20 under 40: Michael Frantz

Favorite quote or saying, why?

“To know and not do is to not know.”

Gathering the information is often the easy part. Executing becomes increasingly difficult as your team gets larger. I have this quote stenciled on my office wall as a constant reminder that at some point we have to stop deliberating, take the best available data and start doing.

Community or professional highlights:

Professionally I have had a great deal of fun as my brother and I have grown our family business over the last 15 or 20 years. We have navigated through recessions, drought, labor shortages and endless new regulations, and I still look forward to going to work each day. Building the right team, making sure that each person in the organization is sitting in the right seat and watching people’s careers move upward as they find that right spot – that is a highlight for me. To me it’s people over products, and I have the privilege of leading an A Team.

In the community, I have had a profound opportunity to learn more about the needs of my friends and neighbors around me during my six years of service on the Turlock Irrigation District board of directors. Water and power – basic services that we all take for granted until the lights go out – touch the lives of everyone. I never imagined the complexity of running a utility until I arrived on the board. Watching the farming community step up and work together to make it through the most severe drought in recorded history was an inspiration. We doubled farm water rates to fund significant investments in water conservation projects and cut water allocations by 60 percent as supplies dwindled. Through it all we received almost no complaints and tremendous support.

Your life changed when:

When our children were born! Kristy and I went from living the good life to having three children in three years. Someone recently told me, “The days are long, but the years are short,” and that nicely captures the memory of stumbling through the house at 2 a.m. with three in diapers at the same time thinking, “This is never going to end.” Click your heels twice and I find myself pulling out of the school driveway with a tear in my eye, wishing they would stay small for just a little bit longer.

What do you want people to know most about you?

Faith, family, and friends. Life is all about relationships. I am utterly convinced that if you put the quality of your interactions with others ahead of any other personal agenda – whether that is financial gain or the desire to build a better widget – you will have a more fulfilled life. I try to live by the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).

What do you like most about living here?

The people in our community are what make this region great. I love our agrarian background and entrepreneurial spirit. Our forefathers solved their own problems and prepared for future generations. Thanks to their vision long ago, there is opportunity here today – new businesses are popping up and our economy is growing again. I can’t think of a better place to live than Stanislaus County. Well, maybe I can, but a little island in the tropics would surely get confining after a few weeks, wouldn’t it?

Why is community involvement important?

It’s no secret that our region is one of the poorest in the state. Who is best equipped to improve our communities around us? Ourselves! There are wonderful people doing great things around us, but we need more. We need more engagement at every level, from volunteering to feed the homeless to serving in local government. Water is a great example where more involvement is needed and a topic that is important to me. Others wish to repurpose the water supply that our forefathers secured and is foundational to our region’s success, and the only thing that will prevent that from happening is if we stand together and speak up as a united community.

This story was originally published August 21, 2016 at 5:18 AM with the headline "20 under 40: Michael Frantz."