52 Cups of Coffee: 417 Edition - Cup 38/52 - Steve Perryman

Here's the weekly boilerplate intro if you've already read anything from past cups of coffee skip ahead to the cup of coffee below the name!

After hearing about the book 52 Cups of Coffee on a Podcast, I thought it sounded like a great opportunity to connect to people in my community. Initially, my plan was to just have coffee once a week with someone I know. I was thinking of friends, family members, or colleagues with whom I could spend some quality time. But the opportunity to engage with my community is always in the back of my mind. So I thought it might be interesting to ask the same set of questions to a diverse cast of influential and interesting people in the 417 area and share them here on my LinkedIn page. At the end of the year, who knows what we'll have... at the very least it's 52 interesting conversations. It's a loose plan. I don't have any real intentions and I think that's the beauty of it. Curiosity. Community. And a chance to learn a little bit from each person. A big thanks to the folks at Travellers House Coffee & Tea for being willing to provide a place to chat and several cups of coffee throughout the year!

**I don't like taking notes while having coffee and conversation so I've trusted Otter to do the transcribing. Any editing issues are my own. I'm not a professional. :) I've included a list of books we discuss throughout the conversation at the bottom.

Steve Perryman - 38/52

Steven R. Perryman is a great friend of mine and has become (whether he likes it or not) a great mentor as well. I had known Steve from back in his Perryman & Associates days with Prime and we got to work together much more directly during his tenure as CFO for Christenson Transportation. Oftentimes, I would come to Steve's office to ask a question and end up down a rabbit hole with Steve about who knows what. He can tell a story and as much as I enjoy going back and forth in conversation with Steve, I truly do love to hear him tell a story. That's the reason I was excited to get Steve to be a part of 52 Cups of Coffee. Part of the reason I love listening to Steve's stories is his delivery. So I tried to stay true to his delivery when editing. While this would be really great to listen to, I'll try to capture it in text! The conversation below is a mix of storytelling and great wisdom for professionals out there in the world. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. We kick off at the Mudhouse in Ozark because it was close to grandpa duties that Steve needed to get to when we finished up coffee!

Rhett Roberson?

What's the CliffsNotes version of the story of Steve Perryman??

Steve Perryman?

I was born and raised in the Ozarks. I'm a fourth generation Ozarkian. The Perryman’s moved to from Tennessee to Missouri and my branch only stayed a few months. They moved to Arkansas prior to the Civil War, so the Perryman’s of the North Arkansas Ozarks have been around for that long. I grew up in a little town named Calico Rock, Arkansas, which was my dad's hometown. He met my mom at college, she's from Northeast Arkansas. Calico Rock, Arkansas is a great place to be from. We've been in Missouri 33 years, almost. We raised our kids in Christian County, but when people ask me where I'm from, I still tell them I'm from Calico Rock, Arkansas. My wife is from there. She's a few years younger than I am, but she, I guess, qualifies as high school sweetheart. I've been married to Sandy for 43 years, going on 44. We raised two kids. Sarah's a school teacher at Ozark, and a mother of two. I've got the best grandkids in the world, bar none. Then Sam is our son. He lives in Salt Lake City and works for Prime trucking.?

I went to the University of Arkansas and graduated, as I was joking with a friend of mine yesterday, we went to school on the seven year plan. It took me a few years to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Including dropping out and working construction one year while trying to decide. I had an opportunity to get introduced to accounting, and got an accounting degree from University of Arkansas. I'm a Razorback, and always will be a Razorback! Which is sometimes hard to be. At least a Razorback fan of their football team, anyway. I was raised in the church. Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a little rural denomination branch of the Presbyterian Church. We were faithful, faithful members growing up. I struggled a little bit as an adult, as lots of people do in the in the faith journey, but I have found myself, over the last 60-plus years, reconnecting from time to time. You've caught me at one of those times here as I move into the last phase or the third phase of life. I'm recently retired or semi-retired.?

Rhett Roberson?

