Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect the real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.
Welcome to the Athletics of Business podcast. I'm Ed Molitor, CEO of the Molitor Group and your host. Today's special guest is Katie Lee. Katie serves as a Vice President of Marketing for CC Creations and her background includes business development, marketing management, customer and alumni relations, telecommunications, as well as oil and gas sales. She leads a team of creative and driven individuals who oversee and manage the local and national marketing strategy for CC Creations. Katie is a proud alum of Texas A and M and was part of A and M women's basketball head coach Gary Blair's first recruiting class after her playing days. She was and still is the youngest assistant coach ever to serve on the US William Jones cup team, which she helped lead Team USA to a bronze medal finish in Taiwan in 2007.
Katie and her husband Logan Lee, former A and M basketball player and current Texas AG's Director of Sales, live in College Station where they are raising two future Aggies, son Qn and daughter Harper.
Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. We are fired up to have you here. How are things going in College Station?
They're great. They're great. The weather's really nice. After having a few weeks of 100 degree weather and 100% humidity, it's nice to kind of have a break and we've had a lot of rain here lately, which is a bit of anomaly. But it's been great. We're just rocking and rolling here.
Now Katie, don't forget I'm sitting here in Chicago and yesterday my kids were in their element because it snowing outside.
Oh man. Yeah, we don't get too many white Christmases here in Texas. So I know my kids being so young, I have a two and a half year old and almost a one year old and I know when they see snow for the first time, it will be, it'll be a special gift to them.
Even if they can't make snowman, it'll be a big party. It's pretty cool.
That's right. That's right.
Well, Katie, you've had an amazing journey and I want to take the listener back to when you played basketball at Texas A and M and you know, after an incredible high school career, you choose Texas A and M and you dealt with some physical adversity there and you know, with Our brand being the athletics of business. It's the leadership mindset that the same traits and behaviors deployed by elite athletes such as yourself and high performing teams are key to your success in business. Can you talk into a little bit about the things that you went through, the unexpected adversity and how that shaped you and led to a really phenomenal career journey?
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I came from a little bitty town right outside of Lubbock, Texas called Shallow Water. It's a town of about 2000 fantastic folks, just salt of the earth people up there. And I had just. I grew up red and black. I grew up my elementary school, my intermediate school, my high school, everything was red and black. And so I always knew I was going to be a lady rater there at Texas Tech. And I've had a strong relationship with coach Marcia Sharp since I was about two or three years old, even before I remember what that relationship was really even like. But her family lived in a little town called Slayton, Texas there, and that's where I grew up in my younger years. And I was good friends with their family and always kept in close contact with Coach Sharp.
And it was about my earlier high school years, of course. I had been named ESPN top 100, I was, and one of the top five players in the state of Texas. Had an immense amount of success early on in my high school career. And I had known that Coach Sharp was battling some heart conditions, some things that may cause some trouble for longevity. You know, when you're looking for a college career, you're looking for a coach that'll be there all four years. And that became, and that became part of a huge question towards my latter part of my high school years. But I did have what I call a career killer. And that was an injury I had in the middle of my sophomore season there at Shallow Water. I went knee to knee with a young girl off of a rebound.
And I remember the moment it seared in my memory. It just freezes in time. I went knee to knee with another young girl and didn't do a thing to her. What it did to me is it shattered the bottom quarter of my kneecap and split my tibia three inches down. So I essentially had about eight inches. My leg that was broken. And just really, just to put it a long story short, this was in December. I ended up playing 15 games on it like that. I was the number one player in the state. I was on the number one team in the state for our respective division. And there was just, no, there was no way you were going to sit me out. There was no way I was going to stop. And it became almost.
You know, I look back at it now and I kind of. I feel sad for the state that it put our team in. But what it did was it probably caused more trouble than help or that toughness factor could have probably been set to the side. But I ended up tearing every major ligament in my knee, minus my ACL and PCL through that. And so I did some major damage to my left knee. And from then ended up from a few in high school and a few in college, ended up having five knee surgeries, four of those being what's called micro fracture surgeries. And any athlete out there, those are, you know, those are known as career killers. And so that made it really devastating to look at the recruiting scene.
Towards the latter part of my high school career, I had been sent letters by pretty much every Division 1 college in the country, including UConn, Tennessee, Duke, you name it, I had been recruited by them. And by the latter portion of my junior year, you know, the unfortunate part is I probably reached my peak ed my sophomore season in high school. That's the best I ever was, if you can put that into measurables, which I always wonder what could have been or what would have been if I had kept progressing and kept getting better. But, yeah, after the end of my junior year, the recruiting scene had slowed down tremendously. I was a McDonald's All American nominee, and I did not make that cut, which, of course, for somebody like me, that's devastating. I'm a competitor. I hate losing.
And that felt like a loss to me. I felt like I had let myself down. I let my family down. And that was always one of those goals, to be a McDonald's All American player. And we'll just say this, you know, blessings come when you least expect them. And this is one of those situations where I can say, you know, now that I see the full circle, it was the best and worst thing that ever happened in my life.
