About Blair Humphreys
Blair Humphreys is Chief Executive Officer of Humphreys Capital, and, in this role, oversees Investments, Accounting, and Operations and serves on the Investment Committee. He brings 16 years of experience in real estate investing and development.
Blair is the developer of the Wheeler District, an infill urban neighborhood on the Oklahoma River near downtown Oklahoma City. He is also the founder and past chair of the Oklahoma District Council of the Urban Land Institute.
Prior to initiating the Wheeler District development, Blair served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Quality Communities at The University of Oklahoma.
Blair earned a Master of City Planning and Urban Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from The University of Oklahoma in 2005.
He and his wife, Maggie, have four children and live in Oklahoma City.
In this episode, Steve and Blair discuss:
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Being grateful for the simple things
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The gift of community
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A good leader and a follower
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Purpose matters most
Key Takeaways
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Remember the simple things that make life good. Don’t wait for someone’s death to remind you how precious life really is. Give your loved ones the gift of spending time with each other.
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Most of our frustrations in life are with other people but accomplishing something great with other people is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have.
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A good leader must not only be good at leading but also at following and being led too. Practice being a good follower and submit yourself to coaching and mentorship - all of these will contribute to your success as an individual.
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It doesn’t really matter what you find yourself doing in life; what matters is if you find meaning or purpose in what you’re doing and how you’re living.
“I don’t think that there’s anything more enjoyable than getting to see a team that thrives together accomplish something - the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts, that you’re able to produce something… it’s better because we were together.” - Blair Humphreys
Connect with Blair Humphreys
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/humphreyscapital
Website: www.humphreyscapital.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humphreyscapital
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZHmiaN27Kj1-v4ZQXTdn9w/videos
Tel: +1 405-228-1000
Email: info@humphreyscapital.com
Connect with Steve and Jason
Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
Email: grow@rewireinc.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Blair Humphreys: The Wisdom Of Community
I've got a super cool guest. I’m sure I say that about all my guests that they are all cool but this guy is really cool. Blair, say hi.
It’s Blair Humphreys here. It’s great to meet with you.
We are going to get to learn more about Blair and what he does. The work that Blair does and what he has done in his career and life are particularly intriguing. He is from a part of our world. It's unique to me because I'm not from there. We get to hear a little bit about that. I'm looking forward to having you on the program. I don’t know if you are looking forward to it but I certainly am.
I always enjoy any opportunity I get to spend time with you. I appreciate the invitation. I’m excited to see where this conversation goes and then hope that it's something that people find useful.
If people have been tuning in for a while, I do this whole thing. If I say it too much, I wonder if it comes off like some insecurity but you don't have any idea what I'm about to ask you, is that correct?
No, I'm flying a little blind, so I'm trying to think back to my improv training here and be ready for whatever is about to happen.
As I told other guests, if I was sitting here trying to stump and frustrate you, I don't know if that would make for a very good show. I don't think that's the idea.
We will be all right. I'm ready. Wherever you want to take it. Let's do it.
How much do you know about astrophysics?
I know very little about astrophysics. I’m tempted to pretend I know something to see how long I could fake it but I'm pretty sure that my astrophysics knowledge probably capped out around eighth grade.
I was waiting to see if you were going to fake it because people are going, “That's an insight that I have, fake it through life.”
If you start with a shared vision of success, you get to a point where people pull on the same end of the rope.
I'm somewhat of an expert on time travel and some of the relativity effects associated with that. I’m totally BS-ing. I know very little.
When you talk about astrophysics and different things, I just think they are saying that they are at some party trying to sound cool.
If you are at a party where astrophysics sounds cool, then I would love to show you a really good time.
In all fairness, I do have a friend that works for NASA. I went to college with him. The guy works on different things that NASA does. It cracks me up that I'm like, “You became a rocket scientist.” How about that? He lives in Alabama and is a rocket scientist.
