[00:00:00] Intro: Every number on a balance sheet tells a story, late nights spent building something meaningful. The risks taken, the difficult conversations, the lessons learned along the way. But true wealth is not measured in dollars. It’s woven into the stories that we create, the experiences that shape us, and the memories that outlive us.
Welcome to the Living Beyond The Numbers Podcast with Jude Boudrreaux. From The Planning Center, this show is not about spreadsheets and financial jargon. It’s about real conversations and powerful stories that help you align your money with your values, your dreams, and your legacy. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you have, it’s about the life you want to live and the stories you leave behind Now onto the show.
[00:00:50] Jude Boudreaux: Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us again for another episode of The Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. I’m your host, Jude Boudreaux, and I’m here with our director of positivity, Caleb Arringdale. [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Caleb Arringdale: Hello.
[00:01:01] Jude Boudreaux: And today we’ve got a special guest with this longtime friend of mine and fellow Loyola New Orleans alum Robert LeBlanc.
So, welcome, Robert. Glad to have you here.
[00:01:11] Robert Leblanc: Oh, excited to be here. Thank y’all for having me.
[00:01:13] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to hearing more about the projects you’ve got going and what’s new in your space. But maybe just give us a little background if you could. I know it’s always, I feel a little, I hate doing a personal intro, but maybe just a little background on how, you know, how you came to, to be with, you know, LeBlanc Smith as a company has a, you know, I think a very prominent place in the hospitality industry now in New Orleans.
So how do we come to this spot?
[00:01:38] Robert Leblanc: Uh, Le LeBlanc Smith is essentially a failed record label, Jude, I went to school at Loyola with you. We had a great experience there and studied economics and finance and always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and knew that I wanted to be in New Orleans. And so we started a record label right at a school.
And while we didn’t succeed selling records [00:02:00] to raise money for the label, we produced concerts, events, parties, and gorilla marketing campaigns. And that evolved into our owning our own music venue, which eventually evolved into a couple of hotel bars in a music venue, and that portfolio has now evolved into a collection of boutique hotels, restaurants and bars located here in New Orleans, Nashville, Tennessee, and soon to be Atlanta, Georgia.
A long evolution, 25 year career, and I, both my foundation at Loyola, which I know you benefit from as well, but also the city of New Orleans has been a magical place for this company to grow because it allowed us to make mistakes. And when we made mistakes, the community helped us and picked us back up.
And so when we say New Orleans really informed who LeBlanc and Smith has become, it’s not just because that’s our DNA, but literally the city of New Orleans. I find if you have heart and, and [00:03:00] give love, they’re typically a pretty forgiving place and they help you work through things. And so the company has been through many fits and starts to get to this point.
As we all know, it’s never a linear journey, but yeah, I feel particularly indebted to the city of New Orleans and the community here who has supported us through thick and thin.
[00:03:18] Jude Boudreaux: New Orleans is a unique place for sure. And, having just been in Los Angeles, remember one of the guys at Launchpad many years ago said that, you know, in New York you have to be successful, in Los Angeles you have to be beautiful. In New Orleans, you have to be yourself. And, uh, I’ve always thought about that ’cause I do feel like it’s a, it’s a city that not only can you be yourself, but it almost, if you’re trying to be something that you’re not, it kind of sniffs it out and it makes you. You know, brings you back to where you were supposed to be.
[00:03:48] Robert Leblanc: Yeah, I think that’s totally fair.
[00:03:51] Jude Boudreaux: It’s been great to see how y’all have, you know, evolved with that and, um, yeah. And so I mean, the living beyond the numbers, I mean, the idea of this podcast is to share [00:04:00] the stories of, you know, it’s not so much the financial aspect of things, but the life part. And so how I’m curious, so you have these hospitality companies, you know, you’re balancing those hours, which can be long and varied, especially in hotels. So how do you try to balance that with meaningful family time? How do you find the way to fit those pieces together?
[00:04:22] Robert Leblanc: One of the things that’s always been really important to me, and again, I don’t want to bang this drum too loudly or too frequently, but I think we learned this at Loyola, is, they taught us to design the life that we wanted.
And then find a career and design your career to fit within that life. And so one of the things that was always really important to me was to be present in my relationships, most importantly with my wife and kids, but, but just in general. And so this idea of being present has always been something that resonated really loudly with me.
And so the way to manage it and, and there are some sacrifices. Jude, before we had kids, I used to watch Grey’s Anatomy with my wife and things like that. I don’t really watch TV anymore. Before [00:05:00] we had kids, I’d slept till 7, 7 30. Now I’m up at five or five 30. So there are some some sacrifices that you make to accommodate that.
But one thing that’s really important to me is when I am home with my wife, with my kids, I’m not looking over my phone screen and paying attention to them. Secondarily, I am a hundred percent there and I’m with them, and even when I’m in situations with friends and there’s times that we’ve caught up for coffee, when I’m with you, I am not checking my email while I’m sitting and talking to you.