And I could go on and on about faith and family, but that right there was one of the pinnacle moments in my life that is just seared into my memory about how it just altered and adjusted the course of my career and to be really frank, probably adjusted the course of my focus on life and career and what I wanted that to look like. Because basketball no longer was primary. It was simply the conduit to get an education and to start my life. You know, the larger portion of my life and that pathway where I saw fit. And so my focus dramatically changed towards the latter part of my high school playing days. And you know, thank God that I had been raised in a family that expected maturity. I was a very independent type A and still am.
My mom and dad will laugh at me to say I was, but very type A, very analytical, very hands on. I want to do it, don't do it for me type person. Which is ironic that I see now in my children. And sometimes it makes me want to pull my teeth out, but you know, it is.
How old are they?
How old are they again? Yeah, two and a half and almost. I've got a long road ahead.
Hey, we're at 6 and 4 and we got the two type A personalities as well. I feel.
Oh yeah, you understand my pain a little bit. But nonetheless, you know, what a blessing it was to really have those aha moments so early in life that I was able to make career path decisions that really, truly affected the change in my life. So, you know, I think you chatted a little bit about it. You know, I did decide to go to A and M. It was the very first call at 10am on Sept. 1, when they could start calling recruits in their senior season. And I received a phone call at 10am sharp by coach Vic Schaefer, who's now the head coach at Mississippi State and doing a phenomenal job there leading that team to the pinnacle of college basketball. And he was on the phone with me at 10am on that morning.
And you know, theme of that conversation is we believe in you. You may not be a starter and you may not be the best player on our team throughout your four years here, but what we do believe is that you have that key plug in to the essential puzzle parts of our team. And without that cog, you know, our team is incomplete. And I believe that. I believed his recruiting story, if you want to put it that way. I believed in what he was telling me. It was almost like a sermon. You know, you get the church and when you get tied in, you know, you believe. And I believed in it.
I believed in everything he was selling me for A and M. He was a former student here, so he had a unique perspective of what the Aggie network is like both while you're here as a student athlete and post your playing career. And I can tell you this, he was probably 99.9999% correct in everything that he told me. And still this reason why I think the world of this coaching staff and all the reasons why they brought me to Texas A and M. How much.
Did you know that theme of that first call at 10am because there's a whole podcast behind that call alone. I mean, how much of that theme of we believe in you has helped shape you when you got into your coaching career, which we will definitely talk about. And now as a leader at C, how much is that carried over how to you. How you lead people?
Yeah. So I think it's a huge shift in paradigm in our world today is, you know, words have the. Words have the lasting effect. You know, there's nothing that you can do anymore that's not put on social media or not put on the web. There's nothing that's deletable, so to speak. And that. That very true in words as well. That sermon, as I call it on September 1st at 10am by Coach Schaefer. What I remember most about mine and Coach Schaefer's relationship, you know, his. His words to me were the truth. It wasn't a story. It wasn't a ploy. It was very real. It was he. The honesty of it is what I think drew me to Texas A and M. And I think in an offline conversation, you and I've told you, I turned down Texas A and M once.
It wasn't the place for me. And I knew that, so to speak. And it was such a shift in perspective when Coach Schaefer, again, as a former student of Texas A and M, was making that call and telling me all the things about what the Aggie network can do for you and what it means to wear an Aggie ring and what it means to have 400,000 former students that have your back. And this was before social media, you know, took its platform. This was before, you know, you could. Everything that you said and did was put somewhere permanent on the web.
And so for him to have that first call and to really just drive truth in, you know, telling me the facts that I would never probably be a starter, that, you know, my knee injuries were a concern to his staff, but that they believed enough in me as a person, a player and as a leader that their expectations for me were different than they were for Aquanesia or that they were for, you know, any of our other all Americans that I played with, they were different for me for a reason. And that was because there's so many puzzle pieces when you talk about team that have to fit perfectly together, you know, to reach that pinnacle. And we did that first recruiting class here at Texas A and M. The Coach Schaefer and Coach Blair and Coach Bond, they recruited in.
I was one of five that truly, I fully and firmly believe, shaped and molded what we now know as Texas A and M women's basketball. And that's no disrespect for who came before us. But the shift in focus and the shift in what the expectations were from Coach Flair and staff were just different. They were just different. And there were so many great teams and great players before us that it just took what they did and they emphasized it with their philosophy and took and molded into what this great thing is today. And you can see that in the championship that they won in 11 and the continued success that they've had throughout the years. But yeah, I mean, that conversation right there was not a plot. It was not a ploy. It was the truth.
And again, I laugh and joke, but it was the sermon that brought me to Texas A and M. Well, not.
Just brought you to Texas A and M. So let's talk about your career, because it is a minor miracle in and of itself that you played for three years with those. So take us through that and what was going through your mind and then all of a sudden, here comes your senior year and you had a decision to make, right?
