How long at current position? Comfort Foods opened in the summer of 2015
Previous Companies/positions:
Owner of RADIANT3, a video production company in Atlanta that focuses mostly on corporate video and advertising mainly for large manufacturing companies like Dura-Line, Graphic Packaging, HOYU of America, and InComm.
What made you decide to work in the field you are in?
After hiring outside catering for our own productions, we realized that we could do SOME of it ourselves. That expanded into us working with other productions in Atlanta providing craft services meals. While expanding into full service film catering, we received an opportunity to proudly become the employee cafe to the 1000+ staff at the engineering headquarters of an international technology company.
When and how did you join IFMA? We just joined! June 18 we joined in both Atlanta and Nashville, as RADIANT3 used to have a Nashville office and that area is growing rapidly.
What’s you favorite aspect of IFMA/ how have you benefited most from belonging to IFMA?
As an employee cafe, our relationship with Facilities Management is incredibly essential. We’re a constant in-house vendor consuming energy and space resources, receiving shipments, hiring and firing staff, running our own IT network, having safety and licensing concerns, and basically being an entire business running inside of your facility. IFMA will give us an opportunity to “eavesdrop” on the Facilities Management community and hear both good and bad practices, find out about new opportunities, and get to better know how to be better allies with the folks who support us every day. IFMA is our backdoor into the meeting place of our hosts.
Hometown/high school?
I’m mostly from Atlanta and I went to Lakeside High School, which at the time was a National School of Excellence.
Family? I’m married to my super talented wife Therese who works at Georgia Tech GTRI
Dream job? If you had to pick a different job, what would it be?
I love service and I love entertainment. My dream job would be owning a casino style venue here in Atlanta, focused on fun, excitement, and entertainment. Less Wynn-style, more like MGM or Planet Hollywood.
Worst or craziest job you ever had? The worst job I ever had was answering customer service phone calls for the phone company. I found out I’m not built to sit in a cubicle for 4 hours, break and heat up my Swanson Hungry Man Dinner, and hit it hard again until my shift ends. I’d rather put in 12-16 hour unpredictable days than to take that phone call again and read that script again, and again, and again. Luckily, that job and the ones after that taught me how to survive in corporate. Answer: NEVER do your job. Weird people are feared, and then rewarded.
Tell us one thing people might be surprised to know about you. I’m 25 percent IT nerd. I once wrote both the front and back-end of what became an enterprise application after learning SQL on web tutorials over the weekend, then launched the app on a spare computer at my cubicle. I exclusively use BlackBerry.
If you had to create a personal slogan, what would it be? Try and break it. Try harder to break it. If breaking it fails, it might just be a really great idea.
If you could only have one book to read the rest of your life, what would it be? Or what is the most influential book you have ever read? In college I took a class called Logic. As strange as it sounds, and as much as everyone in the class hated it, I thought it and its textbook were the best things I’d ever seen. I could take that class right now and read that text book for absolutely no reason.
If you could have a freeway billboard sign with any content you wanted on it, what would it say? Every day you wake up in America is a good day. Today is a good day.
Hobbies/interests? What do you do to relieve stress? To relieve stress, I love to walk through the city, and on the beltline. The crowds of people inspire me. And when I see a building going up, or land being cleared, I think to myself – somebody somewhere is spending millions of dollars to do this. That means somebody somewhere HAS millions of dollars to do this. That means…opportunity exists.
Other than your career, what other skill would you like to develop most in life? I would love to learn to pilot an aircraft.