I am fully present and you can accomplish so much more in terms of nurturing relationships just by being present and you don’t need as much time to go deep ’cause you’re fully there. And so that idea of presence has been what I call a cheat code in my ability to be a, be a loving father who’s very much involved in my kids’ lives.
I’m hopefully a very supportive husband, very much involved in my life, my wife’s life, and still a present friend and, and brother and son. [00:06:00] And so those things are important. And it’s the same thing in my professional context when I’m at a property, talking to the general manager, talking with the chef, I’m there. I’m not, I don’t have one foot in the conversation and one foot someplace else trying to multitask. And so, so that idea of being present allows me to get much more meaningful time, even if the time is not as, long from a minutes or hour standpoint.
[00:06:25] Jude Boudreaux: Oh, totally. And as somebody who struggles at times with this, presence thing, right?
It’s easy to feel that pull towards the ping of a text message, how do you, do you have some rituals or traditions that help you find stay grounded or get into that space when you’re switching on to family time?
[00:06:42] Robert Leblanc: It’s, I wouldn’t say it’s a ritual as much as it’s an expectation and frankly, I, I’m somebody that believes in, in being respectful and being prompt, and I never want to be the person that you have to talk to an assistant to get to me or to get to my calendar.
And I’m not judging people who do live their lives, but I never wanted to be that person and frankly. There are times where I [00:07:00] get behind on my correspondence, my text messages or on my emails, and so the main thing is, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a ritual, but I’ll call it an expectation, which is if I don’t get back to your text in a timely manner, I will get back to it.
A lot of times I spend an hour and a half or two hours on Sunday mornings just trying to go back through things. I try to stay on top of it, and if there are things that are really urgent or time sensitive, you know, as soon as the text comes in, you and I have this podcast today at two o’clock. If I get a text from you at one o’clock and I see it’s Jude Boudreaux, I know that it’s something that’s incredibly time sensitive.
If I get a text from one of my college friends and it’s, uh, you know, an update on his fantasy football team, that’s not so urgent. So I can kind of get back to that on the weekend and, and so people understand that I, the trade off is, I may not get back to you in the moment. But what you do get is when I’m with you, you get all of me and you don’t have me returning everybody’s texts during our time together or during our phone call together.
And so, less of a ritual, but maybe more of an understanding. [00:08:00] And then, and then I do spend time, I do, I believe in a, I can’t get to zero inbox on my email, but I do believe in a zero inbox in my text messages. So I will get back to people eventually, and I’ll always apologize and kind of explain what was going on.
So you’ll at least create some understanding.
[00:08:15] Caleb Arringdale: How have you gotten to this point? Was this something you developed in college or was this a learned ability as you’ve gotten older?
[00:08:22] Robert Leblanc: It was a learned ability. You know, it’s interesting. I would say that I was never diagnosed, but just looking at my personality traits and my characteristics, I think I have ADD.
I’ve always been pretty high energy. I’ve always been pretty peppy. I’ve always moved around things quickly. I remember vividly early in my career I would spend six hours returning 200 emails. And, and by the time I was done with that, I’d hit send and receive and you’d get 90 to 120 responses.
So I’d spent another four hours and, and I would literally spend entire days where all I did was return emails and I just didn’t [00:09:00] understand the faultiness of that. So I worked with a business coach and he taught me this morning routine, this morning ritual. And I still follow that to this day. And so what I do first thing when I wake up.
Say prayers for people that I love, for people in need, for you know, the world at large. That’s really, really important to me. I spend five minutes thinking about gratitude. So it’s my gratitude practices. I have to recall at least three things that happened the day before that made me happier, for which I’m grateful.
And the purpose of that is it’s not big things. Of course, I love my kids and I love my dog, and I’m really grateful for my house. It can’t be those things. It’s gotta be specific moments. And what that does is it trains your mind. To be really present and you observe the beauty of a flower or the facade of a building that you’ve never seen before.
There’s all these things that we have that occur on a daily basis that your mind’s just not trained to pick up on it. But they’re really great things and there are things that do bring you joy and happiness, even if it’s not this overwhelming sense of [00:10:00] elation that you feel after watching a John Candy movie.
And, and so that gratitude piece is really, really important to me. And then I’ll spend five to 10 minutes planning out my day. And we always start with the number one thing, which is, if I can only get this one thing done today, it would be a really good day. So, and, and that forces your prioritization. And then you add two or three more priorities.
And if you’re doing deep work, you shouldn’t really be able to get through more than two or three things well. And then any tasks, anything that need to be. Lease needs to be sent to our attorney for review. That’s a task. We need to upload a picture of my driver’s license for the renewal of a liquor license is a task.
