00:01.17 GBA Podcast Well, hello, Ed. Thanks for taking time to meet with us today. 00:06.06 Ed Alizadeh Hey, guy. Good to be with you. 00:08.01 GBA Podcast So on this podcast, we have Ed Elizadeh. Ed is former president of GBA, and he's also former CEO of Geotechnology. And currently, he's a senior consultant with UES. So Ed, you want to give us some introduction? 00:25.18 Ed Alizadeh Sure. Yeah, I'm at a leisure day. Happy to be with you. Guy and I have known each other for a while through GBA and and I'm excited to kind of share my story and hopefully there's a kernel of something useful in there for for listeners. 00:43.31 GBA Podcast Interesting. I skipped over that, but Ed and I were the young punks that weren't really sure why we were at the GBA meetings. I don't even know how many years that was go. Looking how do we fit in and here we are later looking back on all of that. Let's just dive right in. Ed, I've known you for a long time. You're a really interesting guy and I'd like to get you to share a little bit more about you your formative years. What were you like growing up? 01:08.88 Ed Alizadeh Yeah, I mean, I'm a kid, I grew up in St. Louis and had an older brother and a younger sister. and And, you know, kind of the most interesting part of my childhood, my parents immigrated to the United States in 1958 from Iran. And both my parents were engineers. 01:30.71 Ed Alizadeh Uh, my mom never practiced in the United States, but my dad built a career here and and actually started geotechnology. So it was my, my formative years were really, you know, different than a lot of our neighbors in the sense that my parents didn't really understand the United States sports thing. It was, uh, it was education, education, education, and kind of knowledge is power. That's kind of the way we were. 01:57.82 Ed Alizadeh We were taught, taught, we we all did play sports, but the focus of the household was education. And so we all ended up getting advanced degrees and having good careers. And I think a lot of that started with that foundation that was built for us to focus on learning. 02:21.41 GBA Podcast So a lot of studying going on in your household in the middle school years and high school. 02:27.19 Ed Alizadeh Well, I mean, to be honest, we were all pretty good students and, and know, the, the gene pool treated us well, I guess. And I think the school part came pretty easy for the most part. But, but the, the real driver was, you know, I remember as a kid, you know, I'd come home and I'd have a, you know, a 95% on a test or something. And the question from my dad would be, 02:54.74 Ed Alizadeh Why'd you miss the one? What'd you miss? you And one time I bitched about it you he said, know I'm not measuring you against other people in the class. I'm measuring you against what I know your potential is. And it always stuck with me because I think it just, there's ah ah a balance that, 03:14.72 Ed Alizadeh has to be struck between you being supportive and encouraging people to be successful and rewarding every small success with really pushing and driving somebody to achieve maybe more than they think they can. 03:34.01 GBA Podcast It seems like now you look back and you're happy for that, but how did you feel about it at the time? 03:39.21 Ed Alizadeh I hated it at the time, honestly. and My dad and I had quite a few rubs over that you over the years. couple times I remember telling him he deserved to have a drug addict for his son you then he would see how good he had it, kind of a thing. you Looking back on it, you realize how much it helped me. but at the time, it was kind of, I think tough love is hard to recognize at a kid, or it was for me anyway. 04:06.00 GBA Podcast Sure. Well, new parents have to figure out how to do parenting. It's not easy. So what about outside of school? What you like? What were you doing? do and Did what was your first job? 04:18.26 Ed Alizadeh Well, I, my first jobs were, I kind of did three different things as a kid had grown. You know, I was a lifeguard in when I was like 16 to 18, I life guarded, I was an umpire in baseball. I did a lot of little league umpiring. and even in my first professional job, I ended up doing high school umpiring. So I was, I an umpire. And then I had a little lawn mowing. 04:41.25 Ed Alizadeh deal with two other neighbor friends of mine that we would mow people's lawns. So I had a ethic, but it was I loved being outdoors. I loved sports. So I tried to do things that were outside and related to sports. 