Brian Flis Podcast Transcript
Brian Flis joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Corzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Brian Flis. Brian Flis is the co founder and chief development officer at LF Bioenergy, a company co founder with a passion for driving operational improvements and transformational change. Brian draws from more than 20 years of multidisciplinary military and private sector experience.
He currently oversees multiple company functions and spearheads the proprietary operational excellence management system. or known as OEMS. He is also responsible for ensuring regulatory and permitting compliance. Brian’s 2016 book, Never and Never Again, Lessons from the Frontline, cemented his reputation as a noted leadership expert.
Before joining the private sector, Brian held multiple management and engineering positions within the U. S. Air Force. His academic career includes a B. S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U. S. Air Force Academy, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and an M. B. A. from The Ohio State University.
Well, good afternoon, Brian. Welcome to the show.
Brian Flis: Thank you, Brian, for having me on the show. Happy to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate it. Appreciate you traversing just a state over. You’re in Colorado and I’m in Kansas. Appreciate all the weather been coming our way. I don’t know if Colorado’s necessarily responsible, but we always appreciate blizzards for Kansas.
Brian Flis: Colorado’s normally responsible. So yeah, you can blame us.
Brian Thomas: Well, thank you, Brian, jumping into your first question. Can you share your journey from serving in the United States Air Force to co founding LF Bioenergy? What motivated this significant career shift?
Brian Flis: Yeah, so I’ll talk a little bit about my history there.
So I was a mechanical engineer at the Air Force Academy. Got out, worked for 6 years in the Air Force during that time, did a master’s in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech, and then also one from Ohio State, an MBA actually, and then turn that into a career in industry for 4 years. So I worked with Eden Corporation for 4 years, started as a financial analyst, ended up running their supplier quality group for the electrical sector there.
During that time, really had a passion for getting into the entrepreneurial world and starting my own businesses. Got some advice to, Hey, you know, maybe go into consulting first and test that out. You know, look at some different industries. So I did that in 2009, 2010 was one of the first employees at Wilson Paramore company, boutique consulting firm in Dallas.
They’re built in oil and gas practice. They’re focused around operational excellence. Did that for 7 years, got asked to do the same thing with another company in Houston called Endeavor Management, and then finally went out on my own and built my own consulting firm called Lavister. And that’s really what led me into the Renewable Natural Gas space.
We started helping smaller developers solve some issues they were having and said, hey, we can put together a better team in this space. So in 2020, I started LF Bioenergy with a couple of other partners and. We’ve grown that business over the last four years. We’re up to 40 plus people. Now we’ve got five operational projects.
So yeah, it’s, it’s been a journey along the way. I’ve enjoyed building the consulting businesses, have been involved with other startups as well. And, you know, the entrepreneurial space is really my passion and LF has been the most successful one so far.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate that. Really do. I know you’ve got a lot of things that you can attribute that to, obviously your success in the United States military as being one of those.
You’ve got a myriad of background when it comes to some of the consultancies that you’ve developed and worked with as well. So I appreciate you sharing the back story to LF Bioenergy. Brian, your 2016 book, Never and Never Again Lessons from the Frontline has been influential in leadership circles. What are some core lessons from the book that leaders today should prioritize?
Brian Flis: That book was really a compilation of a lot of the work I did in the consulting space over the 10 years that I was in it. The title was really influenced by a client we had that said, Bad things should never happen, and if they do, they should never happen again. So, we took a lot of those lessons that we learned over those 10 years, distilled those down into that book.
I would say three key messages there are reducing complexity, aligning behaviors, and as a leader, developing the best in your people. So reducing complexity, the first one there, it’s simplifying goals and responsibilities, simplifying processes and procedures that that’s so key. Complexity is the enemy of excellence.
On the behaviors front, it’s aligning those behaviors. To match the goals of the organization. We focused on 5 key behaviors. So having a questioning attitude, distilling that into the organization, having all your employees feel comfortable to ask our questions, even of the top leadership having formality.
So following procedures in the organization is another key behavior. Obviously, integrity, you know, doing what you say, even when nobody else is looking, that’s a core behavior. I think in a lot of organizations as well. Engagement. So sometimes we call that team backup. So looking over everybody’s shoulder, helping each other out, making sure nobody’s missing anything, and then creating a learning organization.
So people need to understand not only their job, but also the jobs of those around them. And then really focusing leaders on just bringing out the best that they’ve gotten people. So transitioning from a mindset of controlling. So ordering and judging people to more of a collaboration mindset, listening and responding.