Yeah and I'm going to ask you leading questions, some that I already know the answers to, just for the sake of other people. What brought you to the Springfield area from Arkansas, and can you lead me through your professional career from there??

Steve Perryman?

Sure. I graduated from University of Arkansas in December of 1982 with an accounting degree. I thought I wanted to be in public accounting, so I had a job opportunity in Little Rock and moved to Little Rock. I worked for a really nice, small accounting firm down there. It was a very professional firm. I learned professionalism from those guys. Again, being a country boy from a little bitty town, you don't really learn that sort of thing. So that that was a great experience. We'd been married a year and a half, I guess, two years maybe, by that time, and Sandy became pregnant. Our daughter was born in October of 1983 and we just decided that Little Rock was not a place we wanted to raise a family. So I had an opportunity to move to Batesville, Arkansas for another accounting firm. I actually knew the partners that ran it. Those years that we lived in Batesville probably is our favorite time of our lives. Sarah was little. We had great friends and still have good friends there. It was just a special time. Stone cold broke, but we were just living life at that 30-ish age.

That accounting firm had several trucking companies. Batesville is a little bit of a transportation center. Julian Martin was one of our clients (J-Mar Express). Julian Martin is the father of Mark Martin, the race car driver. So, I got some exposure to trucking transportation through that accounting firm, which led me to going to work for one of their clients, McNeil Trucking Company, in our hometown, Calico Rock. McNeil was a good company to work for. Dave McNeil is a great guy. He's one of those first people that I ever worked for that was fun to work for. Not that the other people hadn't been, but Dave was a fun guy to work with and work for. I worked for him for a few years and developed what I thought was my specialty, which was developing accounting programs and accounting systems and functions. All that boring stuff around being an accountant. But through that process, Calico Rock, Arkansas was not a great place to run a trucking company from and the decision was made to relocate. It was the right decision. I supported the decision to relocate the trucking company to back to Little Rock. Well, I wasn't about to move back to Little Rock.

So, an opportunity through, of all people, my mother-in-law, I was introduced to a guy named Dave Trottier. Dave Trottier owned Smitty's supermarkets. If you've been around Springfield more than 30 years, you probably remember Smitty's supermarkets. I went to work for Dave at Smitty's really doing the same thing I'd done at McNeil Trucking Company, developing an accounting program, accounting processes, procedures, systems, financial reporting, all that sort of thing. The Smitty's job was the best job I ever had. It was great people and I was doing work that was absolutely right in my wheelhouse. We moved our young family to Springfield, which was a little bit intimidating. We didn't know anybody here, but it was great. It was a great move. We never looked back. That's kind of the story of how we got to Springfield. I worked for Smitty's supermarkets until they were acquired by Albertsons, which was also a great experience going through that acquisition process, but they didn't really have a job for me, so I found myself unemployed in January of 2000.

I'm skipping a few minor things in there, but January of 2000 I found myself as an unemployed CPA when, of all people, Prime trucking ran an ad in the Springfield News-Leader advertising for basically my resume. CPA with public accounting experience, willing to work independently, and with transportation experience. Really what they were looking for was somebody to start an accounting program for their owner-operator truck drivers in their building there and it was my resume. I'm not a prideful, boastful, egotistical kind of guy, but I picked up the phone and literally said, "When do you want me to come to work?" (Laughs) Because it was my resume, and who had my resume looking for a job in January? CPAs are just not looking for jobs in January. So, I got that job, and it was the first time I felt like God had ever called me to something. Didn't know why. It wasn't necessarily fun work, although I worked with great people, and being affiliated with Prime trucking was a cool experience at a time they were going through rapid growth. I always said I had the best job in the world because I had all the benefits of being a Prime employee without actually working for Prime.