04:58.84 GBA Podcast Yeah, I didn't know you then, but I do know you as a person who's always been physically fit and very active. I know you're an active skier, so that started in in your youth. You had opportunities to do that. Sounds like you were swimming and playing baseball as well if you took up those jobs. 05:13.56 Ed Alizadeh Yeah, I didn't actually become a skier until I graduated from college and my first job took me out to the West that's when I started skiing. But yeah, and then growing up, I was like most kids playing, you traditional sports, football, baseball, basketball. And and really, that's actually tied heavily into my, my, my career as well, because I loved the physics of sports. You know, I mean, in addition, I love math period, but the physics side of sports is what really is I got older, I got really interested in, which is obviously just math and sciences is what drives sports too. And when you start looking at the trajectory of a home runner, or, you know, how a quarterback leads a receiver, you know, lots of different 06:08.20 Ed Alizadeh physics involved in sports. 06:11.22 GBA Podcast So good and school, good athlete. did you feel like you fit in? Child of immigrant parents? did there some awkward moments there along the way? 06:19.32 Ed Alizadeh Honestly, I was pretty oblivious to it always felt a little self-conscious because my parents had significant accents. But was a senior in high school in 1979 when when the Iranian revolution happened and and the hostages were taken in Iran. And, you know, we had quite a rude awakening to, how people shifted towards us. And I had some negative experiences at school in my, and our family had some negative experiences at our house, you know, some things that were done at our house that were 06:56.82 Ed Alizadeh a very eye opening. We were living in the suburbs you know, in St. Louis and that stuck with me forever, you know, kind of how people shifted. 07:05.10 GBA Podcast I can imagine that must have been a very difficult time. So that's a pretty good segue into your senior in high school. And how did you choose a college and a field of study? And what was going in your mind there in terms of long-term? Your parents were engineers, so I assume that influenced you. 07:23.17 Ed Alizadeh Yeah, it I was good at school. I liked a lot of different things, but it I really came down to either being a doctor or an engineer. And a lot of that is cultural influence. My parents, their Iranian friends would come over. They were all either engineers or doctors. was a couple of lawyers, but they were this idea of and one of the learned professions was implanted pretty early in my life. 07:51.00 Ed Alizadeh And so I ended up going the engineering route and my dad was a Structural geotechnical engineer and I didn't really understand what he did that well and didn't really want to follow in his footsteps necessarily and so I ended up going petroleum engineering route ended up at the University of Tulsa and which is a good school for that and which had a lot of connections to the St. Louis area. So I ended up getting my bachelor's in petroleum engineering there. And and then later on as an adult got got my law degree studying at night here in St. Louis. 08:30.14 GBA Podcast I want to come back to your law degree in a minute, but interesting, um know, coming from parents that, grew up somewhere else internationally. It's an interesting thing. I think engineering is perhaps perceived better overseas than maybe sometimes in the United States where it feels like sometimes it's overlooked. Do do you have that perception or is that just me? 08:53.52 Ed Alizadeh No, I had that perception and it was it was explicitly stated to me, you as a kid that, you my parents had had that engineering profession was viewed very, very highly and and where they came from, as well as my parents had a lot of connections to France. 09:14.73 Ed Alizadeh some of the relatives that moved to France and to Sweden you know was it stated to us as kids that that engineering was a High calling, you something that was very well respected My brother actually is an orthodontist, but he got his undergrad degree in civil engineering and And always knew he wanted to be an orthodontist, but just because of that upbringing we had and if you're going to fall back on something, civil engineering is a noble profession. It was the way it was viewed in our house. 09:46.08 GBA Podcast It sure is. I mean, count on what engineers do all the time, but it's become routine. Anyway, we'll get off our soap boxes on that and and to you, Ed. So you graduated with a degree in Petroleum Engineering. And I know you went to law school, but that was later in your career. were your first job prospects and and what were you thinking at that point in your life? 10:07.55 Ed Alizadeh Well, my first job, I had worked a summer for Amaco and that that summer of my junior year between junior and senior year, and they offered me a job at the end of the summer and I accepted to start for them in the the next spring. So I didn't even go through the interview process in the fall because I already had a job. 10:27.78 Ed Alizadeh And then in in in December of that year, this is 1983, December 1983 and there's a recession and the oil business is not doing well, they call and rescind my job offer. 