S2E7: From Military Service to Purposeful Success: Diana Potts' Entrepreneurial Journey

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Hi everybody. Welcome to the Purposeful Prosperity Podcast. I'm Seth Waters and I'm here with Jack Smith. And you know, Jack, Jack is an entrepreneur, founder, investor, and world-changer. Jack, excited to be with you today.

Jack Smith (Host): I'm excited to be here too, Seth.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah. Today we have a great conversation with Diana Potts.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah. And you know, she is a part of our team and we're pumped about having her excited about this.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. So grateful to have Diana Potts as part of our team here at Fortuna. And I love her mission.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah. You know, part of what she talked about during the conversation is, she made the statement, she lives with the conviction that she will not die with an unlived life.

Jack Smith (Host): I mean, that is awesome. We're going out and we're going to make it worth what, worth writing about.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah.

Jack Smith (Host): And I love that.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): What does it look like Jack for purposeful leaders to live with that conviction that they will not die with an unlived life?

Jack Smith (Host): For purposeful leaders, what that means is the impact that we make, right? Like you hear it with the Steve Jobs of the world, and I want to make a dent in the universe. Not dying with an unlived life means that you took the chances, you reached out for the opportunities that were presented to you, and you were as prepared as you could be. And, you know, they say no regrets. That's really what that means, right? It doesn't mean that you didn't try something and didn't like it, but it's all the things you didn't do that you really wish at the end of the day that you had taken those chances.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Yeah, yeah, that's really good. Another thing that Diana talked about was she said that throughout her life, she's never wanted to just make money in business. She's always had this perspective that we got to show up and see how we can help in our communities, in our cities, in our states. Jack, for purposeful leaders, how should that perspective shape the mission?

Jack Smith (Host): Well, I think it's right there inside of it, right? So it's all about service. Making money is just a byproduct. When you do good, when you make an impact in the world, and you're doing so purposefully, and you make sure that people need it, and that it's profitable, you use that, you put that profit back into the community, and reinvest it. That's when people want to see you succeed. And then the more people want to see you succeed, the more often you succeed. And there's this beautiful resonation chamber of the more good you do, the more money you make. And the more money you make, the more good you're able to do. Look at Patagonia’s of the world. And so that's, that's really focused on service, not on self-profit.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): That's good. That's wonderful. Well, with that being said, let's jump right into our conversation with Diana Potts.

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Jack Smith (Host): Hi everybody. Welcome to Purposeful Prosperity. I'm your host, Jack Smith, and I'm excited to have my friend and business partner, our Chief Operations Officer here at Fortuna BMC, Diana Potts. Thanks for joining us this morning, Diana.

Diana Potts (Guest): Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be able to talk to everyone and basically help to put our story out there.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. Well, I'm really, really excited today because you have an amazing story. You have done so many things from your early career in the military on through your post-military career and your congressional medals of honor. And I'm just so grateful to have you as part of the Fortuna team and alongside us as we write the Fortuna story. And so here today, I'd like for you to share a little bit about your time before you joined Fortuna, and kind of who you are, and what you bring to the good that we do here at Fortuna BMC.

Diana Potts (Guest): Sure. Well, if we're going to talk about what I did before I came to Fortuna, I wish I was still 30 years old. So the story wouldn't be quite so long. But yeah, having said that, I wanted to start out with just, you know, having been a veteran military, I've spent 13 years living overseas, and it changes your viewpoint from how you see your community around you, how you see the world around you. So, after having spent 13 years overseas and coming back to the States, then as a military spouse, and later as the mother of two sons that are veterans, it definitely gives you a different slant on the world, but it also lets you see things from another viewpoint and having moved around, lived around, been that military spouse that had to give up my job I don't know how many times for my special forces husband to be going to a new PCS. And all of that makes up who I am today and some of the decisions and choices that I have made.