So, yeah, my freshman year, I did a lot of rehab, tried to get my quads to a strength that could hold up my knee, essentially. And with our strength and conditioning program here at am, it did just that. And I was able to get through my first season with a little bit of success. But that said, it quickly went downhill once again, you know, with the schedule and the, you know, anybody that's even healthy would tell you their body. The transformation your body goes through from being a high school athlete to a college athlete is remarkable, not only with just the body transition, but the expectations of time management and just being in the public eye. And our practices were not easy, as I'm sure any student athlete can attest to.
You go from, you know, your hour to two hour, maybe, if you're lucky, sometimes two and a half hour practices while you're in high school. And you have that every single day, you know, two to three, sometimes four hour practices, and then you go to strength and conditioning, and then you go to training table, and then you go to required study hall, and then it goes on and on and on. And by the time you know it, you're waking up at 5am you're going to sleep at midnight. And you're expected to do that all over again. So I'll just say that my career at A and M was a balanced act between trying to stay healthy, which was a difficult challenge in itself, and then trying to manage my time and my expectations for what I wanted life to look like after college.
And I remember one of the things that Coach Schaefer again preached to me on that phone call my senior year was the power of the Aggie Network. And I use that so much, and when I'm talking to young people today is the power of the Aggie Network is exponential. You write your own story, but you write your own story by way of the influence of others. And the influence of others is such a powerful thing, because the influence of the Aggie Network has had such a remarkable and lasting effect on mine and my husband's life. And it's those relationships that we made and developed while were in college that have now come full circle, that a lot of those people are, they're part of our family. My husband and I, we experience a lot of difficulty, you know, trying to have kids.
And so went through the in vitro fertilization route, ivf and by far the hardest outside of my knee. And just the long lasting effects that's had, by far the hardest and most difficult situation we've been in. But it completely transformed our lives as far as our faith. And that is one of our faith platforms that we use today is helping couples that are facing fertility challenges. But in those challenges is when those people that we had developed relationships with while were in college, they were our support system outside of our immediate family who has always been there and been our biggest supporters. We had an exponentially large family.
And that was just friends and family that we had met along the way here in Aggieland that helped pray for us and laid their hands on us and just gave us a place of peace while were going through that challenge. And again, you talk about work, life and career path. Every single job that I've worked at has come. The opportunity has come by way of somebody that's been a former student here at A and M that thought that I was worth the risk. And I use the word risk because every career opportunity we had is, is a risk. And so they thought I was worth the risk and thought I was worth the investment. And that's, you know, through a few changes in my career path, it's what led me to CC Croatians. And I am very blessed, I tell you.
I work for A great company. It's a very large company. Over 400 employees with a single ownership. Mr. And Mrs. Kenny Lawson are the owners here at 50 Creations, and they've been a part of the company since 1985. The company was established in 1982 and he acquired the company in 2004 and has taken it to hype that the company has never experienced before. And we're the largest screen print embroidery company in the state of Texas and one of the top 10 to 15 in the country. But we do business for likes of big brands all across the United States. But we have three. We have a family company. So we have three companies. Two brick and mortar retail stores and then one just worldwide custom printing store. We do pretty much everything but paper products.
But I say that as a little bit of a plug. But it's also because I'm passionate about what I do. I don't go. And I'm not the person that goes and does screen printing on T shirts or embroidery on polos or creates these immaculate signs and banners or trophies and awards or promotional products. I'm the person that gets to tell the stories of how those products are made or what we can do. And so I have a team of six here in our marketing department at CC Creations. And Kenny and Lena Lawson have just entrusted me with their brand and being sole owners of the company, that's a trust that I don't plan to ever take for granted.
And it's my responsibility and my team's responsibility to make sure that not only the brand has integrity, but the loyalty of its customers, both prospective and current.
Well, okay, first of all, how could anybody, after talking to you and getting to know you, not think you're worth the risk? Because you have me fired up right now. Okay, Seriously, I mean, this is. This is unbelievable. I can't take notes fast enough. Katie, forgive me if you heard turning there. I was trying to be as quiet as possible as to not interrupt you, but no. And I look at it and you think about it, you know, what you went through. And the reason I, you know, I would take a risk on you is because think about who the person you became. You didn't just try to get through things, you grew through things. And think about all the diversity, you know, the injuries, the ivf. I mean, everything that you have done and another big piece of the puzzle.
And I think this is important today that we talk about Logan and your husband, Logan, and you went on a really interesting journey. I mean, your senior year, you became a student assistant for the women's basketball program. Logan had a great playing career at Texas A and M and went on to be an assistant basketball coach. And can you talk a little bit about how that, you know, the intentional decisions that you two were forced to make together, collectively realizing you're a part of something, not to be cliche ish, but you're a part of something bigger than yourself. And you had a plan and you wanted to see that plan come to fruition. Right?