10:41.38 Ed Alizadeh so then I scrambled to get a job with Schlumberger and I worked in Fort Morgan, Colorado for Schlumberger for a little bit and I really did not like that job and Amico ended up hiring 10:52.89 Ed Alizadeh and and called me back. And so I ended up starting with Amaco in January of 85, basically a six month delay from when I was supposed to. And they put me in Farmington, New Mexico, which is a town I had never heard of before moving there. 11:04.36 GBA Podcast Uh oh. 11:08.56 Ed Alizadeh And spent four and a half years in Farmington, New Mexico in the oil industry. And I learned a ton during that period. It the petroleum industry was really a good place for people to learn their tolerance for small mistakes or whatever is high as they're trying to develop an engineer. So it it was a great experience for me. 11:33.62 GBA Podcast What kind of tasks were you assigned? 11:36.49 Ed Alizadeh I was a production engineer, so I was assigned to some gas fields, primarily gas fields in New Mexico and Arizona. 11:48.90 Ed Alizadeh and Nevada, and we were actually in Southern Colorado and in New Mexico, we were fracking back then. 11:56.75 GBA Podcast Hmm. 11:57.24 Ed Alizadeh We were at the early days of fracking, but with much less technology than is available now. And and so my job was to take over a well that had already been drilled and tried to increase the production of that well. 12:12.30 Ed Alizadeh So I worked a lot with the people in the field. as well as with engineers in the office as we tried to come up with little schemes. to cause if you could Those wells out there, if you produced you know an extra 100 MCF a day or something, it made a big difference in the financial results for that well. 12:32.51 GBA Podcast Paid for your salary, I assume. Plus some. 12:35.47 Ed Alizadeh i mean yeah They paid well in the petroleum industry for sure, but the expectations were high too. It's kind of a 24-7 business. and the oil industry because the wells are always going and drilling doesn't stop you know drilling as a 24-7 operation. So it was a lot of time where you'd spend a weekend out on a rig or something. But to me, it was a very exciting period. 13:02.99 GBA Podcast So how did you go from petroleum engineer to geotechnology? Can you map that course for us? 13:10.80 Ed Alizadeh Well, my dad had started geotechnology in 84, which is the year I graduated from college. And kind of from day one, you know we we back in the day, you may have been the same. you know We talked to our parents once a week, you on Sunday night or something, when the phone rates were cheaper. And we'd get off the phone. And I was married at the time. My wife's like, 13:34.47 Ed Alizadeh It sounds like a recruiting call. You know, when you're talking to your dad, my dad was constantly on me to come back and work, get a master's and come back to work. And, and I never really wanted to work for him for one thing. And I didn't want to come back to st. Louis, but you know, times changed and, wife and I were both from st. Louis and opportunity came to move back. We were interested in having kids. Geotechnology was starting to get into the environmental business. 14:01.47 Ed Alizadeh And I did have an interest in that. And so I came back and I took a voluntary severance from Amaco. They were downsizing. I took a voluntary severance and and and moved to St. Louis and got involved in our environmental practice at Geotechnology, which at that time was heavily around petroleum products. We were doing a lot of underground storage tank cleanups. We were doing remedial remedial projects around oil and gas releases, basically. 14:33.82 GBA Podcast How much of the business was split between we conventionally called environmental services and geotechnical at that time? 14:41.48 Ed Alizadeh Well, it was almost all geotechnical. When I came in, where just had a couple of people doing environmental, but we grew it quite a bit to where, you know by 1994, environmental was about half of our business. 14:56.68 Ed Alizadeh And we were doing work. Our primary clients were the big mobile shell and Texco. And and I related really well with those folks and those companies and and we had some really good success in that market for 15 years or so. 15:17.60 Ed Alizadeh Yeah. a, I understood kind of to how the project managers and those organizations, their responsibilities laid out and what was important. and and And a lot of times it was the technical was important, but what was more important was the organization of the data such that they could report well to their supervisors and show progress. 15:42.94 Ed Alizadeh in a way that would allow them to get rewarded by their organization. It was a really, early lesson in understanding what your client's motivations are. And a lot of times we tend to focus on the technical work and and what we know to be important on a job, but understanding what is really the most important drivers for the client is is is a very important part of the process. 