sweet?
• 11:38
  Kris Carter: But um when when I was reading, you know, the New Testament scriptures and specifically the gospels, I was like, wow, he just will not shut up about this.
• 11:48
  Kris Carter: He seems to really, really care, and not just care in a way that it's like important, but like I'm he is defining who and what we should be by how we respond to this.
• 11:58
  Kris Carter: So that led me to uh you know, led me to a trip to Africa to go build a school, which was uh fascinating in its own right, but that launched a whole set of career changes.
• 12:10
  Kris Carter: I ended up starting a technology company um focused in Africa, so I'm in Southeast Asia, but focused in Africa, working with microfinance institutions.
• 12:19
  Kris Carter: Um we did that for about a decade helping microfinance institutions.
• 12:23
  Kris Carter: And if you if you don't know, microfinance is basically a way of uh using traditional banking, but lending to very poor people to help them start businesses or help them, you know, uh buy better seed for their crops, or just find better ways to help them um economically help themselves.
• 12:42
  Kris Carter: Um so in the microfinance sector, I did that, like I said, for about a decade.
• 12:46
  Nathan Whitaker: Um then and doing that, and doing that right with really small micro, right?
• 12:52
  Nathan Whitaker: Some of these loans are really tiny that folks.
• 12:55
  Kris Carter: Yeah.
• 12:56
  Nathan Whitaker: But and then figuring out a way to do it where you know you're not charging them so much that it's prohibitive for them.
• 13:04
  Nathan Whitaker: But then how how do you do it in a way that, you know, if I'm getting a return off of a bunch of $50 loans, that's really hard to administer and to oversee and to have somebody go.
• 13:14
  Kris Carter: That's really what our what our business did is we we basically um um we basically set up banking systems for these, you know, these these microfinance institutions, microfinance institutions tended to sort of grow up um, you know, organically.
• 13:29
  Kris Carter: Um, but eventually they have to move from Excel spreadsheets to Fox Pro databases to what we were graduating them to was like serious, you know, first world banking software.
• 13:40
  Kris Carter: So that the same thing that Citibank is using is what the you know uh Vision Fund Bank of Uganda is using.
• 13:49
  Kris Carter: Um and so that was that was really uh a focus of what we did.
• 13:53
  Kris Carter: The beauty of it for me was was not just the the the mission of the work, even or the the opportunity to be involved on the technical side.
• 14:03
  Kris Carter: It was actually the chance to get out to go in the field.
• 14:06
  Kris Carter: And that's when I started seeing much more up front, frankly, just how different the world is compared to the one that you know you and I kind of grew up in.
• 14:18
  Kris Carter: Um and I think I've uh told you this before, Nathan, because we're we have known each other for a little longer than a couple of years.
• 14:26
  Kris Carter: Um but one of the things I have struggled with depression for a a good portion of my life uh at different points in time, and um, you know, taking some medication at different points to help and you know, other times not.
• 14:41
  Kris Carter: Um but I did find in the early days of doing this work and and the opportunity to sort of go to Africa um and not just go to Africa, but actually go visit the clients, you know, in their homes and and sort of understand how these folks live their lives.
• 15:00
  Kris Carter: Um I kind of developed a little bit of an antidepression trick for me, which is when I would wake up at three o'clock in the morning, you know, panicked about the world for whatever reason, because that's what you do when you feel that way.
• 15:15
  Kris Carter: Um I would just remind myself to think about Jane or uh Helena, who I had met in Tanzania or in Zambia, um, and think about, well gosh, if she wakes up at three o'clock in the morning, what are the things that she's worried about?
• 15:37
  Kris Carter: She's worried about, I got five kids and I don't know who's gonna get to eat tomorrow.
• 15:42
  Kris Carter: We may have to, we may have enough for four kids.
• 15:45
  Kris Carter: I have five kids and I need to send them all to school, but I don't have enough school fees to send them all to school.
• 15:52
  Kris Carter: So um in a frankly, I think, somewhat selfish way, I I leveraged the the what I had learned and you know uh from Jane or Helena or whomever else I had met as a way to kind of manage my own, because I was just like, wow, I cannot muster up being depressed about my own circumstances.
