Stephen Day is the kind of person who defies easy categorization. He grew up on an 80-acre farm in rural Indiana, earned degrees from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, ran two of the largest groups at Goldman Sachs, survived the Bear Stearns meltdown, founded a technology investment bank during the Great Recession, co-founded a luxury candle company named after his grandmother, and now operates a heavy equipment excavating business in the Texas Hill Country.
When I sat down with Stephen for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, the conversation was supposed to cover all of that — and we did. But the reason this episode exists right now, at this moment, is because of what happened on the eve of July 4th in Kerr County, Texas. A devastating flood — described by some as a one-in-100-year event — tore through central Texas, claiming lives including children, destroying homes, and leaving a community in ruins.
Stephen and his team at Armour Excavating were on the Guadalupe River within 24 hours. What followed was weeks of volunteer search and rescue, and now a sustained effort to rebuild. This is a story about what happens when Wall Street discipline meets Hill Country grit — and about the kind of leadership that shows up when it matters most.
Stephen's career trajectory reads like a masterclass in building on each experience to fuel the next. After earning his accounting degree from IU, he moved to Chicago in 1988 and joined Deloitte on public accounting audits. That led to an assistant treasurer role at Whitman Corporation, where he learned the full spectrum of corporate finance — and where he first encountered investment bankers.
That spark of interest led him to the University of Chicago for his MBA. In 1996, two things happened that would define the next three decades: he married his wife Susan, and he launched his investment banking career. Both are still going strong nearly 30 years later.
At Goldman Sachs, Stephen ran the global IT services group and co-headed the global software group — two of the firm's largest practices. "I really loved my time at Goldman Sachs," he told me. "I learned a lot from the partners there." But it was Bear Stearns that first scratched the entrepreneurial itch. Bear Stearns was behind in technology investment banking and was hiring leaders from across Wall Street to build the group. Stephen ran their software practice and did a lot of great deals — and the experience of building something from the ground up stoked a fire that wouldn't go out.
He left Bear Stearns before the collapse — fortunately — and then did what any reasonable person would do: he started his own investment bank during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
"We kept telling ourselves that FedEx started during the Great Recession in the early 70s and they survived, and we would too," Stephen recalled. "So we just kept plying forward." The years 2009 and 2010 were brutal. In 2011, Navidar earned its first investment banking fee, and they've been doing the same work ever since — a technology investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions and capital raising.
What sets Stephen apart from many entrepreneurs I know is that every one of his businesses is mission-oriented. This isn't lip service — it's embedded in how the companies operate.
Navidar supports the mission of young students and entrepreneurs, particularly first-generation college students. Stephen believes deeply that education is a gateway for young people to improve their economic wellbeing.
Veta Nell — the luxury candle company he co-founded with Susan — is named after his grandmother on his father's side. She was a single mother who lived through difficult times but remained, as Stephen described her, "an amazingly graceful, generous, very warm, loving person." The company's mission is focused on supporting women, particularly those who have experienced domestic violence and may be homeless as a result. They hire women in these situations and provide job training.
Armour Excavating supports the mission of veterans.
And across all of their businesses, they provide fair wages and full benefits to every employee. "We're really trying to be mission-oriented, compassionate businesses, as well as providing a great service or product to our customers," Stephen said.
I work closely with Stephen on two of these businesses, and I can vouch for the quality. The Veta Nell candles are extraordinary — the packaging alone is beautiful — and companies like Bank of America, Accenture, and Chase have used them as corporate gifts. The tagline captures it perfectly: "Give the best to your world, and the world will give its best back to you."
The origin story of Armour Excavating is one of my favorites from the entire podcast series. It started in 2017 when Stephen and Susan were developing property around their 20-acre homestead. Having grown up on a farm, Stephen wasn't afraid of equipment, so they bought a John Deere compact track loader — the largest they made, 100 horsepower — and started clearing their own land.
