From Farm to Fortune to Footlights With Clay Creasey

What do a Napa Valley farm, Stanford University frat life, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and the Ojai stage have in common?Clay Creasey.In this wide-ranging and unexpectedly fun conversation, Clay traces his journey from early mornings on the farm to high-stakes corporate finance, navigating takeovers, turnarounds, and the slow, relentless shift of retail in the age of Amazon. Along the way, we dig into how he thinks about risk, decision-making, and the difference between problems you can fix — and forces you can’t.But this isn’t just a business story. It’s about reinvention. About landing in Ojai, stepping onto the stage as Daddy Warbucks in Annie, and finding community in a completely different key.We talked about corporate successes such as his time as CFO of Toys 'R Us, and a few failure that left lasting lessons. We did not talk about soil Ph for growing blueberries, Canadian provincial politics or Nelson Mandela.Smart, candid, and full of great stories — this one covers a lot of ground.