The D.E.I. Backlash Hasn’t Changed Mel Gravely’s Story

Introduction:

In 2021, Mel Gravely wrote a book, Dear White Friend, that was aimed primarily at fellow business owners. In the book, Mel tried to make it easier for owners to have genuine conversations about race. He suggested strategies for those, perhaps motivated by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, who might want to engage. He acknowledged that emphasizing diversity can be hard work. He acknowledged that some of his own efforts had failed. But he also pointed out that he himself had been, in his words, “an affirmative action baby” and that that investment had paid off for his college, his previous employers, and the city of Cincinnati. It’s been less than four years since Mel published Dear White Friend, but of course that was a very different time. This week, he talks about the backlash that has ensued and the strategies he still believes can work for those who don’t consider diversity a dirty word.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Mel Gravely is chairman of Triversity Construction.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Mel. It’s great to have you here one-on-one. I want to start by asking you about something you said on one of our podcast episodes just a few weeks back. We were talking about hiring, and you said you occasionally hire someone who shows up for work and is kind of surprised to learn that you actually mean the stuff you tell job candidates about the way things work at Triversity.

You told us that you have a very different culture, and that sometimes takes people by surprise. Unfortunately, we really didn’t have time to get into it during that podcast episode, so I’d like to start there. What were you referring to? What’s different about your culture?

Mel Gravely:
Well, I appreciate you circling back to it, Loren. It starts with a purpose statement that is a little different. You know, our purpose is to model the diverse and inclusive world we want to live in. And as a construction company, that is different than the purpose of many other kinds of companies, especially construction companies. And so if that is our purpose, then it would lead from there that our systems and our approaches and our expectations and our communication and our hiring and our promotion and our development, our community, all of it would be leading us toward that purpose.

And I think people look at the job we’re offering, look at the work we do, look at the customers we have, and they make up their minds what that means. And they show up here and they think it’s like any other place, but we mean what we say when we are working every day, working very hard at being a model for the diverse and inclusive world we want to live in. So I think it takes them off guard that we’re serious about how we talk about gender. I don’t think we are overly anything in that area, but I think there’s a certain respect that, particularly in our industry, that women don’t often get—or too often don’t get, I should put it that way—that we’re serious about having.

We’re serious about our openness to race. We’re serious about our openness to religions, religious practices, and expectations, and having a special room for people to have midday prayer, if that’s what they need to do. And I think it takes people off guard. And when they’re called to task, because women aren’t girls—I’ll just use that as a great example, one that happens a lot—when they’re called to task on things like that, it can bother them. And so that’s what I meant. Because if we’re going to live our purpose, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got it built into our system. So that’s what makes us different.

Loren Feldman:
I think we all know it’s hard enough to build a successful business if your only goal is to stay in business and make money. But when you set as a purpose something that is not directly reflective of your strategy for making money, do you wind up in conflict? Have you had to make choices where you feel as though the purpose that you’ve articulated is counter to the need to make money?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, I don’t think so. As you were setting up the question, I began to think through examples, but I don’t think so. And here’s why: I believe that, in the long run, alignment with our purpose is how we make money. The fact that we are people who listen differently, listen more intently, connect more authentically with people because we’re interested in them and who they are, we are better with customers. And when we’re better with customers, they stay with us longer.

Just as an example, our stickiness of our employees is better, so we have lower turnover. Our brand in the community is better, therefore business comes to us in different ways. And so it may appear in the short run that a high-performing construction professional who can’t line up with our values, and they may leave our organization—it may seem in the short run that that’s a loss. I would say in the long run, it’s a gain, because it allows us to continue to go down the street and be who we are, and who we are helps us to compete. I hope that made sense.

Loren Feldman:
It does.

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, but you’ve got to believe that, right? Because if you believe that every battle is the war, then no, you’ll make those trade-offs, because you’ll want to win a short-term battle. But we’ve got a very long-term view. As you know, we believe in evergreen principles. And so, our vision is that we’re around for the next 100 years. And what I love about that is every day starts another. The clock starts over for a hundred, so you never get there. And so if you’re thinking that long-term, then you’re not worried about that short-term battle, about that one employee who was a superstar but violated values in your organization. You don’t count that as a loss.

Loren Feldman:
What would we see if we showed up at your offices or one of your work sites? How does that translate into what one would observe if they saw you in action?

Mel Gravely:
Personally, I hope you would visually see a more diverse workforce than you would see from other construction companies. So I hope there’s a visual representation there. We have more women in construction roles in our company—as a percentage in our company—than any other company in our region, for sure. We’ve not checked nationally, but it’s not even close in our region.