Robert Low is one of those people I think you truly should have on your list of people to talk to in this cups of coffee process. Robert is a success story. He's got a great story to tell about how he developed Prime. Later on down the road I had an opportunity to go to work for Don Christenson at Christenson Transportation, and it's been a great end of career job. Don's a great guy to work for. I really enjoyed working for Don, as I've joked with him before, I'm not sure I would have wanted to work for Don when I was 45, but at the end of my career, he's been a great guy and we've had a lot of fun. Part of that deal was, "Don, I'm not going to work for you past 65." and I stayed around until I was 66, but it was time to get off that. So, I retired March 1 of this year. I'm still trying to find out what I want to do next.

Rhett Roberson

Well, you've got some amateur historian work going on. Speaking of Calico Rock, you may be the most well-versed person on the history of Calico Rock on the face of the earth.

Steve Perryman

I'm the second most. The first, the premier fellow, is my dad. My 93 year old dad, born and raised in that town, ran a business in that town for 40-plus years, very active in the church, knew everybody, and he has a memory like a steel trap. He can tell you anything you need to know about Calico Rock back to its earliest days. So I'm the second most.

Rhett Roberson?

Hopefully you're absorbing all of that.?

Steve Perryman?

We have hours and hours of, I said tape, it's digital recordings of him just telling stories. I was over there last week. I'm still capturing stories. He usually doesn't know we were doing it.?

Rhett Roberson?

Do you have timelines you're trying to fill in??

Steve Perryman?

We have deliberately done that with him, and those are great interviews. But some of the best ones are just when he starts rambling, and my sister reaches over and he turns on the recorder on her phone. She's got some great stuff. He's a big storyteller.?

Rhett Roberson?

Do you have any plans for what to do with that??

Steve Perryman?

We're still trying to decide what to do. I've played around with trying to edit it, convert it to maybe even analog. He did a really cool thing about 15 years ago, he started writing a little one page every two weeks for the little local newspaper down there called Reed's Ramblings. If you know my dad, much like I'm doing right now, he rambles. He can go off on tangents and talk for hours. You just have to sit and listen to him, but writing a 750-word piece every two weeks, it's not an opinion piece, but a historical piece for the local newspaper, really allowed him to focus. And he wrote 83 of them. I have some desire to put those in a book. I have them all, and they're very, very good. Some of the best ones, and my favorite one, it's not my sisters, but my favorite one is the one where he writes about girlfriends. It's really about when he met my mom. Which is just the coolest. It is cool. I want to get those edited down and put them in a book. He has some specific stories about swimming the White River. Growing up in the church. He played the organ or the piano for 70 years, I guess, 60 years anyway, he has great stories about the people and the preachers and the family members, the building of the building, those kinds of things that we have to capture somehow. Right now, we're just trying to catalog them.?

Rhett Roberson?

Yeah. I love that stuff. I've done the very cursory look into like the 23andMe type of information. It's hard to use Ancestry.com. That stuff gets so fractured, and somebody's added something that doesn't really fit, and then you're lost down a rabbit hole.?

Steve Perryman?

I had an uncle, my mom's brother, that did genealogy for his entire adult life, and so I have extensive history on my mom's side. The Perryman’s, we only have back to my granddad's granddad. He's the one that migrated from Tennessee in 1857 or '58 something like that. Nobody can get back farther than my granddad's granddad, but I have 2500 names in my in my family tree software that I have.?

Rhett Roberson?

What brings you joy??

Steve Perryman?

Family. And don't take this wrong, Sandy, kids and grandkids, for sure. I really have a great relationship with my kids, both of them. They're two different people. They're seven years apart in their ages, but they're very, very close. I talk to them every day I can. They're busy people. Now I have grandkids, and grandkids are unbelievably special. So, I when I say family, I'm talking specifically about my kids, my grandkids, my wife. We chase grandkids to school events and sporting events. Now in retirement, we're, we're chasing the 14-year-old granddaughter to softball tournaments and basketball and that sort of thing.?

Rhett Roberson?

Today, you told me before we started, you're teaching her how to drive a manual.?

Steve Perryman?