I have 4 kids, 3 boys, and a little girl. We got a birthday coming up. A rocket scientist named Mark Rober, who used to work at NASA, is their version of a rock star. Every month, they wait for his new YouTube video to drop. He is the coolest thing going. In fact, my son was asking me if he could have a Mark Rober-themed birthday party.
That tells you a little bit about your son and where he's going in life.
Maybe I probably spoke too soon. Maybe astrophysics is exactly where it's cool.
I'm panicking because I have zero questions aimed at that. We got to get into our interview here but I did note that NASA or somebody came out and studied some black holes. Did you read about this black hole?
No. What do we get?
I don't have anything. My first thought was, I don't even know how can openers work, and you are sitting here telling me about visualizing a black hole that’s 69,000 light years away. I'm a little out of my depth.
If you spend enough time thinking about the extent of the universe and even the depth of knowledge that those guys have, it certainly will humble you. It also puts a lot of things in perspective that we've got a very small thing going on here from a universal perspective. It’s amazing.
Wisdom Of Community: Many people say a leader should be empathetic. But how can you be empathetic to somebody, in a follower position, if you've never had the experience and done it well?
Here's my first real legitimate question to you as we dive in. A lot of our readers will know that I ask this a lot but I would like to know what you are grateful for.
I had breakfast with a mentor of mine, a guy who used to disciple me. We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of his adult son's death. He drowned in a swimming pool and through some fluke deal. We talked a lot about how we don't know how many days we get on this Earth. Each day is a gift. Each day of the people around you that you love and get the pleasure of spending time with or that you are connected to through family or friendship is a gift. It’s not only for them but it’s also a gift for you to get that time. Start there. There are so many things that flow after that.
There's a Ben Rector song. I don't know how many Ben Rector fans we have out there. He's a Tulsa boy that made good. He has a line that says, “Isn't that just the way it goes? You are dealt a good hand, and you get celebrated.” A lot of times in life, so many other things that I have to be grateful for are things that I'm having fun, getting to do, getting to work on or even getting credit for. A lot of it is playing cards with the cards I was dealt and trying not to lose sight of that.
That's what's cool about an interview, maybe pause. Stop, take, and go, “Am I grateful for the day?” Do we do that? How often do you do that? How often maybe do we miss gratitude when we get so busy?
People reading is probably at least the top core tile of busy people out there who are doing things, having stress, and looking to do it better. That's great. One of the mistakes that's so easy to fall into, and I fall into it all the time, is it's not about having plans for the future. The plans are great. It's about having an expectation. It's already taking for granted the fact that thing that's going to happen years from now that you will be there or whatever it might be, we tend to go ahead and take for granted those expectations. Sometimes in the process, what we do is miss out on being grateful for the thing we are getting to do now.
We are learning along the way. I thank you for your gratitude. I'm already walking away with notes. People don't realize that the interviews are for me. Maybe nobody reads this but I needed to hear you and some of your thinking.
At the end of the day, I'm happy to get on an opportunity to chat.
I might've done this upfront. Sometimes, when people are listening, they are going, “Who is this?” Blair Humphrey is the CEO of Humphreys Capital. It’s an incredible and growing firm in Oklahoma. You guys do investment strategies and real estate investing and development. You are the CEO of this incredible company that's done some amazing work. Rather than read off your CV, I would like to give it to you. Let's go back to that party. It’s a lot more fun than talking about astrophysics. When somebody comes up to you and is like, “What's the 2 to 3-minute Reader's Digest of Blair Humphreys’?” I would love to hear that from you.
I’m sitting in Oklahoma. It's where I have been most of my days on this Earth. I'm an Okie. I was born and raised in Oklahoma City. Business entrepreneurship has always been a big part of our family's history across generations. That's included quite a bit of real estate over the last few decades. Faith has been a big part of our story. My grandfather became a Christian but had his life transformed at the 1956 Billy Graham Crusade in Oklahoma City. That's instilled something that every member of the family gets to work out in their own time and way. It has made it a point of emphasis.
