After Metagenix, I hit an unexpected roadblock. Because of a non-compete agreement, I was barred from working with most companies in the data integration tech space for a while. But my career has always been shaped by a simple pattern: I see a problem, and I jump in to solve it, even if it means stepping into a completely unfamiliar industry.
In the early 2000s, my wife Gloria and I decided to take a total detour from our prior careers and we founded the Carolina Sauce Company. The idea actually started around a campfire. I had a marinade I used every year at hunt camp, and the guys always told me it was so good I needed to find a way to sell it.
Gloria and I did not know the first thing about commercial food manufacturing, but we rolled up our sleeves and learned the business from scratch. We figured out the regulations, hired a co-packer, and started getting our sauces onto grocery store shelves. We spent our weekends traveling to barbecue competitions and trade shows, and we quickly expanded the business into a successful online store selling a wide variety of hot sauces, barbecue sauces, and specialty foods made by other small, mom & pop companies.
One of my favorite memories from that time happened at a big trade show. We were sampling our flagship product, Greg's Happy Sauce, when my culinary hero, Alton Brown, walked right up to our booth. He took a taste, paused, and flawlessly named every single ingredient in my recipe just from flavor alone. Then he looked at me and said, "I'll bet this would be great on salmon."
I grinned and replied, "It is!"
A few years later, I was watching his show "Good Eats" on television and he did a new salmon recipe. Sure enough, the sauce he made on screen was incredibly close to the one we had joked about at that trade show booth.
Stepping out of my comfort zone to build a food retail business taught me that the core principles of problem-solving never change. Whether you are engineering software or launching a food brand, you have to be willing to learn a system from the ground up, balance a tight budget, and work hard to deliver real value.
That is exactly the type of grit we need in our state leadership right now. Montana faces some big, complex challenges, from managing our growth to keeping our economy strong for local small businesses. We do not need career politicians who only know how to operate inside a comfortable government echo chamber. We need leaders who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves, learn new frameworks, and jump in to solve real-world problems for regular families.
That's Montana common sense.
These career stories were originally posted on Facebook. You can follow the entire story at facebook.com/leman4mt.