Molly's 14, our granddaughter, and she's learning to drive. She does a great job, but I bought a Jeep with a standard transmission just so I could teach her to drive a standard and she's doing pretty good. So, I'm picking her up from softball practice after this and we're going to go drive.?

Rhett Roberson?

What do you do to recharge??

Steve Perryman?

That's probably the hardest question, "what do I do to recharge?" Because I've never been good at recharging. I don't hunt, I don't fish, I don't garden.?

Rhett Roberson?

You just went to Alaska!?

Steve Perryman?

I did vacation. We have vacationed some, and just got back a few weeks ago from an Alaskan cruise that I'd recommend anybody do. We had just a fantastic time. But I've never been real good at recharging. I've just kind of been an accountant, which get tunnel visioned in their personalities and tend to work until something breaks. Then I have to back up and say, "Gee, you need a break. You need to take some time off." In the last 20 years, and I don't want to make this sound intentional, but in the last 20 years it has probably been around family breaks of some kind. The recharging came around kids and going to their events and then family oriented things. My mom got sick a few years ago and went through the horrible dementia of Alzheimer's and so I supported my dad. So, you find yourself focused on those things, and when you have a downtime from work, you're doing that. Which is recharging.

I have all these desires. I'm a dreamer, not a doer. So, I have these dreams that I'm going to build an airplane someday, but I know that I'll never do it. I have a dream that I'm going to restore an old car. I can do it in my brain, but I can't do it. I'm not patient enough. I'm a procrastinator. So, it's a tough question, and it's actually one I'm dealing with a lot right now as I move through this transition into retirement, or whatever you want to call this post-work thing. Recharging takes on a whole new meaning. I don't have a great answer to you, because I've never done it very well. I've never been deliberate.?

Rhett Roberson?

How would your colleagues describe you??

Steve Perryman?

I've had colleagues describe me well.?

Rhett Roberson?

(Laughs) That started with a half-smile there.?

Steve Perryman?

(Laughs) One of the best descriptions I ever had... As I've gone through my career, I have memories of specific people that I've had contact with. There's a lot of people on that list, but there are a few that are special memories. One of those was a lady that worked for me for a brief period of time when I ran an office for the Batesville accounting firm. They bought a little practice in Mountain View, Arkansas, and they sent me over there to run it. I had a lady work for me there, Her name was Eulina Hale. Eulina was a special person. Years after I moved on, my dad ran into to Eulina, and they were talking about me. My dad relayed this story to me. He said, "Eulina described you this way, Steve: one of the best people she'd ever worked for, frustrating as hell, but one of the best people she'd ever worked for." That, I think, would be a pretty common theme. Great guy, nice guy, maybe a little too nice sometimes. That's what I've always said my epitaph on my tombstone would be, he was a nice guy...?

Rhett Roberson?

Frustrating as hell.?

Steve Perryman?

Frustrating as hell. (Both laugh)?

Rhett Roberson?

Can you describe the work that you do now? You're retired, so you can talk some about the consulting, certainly, but for the majority of the time that I've spent with you professionally, you were the CFO at Christenson. So, can you answer from both perspectives??

Steve Perryman?

Sure, I have a degree in accounting, and I've always worked in some version of accounting. Both in public accounting in small firms, which was primarily tax work, bookkeeping services, some advisory services for clients, but small accounting firms. A few audits early in my career. The Batesville accounting firm I mentioned had a big health care practice, so we did a lot of hospital audits, nursing home audits, and healthcare consulting, and that was a lot of fun. Then the other half of my working career was in some version of industry work. Really, my specialty, if I had a specialty, was organizing and building accounting departments. That's what I did for the trucking company. They didn't have an internal accounting department. I came in built an accounting program. From software to processes and procedures and personnel. It's what got me the Smitty's job. They had grown significantly, and were looking to internalize an accounting function. I can't say that that's what I did for Don at Christenson, because he had a pretty significant accounting department, but I came in and refined it. That's kind of been my career in a nutshell.