16:11.46 GBA Podcast Great insights on how to differentiate there. So here you are. You come back home again. You help build the business in significant ways in relatively short time. All smooth sailing. 16:25.86 Ed Alizadeh No, there's never all smooth sailing, right? No, I had a lot of challenges, but i I was very fortunate. We did well. in the environmental business and I really enjoyed it. And, came in 89 and then in 91, I started going to night law school and we'd had our first child in 1990. So, you my wife was a saint is the same, you know, and taken, she ran the household old and we had a kid halfway through law school. So I was, working 40 to 50 hours a week and I was going to law school three nights a week. 17:00.05 Ed Alizadeh And, you know, there's a ton of reading in law school. And so it it was a busy, busy time. but we, we were doing well and, and the business continued to grow and, and actually I became president of the company in 96 in January of 96. 17:18.80 Ed Alizadeh And then in February of 96, our number two guy got diagnosed with leukemia, 46 years 17:24.92 Ed Alizadeh Ron Ackelkamp, who was a great great person and he ended up dying later that year. 17:29.05 GBA Podcast Hmm. 17:30.75 Ed Alizadeh And so we we faced a lot of challenges. you know He led our engineering group. So we faced a lot of challenges during that year and the following year, but we got through that and then went on a really high growth pattern starting in 1999. 17:58.53 Ed Alizadeh um um Again, kind of going back to that whole education, you know, the the upbringing, you know, was that knowledge is power. And I decided that I, an engineer and I like technical stuff, but I really liked the management side of it better. 18:12.07 GBA Podcast become 18:12.77 Ed Alizadeh And I liked the problem solving aspects more than the technical engineering aspects. 18:13.44 GBA Podcast just making your 18:20.42 Ed Alizadeh And so I was either going to get my MBA or law degree and I ended up deciding to get the law. degree and because I was on the environmental side of the business and it was all driven by regulations and then laws. So it actually doing that did help me in the environmental practice as well, because I took all the environmental law classes that were available in law school. And then I took all the tax law classes and things that helped us from the business standpoint, contract law and all that. 18:50.34 GBA Podcast overall you think there is a good roi on your 18:50.49 Ed Alizadeh well 18:53.06 GBA Podcast financial but also your time investment to go back and get a law degree in your career 18:58.19 Ed Alizadeh I do for me, it was intellectually stimulating, you know, I changed gears to go to class and I really enjoyed the class time you know, waking up at five on the weekends to read before my kids got up was was not the best but back, you know, going through it, at the end of the first year, I thought about quitting. It's like, you is this really worth my investment of time here? And the end of the day, I'm glad I ended up sticking with it and going through the full five-year program doing that at night. And it was a good sense of achievement and accomplishment, but also has helped us every week in the operation of our business. There's been something where my background has been helpful. 19:44.77 GBA Podcast Do you have challenges, frictions, working with your father in the business or was that probably seamless? 19:51.81 Ed Alizadeh It actually went a lot better than I would have thought. And I have to give him a ton of credit for when he named me the president. He sat me down and basically said, I don't want you to do things the way you think I wanted, want you to do them or the way I did them. You're being put in this job because, you you have skills, you got good judgment, blah, blah, blah. And and you're going to take the business in a different direction than I did and and should. 20:19.99 Ed Alizadeh and And then he said, and I'm going on vacation for the whole month of January. So people have to come to you. And then he disappeared. And he really empowered me to be able to make some changes and to try different things without looking over my shoulder. 20:41.03 GBA Podcast That's terrific. So walk us through that time from your president, the firm's growing, you went on a growth trajectory after some personal tragedy in the business. I'm going to say the early 2000s, correct? Till later when your firm transitioned. 20:59.07 Ed Alizadeh Yeah, so the business did well. we we We did a number of strategic planning sessions every three years or so. and I really am a big believer in that. And that helped us achieve different growth platforms. And we expanded geographically. We did a couple acquisitions some really great caliber firms that brought great caliber people to our company and expanded us to the point where we were operating in 10 states. and we We were doing internal ownership transition through that. and It was frankly you know moving slowly and the company continued to do well. so The value of the stock was going up even though it was heavily discounted from fair market value. 