And so I had to develop this morning routine, uh, to instill discipline in my life and my practice. And then just studying rules. And it’s like anything else. It’s just reps. And so now. That morning routine, literally it’s like brushing my teeth. And this idea of presence just kind of the same thing. It wasn’t always the case, but in just talking through that and making [00:11:00] sure that I was focused in the moment, um, I developed the skill.
So I’ve developed the ability. And, and the other interesting thing about journaling, the gratitude and the presence thing, I used to be a really good, avid note taker, and what I have learned is. I don’t take notes nearly as diligently now as I did 10 or 15 years ago, but it’s typically not because I’m being lazy, but I don’t need to, the retention, I typically retain things really well, and if there’s something super crucial like a timeline or, or, or something that I need to turn over, I’ll still write things down.
I’ll still take notes, but I used to have these volumes and volumes of notes, and now because I’m more focused on being present, I don’t have to take notes nearly as diligently because you’re just. You retain it all
[00:11:47] Caleb Arringdale: as a fellow member of the undiagnosed ADD club. I think those are some really great tips to keep in mind.
[00:11:53] Robert Leblanc: Full disclosure, it still takes me 30 more minutes every morning to find my car keys. So we’re not all the way there [00:12:00] but we’re getting there.
[00:12:01] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. As a diagnosed ADHD person, I’ll tell you like, at times the medication helps if you are struggling with that kind of thing. If I’ve got a busy day, I don’t need it.
’cause I engage in conversation, I’m here. Where I need it is if I’ve got time alone, to stay focused is always a challenge. And the one mantra that I think about constantly it’s like, don’t put it down, put it away. So my keys go a place here and at the house. And so like, that’s it. And if they’re not there, it’s a problem, but I don’t have to think about it.
I don’t just put them down, I put it away. So that’s from somebody’s ADHD book and it’s the, I think about that several times a day.
[00:12:39] Robert Leblanc: Yeah. And it’s interesting you say that you, so I’ve developed, yeah, I’ve developed, you just develop habits, you develop sort of workarounds and, and I think I have the same inability to focus. And so what I do is like if I have to do deep work or I have to think about something, I’ll go on a walk through Audubon Park because it’s, it is multitasking. You’re doing more than one thing, but it allows you to think and [00:13:00] you’re still burning energy. You’re still, you know, exercising some of those ADHD tendencies, but it’s on a walk.
It’s not returning emails while you’re also trying to write a succession plan. Right. And it’s not so, so that’s another workaround. And then the other thing that I found works really well. For that is listening to music in the background, but classical music, anything that’s nonverbal, anything without lyrics.
So there’s a band, Sigur Ros, or a band, Explosions in the Sky. The Sigur Ros has vocals, but it’s Icelandic band and so you can’t really recognize the vocals. So anything that doesn’t have words, uh, doesn’t distract me, but it assuages that and allows me to deeply focus on the task at hand. So, yeah. To both y’all’s points, just developing some of these workarounds, developing some of these systems to handle that.
[00:13:48] Jude Boudreaux: I’ve got to tell you about Secret. So I listen to a lot of kind of that ambient electronic music if I’m working on things. Karen, my wife, always like, it’s like high-end shopping mall is like, what? She describes it, it’s like, you know, yeah. Like [00:14:00] little electronic vibe in the background, but nothing that’s going to be too noteworthy.
But, I love Sigur Ros so much and I was like, boy, what are these lyrics? And the guy made up his own language, like it’s not even Icelandic. Yeah. His language. So like, okay, well I’m not going to figure out what these lyrics are, but, but yeah, there’s something so powerful about, I mean, you and I have shared about music and that could be its own episode, but there’s something so powerful about the way, the notion and what communicates with it, even though there’s, I’ve no idea what he is saying.
[00:14:30] Robert Leblanc: Yeah, his voice is like another instrument in a song. And then there’s a band, Jude, uh, I’m sure you’re familiar with them. Explosions in the Sky. Yeah, that’s the band that did the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights. And they don’t have a vocalist, but just very, very powerful moving songs and, and that works.
Explosions in the Sky works for me just as well as Sigur Ros does. But I, I’m with you. I love Sigur Ros. If you, if you ask me a name, my, my top three bands, they’re absolutely in it.
[00:14:57] Caleb Arringdale: We’re always looking for background music here at the office, [00:15:00] so I’ll throw those in, into the shuffle. That’ll be great.
Many thanks.
[00:15:04] Robert Leblanc: Oh, that’s awesome. Great. You’re going to love them. Great, great band.
[00:15:08] Caleb Arringdale: So you have these great habits that you’ve developed over years. How does that work with your children? How have you been able to help them or have you worked to help them develop similar habits?
[00:15:19] Robert Leblanc: I want to be careful that my kids, um, they understand the value of discipline and structure and there’s, there’s certain like, rigid frameworks that allow them to be more productive in school or anything they’re pursuing.
But at the same time, I want them to be kids too and, and free play and, and boredom and all those things are, are so important to a child’s development. And so it’s a…
We’re very careful, but we do talk about values. Values are really important in our company. At LeBlanc Smith, we have a really clear value system and we, we talk about values each morning before school.