I have a unique perspective of business and business ownership that's based around three choices. You're either going to sell it someday, you're going to give it away someday, or you're going to close the doors someday. If you have an idea about which one of those paths you are on, then that should dictate how you're running your business on a day-to-day basis today. So, I've kind of tried to take that and build that into a consulting practice for those people who want to do number one or number two, build it to sell or build it to give away. When I say give away, that's more than likely family. Giving it away is some version of selling it. I think there's an opportunity there to help people focus on growing value. I think my version of that is built on integrity and ethical management styles, not so much, because I'm some moral, ethical guy. It's that if you really want to build value in your business, you need to have a business that is ran in a moral and ethical sort of way. You've got to be good to your people. You've got to be a good steward of your tax dollars. That's not paying any more than you have to Uncle Sam, but that's not running your business around "I don't want to pay taxes.", because the best formula to do that is not making any money. That's kind of contradictory to my vision. That's really number three on the list: one day close it.

I think that is historically what I've done, what I feel like my strengths are, and how I want to try to leverage that in a consulting sort of way. I had a sales call a few weeks ago with a potential client, and we got down to the "How much do you charge?", and I said, "Well, my wife warned me not to tell you I would do it for free. So, I can't tell you I'll do it for free, but not exactly in it for the money." I think I have a unique message on how to run a business successfully for the long term. I'm hoping I can do that. What I'm finding out is it's really better geared to the smaller companies. Because the larger, more successful companies in an industry sector probably have a lot of that figured out. So, a smaller company that maybe have been running like they're going to close it someday, unintentionally, have decided, "Hey, there is a different way to do this."?

Rhett Roberson?

Yeah, I really like that perspective, and I can see it from conversations we've had in the past, but I've never heard you spell it out that way, in those three different categories. It's really working from the end, which is always a good way to plan. Set the goal, and then determine how we get to the goal. I think people look toward the end of the month, or the end of the year, or the end of the quarter, rather than the end of the life of the business. It's an interesting perspective to me. The next question is, how did you get into your line of work? You talked about it a little bit, the progression through Arkansas into the trucking companies.?

Steve Perryman?

This is actually an interesting, well, not interesting, but it's a story. The person that probably introduced me to accounting as a line of work or as a subject matter to study in college, I hadn't seen in years. I ran into her and her husband at, of all things, a funeral in Calico Rock that we both attended last Friday. So, this is fresh on my mind. I had gone to college and I wanted to be an engineer. I went to University of Arkansas, but I couldn't pass chemistry. This is how stupid I was at the time, by the way, how naive, maybe naive is the word you should print. (I chose both.) I couldn't pass chemistry. No problem with math, just couldn't do chemistry. My dad had this very successful pharmacy in Calico Rock, Arkansas. My older sister was a school teacher and she wasn't going to take over the family business. I couldn't pass chemistry, so I decided to be a pharmacist instead. (Laughs)?

Rhett Roberson?

Logically. (Laughs)?

Steve Perryman?

Oh yeah, they include a course called Organic Chemistry. Wow. (Laughs)

When I finally figured out what a mistake I had made, was when I dropped out. I worked construction for a year, knew I wanted to go back to college, just didn't know yet what to do. So, I just went back as a math major, not math education, just as a math major, knowing that it would lead me somewhere. That was January of 1980 and I moved in with a couple of brothers, Russell and Tim Wilson, and lived with them. Russell's girlfriend, Margaret, was an accounting major, and I got to talking to Margaret about her coursework and looking at her textbooks. I realized that the school of business was not just full of fraternity and sorority pledges, but was also some regular people, if you want to call us that.?So, I switched over to that and finished in a couple years.

I really enjoyed the accounting study work at University of Arkansas in the early 80s, because this is when things were transitioning to the computer world. The practical use of computers was becoming more prevalent. It was just an interesting time in the 80's to be in accounting. I went into public accounting then, as I mentioned earlier, and if you get the timeline, part of that, that was during Reagan's presidency. Reagan led the charge for basically the first major rewrite of the Internal Revenue Code in 30 years. So, all that was happening early in my career, so it was an exciting time. That's all through Margaret, who I just had lunch with Friday. That was how I got to accounting.?