And, you know, talk a little bit about that journey because I think today, I think the pacing range that happens to us in the business world is greater than it's ever been. And I don't think people really feel like they keep going with the flow of things as opposed to being intentional about how they plot along and having clarity. Can you talk a little bit about that journey?
So it's funny that you said that about, you know, having a plan. I would say that's the epitome of my life. I'm a planner. I'm OCD and I'm a planner. And I think God laughs at that because the two biggest things that happened in my life, my knee injury and our fertility journey with my husband, you know, my theme in my life has now transitioned to be one, be flexible, and two, believe in something bigger than yourself. And those two things combined can equate to something really special. And I say that, and I do my husband an injustice by not giving him a proper introduction. So my husband is Logan lee.
He's class of 06 here at Texas A and M. He was the first recruit that Coach Billy Gillespie ever brought here to Texas A and M. And he and Coach Gillespie, very similar to my relationship with Coach Sharp. He and Coach Gillespie have known each other through a relationship with Coach Galissy and Logan's dad. Logan was the coach on the court that every coach wanted. He was never going to be. He was never going to be the All Star. He was never going to be the All Conference. He was going to be the person that was going to drag off the ground and help stand up any teammate. He was going to be the one that had the teammates back. He was going to be the one that pushed that teammate until they had no more push left to give. And he.
And that's what he did. For AC Law. I firmly believe AC had the talent, Logan had the strategy, and those two went head to head every single day on the court and had it not Been the perfect storm between Coach Gillespie, Logan and A.C. i do, I think they're the triangle that made really truly Coach Gillespie and AC Kind of what they, what the opportunities that were brought to them. And again, I do say that a little biased, but I think Logan was one of the best basketball minds. Not was, is one of the best basketball minds that I've ever met. He, he just knows and understands the game in ways that most student athletes don't think of basketball, which is really special.
And he and I, that's why we don't talk a lot of basketball at home or we don't watch a lot of basketball at home because we talk it, we talk through it, we don't have to see it on a screen to understand the game. He and I are very analytical when it comes to the game of basketball and understanding angles and why people that don't have the God given talents of the all Americans, what they have to do to succeed, you know. And that's where he and I understand each other. But anyways, Logan, my husband who played, you know, we met first day, first practice here at A and M. We have the true love story. We didn't start dating until a year later, but we've been together almost 13 years. Married, married for eight.
He and I, when we reached our senior year here at Texas A and M, we knew that, you know, this was our life. We, we had joined a church together while we played here and while were dating and we knew that were going to be married at some point in our life. And those career decisions that were having to start making towards the latter part of our college career had to be very mature decisions. They were forced to because I was in college basketball, I was coaching college basketball, he was coaching college basketball at different capacities and I was being recruited to come coach at this school and he was being recruited to come coach at another school. He on the men's side, me on the women's side.
You know, I, ed, I'd be interested to know if there is any marriage out there that Both are Division 1 college coaches on their respective gender sides. I don't think there is one and quite frankly I don't think there ever will be one.
No, I, for obvious reasons, I've never heard a story like that. When you really, when you stop to think about it now that you mentioned that would be one heck of.
A trivia question and that's right. And so I didn't know, and I really don't know without sacrificing family, if that's even possible. And I think you and I, again, I go back to, you know, us having an offline conversation. I'll privy this whole conversation, preface this whole conversation with, there's nothing negative. There's no negative connotation in the fact that I think that family come first while being a college coach. So let me just put that out there. I firmly believe, and I think there's a lot of great coaches out there that put family first. But I'll say this about Logan and my look on life. It wasn't the type of family life that we wanted to live. And so we didn't want our kids bouncing around from city to city. That is our decision. That was what we didn't want for our family.
I had left the college game in 2012, I believe, and that was a year before. No, I take that back in 2009. In 2009. And that was a year before Logan decided to step down as well. So I respectively stepped back and put all of my eggs in one basket with Logan and said, you know what? I've been in this world. I know what it takes. If this is a career path that you want to go down, I'm all in. You tell me what you need from me, and I'm all in. And he knew I had his back in whatever capacity that was. We lived apart thousands of miles away for two years. And it was hard. It was hard.
And again, it goes back to the decisions, the very mature decisions at 24, 25, 26 years old, you have to make and say, that's just not a life that we wanted to live. So when he decided to take a step back, were engaged. And we both, we had a tough. We had a weekend together, and we had to make a tough decision while were. While were in the same city at the same time. And that was, okay, what's next? What do we want our life to look like? We want kids. Yes, that's a check mark. We know we want. When we have kids, we want our family life to look like this. And the check marks were, we don't want to bounce around.
We want to have a stable family life, and we want to live in a place where we can call others family. And so when we look at that checklist and we say, okay, what would work best for us? He's from San Antonio. I'm from the Lubbock area. Neither one of us really saw our adult Life and the other's hometown. And so we both looked at each other and said, college Station, without. Without even flinching. It's College Station. It's the Aggie Network. It's the people there. It's the. It's the trust in something greater than yourself, which is. If you know any Aggie, you'll know that they. They. It's called drinking the maroon Kool Aid, right?
