Badges, Boardrooms & Barrel Rooms: Ray Clark on Bounty Hunting, a Concrete Empire, and Building Zixpy Tours

Ray Clark walked into 216 Coworking with a resume that reads like three different people's careers stitched together, and by the end of his sit-down with host Logan Lewis, it was clear that was the point. What started as a conversation about Zixpy Tours, the experiential travel company Ray launched in 2025, kept doubling back on itself: a college kid running down bail jumpers in Cobb County, a corporate climber who spent eight years shipping German rubber form liners to Dubai and Shanghai, and finally a guy who walked away from the corner office to watch strangers smile on a winery bus.

A Rookie Bounty Hunter's Baptism by Fire

Long before concrete or cocktails, Ray was a college student working the front desk at the Cobb County state court clerk's office in 1993, checking in bail bondsmen from a company called A-24 Hour Bonding. One night they offered him $350 to help arrest a woman who'd skipped a court date. "Here's a badge. Here's the paperwork. Go down and arrest her," Ray remembered being told, with zero training beyond that. He showed up at a mobile home to find four young kids alone, the oldest just eight, with an oven cranked to broil because it was the only heat in the house. He tracked the mother from a gas station to a Waffle House with a giant mag light, badge in hand, while cops got called on him. His last case, two years later, was even closer: a fake drug buy set up to arrest a wanted felon who had a gun tucked in the car door. "He said, 'That was my clock. I was going to blow your f***ing head off,'" Ray recalled. He turned in his badge that same night.

From Retaining Walls to Running a Global Concrete Operation

Ray's next act was decidedly less cinematic, but no less demanding. He got into the paving-stone and retaining-wall business, managing Home Depot and big-box accounts across the Southeast for a half-billion-dollar company before jumping to a smaller, family-owned outfit chasing a bigger paycheck at 28. "Chase of money is not the answer," he told Logan flatly, explaining he was let go two years later amid jealous internal politics at the family firm. From there he rose to become president of a company selling form liners, giant polyurethane rubber mats that let precast concrete look like anything from brick to carpet texture, running North American operations for a German-owned company with offices in Dubai and Shanghai out of Athens, Georgia. He held that role for eight years, traveling the world for weeks at a stretch, until COVID hit in 2020 and he lost an employee. "Losing an employee took a lot out of me as a person," he said. That loss, paired with being away from his wife 90 percent of the time, pushed him toward a quieter role running a concrete industry nonprofit before retiring from corporate life altogether.

Trading the Corner Office for Zixpy Tours

Ray didn't set out to become an entrepreneur; he assumed he'd work corporate until retirement. What changed his mind was two decades of travel. "I've learned from traveling the world... getting people around food and wine provides the most spectacular experiences I've ever experienced in my life," he said. When he retired last year, he launched Zixpy Tours, deliberately choosing a name with no built-in ceiling. "You didn't want to be able to say you were just a winery or brewery focused thing," Logan pointed out, and Ray confirmed it was intentional. Winery, brewery, and distillery tours are the low-hanging fruit to build reputation, but his real ambition is curated, one-off experiences nobody else offers. He described a recent trip with seven friends celebrating a yearly tradition, starting at Ingleheim Vineyard, the oldest winery in northwest Georgia, for a private tour of the barrel and production rooms. Asked about the twelve similar companies now operating around metro Atlanta, Ray shrugged it off with a line a friend once gave him: "There is enough food for all of us to eat."

Real Content in an AI World

The two spent a long stretch debating AI-generated marketing, a topic close to home since Ray's wife is pursuing her doctorate in education while institutions scramble to detect AI-written papers. Ray admitted he leans on AI tools for imagery but rejects most of what they generate. "People can tell when... images are posted and it's AI," he said, arguing overly polished AI content is starting to backfire as audiences crave the real thing. Logan agreed, describing a conversation with a marketing contact about ditching filters entirely in favor of raw, organic video. Both landed on the same conclusion: for a business built on genuine human experiences like Zixpy, authenticity is the actual product.

Life With Cheryl, a Cabin on Lake Superior, and No Kids

In the episode's most candid stretch, Ray opened up about choosing career over children with his wife, Cheryl, a former CFO who retired at 44. "We tried later in life, but it did not end well," he said, adding that if he had one piece of advice for younger people, it's simple: "Don't wait that long." Cheryl spends June through November at the couple's cabin on Lake Superior in Batchewana Bay, Ontario, the most restful spot Ray's found in the 32 countries he's visited, including a memorable night a black bear broke into a truck in the yard while Cheryl, high on an edible for the first time in five years, watched in disbelief. "She thought she was tripping and then she looks out, there's a bear," Ray laughed. Despite the regret around timing, both have found peace in the freedom it gave them to chase second careers on their own terms.

Listen to the Full Conversation

From courthouse arrests to concrete boardrooms to pouring drinks on a winery bus, Ray Clark's story is proof that reinvention doesn't have an expiration date. Catch the full conversation with host Logan Lewis on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and if you're ready to book a winery, brewery, or distillery experience of your own, find Ray and the team at Zixpy Tours.