Rhett Roberson?

Isn't it interesting how all these little tiny things cause a fracture. You could have gone this way, but you end up going this way and as those fracture off farther and farther.?

Steve Perryman?

I had these naive blinders. My mom's funniest story she loved to tell about me was--I didn't think it was all that funny--but was me telling her when I was in high school that I just didn't want a desk job. I just couldn't see myself sitting behind a desk doing a desk job. I had to do something where I was going to get my hands dirty. I wanted to be a farmer, or whatever. She loved telling that story, because I ended up 43 years in a desk job. (Laughs)?

Rhett Roberson?

Not much more of a desk job than being in accounting.?

Steve Perryman?

It is a desk job. And a significant part of that, I had to wear a tie. That part wasn't too much fun.?

Rhett Roberson?

Who's the best boss or leader you've had the opportunity to work with and what made them so good??

Steve Perryman?

There are a few for different reasons. One of the one of the best examples of leadership, not bossing, but leading, was the three partners that I worked for in that first job out of school in Little Rock. Three completely different personalities, but how they how they went about running that business was very intentional, as I've already mentioned earlier, very professional. They really just taught me... I don't know if I was taught. I don't know that I learned the lesson. They were the first to expose me to the example of leadership as a skill. My naive approach, at that point, was "boss". Somebody who was going to tell you what to do, and when to get it done by, and if you didn't get it done right, chew you out. Although, I never had a boss like that. Dave Trottier was a great guy to work for at Smitty's. It was a very successful business. As I've already mentioned, it was one of the best jobs, if not the best job I ever had. Dave was an operations guy. I might go weeks and not see Dave, but he was a great guy to work for. Again, very disciplined, and probably where I learned discipline as a young guy. For example, they were building these supermarkets around town and we'd build a supermarket, then all these buildings and other business would grow up around us. So I went to him one time and I said, "You know, Dave, why don't we take advantage of that? Why don't we do that outbuilding stuff?" I'll never forget him telling me in pretty plain terms, "Steve, we sell groceries. We don't do real estate development." I don't think I really, actually got that until I read a few years later the book, Good to Great. I'm sure you read it. In Good to Great it talks about being focused on the one thing that you can be the best at. That's what Dave was showing me. We do this one thing really well. We don't do real estate development. We could, but we're not going to be the best at it. So, why don't we let somebody else do it? He never said all those words. He said, "We sell groceries."?

Rhett Roberson?

The rest was inferred.

Steve Perryman?

Yeah, the rest was inferred. You know, Robert Lows leadership, and again, I didn't work for Robert, but the way Robert runs Prime, and his whole story is a great testament. I like his model a lot and the way he manages it, in the way he lets people do their jobs for the most part. Then, Don Christenson , just because it's the most recent. Don's a great guy to work for and work with. He might be described also as a lot like me, frustrating as hell sometimes. And you can print that. (Laughs)?

Rhett Roberson?

I was going to say, I will put that in there. Don will get a kick out of that. (Laughs)

Steve Perryman?

That's fine! But I've enjoyed working with Don a lot. I've got a lot of people back through there. I've got this guy from when I was at the University of Arkansas and I drove a transit bus. That was probably the second-best job I ever had in my life, driving a transit bus around the universe campus. My boss there was a great guy. I cannot remember his name, but he was a great guy to work for.?

Rhett Roberson?

What in your memory, all these years later, makes that guy stick out??

Steve Perryman?

He was organized. He hired good people, he trained them, and then he got out of the way. That's the thing I remember about him. He made sure everything was on schedule, and then he got out of the way and let his people do the job.?

Rhett Roberson?

I think you're starting to touch on one of the most developed, reoccurring themes about leadership in this 52 Cups thing. Which is hire well, train well, get the hell out of the way.?