Yep. Absolutely.
They trust in things. It is. It's a real thing. And so it. You know, they. It's the power of the Aggie network that brought us back to Texas A and M and the College Station. And we've been here. We got. We moved back without job, without a stable salary and without a plan, and we upped and moved here and decided this was going to be life for us, this was going to be home. And at a very young age, we made a very mature decision, which seems a little silly now that we look back to make this rash of a decision, but we. We made the decision to come back. And this has been home ever since.
And I tell you, the home that we've created here with the people that we have adopted as our family, we wouldn't trade it for the world, Ed.
Yeah, no, and very understandable. So now I'm going to ask you a question because I'm really curious about this, and I was going to ask you after you stepped away, but I paused to think. There's more to it. I remember when we got. When we got let go in 98, and I made probably an immature, rash decision, and I said, forget it. I'm going back to Chicago. I'm to go into the corporate world, and I'm obviously very grateful I did and very blessed that I did. But I remember I woke up about three minutes or three minutes. Excuse me. About three months after making that decision and realized that there was a huge void in my life. But then, now here's Logan and you, where it wasn't just one person whose entire life was the game of basketball. It was two of you.
Was that. Was there. Was there ever a moment where you looked at each other like, what did we do?
Regret? Yeah. Yeah. I would say there was a good. Probably. Now, okay, you're gonna have two different answers if you ask me and ask Logan. So Logan is the type of person that never has regrets. He. He. He is. He's the most genuine person. And again, take my bias out of it, most people would tell you this, he's the most genuine person you would ever Meet. So he always, you know, there's a reason for every decision, and it shapes and molds you into the person that you are, and I believe that. But I will say from my end, there was a. There was a little bit of a loss of myself in the transition. For about a year. I had just gotten married, so I had adopted a new last name, and my playing name was my maiden name.
So that was a little bit of a difference for me. And then I had. I was no longer in that career in that industry. And so then that was. That was another loss for me. In my eyes, I made the right decision. I knew I had made the right decision both by marrying Logan and both by not coaching anymore. But I will say there's a little bit of an identity crisis for me for about a year because I didn't know how to fully take everything that I had wrapped up in this pretty little package by playing both high school and collegiate sports and put it into the career world and how to unwrap that package in a way that made sense and that was applicable. And so it wasn't until about a year or two that into my.
Into my just professional life that I think I had the aha moment that life was going to be okay. Life is going to. Life is going to work itself out. And again, that's why I go back to be flexible and believe in something bigger in yourself. Because those two things right there are the epitome of how myself and really, truly Logan got through some of those very hard decisions, very emotional times in our life and. And have made it into what we are today.
You know, that's. It's amazing. As I'm writing a couple things down here and everything I'm hearing you saying, I mean, you look at what you did, you both collectively came up with a compelling vision. You dialed into what your why. You know, what your why truly is, and you leaned on your faith in your core values. And it seemed to me, and I could speak to this all day long, is you learned how to get away from identifying who you are with what you do. How much has that helped you in your career transition as you've found this incredible family at CC Creations?
Yeah. So, I mean, you said it great. You know, who you are is much bigger than what you do. Who you are is. Is the backbone of everything. If you lose yourself, you've lost everything. And that's. That's where Logan and I, I think, have really have put at the front of our marriage, is there's people that think Many, many things about Logan and I, and some may be negative. There's a whole lot of positive, and I'm appreciative of that. But, you know, there's going to be those skeptics out there. There's going to be those people that just those naysayers. And, and I will say this. Logan and I know who we are. Logan and I know who we are as individuals. We know who we are as a couple. We know the.
We know the paths that we've taken to get to this point have been taken for a reason. And there's no regrets now. There may not have been. There may not have been things that have happened that we liked. There may have been decisions that we have made that have been, at the time, what we thought were harder than what we could handle. But what does the Lord tell us he's ever going to give us anything that we can't handle? And I'm affirmed, firm believer of that. I, yeah, I laugh because I'm. I'm not good with needles. And so the fact that the Lord had this. Had this, you know, I see the Lord up in heaven just looking down and laughing at me because he's like, you know, you. You think you got life by the horns, the bull by the horn.
You ain't got a clue. And, And I, I go, okay, okay, Lord, I've got. I'm on hands and knees. I got my hands here. You tell me what's next. You know, I'm flexible.
I'll do whatever your calling is for me, because that's truly the only way to be. I did. And I didn't figure that out, ed, until about 2015. I didn't figure that out until we lost our first baby in ibs. We lost a little girl. And I tell you what it was. I never had such a call to the Lord and reason why. You know, you talk about the why, the reason why became not me anymore. It wasn't my marriage anymore. It was the Lord and his path. And there's a lot of. I never post anything about our fertility journey on social media without saying God is good or God is so good. And I say that for a reason because there are so many things, outlying elements out there that could write the story for us, right?