Their son Aaron was in seventh grade at the time. He started learning to operate the equipment on day one. Then someone had a simple idea: you could do this on other people's property too. A local regenerative farming operation gave Aaron his first job — clearing cedar trees so they could plant native grass seeds. He was making $100 a day.
For a kid whose previous job paid about a dollar to house-sit and take care of pets, this was a significant pay bump.
From there, as Stephen put it with a laugh, "one bad idea after another" led to a whole suite of trucks, excavators, and skid steers. They acquired a ranch in Hunt, Texas, and realized they could develop it cheaper themselves. The bonus depreciation policy under the first Trump administration allowed them to shelter Navidar income and scale up Armour's equipment quickly. Today, Armour has about 18 employees and an extensive line of business spanning materials sales, hauling, excavating, and more.
My son is in seventh grade right now. After hearing Aaron's story, I might need to have a conversation with him — especially since my kids already admire Aaron's Dodge Challenger. Maybe that's the incentive they need.
On the eve of July 4th, the flood devastated Kerr County. I was in Spain when I read the news and immediately texted Stephen and his family to check if they were okay. The response I got back was long, detailed, and heartbreaking.
The damage was catastrophic. Entire families were swept away. The connection hit close to home for so many people I know — my friend David Evans' daughter was supposed to attend Camp Mystic but for some reason didn't go. Scott Craig, the brilliant attorney, told me his daughter had been at camp just the day before. One degree of separation, over and over.
When I asked Stephen about day one, he was candid: "It's a little bit too emotional to talk about day one too much. I need more time to pass to be able to really process that." What he would share was this: his team was on the Guadalupe River within 24 hours, involved in search and rescue, coming across deceased victims. Standing on side paths where homes previously existed, knowing that entire families had been swept away.
"It's very difficult," he said quietly. "So we're just trying to focus on moving forward. Trying to put one step in front of the other and just put Kerr County back together and try to help these families heal through the process of rebuilding."
Armour Excavating volunteered for weeks during the search and rescue phase. Experts came from around the world to help — including canine teams from the Czech Republic. The Community Foundation raised around $100 million, and many other organizations contributed as well. But as Stephen noted, even with all that's been raised, there are still billions needed to fund the overall cleanup.
At some point, volunteers have to return to their lives, and the heavy equipment business is capital-intensive. Thousands of dollars in equipment wear came from just a few weeks on the Guadalupe River front lines. So Armour created a unique partnership with King's Ransom Foundation, a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to put 100% of collections directly to front-line work. Benefactors cover their overhead, so every donated dollar goes to rebuilding.
Here's how it works: individuals or businesses make tax-deductible donations to King's Ransom Foundation. Armour Excavating puts together quotes for homeowner projects — they have over a dozen projects and half a million dollars in work that could start immediately if funded. King's Ransom's oversight committee reviews the quotes for fair pricing, approves the work, and pays the invoice when it's done. The homeowner doesn't have to worry about collecting, dispersing, or managing funds at all.
Armour will make a small profit, which is fully disclosed in their FAQ. But as Stephen pointed out, somebody has to do this work — and it might as well be local Kerr County contractors rather than national firms coming in from out of town. The mission is to use Kerr County businesses to rebuild Kerr County.
If you want to help, you can visit ArmourExcavating.com, click "Request Assistance" if you're a flood victim, or click "Donate Now" to contribute to the Armour Flood Fund through King's Ransom Foundation.
One of the most valuable parts of our conversation was when I asked Stephen how his decades in investment banking translate to running a capital-intensive construction business. His answer distilled into four principles that every entrepreneur should hear.
Stephen has seen the inside of hundreds of companies through his investment banking career. The ones that succeed have clean books, GAAP financials, monthly closings, job costing, and categorized expenses that allow them to calculate KPIs. "It is the best way to keep your pulse on the profit of a project," he said. I learned this lesson the hard way at Think Power — our financials were among the worst in class when I started. By the time we went to market, thanks in part to Stephen's guidance and Larry LeBlanc stepping in as CFO, they were best in class. At KYRO, we've had GAAP financials and annual audits from day one.