• 16:14
  Kris Carter: I just I can't make myself do it.
• 16:17
  Kris Carter: Um it's not a magical cure, but it was a pretty helpful, and I still do it to this day.
• 16:22
  Kris Carter: Um if I if I struggle, I just kind of pause and remind myself of the people that I've had the luxury of meeting and and say, well, gosh, here's the stuff I'm worried about.
• 16:34
  Kris Carter: What are they worried about tonight?
• 16:36
  Kris Carter: So um anyway, so yeah, that was a really, really great time.
• 16:41
  Kris Carter: Um I felt like uh uh you know God opened up a lot of doors for me to to feel like I could be somewhat useful in the world.
• 16:48
  Nathan Whitaker: So I love it.
• 16:50
  Nathan Whitaker: And you know, I guess let me just, and I don't I'm not gonna put words in your mouth, but I am.
• 16:55
  Nathan Whitaker: Um it feels like there's a sense of gratitude.
• 16:58
  Kris Carter: Okay.
• 16:59
  Nathan Whitaker: It feels like there's maybe a sense of gratitude, and here's why I ask, because I've dealt with a number of the same things you have, and and trying to figure out with doctors or therapists and medication and whatever.
• 17:09
  Nathan Whitaker: And one of the traps I felt into fell into, I didn't have a Jane or a Helena to latch on to, but in the abstract, I would think, Nathan, you jerk.
• 17:19
  Nathan Whitaker: Why are you awake at three in the morning?
• 17:21
  Nathan Whitaker: You're gonna have clean water, you're gonna have, and I'd go through all the, and I'm like, these are all first world problems.
• 17:26
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, yeah, and yet I didn't give myself the freedom to feel the problems.
• 17:30
  Nathan Whitaker: I would just dump guilt on.
• 17:31
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 17:32
  Nathan Whitaker: If I may, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, it feels like you were redirecting that to say, I've got so much to be grateful for.
• 17:38
  Nathan Whitaker: And and you could lean into the gratitude piece of it, where I was then turning it into the guilt piece of it, like I still have all these problems.
• 17:45
  Nathan Whitaker: And now I was just dumping on myself for women.
• 17:48
  Kris Carter: Which isn't particularly helpful, right?
• 17:50
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, right, yeah, right.
• 17:51
  Nathan Whitaker: That feels like a better way to do it.
• 17:53
  Kris Carter: Yeah, I think I think, yeah, certainly gratitude is the underlying um, you know, um uh emotion that that or or um you know posture that you know I would be adopting at three o'clock in the morning when I'm saying, okay, I'm not going to worry about Kris's stuff because Jane's got her stuff, and I know Jane and I care about Jane.
• 18:13
  Kris Carter: And yeah, and so um yeah, yeah.
• 18:17
  Nathan Whitaker: Not easy to do at three in the morning though.
• 18:19
  Nathan Whitaker: So good for you.
• 18:20
  Kris Carter: Um, I mean anything to trick yourself to get back to sleep, right?
• 18:23
  Kris Carter: It's yeah, I hear you.
• 18:25
  Nathan Whitaker: So is that part of where the pivot then came into from microfinance then through Jane and Helena and the like to some of the other things you did after that?
• 18:35
  Kris Carter: Absolutely, yeah.
• 18:36
  Kris Carter: I I uh and I don't want to make you know macro pronouncements about the microfinance sector, because it's a big sector that's helped millions and millions of people.
• 18:45
  Kris Carter: But after doing it for 10 years, I I felt like we could do better.
• 18:52
  Kris Carter: Um and I and it when I say we, it wasn't like you know the industry necessarily, but I just felt like the thing one of the things that microfinance does is it, like I said, it makes small loans, usually to individuals, um, and it helps those individuals in certain contexts.
• 19:09
  Kris Carter: So if you're a farmer and you need better quality seed or you need fertilizer, getting a loan for $100 can make uh you know a thousand dollar difference in your crop.
• 19:19
  Kris Carter: So it's like very real payoff over the course of a year.