If I just sit back and I just watch, my story is going to be written for me. If I don't step in and I don't put my foot down and say, this is me. This is. This is the person I am. This is the faith I carry, and this is how I'm going to live. And when I talk about me, I talk about we, because Logan and I, we rarely make independent decisions without one another. And we respect one another. We respect each other as individuals before we respect each other as part of a relationship. And I think that's also a huge. A huge thing, because people can't imagine working with their spouses.
And while I know Logan and I would butt heads because we're very strong personalities, we both have a great way of stepping back and saying, you tell me your side and let me try to understand it. Because that's the first part, is we both have such an understanding of one another and such a trust in one another that allows us to make inner decisions together that impact the shape and the mold of our life. And I would say that absolutely about our career paths is that he and I took those leaps of faith by being very confident in knowing who we are as people and the person, so to speak, that we wanted to be both as individuals and as a married couple.
And through that, it sets the pace for what our kids are going to know about us, both in the community and at home. And that has 1000% shaped how our career paths have played. You know, Logan is one of the most trusted people in his company and for good reason. The owners within the company. And I know you've done a podcast with Hunter Goodwin. I would bet my entire life salary to say that Logan is not one of Hunter's most trusted sources, just in life and professionally. And he, Logan is, or Hunter would know that Logan would never do him wrong. And I would say that most people think that about Logan, and I hope that most people would think that about me. Knowing who you are before you allow somebody else to write your path or that you allow life to take place.
Be flexible, find a way to adjust, be adaptable to your surroundings, but do all those things while knowing who you are and putting your stamp on it so that the pathway you're walking down, if you're. If you're a good and wise person that is faith driven. You know, that path is going to be the path that you want to be on. You're not going to have any regrets, right?
And, you know, we both. You said, what's next? You know, I'm on my. I'm on my hands and knees. Have my hands up, what's next? And, you know, it's like the old song, the more I learn, the less I know. And you realize that it's A constant process. Everything's a process and you just keep learning, embracing it. How important is continuing? Not just to grow, but to learn and to develop new habits or strengthen new habits or leverage your strengths. In your position now at CC Creations and your relationships and everything you do, how important is that to you and how intentional about that are you?
Yeah. So I'll say this. The second you become an expert, the second you become the dumbest person in the room. And the reason is because the world is constantly changing. I have an incredible team here at CC Creations. So I have a team of six right now that runs our marketing initiatives and strategic planning for our family of companies. And I will say this, I am not the smartest person in the room five out of six times. And the reason I say that is because I bring a certain set of skills that my teammates either have or don't have. Some they have and they have better than me, some they don't have. And it's my job to help them develop and vice versa. I have other teammates that are incredible at what they do and I don't have those same skill sets.
But I dive in and want to learn. And there is never a time when somebody rewards or suggest accomplishment for our marketing department that I'll look around and say, it wasn't me, I appreciate it, but it wasn't me. It was our team or it was Sarah, it was Natalie, or it was Casey or Wesley or Emily or whoever it wasn't me. It was our team. And we are, you know, one of. There's two things that our team I think lives by day. And one of these quotes, they hear me and they, I think they kind of roll their eyes at this point, but it's come around full circle in many times. Let it be a conversation before it's a situation. That is our motto. Let it be a conversation before it's a situation. Not everybody has thick skin.
There are personalities on all sides of the spectrum, but we all have conversations every single day. I may better at handling tough situations than one of my teammates is, but it doesn't mean that teammate can't handle a skin tough situation. They can eliminate having the tough conversation at step 10 if they'll just have the simple conversation and voice their opinion or voice their concern at step one or two. And if they allow it to be an open door, unbiased, pretty much a very mellow, level headed conversation, you can get past a lot of that turmoil or a lot of that conflict just by having that simple conversation at the second hour versus in the twelfth hour. And so that is a motto of our team is let it be a conversation before it's a situation.
I love that. Let it be a conversation before it's a situation. What are some of the things that you have found over the course of your career that interrupted being a conversation immediately make it become a situation. Is it lack humility? Is it ego? Is it both? Is it. I mean, what usually gets in the way of that?
Yeah. So I'll say, coming from the sports world, it's ego. I don't know. I don't know a student athlete that doesn't have an ego. And whether it's confidence or whether it's just being a total turd, you know, not having a great understanding of how to handle situations, I would say it's ego. And that's in a lot of great businessmen and business women have egos. And there's a difference in a very fine line between being confident and being cocky. And I will say there are a lot of people out there that when I was younger in life, called me cocky. And I would probably agree with them.
But it wasn't until I kind of found myself and found, and really, honestly probably my knee injury when it brought me back down to earth, so to speak, that I no longer had the literal legs to stand on to be cocky. And it had to become. I had to elude such a amount of confidence for me to still have the same mindset of that incredible player versus the subpar player that I ended up being. And that was outside of what my body was telling me. That was just the good Lord putting me on my butt and saying, you know what? There's a bigger plan in life for you, and it ain't basketball, sister. So it was a come to Jesus moment that you just go, okay, things happen for a reason. And. And this was.