21:48.02 Ed Alizadeh We always had been not interested when people were calling about acquiring us. No, no interest, no interest, never talked to anybody. But then we got to a point where we were trying to do some acquisitions and the multiples were getting so high, the expectations of the sellers. 22:05.96 Ed Alizadeh that it was hard for us to put all that money at risk of our own money. And at the same time as our transition was going slow and concerns about whether the next, you know, we'd be able to do an internal transition. And so then our board decided maybe we will listen to what's out there a little bit and ended up, 2021 deciding to, 22:32.90 Ed Alizadeh sell the company to what was then Universal Engineering Sciences and we're now going as UES. 22:40.92 GBA Podcast So how was that sale perceived by your staff? Like how do people look back on that now a couple of years later? 23:29.84 Ed Alizadeh and 23:30.93 Ed Alizadeh So I think it was generally positive, generally understood why we did it. But yeah, there were certainly folks who didn't like it. And we lost a couple of people right away that basically said I'd never wanted to work for a big company and and moved on. But the message that we put out there was give it a year. The same people are running the company. We were fortunate, we were the region, there was nothing in the Midwest. So I was the regional president from day one. 23:59.74 Ed Alizadeh So everybody was essentially working for the same people. There was very little change. And so over the course of that year, we worked to try to talk about the vision for UES and where the company's going and how employees have opportunities in this bigger company, which I firmly believe in. So it's been a good transition, I'd be lying if I said there weren't any challenges along the way. 24:27.20 GBA Podcast Sure. There's always challenges, but interesting Ed, you seem pretty engaged still in the business and when we've talked offline. seem to have some enthusiasm and some flexibility to sort of to pursue the things that are interesting. Tell tell about your role over the last couple of years after the transition. 24:42.90 Ed Alizadeh Yeah. So I, we sold in June of 21 and I was the regional president for the next two years. And one of the things that are two and a half years, one of the things that we talked about was was, this is going to allow us to do some things that we wanted to do, but faster. And, we did end up in those two and a half years when I was regional president, we acquired two other companies that I had talked to in the past. We were great companies and we're really excited to have them on GSI based out of Wichita and then grubs. 25:11.43 Ed Alizadeh out of Little Rock, Arkansas. So those are both part of the UES Midwest region now. And then subsequently this year we acquired CSI out of Lexington, Kentucky to be part of the Midwest region. So I am excited about growing and building things. And I think that we've had this opportunity with the backing of, you know, bigger dollars than we had available ourselves to go out and do some things that are exciting. And so I am still engaged. I'm still longer running the business on the Midwest that got turned over to another GBA member, Pat Donovan, who's been very active in GBA. He's now our regional president and doing a great job. And I'm more involved in some national things that we're doing, ah ah including some M and&A work, which which which I enjoy. 26:02.39 Ed Alizadeh I'm kind of as long as it's still fun. I like the people I work with. I believe in what we're doing. I'm still relatively young. you I'm 62 years old. I'm not ready to quit. 26:14.27 GBA Podcast yeah Your enthusiasm comes through, Ed, and I think that's just a terrific story. I'd love to keep chatting with you about your personal history, but I want to kind of shift gears a little bit towards the bigger picture of geo-professionalism and you where we are as a profession and where we're going. And I think you're in a great position to offer some perspective here because of you the story you just told. 26:39.08 GBA Podcast so does our profession look like going forward? What do you see as the opportunities and challenges for JIA professionals? 26:46.97 Ed Alizadeh Well, I think that it's a great question. And and actually, I've been participating through the ACEC Research Institute in this kind of firm of the future project. we We're really, there's about 40 or 50 folks from around the country trying, and a number of GBA members are involved in this, and trying to look at what is the firm of the future? What's what the firm's gonna look like in 2030, in 2035? 