• 19:23
  Kris Carter: Um so yeah, I'm getting a thousand dollars more value out of my crop, easy to pay off my hundred dollar loan plus interest.
• 19:30
  Kris Carter: Um if I'm um you know running a small store, I can buy inventory with that so that I can sell that inventory, and it's a it's a rational business decision.
• 19:41
  Kris Carter: The problem that I was discovering in microfinance is it wasn't creating jobs at the level that I uh thought.
• 19:48
  Kris Carter: Um when the microfinance sort of concept was born, it really um I think the promise was sort of this phrase that everybody in the world is an entrepreneur.
• 20:00
  Kris Carter: And if we can just put a little bit of money in the hands of of you know people who have much uh less resources that we'll be able to find a way to, they will become entrepreneurs and they will create jobs and there will be economic flourishing.
• 20:16
  Kris Carter: So what really happened in my experience was that there might be flourishing at the individual level, but it was very rare that that one person would then hire two people or three people or five people because they didn't really start businesses, they just did the things that they were already doing.
• 20:34
  Kris Carter: Um and so I really got the hunger to think about it from a small business perspective, as small businesses are the engine of economies in America and in Uganda.
• 20:48
  Kris Carter: And so I was really like, boy, I'd really like to try my hand at creating jobs.
• 20:52
  Kris Carter: Um and so I had no particular idea, and you know, if you asked my wife, uh she would tell you that I have career ADD, which is 100% true.
• 21:07
  Kris Carter: I just get bored after a while, which is why I my career has no through line really of like logical, you know.
• 21:15
  Kris Carter: I've worked for guitar companies and I've worked for tech companies and I've done microfinance in Africa.
• 21:20
  Kris Carter: So I decided with all of and I've been a lawyer at a big law firm, so I decided with all of that background, I should make backpacks in Uganda, which is what I did.
• 21:30
  Kris Carter: Um look at that lining.
• 21:34
  Nathan Whitaker: How fun is that lining?
• 21:36
  Nathan Whitaker: Or the packing cubes.
• 21:38
  Nathan Whitaker: Do you need a packing cube?
• 21:39
  Nathan Whitaker: Yes, oh, right?
• 21:44
  Kris Carter: I love it.
• 21:44
  Kris Carter: I love it, thank you.
• 21:46
  Kris Carter: So that is a company I started um conveniently like three weeks before the pandemic um in 2020.
• 21:55
  Kris Carter: Um actually I'd started it about about uh six or Months before that, but we finally got our product out the door, like right before the pandemic, um, which was not great timing when you're selling a product for traveling, um, and people just didn't go anywhere.
• 22:13
  Kris Carter: So uh so we struggled uh with that business.
• 22:16
  Kris Carter: Um and uh but I so I built a little factory in uh northern Uganda.
• 22:22
  Kris Carter: Uh believe it or not, I started this with uh nuns, Ugandan nuns, uh nun by the name of Sister Rosemary, had a sewing school um in uh northern Uganda and weird set of connections.
• 22:37
  Kris Carter: My daughter did a gap year with Sister Rosemary.
• 22:40
  Kris Carter: So Sister Rosemary and I became friends, and she was kind of for a year mothering my 18-year-old in Uganda.
• 22:47
  Kris Carter: So uh we became friends.
• 22:49
  Kris Carter: I got to know her uh sewing school, and so she and I, really me, but you know, with her help, um set up this business to essentially create jobs for women that were coming out of this sewing school.
• 23:04
  Kris Carter: Um so we actually started the business at a convent and uh eventually moved it off site to a different location um there in Gulu.
• 23:12
  Kris Carter: We called the business Gulu Made.
• 23:14
  Kris Carter: Um and uh that business is still going today.
• 23:18
  Kris Carter: I do not run it anymore.
• 23:20
  Kris Carter: I had a Ugandan partner um about three years ago who uh stepped in.
• 23:26
  Kris Carter: He actually just wandered, he had he wandered into our little factory one day saying, I'm looking for the people who make this bag.
• 23:33
  Kris Carter: And he held up one of our bags.
• 23:34
  Kris Carter: He's like, I didn't think this could be done in Africa.