Family is a big deal. I'm 1 of 3 siblings and 1 of 14 cousins. My wife, Maggie, and I live in Oklahoma City. We have four kiddos ourselves. There’s a lot of life that revolves around family. On the recreational front, I love snow skiing. Any moment I'm allowed to spend on a ski slope, I take advantage of it and spend a lot of time in Crested Butte, Colorado, all through the years.
As far as work stuff goes, I've had some interesting things that have happened. My dad came out of a private business career and went into politics for a season and was Mayor of Oklahoma City for five years, from 1998 to 2003. That gave me exposure to the joy of getting to collaborate with a community of people that are looking to build something together.
Each day's a gift. Each day with the people you love and the pleasure of spending time with them is a gift, not only for them but for you to get that time.
Oklahoma City was in the middle of what we've described as a Renaissance in terms of its development and culture. They did this deal called MAPS, where they raised $360 million of sales tax money and spent it on public improvement projects. Those were things like a new baseball stadium, bike trail system, and library. What is a considerably Red State? They got the whole community to come out and support passing a tax on themselves to invest in their community? That lit a fire in me. It took some time for it to play out but in 2007, one of the ways that culminated was with me following a Business degree and going and getting a graduate degree in City Planning and Urban Design.
At MIT?
Yes, and I loved it. I had so much fun studying City Planning and Urban Design. It's still a part of the work that I get to do. More than that, it was the opportunity to be in a place of learning and get to be with some incredible peers there. To get to study something in its full depth that I cared and was passionate about was so much fun. I enjoyed that.
Maggie and I were there in Boston together for two years. We spent a little time out in Napa after that. My wife is an accomplished chef and got a chance to intern at The French Laundry there in Yountville. We were middle of the recession in 2009. I had this new fancy graduate degree. I was giving vineyard tours at a small scrappy vineyard in Napa. That's how I was putting my graduate degree to work but we had a lot of fun.
In 2009 and 2010, we had to deal with this question, “We have been in Boston. We have been out in California. Where to next?” I don't know what it is about Oklahoma City but I had to go home. I can't say that this place has the geography, the weather or even the economy that makes it the best place to be but you don't choose where you are from. Where you are from is if you have a good experience, that's where your people are and where your roots are. Those two things were gravitational poles that brought us back here. We have been here ever since. We raised a family here and loved it.
What a great deal. I don't know that I had heard of that Napa story before. I'm not sure I've heard that but you made me think of a guy who told me how you can make a small fortune in winemaking.
Start with a large one?
Yeah, that's right.
The guy I worked for was a web millionaire. He was in a Bay Area startup. He exercised a small piece of his stock option to buy a vacation home. What he did was he bought a vineyard in Napa as a vacation home. The stock pancaked out, and he moved to his vacation home and turned it into his business. Your rule of thumb on big fortunes becoming small fortunes, I watched it.
We all go out there. It's so wonderful. There's a magic to that place.
It’s a great spot. There's a lot about the winemaking process that's fun to be in and around. That's a great place for it.
Wisdom Of Community: One of the most life-giving things is to get to help somebody else along the way. So submitting on the one hand and having an opportunity to lead and shepherd or mentor somebody are both important parts of living a whole life.
I loved what you said. This is what we do here in the interviews. I never get to my questions because you say something, and it grabs me. If it's okay, I would love to ask you about this. The exposure to building something together. I would like for you to talk about when you saw your dad do this idea that we can build something together.
If you think about it, life is weird in that way. Most of our frustrations in life are with other people engaging in the community or being a part of a team. My least favorite exercise in every class I ever took was when they would assign teams to do a project. It's like, “No.” It's always this standoff of, “Who's going to do what? Who gets blamed, and who gets the credit?” On the flip side, I don't think that there's anything more enjoyable than getting to see a team that thrives together and accomplishes something.
On the one hand, usually, what's happening there is that the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. You are able to produce something, and you look at it and think, “I never could have gotten this done by myself.” Even if you add up everything we contributed, it's better because we were together. Two, you got a whole group of people there to celebrate it.
