Faith, Football, and Business | Dr. Jason Carthen | On The Homefront

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Brief Summary In this high-stakes conversation, Jeff Dudan is joined by Matt Haller , the President and CEO of the IFA, to break down the current landscape of franchising—what’s working, what’s at risk, and how entrepreneurs can thrive. Matt brings clarity on joint employer threats, the origins of the IFA, the future of responsible franchising, and why franchising remains one of the greatest wealth creation engines in America. If you're in the franchise space or thinking about it, this episode is essential listening. Key Takeaways The IFA exists to protect, enhance, and promote franchising through advocacy, education, and storytelling. Membership connects you to a supportive network, top-tier resources, and industry credibility. Joint Employer rules pose the biggest threat to franchising today. If implemented, they could collapse the franchise model by creating legal chaos and removing autonomy from franchisees. Responsible franchising starts with putting the franchisee first. Franchisors must be royalty self-sufficient and ensure systems are in place to support long-term success—not just growth through initial fees. The IFA is actively leading the charge in Congress. Through litigation, grassroots efforts, and the Save Local Business Act, the organization is defending small business rights. New franchisors need more education and mentorship. Programs like CFE (Certified Franchise Executive) and IFA events (like the Emerging Franchisor Conference) are critical to onboarding well. Franchising is attracting new capita l—including celebrities and athletes— because of its scalability, brand trust, and repeatable systems. Featured Quote “You can’t be a successful franchisor if your franchisees aren’t successful too.” — Matt Haller TRANSCRIPT Franchise Fun: Trump Impressions & IFA Introductions Jeff Dudan (00:04.746) Oh, and we've got John DeDemonico coming on. He's big time. Really? Yeah. What does he do? He's an impressionist. Ooh. He does conferences, but he's been on like AB Jimmy Kimmel's, Borden. I had him do our conference before he was really big. So at the Advantage Clean conference, we had him come out as Trump. This was like, yeah, this was like 2013 or something, before Trump ever even talked about. And he came out as President Trump and he does a great job. And we were right here on a stage in the warehouse. And he basically told everybody that he was buying the company. And the franchisees didn't even know, they didn't know if it was a joke. Yeah. Like Jeff, we're buying, but we've decided to do a deal. And then he was some guy theory. He was, he was Guy Fieri, uh, during our poker night and he was, um, uh, this guy, this guy, who's that guy? Austin powers guy. Oh yeah. He was Austin powers. He does the most amazing Austin powers. Jeff Dudan (01:17.466) He does that guy. He does Dr. Evil, but I think he just he did Austin Powers with us, but he did like three characters. He was here for two days. He was the best. But he got really, really famous after that. Dr. Haller. Matt Haller (01:32.364) Dr. Duden, how are you, sir? I'm doing well, thank you. Happy holidays. Jeff Dudan (01:33.398) How are you, sir? Yes. Yeah, have you been sick at all? Because we're 80% of the people, everybody's sick here. Matt Haller (01:41.68) God yeah, God. Matt Haller (01:45.632) If we were doing this last week, it wouldn't have happened. Yeah. I mean, I w so I don't know if you saw I testified on when actually Wednesday would have been fine last week, other than I had testified in front of the people up there. Um, but, but Thursday, thank you. Thursday, I woke up and had 101 fever and was just like clear my schedule. I can't be functional. Yeah. I had been that sick in a real long time. Jeff Dudan (01:48.542) Really? Well... Jeff Dudan (01:58.846) I watched it this morning. Yeah, it was a great opening statement. Jeff Dudan (02:06.496) Oh my gosh. Jeff Dudan (02:13.814) Wow. Yeah. Well, hey, really appreciate you being on this morning. Jen, is this the right camera with, it looks like I'm a little bigger than normal in here. We zoomed in a little more than normal? Or is that the way you want it? It looks fine on my head. Okay. Matt Haller (02:14.768) But yeah, it's really going around. Jeff Dudan (02:33.062) Yeah, which way you want me? Is this good? Okay. All right, I'll go this way just a little. Okay. Well, hey, Matt, you look amazing. You look like straight out of a catalog, sir. So. Matt Haller (02:41.931) Am I good? Am I well framed and everything? Matt Haller (02:47.496) Thank you. All right, well, I also got some product placement here too. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:52.902) Oh, nice. Nice, absolutely. We're working on our sponsors. We gotta figure out who's, if we're gonna have Celsius or vitamin water, what we're gonna have on our table. So we're already hot, just so you know. I clicked it right before you came in. Sometimes we catch some good conversations before, but none of this will generally will be in the episode unless we get into something. But the format of the show is kind of the hero's journey. So we do a, I mean, to the extent that you're comfortable, we like to go back and learn about you, how you grew up, where you grew up, a little of that path. That way people can get to know who you are, anything you care to share. Growing up, I know you went to NC State, not sure what happened before that, but as much or as little as you care to do that would help people inform their journey with your journey. And then I've got just a bunch of... Matt Haller (03:47.537) Great. Jeff Dudan (03:51.23) you know, franchise related stuff here to go over. But I mean, we can take it anywhere that you think is important. But I just got a handful of questions around the IFA and the role of the IFA and, you know, biggest threats regulation, how franchise would be looking at it. We got an election year coming up. So I just got a bunch of bunch of questions around that kind of stuff. And. Yeah, it's it's, you know, Matt Haller (04:15.076) Take it where you want to go. You know your audience better than I do. So I am at your mercy. Jeff Dudan (04:20.202) We actually don't have that many franchise-related guests on because we're trying to build a broader audience, but you're probably number five or six that's been in and around the industry, but certainly really important overall for protecting our way of life here in the franchise sector. So I think that's probably the best that we can do is to educate people about how important franchising is for all of us. So. Matt Haller (04:48.465) stuff. Jeff Dudan (04:49.418) Yeah, so we'll just get popping here and I'll just do a quick intro and then I'll kick it over to you. Hopefully my head stays clear enough to be cogent. My wife has banished me to the top of my garage for the last four days. So I've been walking around in a small, I've been sick. Yeah. And because I've been bad, I've been bad. Matt Haller (05:06.588) Why? What'd you do? Oh, oh, because you've been sick. I'm like, what'd you make it put in the black box? Yeah, you've been bad. Yeah, probably too much travel, too much work, right? Yeah, just, yeah. Jeff Dudan (05:19.226) Yeah. Well, awesome. All right, well, we'll count it down and we'll go. Let's go, here we go. Three, two, one. Welcome everybody. You are on the home front with Jeff Duden. And today we are with Matt Haller, who is the president and CEO of the International Franchise Association. Welcome and thank you for being on, Matt. Matt Haller (05:47.536) Thanks for having me, Jeff. Good morning. How are you doing today? Jeff Dudan (05:50.374) I'm doing amazing and I'm so excited to get to spend this time with you today. And I really want to dig into all of the things that are going on with franchising. It's vital to our economy. Small businesses, upwards of 60% of our GDP. Franchising is a material piece of that. I've heard you say it's the greatest wealth creation business model ever invented. And there is a lot of precedent for that. And we're very interested in expanding the reach and relevance of the franchise sector. And I'm interested today to hear all of the things that you and the organization are doing to make that sell. To get started, we would love to learn a little bit about you, Matt. Would you care to share a little bit about how you grew up? From UPS to IFA: Matt Haller’s Journey Into Advocacy Matt Haller (06:33.736) Happy to. So I am actually one of very few people that grew up in the DC area. I was born in Georgetown and grew up in Northern Virginia. So you always have to choose a side of the river for the most part. And I'm a Virginia kid, not a state, it's commonwealth, of course. Grew up in Burke, Virginia, went to public school in Lake Braddock. So as in Northern Virginia, everything has some elements named after the Civil War. Uh, general Braddock, uh, was, you know, one of the key generals in the, uh, in the Southern army, uh, went to college in North Carolina. So it went just a little further south. I always, you know, probably offend like a small percentage of your audience, but I always was too dumb to go to UVA, but smart enough not to go to Virginia Tech. Um, and so ended up, uh, you know, I, no kidding. I just. I. Jeff Dudan (07:23.874) Ooh. Jeff Dudan (07:27.534) We have the edit button going on that. And I love it. Matt Haller (07:33.024) I wanted to go to a state capital because I had picked up a little political bug late in my high school career and thought being in a state capital like Raleigh would enable me to learn from working in government a little bit in the state capital in Raleigh and ended up working as