Brent Henley, the founder of The Pyramid Group, joined us to discuss his life mission to build leaders and improve human performance. We post this interview with great sadness, as shortly after our interview, Brent passed away suddenly on August 8, 2021. We devote this show to Brent's memory and his life's legacy of encouraging all of us to be the best possible version of ourselves.

Brent worked with clients to increase performance in sales, customer service, supervision, and leadership. People would clamor to attend his executive retreats on strategic planning, product launches, and organizational growth.

Many listeners know Brent Henley for his leadership in running a simulated society, known as SIMSOC, for Leadership Lafayette and many other organizations. Participants are forever changed as they experience real-life societal challenges they’ve never encountered.

Brent Henley grew up in Oklahoma in a family that was highly active: his mom, B. Glorine Henley, served as Oklahoma Secretary of State (and also worked for the DNC when Bill Clinton was President), and his father, Thomas H. Henley, was chief of surgery at a large hospital. All of his family members were educated at Oklahoma institutions of higher learning.

However, with an early calling to be a United Methodist Minister, Brent moved to Louisiana to attend Centenary College where he got a full scholarship. He fell in love with the people of Louisiana. He also eventually met a beautiful woman (his future wife, Tammy) who was a “half Spanish/half redhead from New Iberia” who turned his head and eventually brought him to Lafayette.

We dedicate this show to the memory of our dear friend, Brent Henley. (November 9, 1957 - August 8, 2021)

Henley discovered through an internship at Broadmoor UMC that full-time pulpit ministry really wasn’t his calling. He changed course and got double degrees in sociology and business. He credits his many mentors at the Centenary's School of Church Careers for encouraging him to follow his God-given path. They didn’t want to force him to be “another miserable minister.”

While this was unfolding, Brent waited tables at a steakhouse in Shreveport, at Mississippi River Company owned by Dobbs House, at a time when Louisiana Downs first got started and Downtown Square was hopping. Brent became headwaiter and hired all the serving staff and trained them while he was a senior in college. They wanted him to become a management trainee and to get into the restaurant world, but Brent didn’t want to work in restaurants for the rest of his life.

Brent had a particular client at the restaurant who always requested him as a waiter on Saturday nights and talked to him about coming to work in the Human Resources Department for his organization which owned a variety of companies and employed 110 employees. Brent was hired!

He joined the local SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) chapter in Shreveport as he jumped into his new job feet first. In his first two months on the job, when he found out that his company was paying three people who were no longer employed, he stopped that abuse. At that point, he made up his annual salary in three days!

After a year, the owner of the company asked Brent to become president of the company, when he was 24 years old! He helped grow the company from $14 million to $40 million per year in eight years.

At the end of that eight years, he quit the company at 32 years of age on Christmas Eve when the partners declined to give him a bonus in lieu of using those funds to buy another business. Brent felt this was unfair, so he handed them the keys as he walked out and went home to tell his wife he had started a ...