27:17.83 Ed Alizadeh And I think the two biggest things, probably three big things, but the two biggest things that come out are technology and workforce. And and are those going to influence and evolve in our businesses? And I think the third one is sustainability. And that's already here, really. and that's It's going to evolve, certainly, but there's lots of different things going on. And from a technology standpoint, everybody talks about AI, but that's just a component of ah ah a lot of different things that are happening in technology that are, in most cases, boosting productivity. And so how how that going to influence things? And then what is the workforce of the future going to look like? And that's some combination of 28:08.75 Ed Alizadeh you know, are we going to be able, to know we're not going to produce enough engineers to continue to operate the way we do now. So how is that going to evolve? Are engineers going to be more um ah leaders that are then cascading information down and and working more with technicians and and folks who have education, but not necessarily going through a full engineering program? 28:35.53 Ed Alizadeh And how will registration change over time? you Will that look different? you think about kind the YouTube generation, know how many times have you done a home project and you go to YouTube, you watch you know some videos, try to get your head around exactly how to do things. And think there's this mentality that you know, anybody can solve problems if, you share some certain basic information with them. And obviously we know that engineering is requires judgment and that, and there is a lot more to it than watching a YouTube, but that mentality and is going to influence, I think how, how work gets done in, in five, 10 years from now. 29:21.08 GBA Podcast Interesting. So I think I know the answer, but why do you think that we won't have the workforce that we've had in the past? 29:29.47 Ed Alizadeh I mean, I think the data shows it already. We're not producing enough engineers today for what we need. And enrollments in colleges, in most cases, is dipping. I know there's exceptions to that. And I think that we we could debate for a whole other hour and why this is true. 29:55.48 Ed Alizadeh people can get easier degrees to to achieve and make more money. And folks who are primarily motivated by money, if you're good at math, you might go more towards statistics, you might go towards finance or something where you they perceive there's more opportunity to make large sums of money. Whereas in the engineering field, we mostly are driven by folks who are have you know this sense that we're we're doing something good for society, we like that the technical challenges, we like the constructing things and being involved in construction. And I just think that we're seeing less and less folks go that direction. 30:43.90 GBA Podcast So where do you think the opportunity is going forward? Like if you're a younger person in your career, what do you think? you How should you be positioning for this future? 30:53.68 Ed Alizadeh I think it's about that higher purpose, kind the impact of what we do. I think a lot of of this younger generation has it right. you know they They're interested in doing something that's important. Sure, everybody wants to make money, but if we can steer more towards the importance of what we're doing, the impact it has on society, how each project that we do, you know, when we're working on a water treatment planet, we're working on a bridge or we're working on, you know, a sewer tunnel or whatever it is, that the impact that has on our people's daily lives and and how important our work is. You know, our current CEO has talked about, we y all 31:45.20 Ed Alizadeh listen to some podcasts and stuff around the the the tragedy that happened in Turkey during the earthquakes last year and this failure in doing the proper inspection work and cutting corners on the inspection that resulted in buildings collapsing, killing people, whereas a properly constructed building next door remains standing and the people that are in that building are protected, you know, 32:14.40 Ed Alizadeh That literally is the kind of work that we're doing is work that in many cases will control life and death, you know? 32:24.57 GBA Podcast That's a great point because it's so routine, they didn't just expect that. And it's these exceptional things like the Turkish earthquake and some other examples I can think of that really demonstrate that impact. But it's so uncommon that I think people just take it for granted. 