an intern for a large software company that was building a public affairs and government relations practice called SAS Institute. Jeff Dudan (07:39.17) Yeah. Matt Haller (08:01.468) the now the world's largest privately held software company. And, you know, learned how to basically be in the influence business and, you know, influence public policy, build relationships with elected leaders and just the importance of kind of getting them, getting a message out. So I studied political science and, you know, had that great firsthand experience, you know, watching government relations, professionals do their job. the importance of just building relationships. Came back to Washington right after college and got a great start in Washington with a small business based in Atlanta, Georgia called United Parcel Service that is pretty relevant right now. We're doing this four days before Christmas or so. And so learned how that large enterprise really... you know, engages in government relations and public affairs and really mobilizes their workforce to engage in government relations and public affairs to, you know, best influence public policy to help that business enterprise grow. And that was actually my first contacts, you know, at least that I ever thought of the franchise model because it was right around the time that UPS had purchased mailboxes, etc. and was in the process of rebranding MBE here in the US into what is now known as the UPS store. I've had a couple of other positions since my time at UPS, including with the US Chamber of Commerce and with another trade association in the pharmaceutical industry and then some outside public affairs agencies that I've been involved in before coming to the IFA almost 13 years ago. And I've had a number of different positions here at the IFA and we can talk more about what the IFA does As we get into the conversation, but I'm in DC firmly a creature of the swamp as I say my wife and I live in the city and Yeah, just love it here in Washington gets a bad rap out there in the in the real world as I say But you know DC actually is a great place to live While while there are some challenges right now and in the city Matt Haller (10:22.976) It's a city. You always are going to have challenges when you put this many human beings in a small footprint Jeff Dudan (10:31.278) Well, there's a lot to do in DC, and of course, it's the seat of our democracy. So there's always a lot of activity and focus going on there. And we appreciate the fact that you found the IFA and the IFA has found you. What is, in broad strokes, the role of the IFA in franchising? What Does the IFA Do? Protect, Enhance, and Promote Franchising Matt Haller (10:57.104) Yeah, our mission, Jeff, is to protect, enhance, and promote franchising. And, you know, I can talk in great detail about what we do in each of those three buckets within the mission, but just, you know, very high level, you know, protecting franchising means government relations and advocacy at the federal level, in states, in cities, you know, internationally, in some cases. Enhancing franchising is the work that we do through our events, through our professional developments, through networking, really the investment that the association makes and its programs to enhance the business model as a way of doing business and improve business practices within franchising. And then promoting franchising is, we'll definitely talk about this, you know, most people didn't set out on a career path. to become franchisors or franchisees. Franchising's not really taught in business schools in a major way, it's certainly not taught at an undergraduate or high school level as a career path. And so most people find their way to franchising as kind of a second component of their career. And promoting franchising as a career path, as a way of thinking about being an entrepreneur in a different way. is, you know, there's a lot of opportunity to do more there. And it's probably the biggest challenge that our member companies, particularly franchisees tell us they face is just finding qualified leads to become business owners. But at the same time, 70% of the country says they'd be interested in owning a small business. And two thirds of that population has no idea where to start and franchising is part of that solution. So we have to raise the volume about people that just see it as something to even consider. And the IFA does a lot in that regard. We want to do more. And we want to encourage others to do more to help us be a force multiplier. Why Don’t More Universities Teach Franchising? Jeff Dudan (13:02.826) Let's start with the enhanced piece of it. There are only a handful of universities in this country that have a program around franchising. I know that Titus is affiliated with FAU, or yeah, Florida Atlantic, and I think there's something at Purdue. There was a master's program up at Quinnipiac that had started. I'm not familiar with more than maybe half a dozen programs around franchising, yet the numbers of franchising are staggering in terms of the number of people that are employed either by or with a franchise organization, or the over, I guess, 800,000 establishments in this country now that are franchised. 