In this episode, Ben Parker shares how important getting a good baseline is for building long term durability.
We are excited to discover, with you, the key commonalities and best practices that allow both public and private organizations from capital intensive industries to become stronger at managing their assets over time.
Learn more at: www.durablecapitalindex.com.
Ben Parker : Welcome to the Durability podcast. This is for those that are passionate about helping their organizations plan and prepare for the inevitable future. My name is Ben Parker management consultant, chemist, creator, entrepreneur, co-founder and member of the Durable Capital Group. And I'm excited for you to join me as we discover what successful organizations do to build longterm durability. We explore the tactics and strategies that allow great organizations to combine the financial wisdom of asset management. The practical street smarts of the maintenance subculture with the real world paranoia of managing risk to ensure their organizations last. We uncover what great leaders are doing from all types of capital intensive industries to make good decisions, build strong management teams and prepare to meet the future in whatever form it comes. This is the Durability podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of the Durability podcast. And I am so excited to share with you something that has been critically important in my journey as to why I believe building durability into organizations and your capital assets long-term are so important. And we've got to take a step back in time in order to really get a good appreciation as to why this is so important to me and how I came about going deep into the fundamentals of capital asset management. And it actually starts back when I was young, when I was a 14 year old wipper snapper, I was so blessed to be able to grow up, working on farms and ranches. And my dad was a horse trainer. He was a training, cutting horses of all things, and I got to grow up in that world and in that environment.
And I've been so blessed by it. But I remember when I was 14 years old, I was actually working for a neighbor on his farm. And I remember being so excited to drive finally, this one piece of equipment. I hadn't been able to up to this point. And I was just one of those things that I just, I was really excited to be able to be trusted, to be able to operate a John Deere 8440 tractor. And this is actually a mid-size tractor, but to me it was a massive piece of equipment. I mean, I stood kind of the tires were not even, I mean, I couldn't even see the top of a tire standing next to it. So it was above my head and I'm not that tall, but it was one of those experiences where I had really coveted to be able to drive this massive piece of equipment.
And I remember the first time I got to drive it, I got to disk a wheat field and I was just so excited. And it was just like, "Man, this is awesome. There's so much power." And it's one of those pivot tractors. So it broke in the middle and kind of had a pivoting steering alignment. It was just awesome. But then I just started thinking about man, this thing's probably really expensive. I wonder how much it costs. And my 14 year old brain was not a whiz brain. I could do some math. And I realized that, I would have to work at my then farmhand wages, which it was really good wage for the time for like 25 years to be able to save up enough to buy one of these things. And I had the tremendously good wage for a 14 year old kid at a time.
And the fact is that tractors are expensive, but they are very useful. And that John Deere 8440 tractor created a considerable amount of value over the years. And it was meticulously taken care of. I remember we blew out the filters, we greased it, we changed the fluids and it lasted a long time. And one of the things that it taught me that was so significant that I'll never forget. And that has an impression on me ever since was how much value was created by that piece of equipment. And I just learned how important it was to be able to maintain an asset every day and be able to use an asset to create value and to help in the process of creating value. And I also learned how critical it is to continually look ahead and plan for and prepare for the next thing that needs to be done.
The next piece of equipment that needs to be purchased, the next thing that needs to be in place so that we can have what we need today. And capital assets is one of those things that can be ride upon to meet our needs long-term into the future through a broad range of uncertainties, as long as we have the right set of assets at the right time and at the right place. And that has been something that has just stuck with me and been influential in helping me understand later what some of the critical drivers are and really some of the mean focus points for later decisions down the road. And next time, I'm going to dive into how my journey through chemistry really led me into these same fundamental business and management practices as well. Tune in next episode of the full story there.
Thanks for listening. Have a fantastic day. Hey everybody, I just want to share with you something that has been super effective at helping organizations to really kickstart the conversation around how they're going to build a long-term durability into their management practices. And if you stop what you're doing right now, you can go to www.durablecapitalindex.com. That's durablecapitalindex.com, you can sign up to take a very special assessment.
This is the Durable Capital Index assessment. It's a baseline assessment and it'll show you exactly where you're at currently with fundamental best practices for building durability. And it will give you a very detailed feedback report that you can take and share with your team. If you go to www.durablecapitalindex.com, sign up, take the assessment and share with your team and really start that conversation around building long-term durability into your organization.