Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Forward Together podcast. I'm Rick Mumu, president of Wichita State University.
My guest today is Landon Huslig. Landon graduated magna cum laude from wichita
[00:00:22] Speaker B: State in 2015 with a degree in
[00:00:24] Speaker A: mechanical engineering and a minor in mathematics.
In 2017, Landon switched his focus and he and his wife Candice launched Wichita
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Life with a simple but powerful mission.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: To tell the stories of Wichita and celebrate the people who make this city special.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Welcome to the show, Landon.
Well, welcome, Landon, to the podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by and talking to us about what's been going on in your life, no pun intended, with Wichita Life.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: So how are you doing?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: I'm doing well.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I love the show and I'm excited to be on here.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Good, good, good. Well, you know, the purpose of this podcast is really to showcase our alums, the connections to Wichita State. And you're obviously an alum. You have that connection back to us. And just to showcase you and find out what brought you to what you're doing now and a little bit about your past.
So always ask, I always start by asking our alums what brought you to Wichita State in the first place.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Andover. I went to Andover Central, so relatively close suburbs. And a big piece of it was I was always kind of math science oriented. Writing wasn't necessarily my strong suit, but I was pretty good at math, pretty good at science through high school, and so started leaning towards engineering. And naturally, that kind of leads you to, okay, Wichita State has a great engineering program, really, really great aerospace, but great all the way around.
And so I was looking at kind of a Trust State, Case State, Colorado School of Mines.
And so it really came down to, one, scholarships that was a big piece of it. And then two, just being close to home. I had two little brothers that played a lot of sports. And so I didn't want to kind of miss all of that. But also, it was not right next to. I mean, andover is only 20 minutes away down the road, but it was also like a little bit away. So, you know, the parents don't stop by all the time and all that kind of stuff. But also, I can go home whenever I want.
But yeah, between.
At the time, there was a dean's scholarship program. And so that was. Our school was one of the target schools for that. So that was a big piece of it. But then I was also blessed to receive the Wallace Scholarship. And so I think it was the summer I started working for Niar right after high school. Working for Sean Urstein at the CAD Cam lab.
And so that was a big piece of it as well. Just like the connections. I knew some people. I went to high school with his niece and so pretty good connection there.
But that summer I was working for him and I got an email that somebody the Wallace Scholarship was kind of the top level scholarship and that I can't remember what the second level was, but I got the second level one. But then somebody chose to go elsewhere. And so I got bumped up to the Wallace Scholarship. So I was more than happy to receive that. But that like cemented the decision even more to go to Wichita State.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And what year did you graduate?
[00:03:01] Speaker C: 2015 from Wichita State.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Okay, so we're 2026 now. So it's been a while.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: It has been a while.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Kind of trace a little bit about what happened after graduation. Where did you go to work and then maybe talk a little bit about how you become the unofficial spokesperson for Wichita and everything. Wichita, yeah, for sure.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: So I worked for Niar in various roles. I worked in the VR lab for a couple years in college.
Did a lot of like CAD CAM student assisting. I taught a couple CATIA classes. And then the last couple of years while I was in college, I worked for Beechcraft. And then kind of that was during the Textron taking over era. And then towards the end of that, I just realized, like, that wasn't for me. Like, I kind of got my taste of the aerospace stuff. I was a mechanical engineer, so I could kind of take that whichever direction. And so December of my senior year started applying some other places and Coke kind of fell into my lap. I'd never really considered it. I just figured mechanical. I'd probably do something aerospace or automotive or something along those lines. But my now wife and high school sweetheart, she was like, why didn't you think? Why don't you ever look at Coke? And I was like, I'd never thought about it. So I applied for a role at Coke Pipeline. It was a rotational engineer role, which basically meant I'd rot roles but also rotate locations. So we'd move around a little bit, which always sounded fun.
And so I started right after school for Coke Pipeline now and then kind of reabsorbed into Flint Hills Resources, which I did for almost 10 years.
And as part of that, moved down to Corpus Christi for a little bit right after we got married in that fall.
