52 Cups of Coffee: 417 Edition - Cup 42/52 - Mark Burgess

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.

Mark Burgess - 42/52

I was really looking forward to catching up with Mark over coffee, as it had been years since we’d had a chance to sit down together. To be fully transparent, I’ve known Mark since childhood—our families attended the same church, and his daughter and I are about the same age. During that time, our families were close, and I always looked up to him for a number of reasons that we get into in the conversation below. Back then, I knew him as a black belt in Taekwondo who took me on my first airplane ride—a tough combo to beat as a kid!

Over the years, I’ve run into Mark here and there, each time catching up on what we'd been up to. It was easier when he owned The Aviary, where I was a regular patron. Since then, he’s expanded his reach, growing his charter business OzAir, and diving into a range of ventures, including his latest project, the Ozarks Lunkers, Springfield's newest professional sports team. From charter flights to arena football, Mark is still every bit as cool as I remember—probably even cooler. He’s a great guy, and it was a pleasure to sit down and hear more about his recent adventures. Enjoy the conversation!

Rhett Roberson 

What is the CliffsNotes version of the story of you? 

Mark Burgess 

(Laughs) I don't know how to wrap that up. I guess, pilot by trade, because I liked it. It was fun. I thought it was an easy career, and you could make good money at it, and you don't have to work that hard. Other than that, I get bored easy, and I need to do different things. I need a challenge, and I need something to keep my brain going. I get bored with things very fast. So even in the aviation world, I've done a multitude of different types of aviation things and companies over the years, and then branched off and did everything from the hair company, to the franchise, to restaurants. We did the Aviary Cafes here in town and my wife had a flower shop for a while. I helped my stepdaughter in Portland put together an artisan butter company so she could stay home while the baby was small. I have the charter company, we've got a ballroom now that we're trying to get going, looking at putting a deli in over the north side of town, The Lunkers, OzAir, some real estate, and some land scattered around. I mean, again, if there's not something in front of me... 

Rhett Roberson 

You just can't sit still? 

Mark Burgess 

I can't. I just get bored. The older I get, the harder it is to go out and do a lot of athletic type stuff and that's what I used to keep myself occupied. I ran marathons and did taekwondo back at church. I took that as far as I could go and got a second degree black belt and my instructor's license. Then I went like, "Now what am I going to do with that?" I'm not going to go teach taekwondo. As you get older, it's harder and harder to do that, harder to find time with it. That's probably the synopsis of me. There's nothing that doesn't interest me. I'm fascinated by everything. I'm fascinated by the trucking business. I talked to guy at Prime for hours one night. I guess they're the largest refrigerated carrier across the country. Any business fascinates me. I want to know how it works. I want to know how to do it. What works and what doesn't work. I'm in the process of writing a book now about business. I wrote one book about charter flying called Charter Pilot (https://a.co/d/fnHAGkm), and it was so you could explain to people what charter flying was. Now I'm trying to write a book about business, about how to start businesses, and the good things and bad things I found out about it. I'm probably 60% away from getting that thing done. 

Rhett Roberson 

Very cool, very cool. Where'd you grow up? 

Mark Burgess 

Marionville, Missouri. 

Rhett Roberson 

All right! Did you go to school in Marionville all the way through? 

Mark Burgess 

Yes, went to school in Marionville all the way through? I started flying pretty much right out of high school. I went to SMSU for a long time, but got bored with college really, really quick. They were teaching me stuff that I’m like, "I'm never using this stuff." Over the years I've done college off and on. I've probably got enough hours for almost a master's degree, but never converted it into anything. I lived in Little Rock Arkansas for about six months of my life, hated it, and came back here. I've pretty much been here for the duration. I like the area. I've traveled all over the country, so I know what other areas look like, and I've got no desire to live in a foreign country. So again, Southwest Missouri is a nice stable area. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yes, agreed! How many aircraft do you guys run through OzAir? 

Mark Burgess 

We go up and down. I think we're back up to nine aircraft right now, 23 or 24 pilots, something like that, a couple of mechanics, and about six administrative people, dispatchers, things like that.