There’s five things that we ask ’em to do. It’s, you know, believe in yourself and be happy with yourself. Do something nice for someone today. [00:16:00] Be grateful to God for all the gifts that you have. Focus only on being the best you can be. Have fun and, and it’s those, those five things and they’re very specific and we talk about why those things specifically we talk about why do something nice for someone instead of just be nice, right?
Because when you do something nice for someone, you’re looking for opportunities to help someone in need to help someone who dropped their books or to sit with someone who might be by themselves in the lunch room. You just, you’re constantly looking for ways. To pick people up and this idea of being the best you can be, as we all know, kids, one of my kids is 11, one’s 14.
And you could get really caught as a child. And honestly, we all have adults that we know that just you get stuck in a cycle of comparing yourself to other people. And, and the reality of it is you should just compare yourself to the best version that you can be or to who you were last year, last month, last week.
And if you just focus on being the best you can be, life typically works out for you. [00:17:00] But if you’re constantly looking, you’re always comparatively gping to be greater than someone. You’re always going to be less than someone comparatively, no matter what. And so it’s just, it’s not the right perspective. We do talk about.
The things that are important to us as parents, though, we want our kids, you know, we talk about the context of sports. The, what we always say is, is it doesn’t matter to me how much you play. It doesn’t matter to me how well you play. It does matter how hard you play. ’cause you can control that. Um, you know, you, you’re a tennis player sometimes no matter how hard you try, you just, you’re just not hitting the ball well today.
Right? And, and, and that’s, sometimes it comes and sometimes it goes. You can’t control that always, but you can control your effort, right? And so, um.
You know, we talk about the value of being coachable, you know, listening and learning and applying the knowledge and how that translates to life also is if you’re coachable, if you’re teachable in a classroom, if you’re capable of being mentored, you, you get so much more.
Enriching interactions with people, [00:18:00] enrichment from conversations then. Then if you’re not coachable, if you think you know it all. Now we talk about being a great teammate. We talk about how much easier it is and how much more joyful it is to go through life with friends, with family, with people you love, and, and nobody ever gets anywhere alone.
And, and if they do, it doesn’t really last and it’s typically not fulfilling. And so we do talk about values and we also talk about discipline and, and, and hard work and, and the value of that. But I’m really careful not to run things too rigidly for an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, because I don’t want them to think that I’m forcing them into being someone that they.
Feel like they have to be or being someone that they might not be. And so we try to let them explore as well. And, and it’s, and it’s been a fascinating experience. I, I played college basketball and I played football really well in high school, but my kids aren’t really into football and not into basketball.
We have a wrestler, we have a lacrosse player. And so it’s just, it’s been [00:19:00] fascinating. They are into riding bikes right now, and it gives them complete joy and passion. It’s not something, I mean.
These, they, they have like a bike gang. I mean, they’re right doing tricks and wheelies and all this stuff. And it’s, it’s just a source of joy and passion that I never would’ve been able to expose them to if I was trying to force them down past. ’cause I didn’t have any exposure to that. And so it’s just been fascinating.
And I know it’s a very long-winded answer to your question, but we try to teach them concepts that will make them good people and would give them a sense of self. And give them grit and determination while at the same time, letting them be free enough to explore the things that they love so they can become who they want to be, not who they think we want them to be, or even more damagingly who we want them to be.
[00:19:53] Caleb Arringdale: Yeah. I I, that was a great answer. I enjoyed that. A tiny thing you mentioned though was like the importance of boredom. [00:20:00] I found that as I’ve gotten older. As a young person, there were frequent times of boredom in life, right? Because, you know, I was born before Google, right? So there were many times when you were just bored.
Whereas now, as an adult, you never have to be bored. You have your phone, you have so many things that can entertain you if you allow them to, right? So it’s the idea of no, no, no, actually. And for a while it can be, wow, this is amazing. I never have to be bored again. But you realize this boredom is actually really important.
It really helps kind of refocus my brain just this time of nothingness, like how important that really is. It,
[00:20:37] Robert Leblanc: it, it really is. And, and it’s, and it’s nuance, it’s complicated, right? Like, so by default you don’t want your kids on video games all the time. Mm-hmm. But, you know, unlike us, we were playing Super Mario Brothers on Nintendo.
These kids, that’s how they socialize. They don’t always go to each other’s houses. They don’t have sleepovers as much, but they all play Fortnite or they, You know, together. And, and that’s how they socialize and that’s how they [00:21:00] stay in touch. We’d love to be completely no video games, no computers, no YouTube.
It’s, that’s, that’s how these kids kind of hang out and communicate. Whereas we used to go to each other’s houses and watch movies and things. And so it’s, it’s tough. You just got to kind of stay on top of it, I think, and, and be empathetic.