Did some like hydraulics business development stuff and then moved down there and did integrity pipeline engineering, which is essentially just look at the pipes data and See what we need to fix so we don't have a leak. And then I was supposed to move to Minnesota next for the next kind of rotation of that, but a job opened up back in Wichita and so we were kind of considered. We were freshly married and we always knew we wanted to experience elsewhere. But also we loved Wichita. I think it's kind of like a mini version of the boomerang story. A lot of people leave and come back, but we knew if we didn't come back then that it might be a longer period of time until we had the chance to come back. And so jumped on that. And that was the end of 2016.
When we came back, we were just gone for nine or 10 months and then we came back. And a lot of my friends, the way I kind of tell the story is a lot of my friends from high school again, we both grew up in Andover and we both went to Wichita State. A lot of our friends had moved away to cooler cities, so they went to Kansas City or Denver or San Francisco or anywhere else.
But not a lot of them stuck around in Wichita. And so that kind of led to me just kind of highlighting. Started an Instagram account called Wichita Life, started posting pictures of the keeper of the plains and kind of that was when the breweries were starting to really kick off around that era, 2015, 2016, 2017.
And so in April 2017 I started that Instagram account with no real plan for it. There wasn't like a business plan, there wasn't anything like that and there weren't a lot of accounts doing that. Now there's a lot of different foodie accounts and stuff. We were kind of early ish on that train. There was a few that already existed. But then it caught on like crazy. People loved it. And so fast forwarding that grew to the other social media accounts like TikTok or TikTok wasn't even around Facebook, et cetera.
Started a podcast the next year because being an engineer I listened to a lot of podcasts while I'm at work. I didn't interact with a lot of my customers and so started a podcast and that grew into a newsletter and now we just keep branching out into different directions. But yeah, I would have never guessed that's what I'd be doing after. But I was still doing the engineering gig. I still have a full time job, which tele life is on the side still right now. About a year and a half ago I switched over to Stand Together foundation, which for those that don't know it's kind of like the nonprofit side of Coke. It's not directly connected, but Charles Cook started it 25 years ago or so. But we were able to work with nonprofits here in Wichita and help them in a variety of ways. So it's a good fit between Wichita Life and kind of the Koch world. That's what I've been doing for about 18 months now.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Well, I'm sure that that whole experience with Wichita Life is what probably attracted Koch to you or to them.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: Yeah, my boss, Joe Woodward, he actually met him when he was recruiting Wichita State students to Coke back in the day. And then he. When they were looking to kind of expand their team, I was kind of the top of the list because of. Yeah, knowing Wichita pretty well, knowing the culture pretty well, and it was a good fit.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: So started that because your love of Wichita, trying to get the word out about how great it is here. And it is hard, right?
[00:07:15] Speaker C: It is.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Think about coming to Wichita. They don't know what it's like.
Think that it's just a bunch of cowboys or whatever's in their mind about wizard of Oz.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: Yeah. All the stereotypes.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: But once they get here, they find out this is a livable city, pretty cool place to live and lots to offer.
So maybe it's just me. And I'm older, a lot older than you, and you're younger and much more prone to think about social media and those sorts of things.
How do you monetize this kind of work? And I'm assuming you have done something, but how does that work for the listener?
[00:07:56] Speaker C: And take one quick step back. I actually didn't really even use my personal Instagram, so I had one, had a few posts, but. So I had started it kind of just on my own. And then my wife one day saw me posting something. She's like, you never use social media. Why are you doing this? And that's when I kind of told her about the idea. And it already had a few thousand followers because it grew pretty quick. So it's kind of funny that that is where it started. But, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to monetize it, I'd say.
I always kind of had that entrepreneurial itch. Early on in high school, I always knew I wanted to start something. In college, we were always brainstorming ideas between class or in the dorms, what we could start. And I think part of it was like, I always thought too big. I was trying to think like, okay, we need to start the next Facebook. Because that was kind of the Way of early Zuckerberg was young, kind of the college kids success stories, but I always thought really big. And so then it was like I started this idea that wasn't even really a business idea yet. And that has grown into now a good side hustle. And eventually we'll do that full time as a family.
But how we monetize it today again, I always kind of had the entrepreneurial itch, but I didn't want to quit my job to be an influencer or something like that. And I mean, with all the algorithm changes and people getting banned from social media and everything like that, I've got three little kids, I'm not going to trust it to the algorithm.