Rhett Roberson

Very cool. Sizeable operation! What brings you joy?

Mark Burgess

What brings me joy? I was just in Vegas hanging out with my buddies. Just turning my brain off, talking to them about their lives, laughing and cutting up. And then, accomplishing things. Finishing a project or making something work. And similar to the restaurants when the wife and I did those, people were like, "Well, you're an idiot for getting the restaurant business. You can't make any money." Blah, blah, blah. We did it completely differently and I'm not going to go into great detail, but we were black pretty much from day one. Most restaurants wouldn't be black for two to three years. So, the fact that we did it was incredible and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it got to a point where my wife figured out real quick, it's really fun to build stuff, it's a lot less fun to run stuff. So, after a couple years and getting it so large, we're going like, "Okay, it's still a good thing, but it's too much work. It takes up too much time." It also drives her nuts and me nuts, because we're both perfectionists. I'm definitely a type-A perfectionist, and you're never going to get that. You walk in there and there's stuff on the floor, there's leftover coffee grounds, it just drives you nuts. We couldn't go eat in our own restaurant because we were never comfortable there. So, I told her, "You have to learn to accept the basics of what you got." That's all you can really do. You've got to learn to accept that you can't pay people enough to care. So, you've got to learn to accept a little bit less than. In the aviation business, not so much. There's a certain standard we have to maintain. I've got a good group of guys. Is it 100% perfect? No. Do people do things that irritate me sometimes? Yes, but it's more manageable. It's a higher level of a professional organization. 

Rhett Roberson 

What do you do when you need to recharge? 

Mark Burgess 

It's changed over the years. For a long time, I played bass guitar with an amateur band here in town. I went and took some lessons and got in this group and we'd go out and play. We used to do adventure races. We used to do marathons. Those kind of went by the wayside, just because of the time it takes. Probably now, most of the time I'll play Texas Hold'em poker tournaments. I travel around to play WSOP and WPT events. I would like to eventually win a bracelet in the big event. I've had good success. I've cashed several times, but that's another full-time gig on its own. If you're able to be a professional player, you've got to travel the circuit all the time and I don't want to do that. So, usually I go find a tournament, play, and win a little bit of money. It's good fun because, again, it occupies my brain with something else. It has no real, true meaning. So, win, lose, or draw, you just have fun with it. 

Rhett Roberson 

Right. Do you feel like using that as a recharge helps solve other real life problems? For me, just to use what I do as an example, I like to ride motorcycles. I find with problems that I'm working on in my day to day, if I will release the stranglehold on trying to solve them and go do something like that, it puts my mind in a different space. Sometimes I find the answer just opening that up. 

Mark Burgess 

Yeah, yeah. Because you have to concentrate on what you're doing. So, like riding a motorcycle. I love riding motorcycles. It's just gotten so dangerous. People don't pay attention. You've got to concentrate on what you're doing, so your brain disconnects from your issues you're dealing with, and all of a sudden that's when the light goes off. "That's what I was trying to find, right there." 

Rhett Roberson 

I think that's an interesting thing that a few people have mentioned. Sometimes the answer is there, when you're not trying to hold on to it it's like your subconscious can do the work.

Mark Burgess

Yeah, it'll process it, but you've got to give it some time to process it.

Rhett Roberson

How would your colleagues describe you?

Mark Burgess 

I don't know, you probably have to ask them. You could probably talked to my assistant and ask her. I mean, I'm hard to work with because I'm a perfectionist. I want things done right. I want things done by the book. We're in a very highly professional industry, so you really need to do it right. They're paying a lot of money. I think I'm reasonable and I think I'm fair with people. I'll go out of my way to make things work with them. If you just continue to jerk around on me, though, and you just continue to try to milk things out and not do your job, then we're going to have a parting of ways. That's happened over the years a few times, but I'm always going to try to isolate myself first and figure out, "Okay, what did I do wrong here to make their situation this way?" Sometimes it's uncontrollable. 90% of the problems I find with employees have nothing to do with the job. It has to do with the wife, the kids, the family. It has to do with something outside the peripheral. It just gets brought to work. So, most of the time, they're not upset with you, they're not mad at you, they're not hacked off at the job. It's that they and the wife got into it last night, and it just carries over. Most people, if they're not happy in the job, they'll just find a job someplace else. 