• 23:37
  Kris Carter: Um and and he had been wanting to try to do it, but he couldn't figure out how to do it, and he walked into our factory, saw that it was being done, and so he called me and we partnered together, and eventually I set him up to run the business full-time, so which he's doing.
• 23:52
  Kris Carter: 100% of the people that I ever hired are still working there.
• 23:55
  Kris Carter: So um I then went about two years ago, two and a half years ago, I went and set up a second factory in Ethiopia, uh, which now has uh so there's only 15 women employed um at the little factory in Uganda.
• 24:11
  Kris Carter: There's about 50 women employed at the factory in Ethiopia, um, which is now um up and running.
• 24:19
  Kris Carter: And I just got it to the point where my local Ethiopian partner there could take that and run that, um, which is why I now made another pivot and I'm working for a venture capital fund here in the US.
• 24:31
  Nathan Whitaker: So working with uh Native American tribes.
• 24:34
  Kris Carter: Yeah, we work with Native American tribes, thankfully in my home state of Oklahoma, so I get to uh go back to Oklahoma a lot and uh exciting that uh it's now during football season, although it would be more exciting if my football team was better.
• 24:49
  Nathan Whitaker: But man, I I was I was there recently.
• 24:52
  Nathan Whitaker: I thought I I thought everything was trending the right way.
• 24:54
  Nathan Whitaker: What a magnificent place, by the way.
• 24:57
  Nathan Whitaker: I had never been on campus.
• 24:58
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Nathan Whitaker: It's one of the largest campuses in the country, just as far as land area.
• 25:02
  Kris Carter: And and uh Oklahoma City itself is uh we're right next to to Norman.
• 25:05
  Kris Carter: Oklahoma City is, I think, the largest city by land mass in the country.
• 25:10
  Nathan Whitaker: Okay.
• 25:10
  Nathan Whitaker: Um but yeah, what a great area.
• 25:15
  Nathan Whitaker: And a lot more trees than I thought.
• 25:16
  Nathan Whitaker: I thought it was just gonna be like tumbleweed and stuff.
• 25:18
  Kris Carter: And uh oh, you should come up to Tulsa.
• 25:21
  Kris Carter: We have more trees up in Tulsa than than Oklahoma City.
• 25:23
  Nathan Whitaker: So that's great.
• 25:24
  Nathan Whitaker: So and uh you know, just a quick plug for Gulu.
• 25:27
  Nathan Whitaker: Um and uh these are really you went out and found a designer, right?
• 25:32
  Nathan Whitaker: You you didn't it wasn't like you were just backpacks in your garage.
• 25:36
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, no, I mean these were these were designers from backpack companies, and this stuff's really high quality.
• 25:41
  Nathan Whitaker: I've had this backpack for six years.
• 25:42
  Nathan Whitaker: I take it on every trip.
• 25:43
  Nathan Whitaker: It's a fan, it's got pockets in the right places, and you've you guys thought of a lot of stuff.
• 25:47
  Kris Carter: It's really proud of it.
• 25:48
  Kris Carter: I'll show you some of the new uh the new designs at the Ethiopian factory.
• 25:52
  Kris Carter: Uh, this is one of the new designs.
• 25:53
  Kris Carter: Okay.
• 25:54
  Kris Carter: Um, and uh we're working with a company called Parker Clay, um, which is uh a uh a leather company, um, a husband and wife, actually, fascinating story.
• 26:05
  Kris Carter: A husband and wife that adopted a child from Ethiopia about 15 years ago.
• 26:09
  Kris Carter: They ended up going there uh to pick up this child.
• 26:13
  Kris Carter: They decided to stay and they started this leather bag business.
• 26:16
  Kris Carter: Um, and so they, the CEO uh and I were introduced to each other because we both own bag companies in Ethiopia, and we're like, hey, we should be friends because nobody else knows what we do.
• 26:27
  Kris Carter: Um and so he called me and um uh wanted to basically take our designs and have us make uh these bags under the Parker Clay brand, which is what we're doing now.
• 26:38
  Kris Carter: So this is our another one of our little bags.