And so you could do a little bit early on. I remember the first check I got was like 50 bucks or something from a hair salon to promote their whatever, twice a year sale. And I thought that was like the biggest. I mean, I worked at Coke as an engineer, so not a bad gig to begin with. But then making 50 bucks on the side like felt better than any of the checks from Coke.
And so that grew into again, the newsletter.
And that was a lot easier kind of blueprint to follow because there were examples of, I mean, traditional media, just newspapers in general sell ad space.
And then I kind of got in the newsletter world of there's some publications called like Morning Brew or the Hustle that are essentially like the Wall Street Journal via email for like millennials. And so, but they sell ad space. And so I was like, oh, this is the product I've been looking for. Like, I wasn't going to just sell social media. You can make a little bit of money there, but it's not super consistent. I had the podcast, but that's really hard to grow, really hard to monetize, get new eyeballs on. And so when the newsletter came along, I'm like, oh, this is what I've been looking for for the last however many years.
And so that's been able to kind of grow from there. And then since then, we have an event calendar, we have a job board that people can kind of pay to put their posts on, things like that. And then now that we have a fairly large audience of, I don't know, 120,000 followers across social media, 43,000 on our email list, et cetera. Now we can sell products or events and stuff like that. And so we've, we did a puzzle last year that was kind of custom commissioned from a friend of mine that I grew up with that was like witched as A whole we've got another product coming out like that for this Christmas. So there's a lot of different ways to monetize and you get really creative.
One of our more, I guess, newer ways is we host dinner clubs. And so once a month people pay a little bit. So we can handle the logistics and the matching. But essentially they're signing up to go to dinner with a stranger.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw something about it.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Yeah, it's really fun. So the morning of we've had about 100 people or more. Up to 150 people go to dinner each month since November of last year. But essentially people sign up the morning of you get a text that said, hey, you're going to George's at 6:30 tonight. And you can pick if you want like a higher price point mid or a lower price point. You take a short personality quiz and you get a text saying, Hey, 6:30, show up at George's, you'll meet five strangers there. So there's probably two or three tables of six at George's and then five or six other restaurants.
You get to meet some new people, make some new friends and then at 7:30 everyone gets a text, hey, meet up at so and so bar. Or last month we did it at the NBC World Series and we were able to use the, I don't remember what it's called, the baseball stadium, the kind of upper deck area.
And we had 140 people go to dinner last month and about 100 people showed up to the after party to check out the NBC World Series for the first time. A lot of them.
But all of the tables from the various restaurants then get invited to one place after so you can mingle and you'll probably run into some people. And it's been fun because every month about half of the people are returning, but there's also half the people that are new. So it just kind of keeps growing.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: And yeah, so younger groups from 19,
[00:12:02] Speaker C: I think we've had some like 75 year olds. It's been a blast to see kind of the whole mix of groups and ages.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So I need to tell my friends who always tell me I, I can't meet anybody, I'm so bored.
[00:12:12] Speaker C: And yeah, well, it's like I had no idea. Like the first one we sold out in like a day of. We kind of limited the spots because I didn't want it to be like I had no idea if it'd be 20 people or 200 people sign up. So we capped it at like 75 and sold out in like a day or two. And I was just like, man, I didn't realize. I mean, I realize it because it is hard to meet people outside of work or school or whatever else. But there's like an itch from the younger. There's like college kids, there's young adults, there's middle age, there's older people and the whole gamut. Everyone's looking for ways to meet new people. That's not awkward. And like, it is a little awkward, but like, it's like a. You're signing up for the awkwardness versus, like trying to make it happen.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: So you all make the reservations.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Yes, we kind of use a service, helps manage a lot of that stuff, but that's a way to make a little bit of money, but also provide a service that people are looking for. So it's really. There's so many different ways to kind of make money off of things, but also provide value to the community. Community.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: So I'm on your email list. So one of the 43,000. I get that at like 6 o' clock or something in the morning. And so I'm assuming you have some help with this. You're just not doing this by yourself.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: I'm writing all the emails. So yeah, so I wrote all the emails. We have a little bit of help, kind of the team. So my wife helps me. She helps with social media and a lot of her help is more of support and shooting down my bad ideas, for lack of a better way to put it. I've got a lot of ideas and she's normally kind of reigns me into what's not necessarily realistic because she does kind of help push me to like, what else we want to do, clearly, as we've branched out to all these different things.