32:43.32 Ed Alizadeh Yeah. 32:44.84 GBA Podcast So will our profession look dramatically different in 10 years, Ed? 32:50.83 Ed Alizadeh I think it will, guy but but i have to say I have to admit that I thought it would have by now also transformed more than it has. you know If you think about the way we collect samples, 33:02.48 Ed Alizadeh lot of things we do in geotechnical engineering are done the same way they were done when I came into the business. yeah I used to keep on my bulletin board potential disruptors to the business and um I always thought that remote sensing and non-destructive testing would have eliminated a lot of the work that we do by now, but it hasn't. 33:30.26 Ed Alizadeh It's surprising to me that to this day that know concrete cylinders are still done the way they are and that we still are collecting samples the way we do with split spoons and hollow stem augers and that kind of 33:46.77 Ed Alizadeh So I would it would be look a lot different in 10 years, but I wouldn't bet my life savings on it. 33:48.18 GBA Podcast It doesn't high-tech, does it? 33:56.22 GBA Podcast One of our prior interviews talked about There's always change, but in a lot of ways it doesn't really feel like things have changed as much as we expect them to. change is right in your face, but it still feels similar. 34:09.58 Ed Alizadeh Yeah, I mean, we certainly can look at things where we're um we process the data much, much faster, much more efficiently. you know When you look at how we do things in the lab and we even put our deliverables out, you know we're obviously much more efficient in a lot of different ways. 34:27.88 Ed Alizadeh But then you are still major parts of our business that look exactly the same as they did 35 years ago. 34:35.27 GBA Podcast True, true that. All right, Ed, I'd like to switch to the final phase of our discussion, which is the speed round. I'm going to ask you a few questions in quick succession and you just tell me what you're thinking. so One of the things I love about GBA is there's so many smart people like yourself. and Most smart people like to get smarter and read. And I just get some great tips on books. So what's your favorite book? What are you reading now? Or what are your favorite all-time books that you like to share? 35:07.65 Ed Alizadeh I'm kind of a history buff you know and that's outside for for pleasure reading, I do a lot of historical fiction ors or history type books. you know So actually right now I'm reading a book about Churchill, 35:25.08 Ed Alizadeh during the Battle of Britain during during World War II. And I'm trying to look up the author, Eric Larson, The Splendid and the Vile. 35:33.52 GBA Podcast Okay. 35:36.47 Ed Alizadeh It's a very interesting read. And I've read a great book about Churchill and Roosevelt and their relationship. But my favorite business book of all time is First Break All the Rules. 35:49.35 Ed Alizadeh And I've shared this with a lot of folks that work at our place and I think it's just a really good book about the understanding how every person has a little bit different motivation and you have to treat everybody differently. This notion that everybody should be treated the same as is I've always felt like it's 100% wrong. You have to treat everybody differently. You have to try to understand, you know go back to Covey, seek first to understand what motivates guy is going to be different than what motivates Ed and how to talk to guy is going to be different than how to talk to Ed. And so I think that that's really my favorite business book and one that I would recommend. 36:34.95 GBA Podcast Yeah, that's a great, great lesson there. And it's a hard lesson to learn. It takes a long time to figure that out. Maybe for some people it's easier, but me, I struggled. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. Overall, Ed, like what's your optimism index? If you said one was low and five was the highest, how do you how feel about the future of your professionals? 36:57.42 Ed Alizadeh I would be four to five. I'm a glass half full person, generally speaking, and I i believe that it's all about the people. and The people that we interact with in this business or are 99% high quality folks who who care about what they're doing. And so I'm optimistic about the business and where it's going. And I hope that we continue to push for the like technology advances, but also for 37:38.51 Ed Alizadeh personal advances help people build their careers in this that's That's really what's most important to me now and at this point in my career is is to see and help other people build their careers. 37:52.35 GBA Podcast That's great. A lot of optimism and amongst the senior leadership, so it's good to hear that. So looking at your your career as ah ah in its totality, Ed, what what do you think your biggest impact has been? 38:07.87 Ed Alizadeh I think the biggest impact is helping people grow and develop. have two daughters um um you know that are adults at this point. I'm super proud of what they're doing. One's an engineer and one's in marketing. 38:21.44 Ed Alizadeh and they're you know they're My wife and I, our responsibility was to do develop them as responsible citizens. think that we've done that. and then And then just providing opportunity to young people in our business and in our profession. is As I see people that work it with us that I work with to this day who have worked here their whole career, it's that's really rewarding to to see people like that grow in advance and in their profession is, I think, what I feel most proud of in my professional career. 