If this happened to be one of my reasons to show me the difference in. In being a cocky person versus being a confident person and how that confidence has allowed my career to be successful. Hey, man, I'm all for it, right?
Well, you know, you just said something that I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about, because I think this is so critical in business. Incredible player versus a subpar player. And you might be talking about production on the floor, but obviously you did something that contributed significantly overall, massive success of the team. How did you find it in yourself too I mean, you became a student assistant your senior year. And people who become turds, we both like that term, people who become turds when they have adversity. Okay, that you either get better or you get better, you got better. How did you find that in yourself and what did you do to contribute to that success at A and M?
So I think being a contributor is probably the key word here. This, it goes back to the whole team. The second, the second year you're an expert, you're the dumbest person in the room and that comes on the playing field as well. You know, I was surrounded by an incredible team who took us to the elite eight my senior year. And two of those, you know, of those student athletes were all Americans. And if they considered themselves to be the expert on the court, that's one thing. If they were, if they continued that off the court, that's where that line between confidence and cocky kind of comes into play. And I'll say this, we had a very stable and heady team my senior year, but in that allowed them to accept me in a different role.
And I, you know, I don't, I, I'm not going to speak too much for myself and what my teammates may have thought of me or why they adapted to that change so fluidly and so seamlessly. But I was put on this team, in my opinion, for a greater reason. And that is for leadership off the court and that is for level, like just level headedness on the court. And I was put in a lot of situations, especially in like last second situations where I was the person that the coaches elected throwing the ball. And that may seem so.
They trusted you.
That's right. It seems like such a small part, but you think about it. If you have two seconds to go and you're down one and you need, you know, you've got a play drawn up for a 10 foot jumper and you got this one person who has to have the ball in her hands, but you know, the other team is keyed up on that person for a damn good reason. Then, you know, you go, okay, who do you trust to get the ball to that person? Because without that ball getting that person, that two seconds is irrelevant. And I fortunately had earned the trust of my coaches to be put in that situation. And I don't know why. I honestly couldn't tell you.
And my teammates, I don't know why they accepted me in the position that they did my senior year or even three out of the four classmates or classes. Not classmates, but classes under me. Accepted me in a coaching role that year after college as well, because I was on staff for two years. And so I really can't answer that question for you as to why they accepted me in those positions. But my. My job was to. To be the puzzle piece. And whatever that meant. Whatever that meant. That meant I was. I had to be all in. I had to be adaptable. I had to be flexible. I had to be the cog that make it made everything run. And that's the role I had to take on. And it wasn't the most glamorous role, I'll tell you that.
There were times where I hated it. I hated it. But there's a reason for it. And I understand in my business world now why those people are so special to teams. Those are the assets of every company, is people and the right people in the right places.
How phenomenal is your culture at CC Creations?
Oh, it's second to none. Second to none. We have six core values that we live by, and we call the people that we work with family. And for good reason, because it is a sole ownership. He thinks this is his family. And it's no joke, Ed. There's people here that I would go to bat for day in and day out, and especially those on my team. I mean, I'll tell you, this mama bear comes out because if you mess with somebody on my team, you're messing with me. And that's. That ain't gonna be a fun game to play.
I love that.
And it is. It's a family. It's a family. And it's the epitome of why it makes working at CC Creations and this family accompanies so wonderful in athletics.
You realize there's a difference in programs. Those that try to make it seem like a family and those where it is a family. And I love the mama bear comment, by the way. That's awesome. I love it. And Katie, that is one of the reasons. Perfect segue into why we are so excited. Don Yeager and myself are so excited to have you on the panel discussion on the VIP panel discussion for our Unleashing Greatness event on November 28th in the hall of Champions and everything. And honest to goodness, I'm on page five and a half of my notes right now. Everything you talk to is exactly what we're excited to share that day and have yourself, along with the other VIP panel members, share that evening. But can you talk into.
And I shouldn't say, but Ian, can you talk into real quick how athletics. How Those skill traits and behaviors, you know, the mental toughness, the relationship building, the communication, the loyalty, the time management, energy management, attachment, everything. All the core intangibles that were game changers for you, how those have impacted.
Your business career immensely. There's not enough words nor enough time to truly exemplify how those have impacted both my working life and my family life. Those are intangible that are taught through the playing field, right? And those are for others. Some of those intangibles, they don't. People don't learn. People don't get those in a classroom. Those can't be taught. They're taught by way of certain actions or expectations within the environment that you're in. And it's just like why your parenting style is so important to your child, your parenting style is going to be, is going to set the example. That's why the lord is first. In our home, we pray every night. Our child, our two year old who just barely has started talking more fluently.