• 26:41
  Kris Carter: But uh yeah, we're really excited to be working with them and and um uh very missionally focused company, which is great because they were we're sort of aligned on our vision of yes, we want to make great products um and that that you know have a product market fit and are are really great at what they do, but also have a real impact in the lives of the people that were uh that are making them.
• 27:05
  Nathan Whitaker: So yeah.
• 27:07
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, that's fantastic.
• 27:08
  Nathan Whitaker: Let me let me just wrap with um with a thought of this, because it's I just love the I love your entrepreneur spirit.
• 27:15
  Nathan Whitaker: I love the idea of career ADD.
• 27:17
  Nathan Whitaker: Um that I've I've at least now been writing and speaking for 20 years or so.
• 27:23
  Nathan Whitaker: But every now and then I'll I'll you know, a friend will get hired by an NFL team or and I'll say to my wife, hey, we could go to, and she's like, wait, stop, you finally found something.
• 27:31
  Nathan Whitaker: Stop, stop, do the thing.
• 27:33
  Nathan Whitaker: Do it right, keep doing that.
• 27:37
  Nathan Whitaker: Um but I do I love that idea.
• 27:39
  Nathan Whitaker: But but you know, that doesn't mean, right, that we're we're following the call on our lives.
• 27:46
  Nathan Whitaker: That doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy, right?
• 27:48
  Nathan Whitaker: And and and sometimes we look at like, you know, he started eight companies or whatever, and we think the first one made 500 million, and so you're just playing with house money from then on, right?
• 27:56
  Kris Carter: Nope.
• 27:57
  Nathan Whitaker: What is it like to follow the the call and to have this uncommon impact, right?
• 28:00
  Nathan Whitaker: That to do things that other people aren't necessarily willing to do.
• 28:03
  Nathan Whitaker: It doesn't it doesn't mean that you're you're inured against trials and sleepless nights at 3 a.m.
• 28:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Yep.
• 28:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Right?
• 28:12
  Nathan Whitaker: I mean it's it's it's probably at times.
• 28:14
  Nathan Whitaker: Do you ever sit there and go, I I took a 90-degree turn.
• 28:18
  Nathan Whitaker: I wonder if I took the wrong 90-degree turn.
• 28:20
  Kris Carter: Oh, uh I mean um I I I mean, so I I spent the first eight years of my career when we you and I left law school together um and worked at big law firms and you know made decent money working at big law firms.
• 28:39
  Kris Carter: Um so uh that was pretty comforting.
• 28:43
  Kris Carter: And honestly, from the day I walked out of that last law firm, I mean I've had some really good jobs that I can't complain about, but it's not like it's been a consistent path to success.
• 28:57
  Kris Carter: And for I'd say the majority of my adult life, I have walked around with this idea that I am probably the least successful person to ever graduate from Harvard Law School.
• 29:09
  Kris Carter: Um so it's you know, and and thinking that everybody who like sees me on LinkedIn probably it's probably like written there, right?
• 29:18
  Kris Carter: You like you pop up my LinkedIn thing and it's like Kris Carter, the least successful person to ever graduate from Harvard Law School.
• 29:24
  Kris Carter: Um so that it just is there, right?
• 29:29
  Kris Carter: I mean, it's you know, and even when things are going well and when you kind of feel like you maybe you're hitting some you know doubles or even a triple, I haven't ever hit a home run.
• 29:39
  Kris Carter: Um, but you know, you're kind of you're getting on base at least.
• 29:42
  Kris Carter: Boy, uh that still comes back and slaps you pretty quickly.
• 29:47
  Kris Carter: Um and it's I I think the thing that's funny to me is through all of the ups and downs, because the downs have sometimes been pretty low.
• 29:55
  Kris Carter: I mean, where I wasn't earning income for significant periods of time and was literally living off of my wife's nonprofit salary.
• 30:03
  Kris Carter: Um that didn't feel great.
• 30:06
  Kris Carter: Um I felt absolutely like a failure all through that time.