I think listening for a leader is 1 of the best skill sets. That she can have, you know, growing a business depends on people. It depends on your people being successful and growing in their careers and their roles. Being a partner rather than a boss is so critical as well. And then just prioritizing time for your employees and making sure there’s open communication in the organization.
And. Again, it goes back to that engagement, you know, behavior, making sure you’ve got a team oriented environment and you know, people are learning from each other and you’re growing as an organization. Those three are really kind of the key lessons from that book in my mind.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate that.
You know, if you can knock down all those obstacles for your employees, you know, you talked about reducing that complexity, makes it a whole lot better. But I can tell you certainly thrive in that environment, building and fostering a team culture there where people want to jump in and help move the mission forward.
So I appreciate that. And Brian, LF Bioenergy focuses on converting cow manure into pipeline quality natural gas, providing farmers with additional revenue streams. While reducing greenhouse gas emissions, what challenges and opportunities have you encountered in promoting the sustainable energy solution?
Brian Flis: Yeah, so it’s been really fun creating this business. I’ll focus on the opportunity side first. What I’m excited about this business is it gives farmers, which are so important to our economy and our food system, it gives them an additional revenue stream for what we’re doing. In addition to that, we’re able to take a waste product, you know, the cow manure that’s normally just.
Venting off to the atmosphere in the form of methane and methane is a greenhouse gas contributor. We can capture that, turn that waste into something that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. provides the farmer additional revenue stream, helps them, you know, keep their family farm going for years to come.
We’ve got one farm that we’re working with that we have a project that’s going to operation here next month or actually this month that the farm’s been in their family for 150 years since 1850. So being able to help them preserve that legacy for their family, provide food for the country is one of the highlights of why we do this.
On the challenges side, these projects are not cheap. So there’s a lot of CapEx. Capital expenditure, there’s market uncertainty. There are credits that we need to, to drive this business forward environmental credits that pay part of the revenue pipeline access permitting regulatory has been challenges for us.
But again, going back to the book there, I mean, putting together a good team of people that has a farmer’s first approach, wants to help the farmer, wants to do good for the environment as well, and can work through those challenges that are in this business has made us super successful. We’re super proud of where we’re at over the last 4 years and the farmers that we’ve helped and the business that we’ve built.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I really like to focus on that helping out the farmers. That’s you’re doing a good thing, but obviously you want to make sure that the farmers are successful and sustainable in their business for the long term. But helping them out is certainly something that really resonates with me. We talk a lot about people helping people, and I think that’s a very important part of it.
But again, on the business side of things, it is another way to diversify their income to help them be successful in the long term. So I appreciate the share on that really do. Brian, the last question of the day I have for you, given your extensive experience in the renewable energy sector, what trends or innovations do you foresee shaping the industry’s future in the next decade?
Brian Flis: I’m excited where the industry is going. I think there’s going to be some new trends on the technology side. So capturing more of the carbon dioxide that comes out of these digesters and is natural in the manure as well, putting that to work and I think smaller scale digester technologies that can help smaller farms.
Uh, will happen as well. There’s going to be a lot of changes with AI. I think AI will be able to help out a lot of what we do in business. So you’re monitoring our technology, monitoring feedstocks, helping us solution projects better. I think AI. Like, in a lot of industries will be a game changer for companies that adopt that getting our RNG into other industries.
So right now it’s used for I’ll call it just the basic transportation market, but. Using it in bigger trucks, ships, steel plants, cement plants, doing small fueling stations. We could do RNG with, you know, small electrical vehicle charging stations. I think that will be something that’s, that’s on the horizon as well.
You look at emerging economies. Right now, a lot of digester RNG projects are in North America or Europe. You look at Asia, Africa, places in the Caribbean, there’s going to be opportunities to deploy similar technology there and then really international trade of RNG right now that RNG is used in the U S here, but we can liquefy that, we could ship it over to Europe.
So I think there will be more trade going on internationally. I hope there will be. That’s another huge opportunity, I think. So, in my mind, the future is really bright for what we’re doing and again, we’re helping farmers out and doing good for the environment. And it’s, it’s a bright future for sure in this industry.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate you highlighting some of those. We have talked quite a bit about AI and robotic process automation. I can see some of that absolutely being used in the very short term, obviously into the longterm, but really do appreciate that and highlighting the RNG as well. I think there’s a lot of things that are going to happen and really in some ways disrupt in and I say disrupt in a good way.
Things will have to change and we know change is constant. So I appreciate the share. And Brian, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Brian Flis: Thank you so much, Brian. Love talking about this topic and what we’re doing here at LF Bioenergy.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Brian Flis Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.