3,000 to 4,000 actively growing brands, depending on where the number is. Why? Matt Haller (13:55.88) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (13:58.978) Don't more universities, in your opinion, put together a program with franchising as its curriculum. Matt Haller (14:09.468) Well, I think there's a lot of ways to maybe answer that question. One, one might be the, the industry. And I use that sort of just as a catchall phrase, franchising is not an industry, of course, it's a collection of industries. Um, but the industry has done really well, um, without. You know, needing colleges and universities to, you know, be invested in that. I'm not saying that we wouldn't benefit greatly from more, um, intentional uh, academia focus on the franchise model, because I think where we actually need more of a intentional academic focus on franchising is less so at the entrepreneurial level, um, but at the, at the brand level, at the franchise or level and kind of in the supplier category where, you know, we need people that understand that we are three and a half percent of private sector GEP and there's an incredible opportunity to move around through career development and actually develop a really healthy way of living as a marketer or a technology person or an operations person or a sales development person in a franchise business. A lot of franchisors are struggling to find individuals to work that have franchise experience to come and support. They're franchisees and some of the bigger supplier companies that focus exclusively in the franchise channel similarly are looking for people with an understanding of the business model. So we would benefit greatly from that. I think the other part of it, Jeff, is you don't need to go to college to become a successful franchise owner. And so in fact... A lot of franchisers don't want people to go to college. They'd like to target people that have maybe a stronger work ethic and are self-made and just have the grit. It might have a little less of the financial capacity to do it. When you find the right person that understands what being a franchise owner actually entails in terms of hard work and following the system. Matt Haller (16:35.584) Uh, you know, that person can, there's, there's great human potential in that. Um, you know, university of Louisville is, is now, um, through a big endowment that young brands made, uh, they probably have the most robust, um, franchise, um, program they call a global center for franchising excellence at the university of Louisville and the IFA, uh, has developed a, uh, a long partnership, um, with the Oval. Jeff Dudan (16:55.15) That's right. Matt Haller (17:03.064) to deliver what we call our CFE program, our Certified Franchise Executive Program. And we've brought in other academic institutions as partners in that vein as well. There's also programs at places like Babson College up in New England and at the University of Denver through a big endowment from Dave Linegar, who is the founder of Remax. You mentioned down in Florida with the Titus School. That's another long-standing program. Ohio State now has a program that's being run by a guy named Michael Seid who, for those in the franchise industry, of course, is fairly prominent. Michael wrote the book Franchising for Dummies with Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's. And so we're starting to see more of this and we're certainly encouraging it. for anybody out there that's in academia and in franchising, you know, reach out to the IFA and we'd love to help you get on your pathway to setting up a franchise program. The IFA’s Founding Story: Dunkin’ Donuts, Fraud, and Regulation Jeff Dudan (18:07.726) You mentioned Dave Thomas. From an origin perspective, if you go back through the history of the IFA, so many notable founders have been past presidents, past chair of the IFA. What was the original intent of the IFA, as you understand it? And then, how has it evolved to be the massive trade organization that it is today? Matt Haller (18:32.604) Yeah. So Bill Rosenberg, who was the founder of Dunkin' Donuts, really drove the formation of the IFA with 15 or 20 other founders and leaders of early franchising companies back in the 60s. And what was driving it was in some cases, not totally different than what we're facing today in terms of, you know, governments looking at business practices in the franchise model as it was in its infancy and becoming concerned about individuals being taken advantage of who kind of more unscrupulous