• 30:10
  Kris Carter: Um but the interesting thing to me is that is that I often felt like a f as much of a failure as I felt at that time, I often felt like a failure when I was, you know, making you know really good money working for a large uh business because of something that I felt about myself or the way that my boss was treating me or the CEO or whatever.
• 30:35
  Kris Carter: Um and so I I found that my sense of failure or success didn't have a high correlation with the ups and downs of my circumstances.
• 30:48
  Kris Carter: Is that I tended to um when I was not in my right mind, I tended to be able to think of myself as a failure regardless.
• 30:58
  Kris Carter: And when I was in my right mind, I tended to be able to think of myself less that way, even when things were really, really tough.
• 31:07
  Kris Carter: Um and there have been some times where, like I said, you know, after after living on your wife's nonprofit salary for a few years, that that starts to feel like, wow, I'm just not contributing to, you know, my household.
• 31:22
  Kris Carter: I'm not a worthy person.
• 31:25
  Kris Carter: And yet somehow or another, um, frankly, with a lot of support from my wife, um, I was I was able to keep pushing through, maintain the vision of what I was trying to do, and and you know, recognize that I had a responsibility to the people that I was leading.
• 31:42
  Kris Carter: Um and and so uh yeah, there's there's just no simple answers.
• 31:47
  Kris Carter: I a a good friend of uh of both of ours uh said to me last weekend a phrase that I'm gonna be contemplating for a while, which is um life is hard for everybody, and it's really, really hard for some.
• 32:00
  Kris Carter: Um and I felt like that was that was helpful to me because I think I most of the time I'm just in the first category of the everybody for whom life can be difficult.
• 32:12
  Kris Carter: And that's why I uh, you know, use my little mental trick about Jane that I told you about earlier.
• 32:19
  Kris Carter: Um because, you know, yeah, life's been hard for me at times, but it's been really, really hard for Jane.
• 32:25
  Kris Carter: Um and that that sort of keeps me grounded um and in in what I'm doing.
• 32:31
  Kris Carter: So thanks.
• 32:33
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate you sharing all that.
• 32:34
  Nathan Whitaker: You know, one of the things I the older I get, right, this idea that we need encourag ement, I am.
• 32:40
  Nathan Whitaker: Even with all that hair that you have.
• 32:41
  Nathan Whitaker: Even with all that hair, I know.
• 32:42
  Nathan Whitaker: I just wait for it's finally going gray.
• 32:45
  Nathan Whitaker: I I want to look distinguished.
• 32:46
  Nathan Whitaker: Um but but it's in one, we all need encouragement, right?
• 32:52
  Nathan Whitaker: Because we all have that inner voice.
• 32:53
  Nathan Whitaker: We all have that imposter syndrome.
• 32:55
  Nathan Whitaker: Everybody.
• 32:55
  Nathan Whitaker: The older I get, and when I share with people that I do, they're like, whoa, I thought it was just me.
• 33:01
  Nathan Whitaker: And then also when I share with people and have gotten more transparent on finances, which is hard and nobody wants to, but like I'll say, Oh, I was employed, unemployed for three years when I was writing Tony's book, and I'm like, no, no, like my wife having to go out and find something to do to try to pay our mortgage that month because I'm like, I'm I'm bringing in zero.
• 33:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 33:20
  Nathan Whitaker: And and how dispiriting that can be.
• 33:22
  Nathan Whitaker: And then, or then being between books.
• 33:24
  Nathan Whitaker: Like people are like, well, that was 20 years ago.
• 33:26
  Nathan Whitaker: And I'm like, uh, okay.
• 33:27
  Nathan Whitaker: But it um and once you do that, it turns out there's a lot of people out there like that.
• 33:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Like we're all faking it, like 90% of the time.
• 33:34
  Nathan Whitaker: Not everybody, but you know, there's a lot of people that really they've taken, yeah, they take such solace in in hearing about what a disaster I can be at times.
• 33:42
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 33:43
  Nathan Whitaker: And they're like, oh, thank you for sharing that because I feel those things too.
• 33:47
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 33:48
  Nathan Whitaker: Um so I appreciate you sharing that.
• 33:50
  Nathan Whitaker: Thank you.