[00:21:19] Jude Boudreaux: It is, I mean, minor, I forget how close in age our kids are, but yeah, almost the same ages and, um.
Yeah, I could tell, you know, Lucy not to ever, you know, can’t be on your phone. And then she’s completely outside of her group from school because they’re then, you know, she’s out of the loop. So it’s how do you balance it and communicate about it and hopefully teach them so they make good choices when they’re online.
And yeah, it’s a certainly a stressful different thing. But yeah, I’ve mentioned saying that I’m not going to pretend I didn’t spend all day putting, playing video games with my friends in the summer. Different environments, but so yeah, so I mean, kind of continuing on the start of family, so you’re now in this like family business, right?
It’s, you know, [00:22:00] LeBlanc Smith. The name is very meaningful to you and your family. And so how do you talk to your children about like this idea of entrepreneurship and family business? It’s that something that they’re curious about?
[00:22:10] Robert Leblanc: They are curious about it and we, you know, one of the things that we always try to do is we try to make sure we’re presenting the most honest aspects of our life, our profession when we make mistakes. So COVID, we have a hospitality business in New Orleans. New Orleans was hit really hard by COVID, so it was particularly restrictive and it hurt us. Emotionally, financially in, in so many ways, but we never shielded the kids from that. We were really honest about that.
And the other thing we did is we didn’t really blame COVID and, and the reality of it is COVID was tough, but had we done things differently, had we done things better, had we maybe done things more conservatively prior to COVID, we would’ve been in a much stronger position financially to endure COVID or Survive COVID.
We did survive COVID, but it was pretty painful, but it wasn’t painful [00:23:00] because of COVID in and of itself. It’s painful because I didn’t prepare for a situation like COVID. So I talked to them really honestly about that. Jude, and then every step of what we do, I try to, if they’re interested, I’ll. Try to show them.
So we’re working on a new project called Love’s Alibi in Nashville. And so I showed them the iterations of the logo and why we’re choosing this look and this color palette and they ask questions and I actually heard a really cool thing.
Jason Hamill is my best friend, but he also does all of our brand identity and it’s where our projects start as I’ll always share an idea with Jason first, and he helps.
He’s a great filter and he’s also really honest and he tells me if it sucks quickly. He’s a big fan of the fast no. Or the fast. It sucks as opposed to sort of the slow, it sucks and so it’s great.
But Jason said that he was texting with my 14-year-old bear who designed a logo for his best friend in eighth grade’s, car detailing company that they want to start. So I guess it is. Talking to, to your point. And so [00:24:00] we want to be really careful, again, not to feel like they are forced into this or they’re obligated. But, but we do talk about it and we, we, we talk about different entrepreneurial ideas and, and sort of things they might start doing now.
Washing windows in the French Quarter for the restaurants down there, cleaning out garbage cans in the French Quarter, ’cause in the summer, in particularly, those things start to get a little smelly. If you’re a seafood restaurant in the French Quarter, that’s, that’s tough.
So, so we always try to show them what we’re doing on a step-by-step basis, but we also share really honestly, both the ups and the downs. And we’re really careful even on the ups, we’re really careful to talk about the reality of like, we’re clear to point out who on the team drove that success.
So it’s never their mom and me created this awesome place, or their mom and me got this recognition from travel and leisure for the new hotel in the fringe quarter. It’s like the team at the sells team. Warranted recognition is one of the best new hotels by Conde Nast Traveler. It wasn’t [00:25:00] me, and that’s a really important thing for us to teach our kids.
I understand that. I understand that we wouldn’t be who we are without all the people in our lives. That’s just the people we work with today. The people we worked with 10 years ago and higher up and further back.
Family, friends, teachers, coaches, mentors, teammates. And so we’re really, really clear to talk in that context with our kids.
I don’t ever want them to think that they, no matter how great they are, um, that they can do it by themselves. It’s always, it’s always, uh, a function of a ton of great people who give you a lot personally and professionally.
[00:25:36] Caleb Arringdale: You’ve been very successful in your business. We have many clients who’ve been very successful in their businesses.
How do you raise children in that environment where you’ve been very successful? How do you raise them with, with the expectation of, yes, I, you don’t wanna be crushed by my success, but I want you to rise to your own success, like find your own version of success. How does that work?
[00:25:57] Robert Leblanc: It starts with how we define success.
So I [00:26:00] always tell my kids that like, I have an incredibly successful life, but I define that success very differently. The reason why I think that I have a successful life is I’m tremendously happy and I have a sense of self and I have a purpose. I have something that I really care about working on that I think can leave the world in a better place.
I’m happy. Like my default position is happiness and gratitude. And so that’s the most important thing. But I also have a wife who I love dearly who supports me tremendously. We have two amazing kids and I love being their dad, and I feel really lucky to be their dad, and I think that’s the most important job I’ll ever have.