But then I hired my mom. She used to work for the Wichita school district and now she helps kind of pull the stuff together for our event calendar because it takes a lot of time to manage all the events and kind of put that together. And then we actually hired Wichita State student.
Not May of 2520 or May of 26. It was May of 20.
And now she works for Wichita State doing some event stuff. So Claire Mabie runs a lot of our social media stuff and she's been amazing.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Well, good, good.
Was she an applied learning student?
[00:14:08] Speaker C: I'm not sure exactly. So originally I just kind of put it out in the newsletter that I need help with this. And I had, I don't know, five to 10 applicants. And then somebody, I can't remember who it was, somebody From a trust state, put it on one of the job boards, and so I got a bunch more. And so I eventually had to shut it off because I'm like, I can't have 30 applicants. I capped it like 15. And then kind of worked it down. And Claire stood out, so she's been awesome.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Well, the reason I'm saying is, you know, we want all of our students to have these applied learning expenses, and we have resources for jobs like that, Because, I mean, what you're doing is, you know, common across, you know, our society. People want to have the social media presence, and all kinds of businesses do, and so we want to help build that talent pipeline, too. So I was just curious.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: I think she was part of something like that.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:52] Speaker C: And she did get credit for it.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: I know. Yeah. Well, that's good.
And that email comes out every day.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: It's kind of a weird schedule. So there's kind of. Some people do this, like, once a week, some people go daily. We're kind of a weird middle ground. We do it four days a week.
And the reason for that is we send Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
I originally started it in June of 2020, and so it's kind of a weird time in the world with COVID kind of still looming. Like, it was very uncertain back then, but it was kind of a way to put, like, okay, there are a couple events going around, whatever that looks like. But I didn't really know, like, what that really looked like until I started seeing some, like, the morning brew type models of what a good product looks like. And then eventually it was like the emails were getting too long. And so on Gmail, like, it gets to get technical, it gets clipped. And so, like, you don't see the bottom of the email if it gets too many words or too large of a file. So I started sending twice a week, which was essentially not that much more work because it was just a longer email cut in half, basically.
And then fast forward a year maybe.
I started going three times a week because I needed. Mainly because I needed more ad space, and I didn't want to just cram one email full of ads.
And so I started doing what I call deep dives on Wednesdays. And so it'll be into organizations, events, history of different stuff, which has been really fun to do. Like, the history of the boathouse. And, like, there's the boathouse now, and that's kind of in the news now. But, like, there used to be a boathouse where, like, you could actually rent boats and, like, whatever that Looked like. So that's fun because I get to learn a lot. And then people rave about those. Cause they're learning about their city.
And then going a little bit further is like, we have so many events we don't get to cover. In those other emails, which are Monday, Fridays are kind of local news, the events, sports, et cetera. The Thursday email is just like a dedicated what's happening this weekend email. So it's a little like a one line about, I don't know, 40 to 50 different events. So people can kind of just send it on Thursday so they can kind of plan ahead a little bit and plan for the weekend.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: So you're the guy that actually knows what's going on.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: Trying to. It is funny though. Cause I'll do that. And they're like, oh, thanks for telling me about this event. I'm like, can you remind me what that one was? Cause there's just so many events. Some of them I start to forget about.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: But yeah, well, we'll put up on the screen the website so people can know more information.
At the very end, I'll say what the website.
[00:17:00] Speaker C: I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, so let's go back to Wichita State. When we came here, how did you experience the classes when you came to the university?
You already talked about your interest in engineering and math and science and those sorts of things.
Just tell us a little bit more about your journey as a student when you got here.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So lived in the dorms. So there's a lot of late night studying in the dorms as engineering students.