For traditional "mom and pop" type businesses, modern marketing — a good website, Facebook, Instagram, online outreach — can be transformative. Armour has been growing 50 to 100% year over year, and Stephen credits their marketing program as a key driver. Too many business owners will buy a Raptor truck before they'll invest in marketing. That's backwards.
There's no substitute. Armour's growth is built on delivering great service and great value. Repeat business and referrals follow naturally.
You don't have to own every capability in-house. If a project needs concrete work, you don't have to do the concrete — you just need to know who's excellent at it. About 30% of Armour's work involves reworking past failed projects where homeowners didn't have a holistic plan. By coming in early, mapping the full project scope, and coordinating with trusted partners, Armour helps customers avoid expensive rework. It's a lesson straight from the tech industry applied to dirt work.
Stephen said something that every entrepreneur needs to hear: "Probably the number one reason that successful small businesses go out of business is the net working capital problem. They're growing too fast and they don't have enough capital to handle that growth."
It's a counterintuitive killer. Your business is succeeding — you have more orders than you can handle — but you're paying vendors, suppliers, and employees long before your customers pay you. That cash gap can destroy a company that looks healthy on paper.
Stephen shared that Armour's ability to finance large projects — fronting significant working capital on low-margin, capital-intensive jobs — is actually a competitive advantage. Smaller competitors can't afford to hang with longer payment terms on big contracts. Armour can, and it wins them business they otherwise wouldn't get.
The key to managing this? Technology. Armour uses Jobber for the full project lifecycle — from request intake to quoting, scheduling, time tracking, job costing, and invoicing. Everything flows digitally, end to end. They use Motive for GPS tracking of every vehicle and piece of equipment, monitoring driving behavior, fuel economy, and maintenance schedules. QuickBooks Online handles financials. A PEO manages payroll. Everything lives in the cloud via Box.com.
"We're a paperless company," Stephen said. "Every time I go into the office and I see invoices on the desk, I just cringe."
That paperless, digital-first approach is what allows Armour to track receivables, monitor average collection days, match cash flow in and out, and invoice promptly with full backup documentation. When your customer has everything they need — time records, daily reports, project details — they have no reason to delay payment. It accelerates cash flow and reduces the working capital you need to operate.
I walked this same path at Think Power, where our working capital improved by 100% even as the business grew by 57%. It works.
As a technology investment banker who's spent 25 years evaluating tech companies, Stephen isn't someone who adopts technology begrudgingly — he actively pursues it. So when I asked where AI could make the biggest difference in construction, his answers were practical and grounded.
AI tools that can read blueprints and civil plans, then make accurate predictions about how much material needs to be removed or added to a site. Stephen gave a vivid example: a hillside cut that's 450 feet across the back, 150 across the front, cutting down 18 feet on one side and 10 on the other — essentially a lopsided pie wedge. Calculating the cubic yards to remove and the semi loads required is enormously time-consuming. AI can get faster, more accurate answers.
Knowing where your costs stand today is achievable with existing technology. But predicting how a project will finish — that's where AI can add real value, modeling assumptions and scenarios to give project managers a forward-looking view.
Using AI to identify which types of customers are most responsive to outreach, and automating the targeting across a broad market that includes general contractors, builders, ranch owners, homeowners, and business owners.
When I asked Stephen what he'd do with a day in the Oval Office and full control of Congress, his answer wasn't a specific policy — it was something more fundamental.
"The first thing I would do is install civility and integrity back into the political process," he said. "I feel like America is stronger when our individual fabrics are woven together into one tapestry. It's our diversity, our creativity, and our uniqueness that makes us great. And I feel like in today's political environment, both major parties are guilty — the integrity and the civility of the discourse has fallen apart."
Coming from a man who has built businesses across every imaginable context — from the trading floors of Wall Street to the flood-ravaged banks of the Guadalupe River — that perspective carries weight. Stephen sees firsthand, every day, what happens when people come together across their differences to solve problems. In Kerr County right now, nobody cares about your politics. They care about whether you showed up.