Rhett Roberson 

Can you describe the work that you do? Now, you've got a lot of irons in the fire. That's a long list to describe the work that you do, but I'll leave that to you. 

Mark Burgess 

Just managing and overseeing. I probably am more hands on than I need to be. I've got people that do a great job, and I'll still step in to do things, but it's just basically the overseer or manager. It's trying to guide everybody to do what they do, and make sure we're not missing things, and try to put people in place to run things. 

Rhett Roberson 

You still flying clients? 

Mark Burgess 

I fly occasionally. I'm still qualified. We're an airline, so we have to qualify like all the time. So, the way it stands right now, I stay qualified on two different groups of airplanes, mainly because I'm a check airman. So, I've got to give my guys check rides. Then if we get in a real crack, I'll step in and cover a trip from time to time. 

Rhett Roberson 

Cool. How did you get into this line of work? I think I maybe understand from the serial entrepreneur perspective, based on being interested in so many different things, but ultimately it seems like the aviation has been the through line. What got you into planes? 

Mark Burgess 

When I was a kid, the airline world, the aviation world, was just exploding and getting bigger and bigger. When we would go on vacation, my dad would always want to stop at the airports and watch. That used to be the big thing back in the day. You'd pull your car up to the end of the runway and watch the big airplanes take off. Then my uncle had his pilot's license. He worked for a company in Neosho at the time, called Rocketdyne. They actually built the jet engines for some of the early space program down there in the Neosho, Missouri, of all places. So, he was kind of an engineer type guy by trade. He took me on a couple of airplane rides, and I went like, "This is so cool!" My main goal was to go fly fighter pilot. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. That's the ultimate airplane to fly, right? When I was coming out of high school, we were coming out of Vietnam, they didn't need pilots and didn't want pilots, and I wore contacts or glasses as a teenager. When they were in Vietnam, if you could say airplane, they would put you in a cockpit. After Vietnam, you had to have a college degree and perfect vision. They just didn't want any pilots. So, that area kind of got away from me. I did apply for the Air Force Academy one time, but I missed the deadline for getting in there, and by the time the next circle came up, I was already doing some civilian flying. So, that just didn't work out. It was just going to be in the civilian area. And it's exciting, you're commanding a very complicated, large piece of equipment, and it's something not everybody can do. It's always seemed to kind of come, not easy, but natural to me.

I love doing any kind of flying. A couple years ago, I went down and got my seaplane rating in Florida, just because I wanted to see what that was like. And then I got interested in helicopters. I always wanted to fly helicopters, but again, it's hard to do unless you go in the military. I finally got in a position where I bought a small training helicopter and hired a guy to teach me. I had a helicopter up until just about six months ago, here in Springfield. I loved it. Flying a helicopter is more fun than anything, because an airplane pilot has three to four things they're dealing with at any given point in time, sometimes five. A helicopter pilot has anywhere from six to 12 that you're dealing with. So, you're truly flying all the time. You can never let go of it. You can never stop doing what you're doing. I was doing some work for Greene County and loved doing that, but they kind of slowed down on me, and they got a couple of drones, so I ended up selling a helicopter. I'll probably get one back again, because I still love doing that, but that's a very expensive hobby. I've just got to figure out when and where I want to do that again. But that's how I got into it. Once I got into it, I figured out I can make a decent living doing this. It's not hard, you know? It's hours and hours of boredom broken up by a few moments of sheer terror every so often. 

Rhett Roberson 

(Laughs) 

Mark Burgess 

You're basically just driving this ship from one end to the other, and at this point it's second nature to just jump in and go without thinking about it. 

Rhett Roberson 

I don't know if you remember this. You took me on my first plane ride ever when I was a kid.

Mark Burgess

Yeah, I do remember, but I don't remember what we took you in.

Rhett Roberson

Something like a little six-seater Cessna. I think we went to Kansas City. I don't know if this can be on the record, but you let me hold the controls for a moment. (Laughs) 

Mark Burgess 

Oh, yeah. 