Loren Feldman:
Do you know what that percentage is? Yeah, we’re in the 31-, 32-percent range of construction. I’m not talking about accountants and HR professionals—we’ve got them—and IT professionals, but I’m talking about construction roles. And we’ve got more people of color in those roles, those professional construction roles, than any other company in our region. So you’d see a different presentation when you walked into a job site. But keep in mind, you could walk into a job site and every person there is a middle-aged White guy. I mean, we’ve got a lot of those folks working here too. Nothing wrong with that inclusion. Inclusion means everybody, right? [Laughter]

But I hope you’d see something different. For sure, if you came to our all-company meeting, you’d see something different. I hope, though, that you’d experience something different, that you’d experience people who are collaborating, listening to understand, not to respond, who are treating people in a manner that is respectful—honoring the fact that people are individuals. So I hope you’d experience something that is different. We’ve got a lot of women and women of color who are our customers. Our industry has a reputation of being dismissive and condescending, and I hope you would not experience that. Because we’re interviewing for that when we interview. We’re developing that in an overt way in our training.

Because we know that we all have biases, and we just don’t want those biases to come out in the workplace in ways that are off-putting or negative. So I hope you’d see something different, but I hope more so that you’d experience something different, because that experience of something different is what customers appreciate. And it’s an intangible thing, but it is the customer experience.

Loren Feldman:
What drove you to create that kind of culture? And what gave you the confidence that it would work?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, well, in some ways, we make the job take longer. That’s for sure. So I wish I could tell you that this was something that came out of a strategic vision of mine, where I thought there was space in the marketplace for a company like this, and I’m not sure that’s true. But I bought this company because I wanted to make a point, and I wanted to make a point that a diverse, high-performing team could compete and win the very best in our industry. And so that was my personal purpose for buying the company, my personal purpose for driving so hard to build a brand.

As the company evolved, we needed to turn that personal purpose into something that the organization could embrace. What we discovered was what we had become, was what I just described to you. Because of our intentionality, because of our customer base, because of our performance over the years, we had become the company I described. And so the purpose statement became one that, we were manifesting it, so why not state it out loud? So we did, and it is different. It gets a bit of a turn of the head. I think some people wave it off as, “They’re just being”—maybe I can use this word—”woke.” And for some they think that’s where it stops, and that’s okay with us too.

Loren Feldman:
Did you deliberately set out to tell the world about this, to market your brand as an employer, or did you kind of just let it speak for itself?

Mel Gravely:
I started out letting it speak for itself. And then I built this team of people who, now, when they want to go recruit, they want to talk about it. And I think it’s a good thing, though. I think that it pushes away people who don’t like that, and it attracts people who want it. And so, I do think it’s effective in screening people, particularly young people.

But, yeah, I just wanted to prove it, Loren. It was personal for me at the time. I just wanted to prove we could go out and kick some butt and be a diverse and inclusive team and kind of show the world. In our industry, minority-owned companies, companies owned by black people or other people of color, they’re looked down upon. You don’t go to those companies to have a great construction career, and that bothered me. I’m a pretty smart guy, and I bet I could figure this out. But that was my personal point. We needed to make it a company purpose, not just a Mel Gravely purpose.

Loren Feldman:
Do you feel as though it worked the way you hoped it would from the beginning, or did you have to make adjustments along the way and learn some lessons the hard way?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, I wrote about it in my book, Dear White Friend. We went too far sometimes, and sent the wrong message sometimes, that people misunderstood what we meant. And at times it got conflated to mean that we’d keep a person of color, no matter whether they performed or not. Boy, I surely didn’t mean that. Because performance is performance, and there’s only one standard for performance. That’s the customer standard. Exceeding that is our only way to success. So, yeah, we’ve made some mistakes along the way and had to evolve, and we’re still there. The words I would say to you is that it hasn’t worked. We’re working on it.

Loren Feldman:
So you mentioned your book, and that is the other reason I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. In fact, we met because of your book. You spoke about Dear White Friend at a Tugboat Institute event in 2021 where you got a standing ovation from a group of mostly conservative business owners. And you and I subsequently had a conversation that I published here at 21 Hats. That was 2021.

A lot has happened since then. I’d just like to go back to some things we actually talked about in that last conversation. One is the daring thing to take on race the way you did. I’m guessing there were some people in your life whose judgment you trusted, who told you you were out of your mind. Why did you write the book?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, to be honest, you know, I had, it was Covid time, so I didn’t have anything else to do. [Laughter] No, that’s not true.