Stephen Day's story is a reminder that entrepreneurship isn't a single lane — it's a mindset. The same discipline that allowed him to thrive at Goldman Sachs is the discipline that makes Armour Excavating's books clean enough to scale. The same creative thinking that built Navidar during a financial crisis is the thinking that led to a vertically integrated excavating business with 50-100% annual growth. And the same compassion that named a candle company after his grandmother is the compassion that put him on a river within 24 hours of a disaster, searching for his neighbors.
If you're in Kerr County and need help rebuilding, visit ArmourExcavating.com and click "Request Assistance." If you're anywhere in the world and want to help put donations directly to the front lines of rebuilding without red tape or bureaucracy, visit the site and click "Donate Now" to contribute to the Armour Flood Fund through King's Ransom Foundation. You can also call 830-285-1820 or email info@armourexcavating.com.
And if you're a young entrepreneur looking for a roadmap — good financials, smart marketing, relentless quality, reliable partners, and technology that makes you paperless and fast — Stephen Day just gave you one.
Thank you, Stephen, for your leadership, your generosity, and your willingness to share your story. Kerr County is lucky to have you and the Armour team.
From Boots to Boardroom shares the journey of those who power America — from the job site to the boardroom, leading with grit, tenacity, empathy, and vision. Not every leader sits in a corner office.
Listen to the full episode with Stephen Day and subscribe to the podcast at www.frombootstoboardroom.com.
To learn more about Armour Excavating or to donate to the Kerr County flood recovery effort, visit ArmourExcavating.com.
This episode sponsored by KYRO AI: Digitize work and maximize profits. Learn more at kyro.ai
Stephen Day is the kind of person who defies easy categorization. He grew up on an 80-acre farm in rural Indiana, earned degrees from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, ran two of the largest groups at Goldman Sachs, survived the Bear Stearns meltdown, founded a technology investment bank during the Great Recession, co-founded a luxury candle company named after his grandmother, and now operates a heavy equipment excavating business in the Texas Hill Country.
When I sat down with Stephen for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, the conversation was supposed to cover all of that — and we did. But the reason this episode exists right now, at this moment, is because of what happened on the eve of July 4th in Kerr County, Texas. A devastating flood — described by some as a one-in-100-year event — tore through central Texas, claiming lives including children, destroying homes, and leaving a community in ruins.
Stephen and his team at Armour Excavating were on the Guadalupe River within 24 hours. What followed was weeks of volunteer search and rescue, and now a sustained effort to rebuild. This is a story about what happens when Wall Street discipline meets Hill Country grit — and about the kind of leadership that shows up when it matters most.
Stephen's career trajectory reads like a masterclass in building on each experience to fuel the next. After earning his accounting degree from IU, he moved to Chicago in 1988 and joined Deloitte on public accounting audits. That led to an assistant treasurer role at Whitman Corporation, where he learned the full spectrum of corporate finance — and where he first encountered investment bankers.
That spark of interest led him to the University of Chicago for his MBA. In 1996, two things happened that would define the next three decades: he married his wife Susan, and he launched his investment banking career. Both are still going strong nearly 30 years later.
At Goldman Sachs, Stephen ran the global IT services group and co-headed the global software group — two of the firm's largest practices. "I really loved my time at Goldman Sachs," he told me. "I learned a lot from the partners there." But it was Bear Stearns that first scratched the entrepreneurial itch. Bear Stearns was behind in technology investment banking and was hiring leaders from across Wall Street to build the group. Stephen ran their software practice and did a lot of great deals — and the experience of building something from the ground up stoked a fire that wouldn't go out.
He left Bear Stearns before the collapse — fortunately — and then did what any reasonable person would do: he started his own investment bank during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
"We kept telling ourselves that FedEx started during the Great Recession in the early 70s and they survived, and we would too," Stephen recalled. "So we just kept plying forward." The years 2009 and 2010 were brutal. In 2011, Navidar earned its first investment banking fee, and they've been doing the same work ever since — a technology investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions and capital raising.
