Christopher H. Volk

Beginning with his first job as a commercial banker in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Volk formed an interest in corporate business models, financial statement analysis and finance. From there, he moved to Arizona, where he would eventually guide the initial public listing and assume the presidency of his first real estate investment trust, a business that became a national leader in providing lease and mortgage financing solutions for restaurant and other chain store operators. Over the next three decades, Chris was instrumental in founding and then publicly listing two other successful and market-leading net lease businesses. The most recent of these is STORE Capital, a company Chris guided for a decade as its founding chief executive officer through the beginning of 2021. The business models of all three companies, backed by strong leadership teams, delivered attractive shareholder returns while benefitting a broad array of stakeholders. Altogether, Chris oversaw the successful deployment of more than $20 billion in net lease and mortgage capital to thousands of growing businesses across the United States. Chris began to write about corporate finance early in his career, with articles covering subjects from financial statement analysis to business valuation and real estate investing. In 1999, he devised the Value Equation, or V-Formula, a simplified way to determine business equity returns. That year, he wrote an inaugural article that would go on to win the Lybrand Gold Medal, bestowed for the best article of the year by the Institute of Management Accountants. Later, Chris would write articles that expanded on his early V-Formula observations, culminating in an eventual award-winning video series that he created while chief executive officer at STORE Capital and which inspired this book. He was a 2019 regional winner of EY’s Entrepreneur of The Year® award. He has served as a visiting professor to Cornell University, is a frequent university lecturer and serves on multiple charity boards. He resides with his wife in Paradise Valley Arizona and Huntsville, Alabama.