So I always like to go back to something that my mother, who was a very big influence when I was very young and a little bit different, wanting to see the world and wanting to be able to make a mark as I got older. My mantra sort of became, “I will not die an unlived life.” And I have definitely been able to say that when my time comes, I have lived a very full and fruitful life.  Having come back, found a job, and it was definitely just a J-O-B - needed to find something to keep myself busy, needed to, you know, bring that little bit of extra money in, and found out that if you're not working your passion, then it's a J-O-B. So having done that, I decided to open my own business. And we did very well. I have to say we sold in 13 military stores, had a GSA contract, did a lot of disaster response, and selling a lot of PPE stuff as well. So, it was definitely a learning curve. It was definitely a challenge, it was definitely out of my comfort zone. But at the end of all of that, and with the support of hiring some people who were smarter than I am, to be totally honest about it, we were able to make our mark in that world. Hurricane Rita came along and then Hurricane Katrina and both of those in the whole Gulf area, we were able to reach out a hand, be a little bit different than a lot of companies who wanted to go down and make some money. We wanted to go down and see what we could do to help. By doing that and getting into the communities and working with the Corps of Engineers and Department of Environmental Quality and all of that, we were able to get into those communities and make a difference. And out of that, I have two congressional honors for disaster response and environmental responsibility. So it's definitely been a journey.

And being able to take all of that, I ended up consulting after that for almost 20 years now, billions of dollars in federal and state contracts with my clients. And it has been a journey of always remembering what we bring to the table and our core values, and the difference that we want to make. As a business, we want to make money obviously, but we want to make a difference while we're doing it and being able to reach out all the time, consulting for veteran-owned businesses and our eight A-businesses so that we can help the underdog be able to come and you know, it's awesome to be able to stand on a stage and you're not getting the award yourself. It's your client that you've had for three years that has come from nothing, that is now getting a federal contract and is getting awards themselves, and knowing that you had something to do with that and then multiplying that by 50 companies. So it was awesome. I got to spend some time at the Pentagon. I helped to be part of the panel that wrote the DoD Environmental Sustainability Plan when it first came out. Helped to work with the Army Energy Task Force when it came out to all the military bases, and being a North Carolina representative with the business advisory council to the white house. It was awesome to travel all over the United States and to be able to help train businesses, to be able to make a mark in the community, to be able to talk workforce development and how does that do with employment and how do we do it right. So that's a whole lot of something that kind of encompasses the fact that I have definitely lived my life for quite a while now.

Jack Smith (Host): You have indeed. And I'm so grateful for all the experience you bring to us and our customers and more importantly to our team, right? Something that's near and dear to both of our hearts is taking care of the veterans that we were fortunate enough to get to lead, and the ones that we're helping to get out into the civilian world. So I really appreciate your passion and your experience and all that you bring to Fortuna. You talked a lot about your journey and you still skipped a couple of major points that I'd really like for our listeners to hear. Can you talk about a life well-lived? You haven't even told your stories of your military service, but we'll get to those on another day. But I want to talk about your environmental success, and in particular, you talked briefly about disaster response, but you're a water expert. You were written up in the Arab Water World magazine, and can you tell me a little bit more about what you do with water and why that matters?

Diana Potts (Guest): Sure. So when we first started realizing around the world that there was a water issue. Here in the U.S., everybody was pretty complacent about the fact that the U.S. would never have a water issue. We would never have contaminated water, we would never have the shortage of water, and I think I was about 15 years too early with me, you know, that little chicken that runs around and said the sky was falling. And so I did a lot of my work overseas. We helped to do water filtration plants. I actually owned a patent for the original air-to-water generation machines. So being able to literally make pure water out of air and taking those into the military, taking it down into disaster response. There is nothing worse than you are surrounded by water, it's a humongous flood, there is chemicals that has come out from all of the factories, and no one has drinking water.