What sets Stephen apart from many entrepreneurs I know is that every one of his businesses is mission-oriented. This isn't lip service — it's embedded in how the companies operate.
Navidar supports the mission of young students and entrepreneurs, particularly first-generation college students. Stephen believes deeply that education is a gateway for young people to improve their economic wellbeing.
Veta Nell — the luxury candle company he co-founded with Susan — is named after his grandmother on his father's side. She was a single mother who lived through difficult times but remained, as Stephen described her, "an amazingly graceful, generous, very warm, loving person." The company's mission is focused on supporting women, particularly those who have experienced domestic violence and may be homeless as a result. They hire women in these situations and provide job training.
Armour Excavating supports the mission of veterans.
And across all of their businesses, they provide fair wages and full benefits to every employee. "We're really trying to be mission-oriented, compassionate businesses, as well as providing a great service or product to our customers," Stephen said.
I work closely with Stephen on two of these businesses, and I can vouch for the quality. The Veta Nell candles are extraordinary — the packaging alone is beautiful — and companies like Bank of America, Accenture, and Chase have used them as corporate gifts. The tagline captures it perfectly: "Give the best to your world, and the world will give its best back to you."
The origin story of Armour Excavating is one of my favorites from the entire podcast series. It started in 2017 when Stephen and Susan were developing property around their 20-acre homestead. Having grown up on a farm, Stephen wasn't afraid of equipment, so they bought a John Deere compact track loader — the largest they made, 100 horsepower — and started clearing their own land.
Their son Aaron was in seventh grade at the time. He started learning to operate the equipment on day one. Then someone had a simple idea: you could do this on other people's property too. A local regenerative farming operation gave Aaron his first job — clearing cedar trees so they could plant native grass seeds. He was making $100 a day.
For a kid whose previous job paid about a dollar to house-sit and take care of pets, this was a significant pay bump.
From there, as Stephen put it with a laugh, "one bad idea after another" led to a whole suite of trucks, excavators, and skid steers. They acquired a ranch in Hunt, Texas, and realized they could develop it cheaper themselves. The bonus depreciation policy under the first Trump administration allowed them to shelter Navidar income and scale up Armour's equipment quickly. Today, Armour has about 18 employees and an extensive line of business spanning materials sales, hauling, excavating, and more.
My son is in seventh grade right now. After hearing Aaron's story, I might need to have a conversation with him — especially since my kids already admire Aaron's Dodge Challenger. Maybe that's the incentive they need.
On the eve of July 4th, the flood devastated Kerr County. I was in Spain when I read the news and immediately texted Stephen and his family to check if they were okay. The response I got back was long, detailed, and heartbreaking.
The damage was catastrophic. Entire families were swept away. The connection hit close to home for so many people I know — my friend David Evans' daughter was supposed to attend Camp Mystic but for some reason didn't go. Scott Craig, the brilliant attorney, told me his daughter had been at camp just the day before. One degree of separation, over and over.
When I asked Stephen about day one, he was candid: "It's a little bit too emotional to talk about day one too much. I need more time to pass to be able to really process that." What he would share was this: his team was on the Guadalupe River within 24 hours, involved in search and rescue, coming across deceased victims. Standing on side paths where homes previously existed, knowing that entire families had been swept away.
"It's very difficult," he said quietly. "So we're just trying to focus on moving forward. Trying to put one step in front of the other and just put Kerr County back together and try to help these families heal through the process of rebuilding."
Armour Excavating volunteered for weeks during the search and rescue phase. Experts came from around the world to help — including canine teams from the Czech Republic. The Community Foundation raised around $100 million, and many other organizations contributed as well. But as Stephen noted, even with all that's been raised, there are still billions needed to fund the overall cleanup.