Human beings were tribal. In the world, we are seeing a lot of ways that can exhibit themselves in a negative fashion. Tribalism can be negative. It can be about pushing other people off or about asserting dominance. It can also be about celebrating, dancing, and getting to experience what it feels like to be a part of something. That's community. That's fellowship. Ultimately, shared experiences and wins are something that bleeds life into that.
There is a bit of a paradox to it. You started that whole thing by saying when you got that in college, you guys are going to have to do something together. I remember those days. It’s not only who gets the credit, how will you win, and who does what. There's a lack of control. If you know you have to do something, you can go out and do it. I love what you are saying about the shared experience celebration together. I'm curious about your thoughts on this juxtapositioning. When you bring people together, there are all these problems. I presume for you that the benefits of doing stuff together outweigh the detriments of doing stuff alone.
There are a couple of things we could unpack there. One of the things that occur to me is that who's a part of the team and what you are trying to do together matters. It helps if you start with a shared vision of what success looks like. In any event, whether you start there or not, you got to at least get to a point where people are all pulling on the same end of the rope.
Part of it is both having individuals that have the ability to lead and follow well. Those are two sides of the same coin. I've never met a leader that I wanted to follow that wasn't submitted to the authority of someone else or some other body. If you find somebody who's unwilling to follow anyone, then watch out because they are not who you want to have over you.
We should probably stop our interview because you and I need to write a book. I came up with this.
What do you get?
I’m asking you to speculate. This is conjecture at its finest. If we went on to Amazon somehow and typed, “Books on leadership,” how many do you think we would come up with?
Let’s say 25,000.
Nothing is more enjoyable than seeing a team that thrives together and accomplishes something.
Let's double it because I was going to say a million. I'm not kidding. It's probably the most written topic out on the planet. Let's say 50,000. Humor me. How many books are written about great followership? Nobody comes to me as a coach and says, “I need to learn to be a better follower,” and yet, what you said was so impacting. If I heard you correctly, the insight I had was if you don't learn to be a good follower, be careful because what kind of leader can you be? Did I hear that right?
Yeah.
There are no books on followership. I shouldn’t say there are none. Maybe there are some.
There are a lot of people that say a leader should be empathetic. How can you be empathetic to somebody in a follower position if you've never had the experience and done it well?
Tell me about that. Leadership is a wonderful topic. We offer a course on it, which is awesome. It struck me that nobody offers any courses on followership and what it means to be a good follower.
The only way people will buy the book, though, is if somehow we still label it as a leadership book.
We are the master of that. I'm the first to say that coaching has no prescriptions. The 5 easy ways to create 3 simple steps, we still sell it, so people come. If you say, “Learn to become a good follower,” only you and I will have that book. It's genius. We can both lead and follow. They are important. I loved this. I want to go do stuff together with other people. How often in our own lives do we accidentally isolate? What did the pandemic do to us? I don't know if we are together as much as we could be anymore. That's what I thought the idea of that is timeless.
There are a couple of things that stick out. One, I don't think I'm capable of becoming the best or a better version of myself without people who have walked it out in some phase of life. That could be because they are older. That could be because they've had more particular experience in this area. That usually looks like some type of mentorship or discipleship.
I feel like that's part of what we get to do together with you as a coach. In my opinion, the only way to make that a substantive thing is you are saying to the person, “I'm submitting to you.” I'm not necessarily saying you get to call the shots. I'm not abdicating on life but I'm saying, “I'm here because I believe you have an insight, wisdom or something that is greater than what I have available to me. I'm submitting to you this area of my life so that I can grow in it.”
At the same time, you grow a lot when you have the opportunity to provide that to someone else. It's one of the most life-giving things to get to help somebody else along the way. Submitting, on the one hand, and then also have an opportunity to lead and shepherd or to mentor somebody is both important parts of living a whole life.