Loren Feldman:
I’m sure that was an element, right?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, I had time to do it. But there was so much going on at that time, and no one was able to talk to each other. And it disturbed me that my White friends were shocked, amazed, looking for answers, ignoring the topic. They were all over the place. But what was central to my reason for writing the book was, these were my friends. And when I looked at the landscape, there was no other business person writing on this topic that I could find. And so I decided there was a lane there.

You know, Loren, I’m not sure I ever thought about the implications. I surely didn’t have a plan for supporting the book when it came out. It was just something that I wanted to get done and get out. The publisher took it, polished it up, and next thing I knew, books showed up on my front door, and it was on. And they said, “Well, you’ve got to speak.”

And so there was no plan, Loren, I guess is what I’m saying to you. And so I never had the time to get nervous about it or be concerned. I did think a little while about: I don’t want this to spill on my company. I don’t want people to take this the wrong way and have it spill on my company. So even if you read the book now, my bio doesn’t name the company in it.

Loren Feldman:
Oh, I never noticed that.

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, my bio doesn’t. Inside the book, I do mention the company name, but most people who are going to be negative aren’t going to read the book. So I wasn’t too worried about if you mention the name on page 28. They’re not going to get to page 28. So I don’t feel particularly brave or whatever, because I don’t remember thinking, “Man, this could go horribly wrong.”

Loren Feldman:
Well, it was a different time. You wrote this, of course, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. And at the time, there seemed to be kind of a collective sense among many that we can and should do more. That seems like a long time ago. There was a lot of talk about diversity, and I think one of the things that struck me and that I liked about the book: You encourage business owners to believe that they have more power and influence than they may realize, and that if they’re serious about trying to help, and if they’re intentional in how they use that influence and power, they can really have an impact. And I thought it was a really important message at the time.

Mel Gravely:
Well, yeah, and you know, it’s funny you bring the time up. By the time George Floyd happened, this book was almost done. So, Ahmaud Arbery, I was writing before him, but when that happened to him is when, in my mind, I got pissed off enough to say, “It’s got to become a book.”

And by the time George Floyd was killed, the book was virtually done and about ready to come out. And I was getting a lot of questions from people about that. And, Loren, here’s the thing” This is not the first time. This cycle of, “We care about this topic,” to where it tapers off, to, “Okay, back to normal, back to business now,” this is not the first time this nation has done this.

Loren Feldman:
Or worse, in the form of a backlash, even.

Mel Gravely:
Absolutely. And I think we’re seeing some of that, too. But that’s not even the first time. So for people who are frustrated or dismayed, you just simply have to go back to your history to see that we’ve done this a number of times. And so when my friends were up in arms, I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew for sure it wouldn’t last, because it never has. And that’s why I don’t think that riding a wave like that is the answer to really making long-term systemic change.

Loren Feldman:
So your point is that you were less focused on what had been happening in the news at that time than I realized and addressing an issue that had been present for your whole working life.

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, and I think I got to an age and a position in the community I live in, in Cincinnati, where I thought I had the combination of ability to influence, that people would read this book and take it seriously. And there was less they could do to harm me personally. And so, if you have that kind of position, then you should use it. And so I did.

And you mentioned Tugboat. For those who don’t know about it, you should Google “Tugboat Institute.” But in my mind, that group of CEOs launched this book. I didn’t plan it that way. I didn’t think about it that way. But they were the group I was writing to: passionate, compassionate, people-first CEOs, privately held companies from all over the nation.

They were who I was writing to, and to have them make room for me to make the presentation—which is the first step—I thought was daring. But to support it, to lean in, to then invite me to their cities, to speak to their local business groups, to their companies. We launched that book together, and we could, I guess, talk more about that, but that’s how you make progress. You block and tackle every day. You win over hearts and minds. You talk about strategy and approaches with people. You try things that work and some of them don’t. You try more things. That’s how we make progress.

Loren Feldman:
I want to ask if you’ve changed how you think about any of this in light of the backlash, but I want to emphasize a couple of things that I took from the book. One is that you were very open in acknowledging that you yourself benefited from some folks who were intentional about reaching out to you. In fact, at that Tugboat event, if I remember correctly, I think you referred to yourself as an “affirmative action baby,” which kind of has a different ring to it today, given the way people talk about affirmative action now. Has anything changed about the way you think about that, given the backlash?