And I have tons of meaningful relationships in my life. I’m still really tight with my parents. I’m tight with my siblings. I’ve got tons of wonderful friends. I’ve got a great relationship with people that I work with. I get to work with people, I love people who inspire me, and I get to work on something every day that, that I really enjoy doing.
And that’s, those are the things that we talk about. We never talk about, I’ve never defined success on the number of places we have or the awards that we’ve [00:27:00] gotten, or the amount of revenues the company generates or the profits that the company generates. And so it’s how you define success and that, and that’s important to me because I want them to understand.
But LeBlancSmith could become a company that does $200 million a year in sales with a 20% profit margin or whatever, and they could be a high school math teacher. They could be every bit if as successful, if not more successful than I am as a high school math teacher. And, and because of the lives that they impact and because of how they might be able to inspire each one of those kids that they teach.
And so that’s, that’s it, that’s how we talk about success. And, that’s the most important thing to us. And that’s, and we set up those constructs and I want them to truly believe that. Look, my oldest son, I’m not convinced he won’t be in law enforcement, I’m not convinced he wouldn’t be a, a, potentially a police officer or he’s got celiac disease, so I don’t think he could be in the military.
But he, he’s really drawn to this idea of, [00:28:00] you know, the, the, the, the most altruistic version of those jobs of like helping people. And he loves, he’s fascinated with television shows of police officers helping people or military, uh, people helping other people or saving people and things.
And so I don’t want him to feel like he wants to be a police officer or fireman, and he is not gonna make a million dollars a year doing that. I don’t want him to feel like he’s not a success as long as he’s the best police officer or firefighter that he can possibly be. And as long as he’s got meaningful relationships in his life and he’s happy and he’s got a sense of self and he positively impacts the world, that’s every bit as successful as Warren Buffet is.
[00:28:36] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, that’s so great. And I mean it, it’s rhymed so much with, there’s a guy, Jay Hughes wrote this. Really thick book about family wealth. So it’s a dense read. There’s a lot of great things in it, but the thing I talk about most often is this idea of the pillars. And so, yeah, there’s the, you know, there’s financial wealth and that’s easy to measure, but there’s also intellectual, or not financial capital, but intellectual [00:29:00] capital, like somebody might go, Mentioned be a teacher, they may go and become a PhD and do research. There’s spiritual capital. ’cause they can be involved in their faith organization and, and work in that realm. There can be social capital because they’re working in, in doing things to help society or maybe in the political realm or running a nonprofit.
And then there’s a fifth one that is kind of for the family to define. But let’s talk about your family across those capital lines because um, yeah, for many people. Once you know, if your parents have achieved a certain level of success, it’s not, you know, it’s not 1800, it’s not always gonna be that you’ll be more financially successful perhaps than the generation before.
So we have to find ways to talk about this and ensure that’s family success is about honoring those things. It’s not about having more money.
[00:29:45] Robert Leblanc: Yeah, a hundred percent. And Caleb, the other thing that’s important to us is that, you know. My wife and I have always lived a pretty simple life that was important to me.
This idea, I, I study stoic philosophy and it’s, you know, this idea of enough, right? And so, [00:30:00] I drive a 40,000 Jeep. I live in a great 2,600 square foot home that’s on a nice street in a decent neighborhood, but it’s not on St. Charles Avenue here in New Orleans. And, um. That’s important to me. But that being said, we can travel, we can go wherever we want to go.
That, you know, we, we, we don’t have, I consider us wealthy because we don’t have the fear of like, how are we gonna pay our next, you know, our next mortgage. We don’t, we don’t have a fear of like how we pay our bills in two years. And so I’m really clear that we are. Financially. That’s, to me, that’s the definition of wealth.
And, and so, I don’t apologize for that reality. But what I do think is important is when you are in those situations, you need to find opportunities that life will present to give your kids a sense of grit and to put them in safely uncomfortable situations so that they can learn and grow and develop their own intestinal fortitude.
And so the COVID situation’s a great example. Being honest about that, being honest about why we had to sell our house, being honest about the mistakes that I made before COVID, [00:31:00] that led to me having to sell the house so that we could save the company. And then, you know, like the Phoenix from the Ashes, talking honestly about how we dug out of it and about how these tough things, COVID, you know, we’re not there quite yet, but there’s a, there’s a point maybe a year, maybe two years, where COVID, which cost me a tremendous amount personally.
More so than it cost financially, it was a tremendous amount financially as well, but, and emotionally, it broke my heart. But, um, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I used it as an opportunity to learn from it and grow from it. And I didn’t use it as an opportunity to point and make an excuses that COVID did this to me.
And so, that’s been awesome. And then, and then you look for opportunities in life to put them in safely uncomfortable situations. For instance, my oldest son played tackle football at Harrell Playground. It’s an all black playground. He was the only white kid and it was. Fantastic experience for him. He learned so many things.