And I think it's funny to compare even like teacher to teacher sometimes because I started with calc 2. So I took AP calc in high school. Scored high enough to get a little bit of credit for that. But Calc 2 is like, that was a welcome to college moment. They always say, like the welcome to the NFL moments. That was the welcome to college moment because it was just a tough class compared to other people. Had other calc 2 teachers maybe weren't as tough, but we had a tough one. But I think that was good because it kind of established like, okay, you can't just get away. Like a lot of times in high school, you don't really have to study. It's not that hard. A lot of the classes, this is like, oh, no, you actually have to study. And I think that helped kind of set what that could look like for the rest of college. And so as part of my scholarship, we had to take part in some Sort of organization, they didn't really care what it was. Some people did fraternities or sororities, some people did other stuff.
So my freshman year I did a lot of student activities Council, I think is what it was called sac. So I did a little bit of that, helped kind of run some of the events on campus, which was fun just to meet new people and kind of go to a lot of events and help with some of them.
And then towards the end of that, I started to hear more about some of these race teams on campus. So there's like the Formula sae, Baja sae, and they were taking these cool trips and I'm like, man, I'm missing out on this stuff. And so towards the end of my freshman year, I started kind of just hanging out around the shop a little bit. And then for the next three years I was probably in the shop way too much doing the Baja team, which was super fun.
My last two years, my friend Ian and I, who kind of came in engineering at the same time, he's from Cheney, got to know each other really well and we were kind of co captains our last two years for Baja. But that was a lot of fun. Traveling to Washington State, Oregon, Rochester. We did okay.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: We did all right.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: It was fun.
It's interesting because there's.
We had a pretty small team here and I mean the budget is the budget, it kind of is what it is. And everyone has their own. But then you look at the teams that are like Michigan and it's kind of like they have like just a well oiled machine. Like we're scrapping by and learning a lot. But they have like, I don't know, they've been handed down a really good car from the previous class and they've got five times more money and whatever that looks like. But just there's just a lot to learn from that and stuff breaks in the middle of competition and kind of building the camaraderie, figuring out how to fix it and scrap together. And that was a really good experience.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: I've been over to that lab recently.
I think it was last academic year.
It's amazing.
First of all, amazing, the work they're doing, but also the interest and just really weigh into it.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Oh, for sure. And it's, I mean, it's all student ran. Nobody else is helping the students. It's pretty awesome to see like, I mean, we're doing everything from designing it and which is kind of where the CAD Cam stuff that I was already doing played into it. I was pretty good at that.
I mean, you're figuring out how to. If you're going to bend the pipes to make the car or order them and then you're making the gearbox and all that. It's pretty interesting. I don't know. It's fun to watch. And unfortunately I graduated in May of 15. The new engineering building opened up that fall, I believe, so I just missed that. But it's been fun to kind of go back and visit.
As part of Coke, we did some kind of award for the end of year senior design projects. And so it was always fun to go back and see all the different tour the building, but also see all the different senior design projects. And it was a lot of fun.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: You mentioned Niar earlier working at the National Institute for Aviation Research. And I'm assuming you've been following its progression, but now we have hundreds of students working in those various different labs and you said you worked in the CAD cam. I did, yeah.
What kind of projects were you working on or do you remember?
[00:21:01] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Initially it was like they kind of just get you up to speed. So there's the basic level, kind of CATIA classes in CATIA is just the modeling software they use and kind of work your way up. So the first one is like how do you build individual parts? The next level is kind of how do you put those parts together?
And so forth. And so early on it was just kind of learning and then student assisting is just like helping students, whether that was like college age students or kind of the non traditional students. So it was always fun to see, like. Cause that's what most of the aircraft companies use. And that's why with trust 8 kind of leans into it.
But that was fun. And then I remember specifically later on when I was working for Textron Beechcraft, it was a lot of wing parts. And so another cool part of kind of going with trust 8. And I'm sure I can't imagine where it's at now because this was 12, 13, 14 years ago. But some of the pieces were forged. So it's like they had a cast back in the day when the 50s or whenever they first designed these planes. But like there's this part that nobody's ever. There's no model for it and it's really hard to like model it because it's just kind of weird angles and stuff.