You know, our prayer is about five minutes long every night, but it's because it's dedicated time that we have set to the side to talk to the lord. And so when we say lord or when we say Jesus or when we say pray, Kuan knows the motion he needs to make. When we say we're praying, he shuts his eyes and he crosses his hands. And that's very intentional in our home. And I would say that about our parenting style. When Kuan sneezes, we've always told him, bless you, kuan. And so the other day I about dropped to the ground and just wanted to cry like any mama bear would do. I sneezed. And out of nowhere, without even thinking, he goes, bless you, mama.
And I tell you what, it made every hard, every hard shot, every hard day, every fertility discussion, every penny dropped, it made it all worth it because he was intentional about being responsive to something that we had we've been talking about since he was born. Whether that be, you know, please and thank you. Whether that when he talks to somebody, we don't allow him to look down, we turn his chin and we say look and speak with your words. And he talks to somebody, you know, to their face and he looks them in the eye and with, you know, our handhelds being in our hands all day and people looking at screens all day, that's very intentional in our home, is that when you speak with somebody, you look them in the eye, you make it an intentional conversation.
And then if they're talking back to you Listen. And so those things, you know, the respect that you gain from being a player, if you have a good coach, it's like having a good parent. You learn life lessons in a larger and stronger capacity than you could have ever imagined. And I'll tell you this. There hasn't been a coach in my life that I could say I regret having. Because every coach in the different strengths and the different capacities that they've had have all shown me life lessons that I still hone in on to this day, whether it be my AAU coach, my high school coach, my college coach, my dad, my. My. Our friends, our little. Our little dribblers, coaches, all those coaches have had a huge impact in my life.
So, you know, some people ask, you know, who's a mentor that's taught your biggest life lesson? I'll say, to be honest, that's not a fair question. No, it's not a fair question. Because there are so many people that have impacted my life in such a positive way that have allowed me to grow and adapt to the person that I want to be. There is not just one. There is a million. There are more than you can count. And those have transitioned to family, into my faith, and into my friends. And I hope that when my life is said and done, and you put that period on the end of that last sentence, that people can look back through those.
Through those dates in 1986, dash, whatever that date is, that I joined the Lord in heaven, that they can say that dash spent in the middle of my life was well worth it, was well designed and was flexible to the pathway that the Lord has set for me. And I hope that dash speaks volume about the person that I hope and pray that I am and that I. That I want to be in my future.
That is so powerful, the dash. I mean, it is so powerful, the dash. Quick question for you. Are you hiring at CC Creations? Because I'm ready to go.
Yeah, Come on.
Let's go. Hey, we come down to the conversation. I'll just stay there. My wife's coming with me. She'll love it. We'll just have to bring the kids down at a later date. We're good.
Bring them on.
Yeah, I absolutely. This was. This was absolutely phenomenal. I appreciate your time. And for folks who want to learn more about CC Creations and learn more about you, what are the different social media places they can go to find out?
Sure. So CC Creations, the website is CC CreationsUSA.com and we have. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter. We have two other Aggie centric retail brick and mortar companies. The warehouse at CC Creations. At the retail store, it's 20,000 square feet of the largest selection of Aggie gear anywhere in the world. Anywhere in the world. And that's the warehousec.com and then we have another location called Maroon U. That's all of our branded licensed apparel, our Adidas cutter and buck brand 47. You name it, we got it. Dooney and Burke, Yeti. Come one, come all. So very, very cool store. And smoorinu.com so we're on all the different social media platforms, but I would encourage people to go to the website. You'll find all that information there.
Great people, great products. How about you? How about your, how about your personal stuff?
You know, I don't, I try to stay, I really try to stay off the social or the work platforms. I don't do a lot on LinkedIn, which probably shame on me. I know there's people out there rolling their eyes, but I stay on social media. And I'll say this, I post a lot of pictures on social media because we have family in San Antonio, family in Lubbock, and I've kept everything pretty private as far as if I don't know you, I typically haven't added a lot of friends because we do put a lot of our personal life out there. But obviously happy to grow our network in any way we can. But yeah, I'm on social.
And you know what, I tell you what, especially having that perspective, I love that. And the fact that you shared so much with us today is awesome. And to find out more about this really cool event that Katie is going to be a part of on the VIP panel, you can go to the Molitor group and you can just go ahead and click on the Unleashing greatness tab up there and that will tell you all about the event, how you can go about jumping on board and what the whole day in the evening will entail. And we're very excited. Along with Katie, we have Hunter Goodwin, we have Jason Boker, and we have Stephanie Rempe, and there's a couple more that I know are on board, but I can't really announce just yet.
And I will tell you once we're done here, Katie, but we are excited. It's going to be a very cool day.
Yeah.
And to hear more podcasts, we are, we're on itunes. Run stitcher. You can go to the podcast website, the athletics of business.com appreciate the listeners. Appreciate the comments. And that is all we have today. And Katie, I cannot thank you enough. And best of luck to Logan and you injure your little family.
Thank you so much, Ed. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's. It's. It's certainly my pleasure.
It's been a lot of fun.
Yes, sir.
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