Mel Gravely:
No, not at all. Let me just clarify why I say I’m an affirmative action baby. There were two or three, at a minimum, situations or times in my life where it was obvious that I was there because someone was intentional about providing me, because of my race, a particular opportunity. And without that access, I would not have gotten that opportunity. It happened with the college I chose to go to. They were starting a new co-op program for minority IT professionals. I got that opportunity, and I did very well there. It happened again at IBM, when I joined IBM in the late ‘80s.

So my point is that that intentionality—in the book, I call them “actions of intentionality,” not affirmative action, because apparently that branding has gotten so negative—but actions of intentionality providing opportunity for people. And if you look at the balance of at least my life, the investment of the actions of intentionality has clearly produced returns, whether it be for IBM, for the college I attended, for the city I live in now. And so if we look at it from an investment slash return standpoint, I don’t know why the branding has gotten so off. But you’re right, affirmative action is definitely something that has become negative.

And people say, “Well, don’t you worry about that diminishing who you are?” No. Deal with me, and you’ll find out there’s no diminishing of who I am because of how I got to the opportunity to sit in front of you. Deal with me on a business transaction, or on a board, or in the community, or leading my company, and you’ll find out that, no, there’s no diminishing of me because of how I got the opportunity. So, maybe things are a little different now, I don’t know. But no, my thoughts have not changed. And I think time, I think history, will tell, will teach us that it was effective then, and we’re going to miss some opportunities if we’re not careful.

Loren Feldman:
As you point out, clearly the ROI is there for the people who reached out to you. One of the other things I liked about the book, though, is that you acknowledge: It’s not foolproof. It doesn’t always work. And in fact, I think you have a section where you refer to the way you run your business. At one point, I think you had a division that you required to meet a quota of 20 percent African-Americans, was it? And that didn’t work out, which you acknowledged. Why didn’t it work out, and what did you learn from that?

Mel Gravely:
Well, it didn’t work out because I gave the mandate without clarity. I’ll take complete responsibility. I gave the mandate because I thought I was doing the right thing, because this division was struggling to hire people of color. And I was like, “I want you to be serious about this. Let’s get serious. Let’s put a number on it. Let’s get really serious about it.” And they translated that to mean: No matter what that person did, I wasn’t letting them go because they wanted to get to their 20 percent. And so you had performance challenges. We had attendance challenges.

You know, all these things are going on unbeknownst to me, but they were keeping their 20 percent. And that is what I said. It’s not what I meant. And so, we went in and revisited that. We still struggle in that division, for sure, to hire African Americans. But we’ve got a different way of going about it now, and catching folks a little younger, training them a little differently, pairing them up and partnering them with mentors. So we’re trying new approaches. But I can’t just give that number mandate and think that it’s not going to get a little twisted up, and it did.

Loren Feldman:
It’s great that you acknowledge that even you could struggle with it. I know a lot of well-intentioned people who have sought to create more diversity within their companies and struggled with it. They didn’t come at it the way you did, because it wasn’t part of their purpose. So they didn’t have the same need, the same commitment to it. Do you have any advice for people who are trying to do that and struggling with it?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, well, advice would be strong, but I always invite people to think about: What’s your posture on this? You know, is this interesting to you, this whole idea of diversity? Is it important to you? Or is it imperative to you? Interesting says, you know what, if it comes to you, you’ll take it. You’re not against it. You’re willing to talk about it. Important means you’ve got some plan, but you don’t want to go too fast or go too far. Imperative is where I sit and where, I hope, 85 percent of the time, my company sits. That means we have to win in that space, because it is a part of our purpose, and it’s part of our value proposition, and so it pushes us to try innovative things.

You know, we’ve redesigned some job descriptions so that we’d have a broader pool of candidates across different college majors. We’ve done that because there’s so few people of color coming out of construction management degrees and civil engineering schools, at least in our area. So we’ve started taking people out of operations, people with operations management degrees, and cross-training them in ways that we believe can be successful. So we’re trying some of that. But when it’s imperative, you’re willing to experiment. You’re willing to try things. You’re willing to fail. You’re willing to admit your failure, try something else, but it can’t stop.

So I just invite people to decide: If it’s interesting to you, then be there. If it’s important to you, then you’re a little bit more invested. You’ve got some strategy around it. And if it’s imperative, then—and I realize that’ll be a rare camp—but for us, we can’t lose the battle for diversity and inclusion, because we cease to be who we are. And then we’ll just be any old construction company. And I don’t think the world needs another one.