Steve Perryman?

Get the hell out of the way.?

Rhett Roberson?

Interesting this comes up in different ways. It's what you read in the books, but to hear it in lived experience, and as a consistent message is interesting.?

Steve Perryman?

The hardest part about that is the GET OUT OF THE WAY part. Especially a person for whom the business is their baby. You know, they birthed it. They have bled for it. It's hard. It's been a lot of businesses that ultimately failed because the successful entrepreneur could not get out of the way.?

Rhett Roberson?

Absolutely. As a child, what'd you want to be when you grew up??

Steve Perryman?

That's easy. A pilot.?

Rhett Roberson?

Me too!?

Steve Perryman?

I dreamed about being a pilot. I still dream about being a pilot. I have a pilot's license, but...?

Rhett Roberson?

I've never taken the step to get in the cockpit, but maybe that'll be a pursuit in the next 10 or 15 years. Do you know Mark Burgess, who owns the Ozark Lunkers, and he has...?

Steve Perryman?

OzAir? Is he the OzAir guy?

Rhett Roberson

Yeah!

Stee Perryman

I've never met him.?

Rhett Roberson?

When I was a kid, I knew Mark through church. He took me up in a six-seater Cessna, I think. He took us up, and he let me hold the controls. That was one of the coolest things ever. I got into the flight simulators, and that's what I really thought would be cool to do. What book has had the most significant impact on your life??

Steve Perryman?

You know, I never read a lot until I met a guy named Gary Boomer. Gary Boomer is an accountant that's got a consulting business. I mean, I read some, but didn't read extensively (Restructure?) Gary's got a consulting business up in the Kansas City area, Manhattan, Kansas. He's a great guy, smart guy, maybe one of the deepest thinking guys I've ever met. He talked about not being an avid reader and then taking it up later in life and the books that he read, both fiction and nonfiction. I came away thinking if he can do it, I can do it too. I took that as a challenge a little bit, and I'm a consistent reader now. Probably the book that had the most impact on me, just because I finished it, was Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton (https://a.co/d/i09NEPe). Just to be able to, again, this is how small thinking I am, but just to be able to say I finished it is an accomplishment in my mind. Very interesting guy. I had an opportunity to go speak to my daughter's advanced social studies class one day, juniors and seniors, and I was talking to two of her most advanced students. I asked them what they read, because I really get into this habit of asking "What are you currently reading?" I asked them what they were currently reading. One of the students, I'll never forget, said he was rereading Hamilton for the third time. I thought, "Well, never mind." (Laughs)?

Rhett Roberson?

Yeah. At that age? I'm like, "Alright!" (Laughs)

Steve Perryman?

There have been a lot of business books and leadership books and it's hard to point to any one of those. Good to Great (https://a.co/d/4GkZ4NR) I've already mentioned. It should be on everybody's reading list. It's a little dated, now. It's 25 years old. It's a little dated, but still good read. I've got books that are kind of on my every three or four years rotation. I recently reread a book called Leadership and Self Deception. (https://a.co/d/elL7tVi) It's out of the Arbinger Institute. It's a great book. There's another book called Multipliers (https://a.co/d/2YgcazW), which is a great book, and I reread it every 2, 3, 4 years. There's just a lot of others in there. It would be hard for me to point to just any one reading.?

Rhett Roberson?

Yeah, well, that's a handful of good ones anyways.?

Steve Perryman?

Somewhere, I've got a reading list that I could probably send you, and you could fill in the blanks, but I'm not sure I adhered to it today. (Laughs)?

Rhett Roberson?

I'm pretty excited about the reading list that's going to be at the end of this project. There's so many good books on there. There's so many good books. You need to do that! I will. I will put it all together, because I put it at the end of each one. So, I've got a good list going. What's the most important lesson you've learned so far in life??

Steve Perryman?