And as we all know, you know, besides air, one of the best things you need is water. So, I continually tell people water was the new oil. It was what was needed. You're finding the boundary wars and everything else and all of this overseas. And then it started to hit the States with contamination of a lot of our lakes, we're starting to pay attention. And in the last 10 years, we have found with PFAS in our waters, we have found contaminations. You've got Flint, Michigan that had to go through issues. Every disaster that we have, the bottom core line was always water, water, water. Having worked with a lot of environmental products and how can we do cleanup, one of the biggest issues that we had to face to begin with was that water issue. I became very involved in it. As you said, I was written up in the Arab Water World as one of the foremost water experts in the world. It was basically coming back again to community. What's the community need during the disaster? Or what's a community need even without that disaster? Because you have countries around the world that there is a huge shortage of water. And now it's hitting us here in the States, where you've got cities that we're trucking water into because everything around them is contaminated. So, I don't think that issue is going away anytime soon, and I'm really glad to see that there's a lot more people paying attention to it.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. There's some really cool emerging technologies coming out in water with, you know, using nanotech and molecular bonding to filter water. It's really exciting to see what's well, you know, what new technologies we're able to play with these days.

Diana Potts (Guest): Yeah, I'm just so happy that I remember coming out with the very first air-to-water machines and working and how big they were and how clumsy they were. And now you can fit one in your office.

Jack Smith (Host): I met a guy the other day that has ceiling tiles, the roof tiles with solar that can do atmospheric water collection on top of it. It's crazy what they've got. Put them on top of your house.

Diana Potts (Guest): Yes, it's amazing that people are finally understanding. I sat on a task force with the Pentagon. And of course, when you do that, you sign your life away, you're never able to talk about what is it that you do. But one thing became very, very clear, which is why I actually opened up my business in the first place, was energy-water-food nexus was going to be huge here in the States, and there was no turning back from it. Something had to be done. And,  you know, having a small business to be able to work with some of these big guys that were out there, but couldn't maneuver as fast as we could, actually became one of our biggest selling points.

Jack Smith (Host): Love it. No, that's, that's how we work, right? You, you move nimbly to respond to where the crisis is needed most or the help is needed most.

Diana Potts (Guest): Right, yep. So, having done all of that it's been a lot of experience a lot of history and it all keeps coming back to the fact that anybody who knows me, knows that my family is the most important thing to me, and my family becomes a community, my community becomes the city, my city becomes the state. So, as we work together with other people and bring other people, it's been such a collaborative effort in all the projects that we did. I was really sad to see COVID come and a lot of the projects that had been started in the communities actually got stalled and a lot of them lost funding because they couldn't move forward. So it's good to see that we're back on track - just got back from the Brownfields Conference and a lot of great things are being done within that Brownfields community and being able to do cleanup and things like that. So it's been a journey. It's been a really great journey. I've met a lot of wonderful people, but at the heart of it and the core value of it has always been family, community, our veterans, and getting into a lot of the neighborhoods that are neglected and have low economic development.

And so we've been able over the years to get into- I spent some time in workforce development, sitting on the workforce development board and actually managing the NCWorks here at Fayetteville during the three-county merge. So it comes from being a business owner, then working economic development, being able to work with the community, and finally bringing workforce development So that, that cycle is a whole cycle of seeing it from each viewpoint and what is best for the company, ends up being treating your employees good and making sure, especially after COVID, we're all realizing how much more we need that quality of life. And being able to spend time with our families has become more important. So it's all of those transitions and keeping up with the transitions and keeping up with what's going to happen when AI comes in. And how do we upskill and train all those people that AI may take their place? Let's make sure that we upskill them so that they're ready for their next career choice. So yeah it's a lot that has led to what's happening in today's world.

Jack Smith (Host): And that was going to be my next question. So what leads you to do what you do today? Right, you joined, you did all this wonderful, amazing things, and then you joined a team. Can you tell us about that?