Loren Feldman:
Another thing that I found eye-opening—and I’ve relayed this to more business owners that I can remember—is, at the time, the conversation about diversity was largely about hiring. But as you stressed in the book, there are other ways to go about this. And one really important one is in the vendors that you choose, and that if you give somebody a chance, you can really make a difference.

Mel Gravely:
I hang out with a lot of CEOs. I think we talk about it equally, at least in my experiences. And they say the same things that are frustrating. They say things like, “Well, you know, our supply chain’s very competitive.” That’s the same thing they say about their hiring process. And I say, “Uh huh, okay, then put other people in your competitive supply chain process and see if they can win.” That’s all I’m asking. Don’t change the bar, but include some people that you hadn’t been including before.

And again, since it’s imperative to us, we have large projects we do. We have small projects we do. Sometimes, some of the diverse contractors are pretty small. That’s okay. Well, we’ve got small projects, so I may not invite them to participate and compete for a big one, but why can’t I invite them to participate in the small one? Or if I’m creating some new line, why can’t I invite them to be a part of that, where everyone’s going to be new to the process? Because it’s oftentimes hard to beat an incumbent. So if I’m starting something new, that may be another opportunity to include some diverse suppliers. So when it becomes important to you, you’ll think about ways to make it happen.

Loren Feldman:
So, what do you make of the backlash, in that light? Has it changed your life, the way you go about business at all?

Mel Gravely:
I haven’t changed a bit about how we go to market. I haven’t changed a bit how I think about this. I have changed my advice and counsel. I’ll give you an example. I sit on a board and that company is talking about stepping up their D.E.I. work—

Loren Feldman:
That’s a dirty word these days, Mel.

Mel Gravely:
That’s what I said. I said, “Hey, you know, there’s a way to step up your interest in that space without branding it. And I invite you to be thoughtful about how you approach it. Because I don’t care how you brand it. I care how you do it.” And those who really care about this, who really care about a real opportunity for everyone, they’re going to continue to build processes that allow that to happen. So, I am advising a little different around the branding. I wouldn’t have been as sensitive to that, I don’t think, before. I mean, heaven forbid we say the word “equity.” For some reason, that is a true cuss word, and I want to wash my own mouth out with soap.

But here’s the thing: When we say we only hire the best, or we only do business with the best, I don’t know how you know that if you’re not searching broad enough. If your pool looks so homogeneous, how do you know you only hire the best? And no one can answer that question. They say those words, but they go to the same places, and they look at the same people, and they call that the best. And I would argue that if all your best looks the same, it can’t possibly be the best, by definition.

Because diversity is better. Diversity of thought, age, experience, background is better, proven to be. And so, when I hear that, I challenge the thinking, because it just doesn’t ring true. It’s an excuse to keep doing what I’m doing. And if I happen to find someone in the pool I’m fishing in that looks like a fish that I can handle, I’ll take it. And that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not creating an America that I’m trying to aspire for.

Loren Feldman:
I’ve worked at some big companies that have professed an interest in becoming more diverse, and have implemented programs that generally haven’t worked as well as they hoped. And it has led to people saying, “Well, you know, we tried. We don’t pay enough. Smart people who might come and work here can make more money elsewhere.” It’s easy to give up, rather than finding different ways to find the people you’re looking for.

Mel Gravely:
Let’s go back to where we started. This is a long-term march, and in my presentations, when I was speaking more on the book, I would just say, “I’m going to do my 2 percent. It’s not because I’m giving 2 percent effort, but I’m probably going to get 2 percent results, because it’s not easy. And if you do your 2 percent, and the person next to you does their 2, we’re going to see progress made.”

But it’s going to take us multiple generations of working at this thing together to build the nation that codifies the inherent promise in the founding documents of the country. So I just feel that way. There’s some people that disagree. I mean, the founding documents suggested it was White men who own land, and I don’t think that’s what they were trying to get at long-term, but maybe they were.

Loren Feldman:
I’m curious what your experience has been, maybe on boards or in conversations, with the D.E.I. programs of other businesses. I’ve had some experience at companies I’ve worked for, friends who’ve worked at other companies and described what they’ve been through. The programs have sounded terrible, from what I’ve seen. [Laughter] And even if you believe in the basic cause, it’s like they’re set up to fail, I think. I think they’re so bureaucratic, they don’t do a good job of explaining why this is a worthy cause. It just becomes another bureaucratic hoop that you have to jump through that becomes a pain in the ass to people who are trying to get their work done before they go home at the end of the day. And I think everybody just comes to hate it. I’ve seen a lot of that. Have you seen that? And do you have a suggestion for dealing with that?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, I try to stay out of that lane, to be honest with you. I would say this, though. I don’t know if everybody comes to hate it. So, I think we look at companies first, whether they’re signaling their interests, and secondly, whether they’re then living their interests. And because they’re bureaucratic, and because they can be big, their systems are bureaucratic, whether it’s about safety, or about new product development, or if it’s about diversity. They just tend to be cumbersome organizations.

