After graduating from Episcopal High School, Trey Godfrey made his own way into the world—first as a defensive back at Tulane University and then working full-time for the football coaching staff while attending graduate school.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, he relocated to Charlotte, N.C., and embarked on a career as a motivational speaker at high schools and colleges across the country, living a life of hotel rooms, suitcases, rental cars and fast food, and spreading his message to more than 150,000 people.
But in 2006, he returned to his hometown to work with Cyntreniks, the company his father, community leader Brace Godfrey Jr., started with John Schneider. Among other projects, the firm helped to develop the Kress Building at Third and Main streets, as well as Hotel Indigo.
“The entire fabric of my reality changed in March 2010 when my dad died,” the 33-year-old Godfrey says. “I was one of those few fortunate young men who had the opportunity to see and to work with their dad on a daily basis. Losing that was losing Dad, it was losing a mentor, it was losing my best friend and it was losing my business partner, all at the same time, which was a tremendous jolt as any anyone might imagine.”
Overnight, a massive amount of responsibility fell to Godfrey. But as he notes, he’s “still standing.”
Today, Godfrey is a partner at Vision City Development Group, an entity that merged Cyntreniks and companies two of his father’s partners had created, so named for the elder Godfrey’s vision for the city of Baton Rouge.
“That more than anything else is what we’re all about,” he says. “Developing a vision for this city and how great it can possibly be, and then having the ability to act on and execute that vision.”
One of Vision City’s first projects was Springboard, an entrepreneurial accelerator in the Kress Building. But there’s much more to come. Godfrey is also serving as executive director of the newly organized Brace B. Godfrey Foundation, designed to help cultivate leadership, business development and public policy.
“I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything of true substance yet,” Godfrey says. “I feel like my best work is ahead of me.”
I wanted to be a professional boxer. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know. Later, I also wanted to be a lawyer and a professional athlete.
I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Find a mentor—someone who has achieved at the highest level of what you want to do. Along with finding a mentor, there is a very fine line between being a pest and being proactive. Get as close to that line as you can without crossing it.
Its people. We have some people with some extraordinary vision for Baton Rouge who are articulating and trying to execute on that vision daily. I believe that vision is gaining momentum.
Downtown.
I would change the attitude that has created stagnation to one of a more progressive mindset that would seek and create positive things more quickly.
The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Baton Rouge is not yet as mature and developed to be able to do some of the things we endeavor to do. Yet.
Hopefully, with a cigar in one hand, a drink with an umbrella in the other hand, on a sandy tropical beach.
