From my father: Do not quit. You've got to fight every minute of the day. He used to say, "Yeah the brick wall, you can go under it, you can go over it, you can go around it. You figure out a way." In business and in life, when I fought through a leukemia battle, that was the most valuable lesson.

We're here 25 years in business as an independent shop. We've weathered 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008. I'm proud of all of the longevity, in terms of people staying here. I'm proud of the work, and the culture, and how we've created a good environment.

John Wooden, the coach of UCLA. Just the concept of team first. Be the last guy off the boat. Eat last. Don't cut corners. He won the NCAA Championship 10 times. He made sure the players laced up correctly, they warmed up, and they were prepared. Preparation is everything for success.

As we've grown and matured, there's a culture of respect as opposed to "I'm the star!" Sometimes I'll ask who came up with a great idea, and generally the response is silence or "me AND my teammate." It's that kind of nature of people working together for a collective good.

There's a big D2C movement with people starting businesses and looking at the standard operating procedures of getting your product on retail shelves. Now they're going straight to the consumer. That's the same kind of flexibility of being a smaller company that has grown up very untraditionally.

Greta Thunberg. I see her in front of millions laying it out there. I think this is a tipping point in our history, where young people are going to take back the world and not let it go this time.

The value of grey. Some of us Texans say "we don't do nuance," but the ability to appreciate complexity and shading — to not see in black and white — is a strength in business and life. (Humor helps too.)

Read a lot, talk a lot. The industry seems to change minute-by-minute, so keep up with the news and the trades, but also mix and talk with your counterparts and competitors to challenge your own thinking.

People whose ideas keep on giving. People like Tim Berners-Lee (the World Wide Web), Malcolm McLean (shipping containers), or Hedy Lamarr (wireless communication), who cook up an innovation that then resonates down through the decades to literally change the world.