#19 Paul Abbott & Michael Lombard: Self-Currency

Paul Abbott is 60 and was raised on the move. His father’s career relocated the family every three years or so through Paul’s childhood. He attended Washington and Lee, started his career at Milliken & Company working night shifts in textile plants in the South, eventually built a “rollercoaster ride” of a career across real estate and finance. Today he’s based in Austin, and calls this stage of his life “Act Three.” He’s been married to his wife Lynn for thirty-nine years. People call him Chief.Michael Lombard, 36, is the great-great-grandson of Nicholas Lombard, who with his brother started Lombard Bros. in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1923. It was one of the first motor carriers in the United States, and one of the largest in the Northeast before it was sold in 1984. Mike served in the United States Marines as a Fire Direction Controlman in the artillery, deployed to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. After the Marines he attended the University of New Haven on the GI Bill. In 2020, he moved to Texas with his wife, got his CDL, and became the first Lombard to drive a truck since the company sold. Today he is Partner Development Manager at Truck Parking Club, hosts The Lombard Trucking Show podcast, advocates for trucker health through the nonprofit Project 61, and has completed three Ironmans. He’s also seriously into history, especially Napoleon.We had no shared agenda going in. What emerged over two and a half hours was a conversation about identity and the cost of refusing the boxes you’ve been put in. Mike talks about losing a hundred pounds, the death of a fellow Marine that triggered it, and what it’s like to carry a family name that built and lost an empire. Paul talks about a nomadic childhood, the identity crisis he says he’s been in his whole life, and the framework that’s helped him navigate it — “you are the currency”: the idea that who you are is the thing you actually bring to a room, not the title, the résumé, or the credentials.Paul Abbott Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chief_abbottMichael Lombard Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lombardtruckingThe Lombard Trucking Show: Companion Substack Piece: https://mitchellpenningroth.substack.com/publish/post/198163382Note: My first multi-guest episode in-person. Production quality is still a work in progress here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mitchellpenningroth.substack.com