At some point, volunteers have to return to their lives, and the heavy equipment business is capital-intensive. Thousands of dollars in equipment wear came from just a few weeks on the Guadalupe River front lines. So Armour created a unique partnership with King's Ransom Foundation, a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to put 100% of collections directly to front-line work. Benefactors cover their overhead, so every donated dollar goes to rebuilding.
Here's how it works: individuals or businesses make tax-deductible donations to King's Ransom Foundation. Armour Excavating puts together quotes for homeowner projects — they have over a dozen projects and half a million dollars in work that could start immediately if funded. King's Ransom's oversight committee reviews the quotes for fair pricing, approves the work, and pays the invoice when it's done. The homeowner doesn't have to worry about collecting, dispersing, or managing funds at all.
Armour will make a small profit, which is fully disclosed in their FAQ. But as Stephen pointed out, somebody has to do this work — and it might as well be local Kerr County contractors rather than national firms coming in from out of town. The mission is to use Kerr County businesses to rebuild Kerr County.
If you want to help, you can visit ArmourExcavating.com, click "Request Assistance" if you're a flood victim, or click "Donate Now" to contribute to the Armour Flood Fund through King's Ransom Foundation.
One of the most valuable parts of our conversation was when I asked Stephen how his decades in investment banking translate to running a capital-intensive construction business. His answer distilled into four principles that every entrepreneur should hear.
Stephen has seen the inside of hundreds of companies through his investment banking career. The ones that succeed have clean books, GAAP financials, monthly closings, job costing, and categorized expenses that allow them to calculate KPIs. "It is the best way to keep your pulse on the profit of a project," he said. I learned this lesson the hard way at Think Power — our financials were among the worst in class when I started. By the time we went to market, thanks in part to Stephen's guidance and Larry LeBlanc stepping in as CFO, they were best in class. At KYRO, we've had GAAP financials and annual audits from day one.
For traditional "mom and pop" type businesses, modern marketing — a good website, Facebook, Instagram, online outreach — can be transformative. Armour has been growing 50 to 100% year over year, and Stephen credits their marketing program as a key driver. Too many business owners will buy a Raptor truck before they'll invest in marketing. That's backwards.
There's no substitute. Armour's growth is built on delivering great service and great value. Repeat business and referrals follow naturally.
You don't have to own every capability in-house. If a project needs concrete work, you don't have to do the concrete — you just need to know who's excellent at it. About 30% of Armour's work involves reworking past failed projects where homeowners didn't have a holistic plan. By coming in early, mapping the full project scope, and coordinating with trusted partners, Armour helps customers avoid expensive rework. It's a lesson straight from the tech industry applied to dirt work.
Stephen said something that every entrepreneur needs to hear: "Probably the number one reason that successful small businesses go out of business is the net working capital problem. They're growing too fast and they don't have enough capital to handle that growth."
It's a counterintuitive killer. Your business is succeeding — you have more orders than you can handle — but you're paying vendors, suppliers, and employees long before your customers pay you. That cash gap can destroy a company that looks healthy on paper.
Stephen shared that Armour's ability to finance large projects — fronting significant working capital on low-margin, capital-intensive jobs — is actually a competitive advantage. Smaller competitors can't afford to hang with longer payment terms on big contracts. Armour can, and it wins them business they otherwise wouldn't get.
The key to managing this? Technology. Armour uses Jobber for the full project lifecycle — from request intake to quoting, scheduling, time tracking, job costing, and invoicing. Everything flows digitally, end to end. They use Motive for GPS tracking of every vehicle and piece of equipment, monitoring driving behavior, fuel economy, and maintenance schedules. QuickBooks Online handles financials. A PEO manages payroll. Everything lives in the cloud via Box.com.
"We're a paperless company," Stephen said. "Every time I go into the office and I see invoices on the desk, I just cringe."
That paperless, digital-first approach is what allows Armour to track receivables, monitor average collection days, match cash flow in and out, and invoice promptly with full backup documentation. When your customer has everything they need — time records, daily reports, project details — they have no reason to delay payment. It accelerates cash flow and reduces the working capital you need to operate.