• 33:50
  Nathan Whitaker: And and I just have loved watching the the through line to me is that you're willing to take risk and you're willing to follow the next call.
• 33:59
  Nathan Whitaker: And and it's just been remarkable to watch you and to watch you turn out products that I still use every time I travel or do anything.
• 34:08
  Nathan Whitaker: Any parting thoughts on impact and living with significance as we live as we go?
• 34:15
  Kris Carter: Wow, since you brought up the word impact, I I'm uh I'm gonna borrow something that I heard um Dave Evans say recently, which uh he's you know he's written uh uh several books about designing your life.
• 34:30
  Kris Carter: Um uh he's a Stanford professor, and I wrote these books with a guy named Bill Burnett, which incidentally Bill Burnett uh designed my first product when I when one of the one of the things I did was I designed a digital jukebox for hotels um conveniently right before 9-11 when nobody went to hotels anymore.
• 34:50
  Kris Carter: So the timing on businesses is never great.
• 34:53
  Nathan Whitaker: Right.
• 34:57
  Kris Carter: We will not talk about E-coustics.
• 34:59
  Kris Carter: Um but um but uh Dave Evans was was sort of talking about how so many people, and I I find myself guilty of this, are sort of looking for impact as a as a the definition of how they should um, you know, how do I have impact in my life?
• 35:18
  Kris Carter: Um and while that is all well and good, I think one of the things he he really sort of preached this idea of living in the moment and really, and it's back to your point about gratitude, right?
• 35:32
  Kris Carter: Of just being grateful for the things that I do have in this moment because impact is often one of those ways of sort of, and I I hate to, I know you meant impact in a positive way, so I don't want to sound like I'm being negative about it, particularly since I spent a good portion of the last 15 years focusing on impact and still still am.
• 35:53
  Kris Carter: Um but uh it it's been helpful to me to kind of get out of you know, seeking that as an end goal and recognizing that I can live in the moment of today with my family, with my friends like you, and just really get all the joy that you know God has for me out of this life by living living in that moment.
• 36:16
  Kris Carter: And so that's that's really where I'm trying to lean in at the at the moment.
• 36:20
  Kris Carter: Um and then the beauty of things like impact is kind of like uh you know icing on the cake.
• 36:27
  Nathan Whitaker: So yeah.
• 36:28
  Nathan Whitaker: Awesome.
• 36:29
  Nathan Whitaker: I love it.
• 36:29
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah, I love the take it wherever.
• 36:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Um it reminds me a little bit about the Harvard Happiness Project, the study they've been doing for first it where where they kind of they've and and I I'll probably screw it up like every everything else I heard at Harvard, I'll mess it up in my attempt to retell it.
• 36:46
  Nathan Whitaker: Including but it's but it's not a thing to be chased, right?
• 36:51
  Nathan Whitaker: It's it's not the it's not the goal that it's being in the moment, that that may or may not come later, but if we're in the moment of but when we try to think, well, this will make me happy if I do this, as compared to focusing on what's right in front of me and who are the people and who are the moments, and yeah, and versus something to be chased, probably like impact.
• 37:10
  Kris Carter: Exactly, exactly.
• 37:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, Kris, thanks so much for joining me.
• 37:13
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate you taking the time, and it's been so fun to watch you along the way.
• 37:16
  Nathan Whitaker: And you know, we didn't even mention the fantasy baseball league that we've been in for 30 plus years.
• 37:21
  Kris Carter: Uh you've won more than I have, just to be clear.
• 37:25
  Nathan Whitaker: But well, your team is named the blind squirrels because you won a championship one year or two years the way a blind squirrel would find a nut.
• 37:31
  Nathan Whitaker: So yes.
• 37:31
  Nathan Whitaker: Indeed.
• 37:32
  Nathan Whitaker: Yes, yes.
• 37:33
  Nathan Whitaker: I don't know what it is about you guys, but you've done a marvelous job of really living out the brother.
• 37:42
  Nathan Whitaker: I appreciate it.
• 37:43
  Kris Carter: Appreciate it, Nathan.
• 37:44
  Kris Carter: Thank you.