And so the fact that their diversity efforts might be cumbersome, I don’t know what to say about that. So that’s first. But the bigger idea is, I am looking for companies to signal and then show that their interest is real. But I’m not a consultant. I run a business. I wouldn’t know how to consult to help them fix it, to be honest with you, Loren. But I would just say to you that if people dismantle their diversity departments and their supplier diversity departments and this, that, and the other, people are watching that. And everybody’s not happy about it.

Loren Feldman:
All this stuff has been so much in the air of late. A lot of it has to do with politics and the election this year. In the paths that you travel, what has changed because of the backlash? Do the people you deal with, the people who supported you when you wrote the book, do you think they still have the same interest that they did before? Or are they, too, affected by this backlash that seems to have taken over the conversation?

Mel Gravely:
Yeah, I would probably say mixed. I don’t know who is not affected by the rhetoric, by the demonization of the idea of even speaking of diversity. We’re all affected by it, and I think it makes my White friends pause and say, “Hmm, that sounds reasonable what they’re saying.” Because they do make it sound—well, sometimes it doesn’t sound reasonable—but many times what they say sounds reasonable. So, I get it. I do think that people are being affected by it. But as I went around this country talking about this book, I didn’t meet anyone that, when you got down to the one-on-one level, didn’t have empathy, interests, and a real desire to close the gap between races, both relationally and economically and educationally. I didn’t meet anyone.

There’s a small minority of people, at least in my experience in this country, that either deny that our history exists in this nation, or they deny it still has an impact on today. It’s a small group. Most people acknowledge that we’ve got a history around race in the country that has created a situation that we are dealing with right now. Where they differ is: What do we do about it? Where they struggle is: How do I fix it? How do I make an impact? There are very few people who don’t realize that the way we built this country has created this structural system that has Blacks on the bottom and Whites on the top, and everybody else in between. Most people don’t like to hear me say it that way, but they acknowledge that, “Yeah, I get it, that did happen.”

The question is: What do we do going forward? So I don’t think about the people who want to deny our history. I don’t talk with them very often, because I don’t argue about this topic ever, ever. I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m not an evangelist for diversity. I’m a business leader. But if you want to talk about how we do it, then I’ll meet you in the middle of that conversation, and we can talk about that.

Loren Feldman:
I’ve seen the same thing where there’s such a difference between the conversation you have with someone one-on-one and what you hear out there in the ether.

Mel Gravely:
And I think we can get distracted, dismayed, disillusioned, and all those other things by listening to that. And so, I mean, my advice to my friends leading up to the election—and for sure, after the election—if you’re bothered, turn the dang TV off. Stop watching CNN or Fox or whatever the heck you’re watching. Most of it’s not news anyway. It’s commentary, and they get paid to make you watch and get angry, so you watch some more. I don’t want to live my life angry and pissed off. I refuse. I don’t hate anyone, and I don’t want to hear about hate. I want to talk to people who want to really work on problems. And when you get to the micro level of this, we can make a difference.

Loren Feldman:
I assume you’re still glad you wrote the book?

Mel Gravely:
I am glad I wrote the book, Loren, but for reasons that you may not expect. There are probably three fundamental reasons why I’m—glad is the wrong word—proud that I wrote the book. Number one is, I think that, for my moment in time—and books don’t last that long—it made people pause and think. And if that led them to action, man, I made my 2-percent difference.

The second reason is because I got to meet and connect with people like you. And, man, I’ve got relationships all around this country now with people who I would have never known if I hadn’t written this book. And we’ve had conversations that are rich and deep and meaningful, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So I’m proud of it for that.

And then the last thing—I probably mentioned this before: my mother passed two months after the book came out; my father is still living—but my parents were proud of me. And my dad said, “It’s the most important thing you’ve done in your life, and you’ve done some great things.” And he’s proud of me. So for him to say that, I mean, what the hell else do you want in life?

Loren Feldman:
My thanks to Mel Gravely. Once again, Mel, I really appreciate your willingness to talk about this. I personally happen to think you’ve done more than your 2 percent, and I appreciate having had the opportunity to play a small role in that. So, thank you.