I walked this same path at Think Power, where our working capital improved by 100% even as the business grew by 57%. It works.
As a technology investment banker who's spent 25 years evaluating tech companies, Stephen isn't someone who adopts technology begrudgingly — he actively pursues it. So when I asked where AI could make the biggest difference in construction, his answers were practical and grounded.
AI tools that can read blueprints and civil plans, then make accurate predictions about how much material needs to be removed or added to a site. Stephen gave a vivid example: a hillside cut that's 450 feet across the back, 150 across the front, cutting down 18 feet on one side and 10 on the other — essentially a lopsided pie wedge. Calculating the cubic yards to remove and the semi loads required is enormously time-consuming. AI can get faster, more accurate answers.
Knowing where your costs stand today is achievable with existing technology. But predicting how a project will finish — that's where AI can add real value, modeling assumptions and scenarios to give project managers a forward-looking view.
Using AI to identify which types of customers are most responsive to outreach, and automating the targeting across a broad market that includes general contractors, builders, ranch owners, homeowners, and business owners.
When I asked Stephen what he'd do with a day in the Oval Office and full control of Congress, his answer wasn't a specific policy — it was something more fundamental.
"The first thing I would do is install civility and integrity back into the political process," he said. "I feel like America is stronger when our individual fabrics are woven together into one tapestry. It's our diversity, our creativity, and our uniqueness that makes us great. And I feel like in today's political environment, both major parties are guilty — the integrity and the civility of the discourse has fallen apart."
Coming from a man who has built businesses across every imaginable context — from the trading floors of Wall Street to the flood-ravaged banks of the Guadalupe River — that perspective carries weight. Stephen sees firsthand, every day, what happens when people come together across their differences to solve problems. In Kerr County right now, nobody cares about your politics. They care about whether you showed up.
Stephen Day's story is a reminder that entrepreneurship isn't a single lane — it's a mindset. The same discipline that allowed him to thrive at Goldman Sachs is the discipline that makes Armour Excavating's books clean enough to scale. The same creative thinking that built Navidar during a financial crisis is the thinking that led to a vertically integrated excavating business with 50-100% annual growth. And the same compassion that named a candle company after his grandmother is the compassion that put him on a river within 24 hours of a disaster, searching for his neighbors.
If you're in Kerr County and need help rebuilding, visit ArmourExcavating.com and click "Request Assistance." If you're anywhere in the world and want to help put donations directly to the front lines of rebuilding without red tape or bureaucracy, visit the site and click "Donate Now" to contribute to the Armour Flood Fund through King's Ransom Foundation. You can also call 830-285-1820 or email info@armourexcavating.com.
And if you're a young entrepreneur looking for a roadmap — good financials, smart marketing, relentless quality, reliable partners, and technology that makes you paperless and fast — Stephen Day just gave you one.
Thank you, Stephen, for your leadership, your generosity, and your willingness to share your story. Kerr County is lucky to have you and the Armour team.
From Boots to Boardroom shares the journey of those who power America — from the job site to the boardroom, leading with grit, tenacity, empathy, and vision. Not every leader sits in a corner office.
Listen to the full episode with Stephen Day and subscribe to the podcast at www.frombootstoboardroom.com.
To learn more about Armour Excavating or to donate to the Kerr County flood recovery effort, visit ArmourExcavating.com.
This episode sponsored by KYRO AI: Digitize work and maximize profits. Learn more at kyro.ai
Hari Vasudevan, PE, is a serial entrepreneur and engineer focused on AI-driven solutions for utilities, construction, and storm response. As Founder and CEO of KYRO AI, he leads the development of AI-powered software that helps utility, vegetation, and field service teams digitize operations, improve storm response and restoration, and reduce operational risk. He also serves as Vice Chair and Strategic Advisor for the Edison Electric Institute’s Transmission Subject Area Committee and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering with professional engineering licensure in multiple states.