But the cool part was seeing like the reverse engineering technology and they scan it and then you use that scan to kind of build the part three dimensionally and then see how that fits Together. So that was cool. That was kind of really taken off when I was. I remember they got. While I was at Niar, they got a 3D printer that printed. I don't even remember how it worked, but it was like a metal 3D printer. And so I was like, man, this is insane. Again, I can't imagine where everything is today.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: It's just incredible. We have the largest additive manufacturing research facility now on campus. You can print anything you, this room, this building. It's pretty incredible. And then students are getting that experience, take to their careers. And also wanted just to point out, you said that you were a Wallace Scholar. And so when someone says that, we know exactly what that means. And the premier aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, all kinds of different fields in engineering.
Students who get that, that, that particular scholarship. Was Velma Wallace still alive when you were in school?
[00:23:08] Speaker C: I think she was early on. I can't remember.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: She died around that time.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I think she was like early on. Yeah.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: But it's been a great scholarship and personal development, you know, group of students for these scholars to work with. And many of them have gone on to, you know, become leaders in our community and elsewhere. So I'm glad to see that that's, you know, one of our products.
[00:23:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's been fun too. Just, I mean, I run into some of the people either that I was in school at the same time that were Wallace Scholars, or we led Young Life in Andover for a while, which is like a non denominational Christian group. One of my young life guys, he got the Wallace Scholarship and he's been working at Coke for. Actually when I left for Stand Together, he filled backfilled me at Coke. So it's been fun to like see full circle things like he was a Wallace Scholarship and Wallace Scholar, but then just other people. It's like it was a really good group. And I mean, like you said, a lot of leaders here, they've sent a lot of people like a lot of like NASA scientists and all kinds of stuff. They've been all over the world. It's awesome. Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. So you talked to me a little bit earlier about what you were doing at Wichita Life with social media channels and blogs, podcasts and all that sort of thing.
So what's next for you? What do you think? I know you're working Stand Together now, but in terms of all of this Wichita life and what you're seems like you're really passionate about is telling the story of Wichita. So what's next? Do you have Any ideas about that?
[00:24:34] Speaker C: That's a good question. I think it's just kind of continuing to grow what we have. So the email newsletter again is around like 43,000 subscribers.
The population of Wichita is like 400,000. Greater Wichita is 650. So we've got a little bit of work to do. But I think continuing to grow that. Continuing to kind of host some different events. So the dinner clubs, I would have never guessed that was something that people wanted. And so we kind of stumbled into that by seeing what other type of events does Wichita not have yet.
Continuing to just like find different products, whatever that might be. And so something we just rolled out. So the website that you'll kind of point to, we just kind of redid the website a little bit.
Kind of leaning back into like what makes traditional media. What was something like. My dad grew up reading the paper everymore. We had the physical paper everywhere with the big stack of recyclable papers there. But it was like I always flipped to the sports, I always flipped to the comics and then like the games. And so we just rolled out like a small gaming website with like the crossword or the wordle type stuff. Just continuing to push it and see where else we can grow it really.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: So yeah, our kids, they don't watch broadcast news, they don't read newspapers, they get their news through different sources. And so it's interesting to see how you've transformed your thinking on this and what you're thinking in the future. And you know, the other thing I want to just say is that I think is great about you. And I always tell students, you know, many students who come to the university nowadays, the generation now, you know, I started in higher education almost 40 years ago, so things have changed. But what students typically are worried about or talk to me about is, you know, they're concerned about getting that big job, you know, the CEO, right out of school or whatever. And that's typically not what happens.
But what I do tell them is that take every opportunity and if you're asked to do something or you see an opportunity, take that opportunity, walk through that door, you can always turn back around. And that seems like something that you've done.
Start out as an engineer, now you're stand together, work for an engineering focused type company. But stand together is, you know, offshoot of that, but much different. And then this Wichita Life initiative and business that you have going on, I think it's just a good example of how you've taken advantage of this.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that even goes back to like my first week. So I graduated high school middle of May, whatever that was in 2011.
I started at Nair like a couple weeks later that summer. And it was the first. I think it was like the second day I was taking a CATIA class, Cad Cam, just to kind of. Again, I had no experience in that world yet started taking that class.