They go not only hand in hand. When we are 90 years old and sitting on some log, we will finally go, “There's no one left to walk through life.”
Wisdom Of Community: We have to continue to refine and improve ourselves and grow. Do that from a position where we allow ourselves in appreciation or even confidence to make the most of what we're doing today.
Buy a fishing pole and get your great-grandkid. You will be rocking. You have great stories to tell.
Until that happens, there's someone above you who can always teach you. I've got some good friends in their 60s and 70s that become better listeners. They seemingly become better followers. They want to learn. I find that incredibly intriguing. It's a journey of going back and forth there.
I'm with you. I do think that exists throughout life. In truth, maybe eventually, we get so old that it's children that can teach us the most. We can forget how it is to be a child and engage the world through open eyes and new experiences.
That causes such a cul-de-sac in my brain. We never intended this to be any kind of commercial for Rewire and the coaching practice that we have. Coaching and being coached, we do that because you can't have a 360 on yourself. It's not necessarily telling people what to do at all. It's more about inviting them out. Even when you are those grandfathers on a boat with a fishing pole with your grandson, you are still asking them questions. You are not trying to shove something in. You are trying to draw something out. Maybe you and I can get there.
Sometimes, I wish I could push the easy button and have people tell me the answer but I’ve always found that that's not quite how it goes.
It is a desire for all of us but you and I both know it doesn't quite work that way. When you mentioned city planning and urban design, part of my work is to maybe showcase and pick up on energy. The level of energy you got when you were like, “I loved that,” with the way you talked about city planning and urban design. What was it about that that you loved? If I may have a follow-up question to my own question, how do you get to use that in your work?
I will start there because it's probably helpful. I wear two hats. One is as CEO of Humphreys Capital, which functionally is a real estate private equity firm. We manage a series of closed-end funds as well as REIT-based perpetual funds. We have investments all over the South and the Southeast United States. That's a lot of fun in its own right. I get to use a particular set of leadership and strategic thinking skills that are fun to apply there.
In terms of planning and urban design, the other hat I wear is as President of Wheeler District. It is an urban infill masterplan community South of Downtown Oklahoma City. We have about 150 acres. We are about a quarter of the way into building out what will be the next great neighborhood in Oklahoma City. We have about 120 houses. We have two apartment projects that are about to break ground. We've got some restaurants and shops coming in. It is a cool place where people know each other, walk, and bike.
I know every city around the country has probably some version of this, and that's great but the joy I've gotten to have is to have a sandbox right here where the work that we work on impacts the community that we love. What does that look like? Some of it is real estate. Some of it is straight-up design, though. We were designing streets and public spaces. Our goal is to have more playgrounds per capita than probably any place in the world except Copenhagen. We are getting to make these decisions and create these spaces, and then ultimately, sit back and watch a community that we love to experience and get to enjoy it. What a treat. It's a great blend.
I spent a good bit of my time working in private equity and finance. I would say, at the absolute best, private equity is amoral. It has tangible components. It has some but very few of them end up manifesting themselves right here where I live, whereas Wheeler District is something that, day in, day out, I get to come back to. I get to see it, and we get to grow it. It's a real treat.
We already got to go. This is crazy. There are a bunch of little side benefits to having an interview like this. I was trying to sit here and listen to the things that you were saying about what you are doing in that community and how you get it to grow. I had all these follow-up questions about working with people and working for people in this communal thing.
We're all designed and created to do something special. Part of that is a mindset, and another part is going out there and finding what it is.
The bigger takeaway for me is listening to you speak about this work has me wanting to question the passion and joy that I find in doing the work that I have. I have a lot of passion and joy in this work. I don't want to put any words in your mouth but it doesn't matter what you do. Can you find passion, joy, and meaning in what you are doing? It sounds, especially through things like the Wheeler District project, you've found some of that. There's some great meaning behind it and joy. You could have a snow cone stand and find joy and meaning. It doesn’t matter.
