In today's episode of the "The Runway Decade Podcast", hosts Bill Bush and Pete Bush, advisors at Horizon Financial Group are talking with Pat Cuntz, a successful business leader in Baton Rouge. He was baseball player at LSU before he became a successful business owner.

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Episode Highlights

• 2.30: Pat met Pete somewhere between 1985-1986. Pete was a freshman the year after Pat had finished playing baseball. Pat was hanging around, finishing school and the two got to be friends… and ended up living together for a little bit.
• 4.18: Pat's first year in baseball at LSU was around 1981, and he played for a couple of years, but things were a lot different under his first coach. LSU baseball certainly wasn't anywhere near what it is now, but he was there to see the change when Skip Bertman took over the program. Pat was on Skip’s first team at LSU
• 6.43: Pat has been the luckiest guy on the planet because when he talked to coach Bertman about graduating and going into business, Coach said “you are going to do great”, and it gave him a different level of confidence.
• 7.11: Pete says he wasn't a great player either. It made him work harder at taking in all other things that Bertman tried to talk about to us.
• 11.14: Pat left LSU not only with a degree, but he meets his wife, another athlete.
• 12.08: Pat dated Cecelia for 10 years before they got married. He and his wife were friends who kind of hung around each other a little bit more, and then next thing you do…go on a date.
• 15.05: Pat dated for 10 years and then he got married, and then 10 years later, Christopher Cuntz their only child came along.
• 19.30: Once, a successful real estate businessperson said to Pat that, work for Motorola and get to know that corporate world and learn from it. Learn the good, learn the bad and then eventually go work for yourself.
• 21.52: The goal was always to go acquire some other companies in South Louisiana and we are going to build this business from New Orleans through the 10-12 corridor, all the way through Beaumont, into Houston and Pat really enjoys it.
• 29.04: Pat says that he and his family have been lucky enough to communicate the gifts that we have been given. There are things they want to do, and he doesn't know what that means today, but we talk about how we will help some people out.
• 30.50: If you are a person of faith, life is about helping people. It is about helping the less fortunate, says Pat.

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Three Key Points

1. Pat went to Houston for training period of about 3 months after getting offer from Motorola and had a funny story about when you talk about confidence and how things play out.
2. The atmosphere for the world of baseball or football or basketball or any type of sports across country is so different. The parents, the kids, even the opposing people, everybody cheers for everybody, and everybody is rooting for everybody.
3. You can make a bunch of money, you can have all the plans, but at the end of the day, it's all about what do you want to do and what do you want to do with it, says Pat.

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Tweetable Quotes

• "The whole early era of Skip’s teams is kind of a big fraternity of guys that did spend a lot of time together off the field as well." – Bill
• "When I was getting out, I was in business marketing, and I wanted to go into some type of sales where you didn't have those aptitude tests." - Pat
• "When I came to work for EMCO, my really good friend ended up being my business partner. I was running the communication side and Todd ran the information technology side and there was always an intention of buying the company." – Pat
• "COVID showed me I can't work from my house. I'm way too easily distracted. I have got to get up and go somewhere." – Pat
• "I have to say I’ll never really retire. I got to do something and as long as I enjoy what I'm doing and they allow me to do this, I'll continue to do this." - Pat

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Resources Mentioned

• Pat Cuntz-LinkedIn
• Email: pat.cuntz@bearcom.com
• Podcast Editing

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