He was playing on that Harrell football team, and he was playing on a lacrosse team at the same time. All white kids in the lacrosse team, the [00:32:00] things the kids talked about before and after practice on the Harrell team, same exact things the kids talked about before and after practice. The way the parents at Harrell engaged their kids and the other kids on the team, it was exactly the same as the way the parents.
Engage the kids and the other kids on the team for lacrosse and, and I know that we know that because we’re old enough to have that perspective, but for an eight or a 9-year-old to learn that at that age, it’s been. It’s been tremendous for him, but it wasn’t always easy for him relative to what a lot of his peers were doing.
They, we believe in, they, they both boxed in a gym that was primarily people of color in a neighborhood that’s very different than the neighborhood they currently live in.
And, you know, these things take courage and they caused them to stretch a bit, but because of that, because they become stronger and they develop different, different inner strength than they may be otherwise would, because we make it a point to lean into these situations that I call, you know, safely uncomfortable [00:33:00] situations. And, and so we look for that as much as, as we can.
We, they’re big believers in them doing jiujitsu and martial arts because, you know, this ability to sort of learn and be humbled every day when you go there, it’s, it’s just like life.
No matter how good you get, you’ll always be able to beat someone in the gym, but you’ll always be beaten by someone in the gym too. And so. That’s a really important dichotomy and reality of life.
And so, so we also try to, when you talk about how we raise our kids in the context of success, it’s not just how we define success, which has nothing to do with monetary or recognition.
The same time we, we look for opportunities actively to, um, put them in situations that I know will develop intestinal fortitude and, and will be stretch situations for them that I know that they’ll. Endure. It just gives them greater sense of self, greater self-confidence. Their ability to relate to people who didn’t grow up in their neighborhood, to who don’t look just like them is pretty remarkable, and life gives you those opportunities all [00:34:00] the time. Sometimes involuntarily like COVID and sometimes voluntarily. So just, you just kind of keep your eyes open for those things.
[00:34:09] Jude Boudreaux: Totally. Well, um, I’m enjoying this conversation a lot, but I, I am also noticing the clock, so we’ve gotta shift over to a few rapid fire questions to Sure.
To kind of wrap this up here. Uh, first and most important, uh, favorite animal, Robert
[00:34:24] Robert Leblanc: had to be a bear kind of cliche, but, yeah.
[00:34:27] Caleb Arringdale: So this is a strange question. How tall are you, Robert?
[00:34:30] Robert Leblanc: Six feet. Six inches.
[00:34:32] Caleb Arringdale: Okay. So far every person we’ve had over six four has chosen a bear as their favorite animal. So I’m like currently correlating human size with like, liking bears.
[00:34:42] Robert Leblanc: That’s remarkable.
[00:34:43] Caleb Arringdale: Yeah. I
[00:34:43] Jude Boudreaux: mean, we have 3, 3, 4 people on the team that are over six four. Right. So yeah, it, it comes up a lot. That’s cool. That’s
[00:34:51] Robert Leblanc: awesome. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, so our son’s name’s Bear, but one of the reasons why we named him Bear was. I’ve known three bears before him growing [00:35:00] up, and they’re all awesome guys.
I’ve never met a guy that’s named Bear called Bear that wasn’t an incredibly nice guy. And the same thing for anybody named Will or William, that’s our second son’s name. I’ve never met a will who’s a bad guy,
[00:35:13] Caleb Arringdale: like my uncle’s named William, but he’s pretty cool, so I guess we’re fine.
[00:35:16] Robert Leblanc: Yeah, right. That’s awesome.
[00:35:19] Jude Boudreaux: What
[00:35:19] Caleb Arringdale: do you
[00:35:19] Jude Boudreaux: think is the best money you ever spent?
[00:35:22] Robert Leblanc: I think the best money you spend is, is always educational experiences. So books. Yeah. Secondarily experiences. Right. But I think if you think about it, foundationally, the things that I’ve gotten from books, the inspiration to learning that has given me the ability, the means to be able to go on these trips and have these experiences.
So books. Yeah.
[00:35:45] Jude Boudreaux: No, I love that. I have, I have a section on my bookshelf here that is the, like books that changed my life section and it’s, yeah, I’ve read them all, but I always say, make sure I have a copy so I can give one away because they did have an impact and I can, I show it to all the kids, like these ideas changed me as I grew and as [00:36:00] they went through things.
So.
[00:36:01] Robert Leblanc: I know you’re a pretty avid reader too, but I gotta tell you, I love y’all’s office. I love this location. I would be in so much trouble ’cause you just write on top of Octavia books. I’m sorry, you, garden District books. I, I would be there or, and I would be ordering these books that I wouldn’t have the time or the bandwidth to read.
But I would, I, I’m, I’m actually very proud of your restraint because I know you have that, that itch that I have too. So that’s kudos to you. I commend you.
[00:36:25] Jude Boudreaux: So much easier now too to like, go up there at four o’clock and grab a cocktail and a book. And so it just amplifies the temptation for sure. all right.