And Sean Urstein walked in and the VR person had just quit. And back then it was like, now you can use like the Xbox, Kinect or that's what we were using. That was like 10 years ago, whatever.
But like there's kind of built in software. Back then it was these big cameras called like Vicon cameras. There's eight of them around the room. You had to use like little dots like Avatar or whatever.
But it was like the second day I was taking these classes and there was a couple older people, a couple younger people. And Sean came and said, hey, the VR lab guy just quit. He gave us two weeks notice. We need somebody to go take, learn everything they can in two weeks and take this over. And it was like kind of hinting at me like, you and Jeff Fisher was the guy's name who was my boss. He's like, no, basically you guys need to do this. And so it was like, yeah, let's do it. I have nothing to lose. I just started, so why as well. And so ended up doing that for two years. I was never super good at it, but it was like a good opportunity and a good way to kind of step into that. And again, like you mentioned with Stand Together, Joe approached me probably a year before I started that. My boss, Joe, and he's like, hey, we're looking at potentially like creating a role that we think you'd be good at filling. And at the time I was like, I mean, I've been doing this coke thing for a while. If I quit Coke, which is a nice gig, I like the work, I love the people.
If I quit that I kind of just want to go do, which shall I full time. And that's still the goal now, is still to do it full time. But I'm like, I don't really want to have like this middle stepping stone between these.
And then kind of slowly over time, I just realized, like, this is a really good role. I should take this. And it's been cool to see kind of the network. I mean, there's. I was kind of the bottom of the totem pole at Coke most of the time. Just the way our group was organized, doing the work but now it's like we Stand together. I'm able to hang out with people or work with people that are at the top of the Coke food chain. And it's like I never would have talked to them if I didn't make the leap to do something different.
And just the network I've been able to make, the people, the work. And yeah, basically it's just kind of saying yes to whatever that next step is.
I could never guess where the road would take you, but I think it's like a Steve Jobs line. It's like you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back. And I think that is very true. Like, you never know what the next step's going to be, but you just got to try different things.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: I just wrote the provost and I just wrote an editorial for the Sunflower newspaper, kind of a back to school thing. And the title of it just say yes.
And when you're thinking about doing something, you can always go back.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: But you might miss an opportunity.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: And so that brings you kind of full circle back to the kind of work that I know Stand Together does and empowering people and trying to improve people's lives and, you know, improving Wichita and other communities. So it, to me, it seems all connected.
[00:30:01] Speaker C: It does. And that's, and that's. When I first started Stand Together, I told Joe. I was like, hey, I don't know if you'll have me for six months or six years. Like if Wichita life really, really, I mean, it has been taking off, but if it gets to a point where I can't do anything, like I might have to just go do that at some point. But it's been such a good compliment to do both. And I'm able to help from both sides. I'm able to use Witchtra Life to help leverage some of the stuff and promote people around town and then kind of leverage the network that I'm making through Stand Together. So, yeah, who knows how long I'll be there. But it's been a really good compliment and been great to help people in different aspects that I can't from the other angle.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Well, it's good to meet you and talk to you more about what's going on. And actually I've met you before. You're one of our, one of our alumni award winners from the Alumni Engagement Office here at Wichita State. So congratulations. Thank you, sir, again on that one. But anyways, it's good to meet you. Thanks for stopping.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Thanks to our listeners for joining us today. If you're interested in more information about Landon and Wichita Life, be sure to check out the Wichita Life Media Network at Wichita Life.
Be sure to follow, rate and share the podcast so others can find it, too. And if you're curious to learn more about Wichita State, check out my book, Student Centered Innovation A Guide to Transforming Higher Education.
It dives deeper into the story of Wichita State's transformation and what it takes to lead meaningful change. Visit Wichita Edubook for more information.
[00:31:37] Speaker D: Sponsorship for the forward together podcast is provided by scott rice officeworks and the shocker store.
Additional thanks to nair amp, wsu carpentry shop and gocreate.
Produced by caleb johnston, dakota miller, katie pham, matt rascoe, curt ryerson with the help of kaelyn bragg, ryan chastain, tim hart, carmen heitsch, sarah tankornellis, tate penner and marcus wright.