Rhett Roberson 

I may have been 10 or 11 somewhere in there, but from that moment forward, I really got into flight simulators. On Microsoft's Flight Simulator I would fly all the planes. 

Mark Burgess 

Yeah. 

Rhett Roberson 

Then I got really into one game series that was focused on fighter pilot stuff.

Mark Burgess 

Which one was that? 

Rhett Roberson 

Ace Combat. 

Mark Burgess 

Oh yeah. I played all of those. Those are fun. If you go to Microsoft simulator now, you'll see my hanger and stuff on there. They've got the whole thing. I've got an eagle on the side of my hanger and an American flag on the top of a hanger, and it's all there. It's all coming from Google Earth. Somebody sent me a picture recently. To see my own hanger on the flight simulator is pretty cool. 

Rhett Roberson 

Oh yeah? Yeah, that's awesome. So, you know, it kind of a spurred me into a passion that never fully took off. Maybe one of these days I'll go get certified to fly. Who's the best boss or leader that you've had the opportunity to work with, and what made them so good? 

Mark Burgess 

Oh, man, I haven't worked for that many people. I mean, I've had bosses over the years, but that's a tough one. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but there isn't anybody I really cared that much for.

Rhett Roberson

(Laughs)

Mark Burgess

They just always seemed to have their own agenda in mind. I've had a few over the years, but most of the time I've worked for myself. I worked for Bass Pro Shops for a couple years. I had done flying for Johnny since way back when he didn't have any money, I was flying him around. He was always laid back, easy going, never demanding. He's probably the easiest going guy that I ever took a paycheck from. The only reason I quit that gig was because the schedule was just awful. You just never knew when you're going to go, when you're getting home, and it's hard on family life. But the equipment was great! The pay was great. He was easy. If I told him, "Hey, the weather sucks.", he would go, "Okay, let's go somewhere else." There was never any high pressure to go fly that way. When I was in Little Rock, the guys that I worked for down there were good because they were actual pilots, and they weren't just pencil pushers. They knew what we were up against, and those guys were good guys. One was an ex-Vietnam fighter pilot. I loved talking to him. They were good guys to work with and that was probably the most fun, because I was working for people who knew what we were doing every day. 

Rhett Roberson 

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

Mark Burgess 

A fighter pilot. I just knew I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, and I wanted to be a CIA agent. I wanted to do covert intelligence type stuff. 

Rhett Roberson 

And you may be. I don't know. 

Mark Burgess 

I can't tell you, I'd have to kill you. (Both laugh) 

Rhett Roberson 

What book has had the most significant impact on your life? 

Mark Burgess 

Probably way back in the day it would have been like a lot of these self-help books. Authors like Zig Ziglar and Norman Peele had a couple books out. The one that I remember that really stuck with me was called In Search of Excellence (https://a.co/d/ibDoFHb), and it was about different companies like Disney and how they got to that point and what they did. That was probably the most fascinating book I read, because he gave you real world examples, like one of Disney's things that came over to Fantastic Sam's was how you kept things hidden and you took on personas. If you walk into Disney Park, you don't see any plumbing or wires or gas pipes. It's all hidden. It's all out of your view. There's nothing there to make you think you're not in that world. There is a level of excellence to how they do things. 

Rhett Roberson 

What's the most important lesson you've learned so far in life? 

Mark Burgess 

Probably, just to calm down and chill in situations. Sometimes I pop too quickly when I see a situation and I want to jump in it and fix it. Sometimes I think it's better to sit back and analyze a little bit more. I'm impatient and I want to fix it right now, and sometimes that doesn't work, and you've just got to back up and say, "Maybe I just need to review this. Maybe I'm not getting the whole story." You tend to get one side of it, you don't get both sides of it. I've learned with employees, it's just easier if there's a conflict going on to bring both in at the same time, together. The stories are completely different when they're both looking at each other. When they're not looking at each other, you get two totally different stories of what's going on. "Well, maybe I didn't really say it that way. Maybe it really wasn't that way." You just get the real, true story and you just lay it on the table. You get over it quicker, and you don't spend 10 times as much time trying to hash out what you think the reality is. 