Diana Potts (Guest): Yeah, I will say because there may be some people watching this, that over the years, have offered me a J-O-B. So I have been offered by some of the largest primes to come work for them and I've always said, “No I wanted to be a consultant.” I wanted to not be put into a box, and then I met Fortuna. And when Fortuna first decided to move to Fayetteville, I was just here to help them make some connections. And the more I heard about them and their core values and what Fortuna does, and the fact that Jack, I'll give you a kudo here, is that Jack never puts me in a box. I don't think he knows what the box is. So whenever we bring new things to the table, it's how can we do this and how does it help our community? How does it help our veterans? So when I was first offered a job, I immediately said, no. Thank you, but no, thank you. Went home that night and I couldn't get it out of my head. The fact that Fortuna does every single thing that is a passion for me, the way they work, the way that they handle their employees, the way that they are active in the community is everything that I am. So for me, I guess it was a no-brainer to finally say yes because I found a company that believes in the same things I do and to actually not just make money, but to make a difference.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. Community, right? And I think that's kind of consistent with all of that. And I really appreciate the communities that you help us build. I'm so grateful to have you on our team.

Diana Potts (Guest): Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. It's been a year, and being COO of a company that embraces growth and embraces the new path has been fantastic. We are starting our new division for PPS. So a lot of my background and connections and things will come to play again with what we're doing with PPS, which is going to be products for all of our hospitals, our VAs, into the disaster relief areas, and all the way into manufacturing plants. So that's our first division that is being set up now.

And then we have signed a lease downtown Fayetteville that we're so excited about: three-story building, historic building, downtown Fayetteville, and the whole top floor is going to be a training center that we can work with transitioning veterans. We can work with our people that are coming to us from NCWorks. And we have a lot of companies that do DoD Skill Bridge that will be partnering with us for that training center. So it's never, never, never do we sit still. It's changing. It's what is the world need right now. We're already talking about upskilling people and using AI and things like that with everything that we do, our staff augmentation that we're doing is growing from call centers to construction, to wherever we need it to go. And our IT consulting just- is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds. So it's been a real exciting time of this last year, working with Fortuna, and bringing about not only a lot of changes in the company, but those changes make that ripple effect out into our own communities.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your experience. Is there anything that you didn't get a chance to share with our audience that you'd like to tell them about today?

Diana Potts (Guest): No, I think we have kind of gone over everything. We talked a little bit about my military with the top secret SI Clarence and working in East Berlin. I can't say too much about that.

Jack Smith (Host): I mean, that's about all you can say, right?

Diana Potts (Guest): That's all I can say. But the thing that I really admire most about Fortuna BMC, I think, is the way that they treat their employees and also the mindset that every single business decision they make is based on how does this affect underprivileged neighborhoods and our veteran communities. And it's not just something that we say, it's something we actually do, which is a big difference from what you see out in the world. We believe in DEI, we believe in veterans, we believe in our underprivileged. We're doing training in our choice neighborhoods’ areas already. So these things I'm looking forward to coming on here a year from now and being able to talk about all the changes that have come in this next year from our two new divisions and the growth of the company itself.

Jack Smith (Host): We'll likely be coming in from our training center since we're going to be building a studio there as well. So I can't wait for that conversation either. Thank you so much, my friend. I appreciate all that you do and appreciate all the support that you've brought to our company. If our listeners can help in any way today, is there something that you can give them to kind of join forces, connect with you on LinkedIn or, you know, to join either as an employee or, you know, a partner to kind of help change the world together?

Diana Potts (Guest): Yeah, actually LinkedIn is the best way to get a hold of me. Just connect with me, let's talk, let's have a discussion. We are always open to collaborations and partnerships on anything. We're going to be getting into a lot of the disaster response field. We're also getting into some environmental things that we're going to be doing in tech cities and things. We'll talk about that in another podcast. That's things coming up for the future, which I think is going to take everyone by surprise. And just please connect, collaborate. We'll have our training center, hopefully opening in January. So, just connect with us on any of that.

Jack Smith (Host): Love it. If you're a veteran-owned business, let's team up, not beat each other up. Let's figure out how we can grow together. I love it. Thank you so much, Diana. I appreciate your time and have a great day.

Diana Potts (Guest): Thank you so much, Jack. I appreciate working here and it's been a great year so far and I can't wait for the next year.

Jack Smith (Host): It's a bright future. Thanks, Diana.

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