39:01.11 GBA Podcast That's inspirational. It's really good to hear where you talk to like about that. So Speedround, if you had to do it all over again, you know looking back at that career arc, what would you have changed? 39:17.24 Ed Alizadeh the flip side of this question is kind of like, what's on your bucket list? And I've always said, I don't have anything on my bucket list. I, you know, opportunity to come up and yeah and you try to seize them. And I think to me, the flip side of that is is true also is that like, everything that happens helps to shape who I have become. ah you know and ah ah And so to say what I wanted to do something different, 39:44.01 Ed Alizadeh No, because I feel like it helped to shape me to where I am. you know Do I have regrets? Sure. i you Everybody has regrets, I think, at some point along the way. But every one of those experiences was an opportunity to that I learned from. 40:01.63 Ed Alizadeh you know I don't think I would change anything. 40:05.58 GBA Podcast I know it's a hard question, but I'm going to continue to put you on the spot and push you for something. 40:11.12 Ed Alizadeh You're going to push me for something. 40:12.64 GBA Podcast Yeah. I mean, come on, everybody to change something, right? And I understand that it's the totality of roads that lead to now, which is, you know, something you're very satisfied with, but I think it's a listener perspective. 40:22.68 Ed Alizadeh yeah. Well, I guess, 40:24.71 GBA Podcast We want to hear, we want to hear something. 40:30.77 Ed Alizadeh yeah, I I don't have anything like, guy I'm sorry. I don't, I'm not. i you know I made mistakes for sure. I've shared a story with people in our company about you know bad decisions I've made along the way. and But again, the that the whole the idea that a bad decision is something you need to change I think is ah ah and is kind of flawed because 40:59.02 Ed Alizadeh If you take the mindset that we're never gonna make a mistake, we're never gonna do something we wish we had done differently, then we're never gonna get anywhere. you know Nothing is gained without taking a risk along the way. 41:06.75 GBA Podcast That's fair. Maybe I'll change the listeners. 41:10.72 Ed Alizadeh So I don't know, I'm don't know, I'm i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm going to persist in not answering that question. 41:15.14 GBA Podcast I tried. I tried going forward. I think I'll change it. Yeah, I think going forward, I'll change it to what do you regret? Um, okay. The last question, Ed. 41:25.92 GBA Podcast Um, do you have a single piece of advice for those entering the profession you'd like to share? 41:31.88 Ed Alizadeh Say yes more often. I think there's lots of, in our profession, there's lots of opportunities that come up. or And and when you're when the supervisor or somebody comes and says, hey, can you tackle this? you know First instinct should be say yes. Every one of those is an opportunity to grow and learn something. 41:59.96 Ed Alizadeh And it also is that super valuable to the company. When you are somebody who will do that, it's gonna help you grow and it's gonna help the company grow. And I'm gonna give a shout out at the end here to one of my partners in our business, Dale Smith, who is just a good friend and has been a great partner. 42:22.86 Ed Alizadeh and Dale took on four or five different roles for us. Every time was was a shift in his career. of not necessarily what he He certainly hadn't asked for it, but every time he said yes and he moved his family once for us and I think he would sit here today and tell you that that was rewarding for him too. 42:44.76 Ed Alizadeh and and made him a better person, made him a better professional, and it helped the company tremendously. I just say yes. 42:54.25 GBA Podcast It's a great piece of advice. So Ed, I think that pretty much ends our time here. Actually, I could go on for for much longer because I find you tremendously interesting and really appreciate what you were able to share with us today. I'll give you the floor for a minute. Anything you want to say to wrap up this podcast? 43:11.99 Ed Alizadeh No, I think this is really cool. It was fun to do, Guy. I appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you at the next GBA meeting in the spring and appreciate you doing this and sharing these stories with ah ah in our profession. 43:28.56 GBA Podcast All right, well, thank you, Ed. That's going to be a wrap. Thank you, Ed Elise Day. You've been a great supporter of GBA throughout your career. Terrific guy to get to know. And I think you've really been impactful in our profession. So thank you for being with us today. 43:43.48 Ed Alizadeh Thank you, guys.