Rhett Roberson 

And the chances that you actually land on reality are slim. 

Mark Burgess 

Right, they're a lot higher if they're in the same room. 

Rhett Roberson 

What advice would you offer for young professionals entering the workforce? 

Mark Burgess 

Man, right now the younger generation, I don't mean to be a cynic. I don't really want to be a cynic, but we've raised a generation that wants the high pay, but they don't want to work. We've had to shift a lot with my younger pilots. And I get it, it makes more sense, because I spent my entire early career working 60 hours a week, never saw my daughter, I just thought that's how you had to do it. That's how you had to do it to make enough money to live, and that's not right either. Now we went the other way to where they want to work three days a week and be home the rest of time. I admire that, but I also have to be able to pay my bills as an employer. I'm dealing with pilots, who are highly professional individuals, and I've had to let a couple guys go because they were entitled. "I should be able to fly the left seat.", and I got "No, you really shouldn't even be here. We're hiring you at a level that we've never hired before. You should have 3000 hours before you're even setting this seat. You're just getting started." It's just this automatic entitlement to get to fly your $4 million piece of equipment when they're not qualified to at all, and that's dangerous. They've got to come to that level, and that's why we're seeing aviation accidents go through the roof. So, for younger people, I just say you have to have a realization here that you have to bring value to the table. You have to be qualified to do the job you're doing, and then don't be so demanding. Realize the company has to make a living or they can't pay you. You've got to at least bring enough time and energy and effort to the table to make you worthwhile, or they're going to find somebody else that will. 

Rhett Roberson 

I think we've grown all too accustomed to this kind of instant gratification. I need everything right now. To your point, especially in your world, can be incredibly unsafe. 

Mark Burgess 

Oh, yeah. 

Rhett Roberson 

There's a reason for these rules, but it seems like all the time we're finding ways to do things faster and get certifications quicker and easier. 

Mark Burgess 

All of it. Even with the computers we run in the cockpit. They tell you "Turn here, do this, go there, do this." Nobody's thinking anymore. So many times the guys get it mucked up. I've had to take the airplane and go, "This is wrong." They're going, "What do you mean?" It could be that the box is not programmed right or it's giving us a glitch. Things like that can cause a pilot to drive an airplane into the ground when the computers screaming at them to pull up. And they're like, "Well, the box says I should be at 3000 feet." Not comprehending that the terrain is 6000 feet. It's just, "Well, that's what the box says I should do." Same way we get in a car right now. You don't think about where you're going. Your phone talks to your car. Your car says, "Here's the direction to get you to work." and you go to work. Oh, wait a minute, it's Sunday, I don't have to work on Sunday. It's that disconnect. There's no common thought process. You drive into your office like, "Oh, what am I doing here? It's Sunday. I shouldn't be working on Sunday." Well, your computer told you so and with AI and stuff coming on...  

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, the way that we manage this AI world in the next 10 years is going to be very interesting. I think my plan for retirement is to have the dumbest phone I can get. 

Mark Burgess 

Exactly. (Laughs) Yeah, yeah. Somebody in a birthday card the other day said, "The happiest memories are of my childhood when I didn't wake up and check my phone." 

Rhett Roberson 

I'm right there. What are you most proud of? 

Mark Burgess 

You know, I'm not a guy to really sit back and say, "Ooh, I did this." I don't think about that. I think I'm probably most proud of the fact that I've got a child who seems to be fairly well grounded. Even though we went through divorce. I'm not happy the way it happened, but I think that's decent. Again, I'm such a perfectionist. I'm never completely happy with anything. It always could be better. That's my biggest fault too. I drive for perfection, but you never get perfection. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, and you stay busy driving for that. It's just interesting keeping up with you. We lose touch, we run back into each other, and we catch up. But lately when I started seeing the Lunkers thing, I thought that was pretty cool. I meant to ask you this sooner, but how did you get involved with that? 