How about travel? Any, like best place, favorite place you’ve ever been?
[00:36:40] Robert Leblanc: My favorite place to go is, I, I love nostalgia. My favorite place to go is when we go back to Long Island every year to visit my wife’s family. Um, she grew up in South Hampton. Uh, she’s quick to remind everybody she’s worked.
She’s a townie, you know, she didn’t grow up next to the CEO of Goldman Sachs. But it’s a [00:37:00] magical experience for my kids because I’m from south Louisiana. My wife’s from Long Island and, and my kids are half New Yorkers half. South Louisiana, and I think that’s a magical combination.
And so they’re really clear on their South Louisiana heritage and roots, and they get exposed to that all the time.
But it’s, it’s one week a year. Hopefully we can get back there more often where we just go back and we deeply immerse them in their mother’s roots and you know, it’s not. We’re not obviously going to like fancy nightclubs or exclusive white parties. We are on the lakes and going to the bays and we’re sort of kayaking and going to the clam shacks and, and all that stuff.
And so that’s my favorite place to go to be every year. And, and over time we’ve developed some great friends out there also. So we see them and we see, see my wife’s parents who are amazing. So that’s my favorite place. That’s my favorite trip. And, and we’ve been on some great trips. We’ve been. More nice things too, but it’s, what that means to me and my kids to be back [00:38:00] home for my wife is really cool.
Nice.
[00:38:03] Jude Boudreaux: Well, and it’s a lot of parallels though with our Cajun ancestors too, who made their way down the coast from there. The accent is strangely similar. You know, you get locals in both of those places. So Robert grew up down the bayou like I did to some degree, although in the big city of hoa, so, yeah.
Yeah. So 50,000 or so people, not the 2000 that I had. Yeah, yeah. So, um, all right then a place you’ve always wanted to go that you haven’t been yet.
[00:38:30] Robert Leblanc: I’d love to take my kids to Paris. Um, I’ve always been a little intimidated with the language barrier. I always wanted to go and do it more immersively than maybe having a guide or a translator.
And so I’ve been, um. Taking Duolingo classes, but I, we, I need to just get over it and go.
[00:38:48] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. It’s um, I mean, I’ll tell you the strange thing, having grown up around the language, even if, you know, I had high school French and not a lot more, you understand a lot more than you’ll
realize now. Speaking it back is a challenge, but like, oh, I know you just asked to open the window and like, why?
I remembered that. I don’t know, but like I can you pick up stuff.
[00:39:07] Robert Leblanc: That’s cool.
[00:39:08] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah. Um, nice. Well, and then, last one. So best advice you think you’ve ever gotten.
[00:39:14] Robert Leblanc: Do cool shit and stay humble.
[00:39:16] Jude Boudreaux: I love that. Well, that’s perfect I think to wrap us up today, but yeah. Was that, is there more of a story behind where that came from?
[00:39:21] Robert Leblanc: Yeah. The definition of cool is not the way it’s used in modern vernacular. He’s cool, cool T-shirt, cool car. It’s cool. It’s being comfortable in your own skin. Doing things with a timeless sense of style. So doing things that will last, investing in relationships that will last, you know, doing work that will last.
Um, and the stay humble piece is don’t ever take that for granted. Don’t ever think that you didn’t have tons of support and help to accomplish those cool things. And don’t ever think that just because you accomplish those things that you can’t. Always be constantly learning and growing so that you can become a better version of yourself in a year than you are today.
The nuance
of that should be though, that you are proud of who you are, and that’s where the cool comes in. You’re comfortable in your own skin today, but you’re humble enough to know that you can continuously learn and grow. So I think it’s a great way to approach life on a macro level, but also a micro level.
So do cool shit and stay humble.
[00:40:16] Jude Boudreaux: That’s fantastic.
[00:40:18] Caleb Arringdale: All right, Caleb, any final thoughts? No. Appreciate it. This has been a really great conversation. Appreciate your time.
[00:40:23] Robert Leblanc: Thank y’all. It’s been awesome.
[00:40:24] Jude Boudreaux: Yeah, no, thanks so much Robert for joining us. It really has been great to hear you share your story and um, and yeah, I’ll sort of wrap us up.
We’ll. Yeah. And thank all of you for watching the, uh, listening to the Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. Um, I’m Jude Boudreaux and you can reach me, jude@theplanningcenter.com
. Reach Caleb caleb@theplanningcenter.com
and Robert, it’s robert@leblancandsmith.com
. Is that correct? That is correct.
[00:40:49] Caleb Arringdale: Okay, perfect.
[00:40:50] Jude Boudreaux: Thanks again for watching. Please like, subscribe, share, comment, let us know what questions you have and we’ll be around to help out. So thanks again. Take care. [00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Outro: Thanks for tuning in to the Living Beyond the Numbers podcast. If today’s episode resonated with you, be sure to follow us so you never miss a conversation.