I'm going to answer this this way, if I was talking to the 23-year-old just graduated from college, me, I would say, it's not set goals, because quite frankly that's a little hokey, but to be focused on what you want to accomplish and at least be able to identify the path to get there. Discipline comes in there somewhere, but probably the biggest lesson I've learned, is to be careful who you trust.?

Rhett Roberson?

So, you framed the most important lesson response as what you would tell the younger version of yourself. The next question is, what advice would you offer young professionals entering the workforce? Is it the same??

Steve Perryman?

Yes. Yes, it's the same. It's absolutely the same. Even more specific to accounting people. I have had the opportunity to counsel a few accounting students are new to the accounting field, and I would tell you, if you're not certain which direction to go, go public accounting first. You're going to get a lot of exposure to different things, even if you get pigeonholed just doing tax returns. More importantly, you're going to get introduced to lots of people. It's the way to network and establish relationships with those people. Remember their names when you run into them again. All that stuff's important. But then I would tell you that the way public accounting is designed today, unless you have some desire to be in equity, in essence, ownership of an accounting program, CPA, firm, advisory firm, whatever, then you don't want to stay in it long term. Five years max. Because, at least in the Midwest, you're just not going to get paid enough for your effort. You're always going to get underpaid. I don't care what size firm it is. Unless you're on an equity track, then I think it's five years or less.?

Rhett Roberson?

What are you most proud of??

Steve Perryman?

My kids, my grandkids? Absolutely no doubt about that.

Rhett Roberson?

Easy answer. That's another one of the things that, when it's in print, it doesn't really capture how quick that was decided! That was a quick draw answer.?

Steve Perryman?

And I make that sound like it's my accomplishment. No, no, no, no, it's in spite of me. (Both laugh) My wife will tell you, Sarah's potty mouth comes from me.?

Rhett Roberson?

(Laughs)?

Steve Perryman?

My wife has a lot to do with who they are today, and especially my daughter and what kind of parent she is. Absolutely my kids.?

Rhett Roberson?

How do you hope the world is better for having you??

Steve Perryman?

Another hard question. I have a 93-year-old dad that has impacted thousands of lives, both professionally and just as an individual. He understood what friendship meant. He had a lifelong friendship. We were talking about it just last week when I went out to see him. I would hope that in some way, paling in comparison to the impact that my dad has had on people, people get some little piece of that "love more, worry less", take a breath, stay away from divisiveness. If you have divisive people in your life, mention it to them once. If they don't change, mention it to them the second time. If they don't change, then sever relationships with them. Because divisiveness, there is just not a place for it. Embrace change, embrace other versions of alternate thoughts and beliefs. Be curious. If I could quote Ted Lasso, "Be curious."

If I could do any of those things with just a few people I come into contact with. Some of the most fun I've ever had in my career was all the truck drivers I met when I was doing Perryman & Associates. Man, I met people from all over the world, from all walks of life. I told somebody when I came to that job, again, coming from a very small town in the Southern Ozarks, a very homogenous environment, coming to Prime trucking, where I was going to be exposed to people different than me, I didn't really know if I was a bigot or not. Then one of the coolest things was learning that I wasn't. (Laughs) Those 25,000 or so truck drivers that I met were some of the coolest people in the world that I wish I had stayed in touch with. And a few I still do stay in touch with.?

Rhett Roberson?

You must have made some good impressions. Pretty personable guy, Steve. Even though, when I asked you if you want to get coffee today, you said, and I quote, "Surely you have more interesting prospects."?

Steve Perryman?

Well, surely you did.?

Rhett Roberson?

You're one of my favorites. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should have??

Steve Perryman?

I guess I'll probably think of something but, no.?

Rhett Roberson?

Okay, well, we're a couple weeks out on this one at least, so plenty of time to add in post. (Laughs)?

Books:

Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow https://a.co/d/i09NEPe

Good to Great – Jim Collins https://a.co/d/4GkZ4NR

Leadership and Self Deception – Arbinger Institute https://a.co/d/elL7tVi

Multipliers – Liz Wiseman https://a.co/d/2YgcazW