Mark Burgess 

I saw it come up on SBJ or something, and I thought, "Arena football's coming to town, that's pretty cool." Of all the sports, football is one I will watch, I kind of enjoy that. I don't enjoy watching any other sport, but I saw it coming to town and thought that would be neat. Something else added to Springfield, something else added to our market, and something else to attract employees. All of that stuff has an economic impact. So, I reached out to them just to say, "Hey, who's doing this?" I was thinking that maybe I could get involved with them and be a sponsor or help them get it going. I had a hard time figuring out who was actually going to own it, and who was running it. As I dug into it, I found out they didn't have anybody. They were looking for an owner. I'm like, "Okay, I don't think I want to do this. It's probably more money than I want to spend." Well, it's really not. It's not Jerry Jones money, it's a lower end. So, I got a lot of questions answered on how it works, the employees, and the structure. They were like, "We're looking for different people. We're talking to guy in Cape Girardeau. We're talking to a guy here.", but they said we need somebody that can run it locally and has local ties. I guess at the time, I didn't have a lot going on, I thought, "Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. I'd kind of like to do that." So, I met with a guy up in Kansas City and bought the license rights. And again, there is a monetary thing to it. At some point in time, if this thing grows into a 12 or 14 team environment, I'm one of the first licensed owners. The licenses that are selling next year are already way higher than when I bought in. Just the natural increase of that brings the value of mine up. Right now, if I was to flip my license, I would make some decent money on it. It's not earth shattering money. But it was just something else to build and put together. I always wanted to produce a show. I always thought I wanted to produce a Christian concert or bring in entertainers. I looked into it a couple of times, couldn't ever make it happen. So, this let me do a couple things. This let me have a professional team that I could help mold and do things with, and it helped me to produce a show. That's what we did at halftime, we produced a show. We were directing it, running it, sound, lighting, people on the stage. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed doing it. It was a lot of work, but I really enjoyed the whole production aspect of it. It's been fun, and we had a lot of good feedback from it. We didn't do as well with the team this year as I wish we had.

Rhett Roberson 

I did one of these with Darrel Wilson. 

Mark Burgess 

Oh, okay. 

Rhett Roberson 

So, we were talking about it a little bit too. It was cool to see that partnership, especially for me personally. I know you, I know Darrel from working out at Prime. All in all, it is a cool project. I'm excited to have it here in town. 

Mark Burgess 

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. You guys have got to come out and watch a game. It's pretty cool. 

Rhett Roberson 

I'll definitely be at some games this next season. Final question, my favorite question, how do you hope the world is better for having you? 

Mark Burgess 

I hope I've been able to influence individuals to, not make them better, that's probably not the right way to say it, but to try to teach them some ethics. One of the things I do in all my businesses is if somebody gets upset or frustrated or angry or don't think they were taken care of, then I'll do whatever it takes to make it right. In any business I've ever had, you get sideways with people. I just get to the point where I ask, "What's going to make this right?" And I'll probably get to the point of saying, "Look, I'm just giving you all your money back. You don't think I did the right thing. We'll call it good, and I'll just write you a check and we'll go on." Because I'd rather go to sleep at night knowing I've done all I possibly can, than to think, "Well, I showed that guy! I jammed him for an extra five grand, and he could screw off." I'm not going to do that. A lot of times they end up staying and being a customer. You drive on. People just want to be heard.  A lot of people are living in miserable situations, and barely getting by. They just want to be heard, they just want to be valued. Everybody's got value of some kind, no matter what you think. They've all got value. So, if you can influence other people to realize that's how we do things, you can do it the right way, treat people the right way, and if you mess something up, fix it. Go back in and fix it. It's not really any fun to be right all the time if you're alienating other human beings in your sphere of influence. At the end of the day, you've got to feel like you've done all you can do to at least make that effort to make it better and make it right. 

Rhett Roberson 

Right. Yeah, that's good stuff! Well, Mark, I really appreciate the time. It's good to get caught up. Been too long. 

Mark Burgess 

Yeah, thanks! Good to talk to you.

Books:

Charter Pilot – Mark Burgess

In Search of Excellence – Robert Waterman Jr & Tom Peters