I would hope so. You want to find meaning and pay bills. You can control that through budgeting on the backend. In the case of planning and urban design, I found some ways to do it with design consulting, etc. that felt limiting. This wasn't my idea but this opportunity came to me. It's so much more fun to get to do something you love, especially when you don't feel like you are fighting a headwind for your time, your family or economically. When you feel like you have a little tailwind behind you and still get to do something you love, what more could you ask for?
You started the interview by asking what I'm grateful for. The list is so long but I love to get to do the work I do. I try to make sure that doesn't become something that creates an imbalance in my life because that would defeat the purpose. I hope more people have an opportunity to wake up in the morning and feel like they are fulfilled and purposeful in what they get to go do that day. That's the goal. That’s the intent. I feel that we are all designed and created to do something special. Part of that's a mindset, and part of that is going out there and finding what it is.
I'm super grateful. Thank you so much for that. I hope people read again those last couple of lines. There are so many good nuggets in there. Here's my last thing, and then we can wrap it up. When we do our work, there's a question that we ask, and that's, “What did you learn?” People go, “I learned about the lizard brain and neuroscience,” or whatever. The second question, and it's the question I have for you is, “What did you learn about yourself?” I know this is a deep question. We will have to truncate it and make it short. You got a lot of blessings. You got all this great stuff. Every life has challenges and opportunities but what are you learning about yourself in this period of your life?
The biggest epiphany that I've had is feeling the freedom to acknowledge both the good and the bad. The thing I've learned about myself is that I am complex, and I am not absolute in any regard. I feel the freedom to both be humbled by all the things that I still have to figure out and get together or habits or patterns that I feel are not what I wish they were. At the same time, give yourself some grace and kindness and say, “You are a pretty good dad. You do a good job. You engage with your kids. You love your kids. You are a good husband.”
If people knew the full truth of it, it's not like I should be winning any awards for how I live that out. It's to have an appreciation for both the opportunity we have to continue to refine and improve ourselves and grow. Do that from a position where we also allow ourselves an appreciation or even confidence in what we are doing to make the most of it. That balance is something that has been new for me.
I used to operate by oscillating between a mindset that was one of pride and accomplishment until I fell flat, and then I would move into a position of shame and humiliation. Being able to embrace those at the same time in a way that's a little more balanced has been a huge breakthrough for me. It always leaves you with something more to work on but also leaves you with an appreciation for how far you've come.
We could come back and do an entire episode on that concept of that balance that you spoke about and that oscillation, that seesawing. You seem to be getting a little bit more of a handle on, “How do I not seesaw so much but embrace that those things exist?”
I'm both. I got both in me. Remember, everybody else has both too. Some of the people that you think are the bee's knees have some rough patches that you haven't been introduced to yet. Also, the person that cut you off or that has been a complete jerk to you, you are probably interfacing with the rough side of them. We are in the process.
That’s our second book. We are going to write a book on followership. The subtitle of the book will be, Bee’s Knees and Rough Patches.
There you go. I committed to myself that I will never write a book until I had a book’s worth of things to say. The world needs good followers like it needs good leaders and the world needs good readers more than it needs good books. You will have to keep me honest on that and make sure I don't need two books.
Wisdom Of Community: The world needs good followers, just like it needs good leaders. And the world needs good readers now more than it needs good books.
I usually take notes and summarize them here at the end. I loved that little nugget. The world needs good readers rather than more books.
I need to read more before I write anything down. I've so enjoyed this.
Thank you so much. We have a tradition, and I don't get to follow it too much. The name of our show isn't necessarily to get Blair's insights on things. It's not even certainly my insights. It's more of what are yours? When you were reading about Blair, was it the passion? He spoke about the Wheeler District and what's going on with that. Was it how we were working together? There was so much there but it doesn't matter what there was there. What matters most is what you are learning about yourself and what your takeaways were from this. Blair, thank you so much again for being a part of this. We will do it again. I promise.
Thanks, Steve, and thanks, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity.
We will see you next time here on The Insight Interviews.