business brands that were using the franchise model as it was in its infancy were taking fees from franchisees and not providing them with any support. You know, I don't want to use the term Ponzi scheme, but you know, there was, there were elements of this that were misleading investors. And, you know, the federal trade commission is now, uh, has its franchise role, which is the primary governing, um, uh, requirement for franchise disclosure and information. Um, IFA worked to develop that and, um, that group of early founders, you know, basically saw that if you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. And, you know, government regulation is not always a bad thing. Um, if it's done in concert with those that are looking to, uh, enhance franchising and that group of individuals, you know, looked around and said, we have, you know, interest on. restaurant issues and we have interests on, you know, hotel issues, but there's not an organization that represents franchising and we ought to create one because this model that we're developing is in its infancy. You know, they saw something, um, as far as opportunity for the franchise model to expand into, you know, other industries. And clearly it has, as you talked about the 3000 concepts that are out there in the U S actively selling opportunities. Matt Haller (20:52.048) But they also saw risk and like any, you know, sophisticated CEO or founder, you know, you've got to look at your, you know, your SWOT analysis. And I think they appropriately saw that this was a shared threat across the industry, but also shared opportunity. So that is really how the IFA came to be. Um, and back in the sixties and we've been around 67, uh, 67 years now. Jeff Dudan (21:20.258) Today we use the franchise disclosure document, the FDD. Prior to that, it was something called the UFOC, the Unified Franchise Offering Circular. Back when franchising first started getting legs, was there no... governing document, no standardization of disclosure that needed to happen so people could just call anything they wanted to a franchise and really invite people into it with a variety of standards that just, you know, had really no boundaries or no definition. Is that... The FDD, Brand Standards, and the Fight Against Overreach Matt Haller (21:59.448) Yeah, effectively, effectively you have the wild west and you know, that that's what needed to be reined in, in some reasonable way. We still have a little bit of the wild west with a patchwork of states that, you know, have additional requirements. You know, some states require registration to sell a franchise. Others do not. You know, but we also have this, this federalist system that was created, you know, by the founding fathers of the U S governments. And, you know, Jeff Dudan (22:03.042) Okay. Jeff Dudan (22:10.39) Mm. Matt Haller (22:30.188) Most Republicans generally like to, you know, cede power to the states and let states decide what works best for them. And, you know, in franchising, that is something that we, you know, have butted up against and certainly helps our friends in the franchise legal community, um, be incredibly relevant to our, our brands. But if we were to, we're to, you know, literally start franchising again, I think, you know, I would posit that the model would benefit from, you know, one uniform. registration and disclosure system, not a patchwork approach like we have today, but certainly better in my view that there is something that creates some standardization for the prospective investor and for franchisors to be able to enforce what's called a brand standard and ensure that their franchisees are following the rules of the playbook and have... appropriate legal recourse to address that if they're not. You know, again, you need to have, you know, the Dunkin' Donuts as I'm here with my Dunkin', right? It needs to look and feel the same to the consumer, you know, here in Washington or where you are down in Charlotte, Jeff, and, you know, if the franchisee is not following the playbook, right, it impacts every other franchisee. value of their business they built in that system that obviously negatively impacts the consumer experience. And the brand has to hold that individual franchisee accountable and the franchise agreement and those brand standards allow the franchise or take the recourse necessary to do that. Jeff Dudan (24:10.506) Yeah, and that's right at the crossroads of where the IFA steps in to really advocate for the franchise industry when regulation appears that could be constricting to our ability as franchisors to maintain brand standards and also respecting the individuality and the sovereignty of the business ownership of the franchisee as small business owners. And I know we'd love to. We'll unpack that and we will get into your exceptional appearance on Congress last week, which we appreciate you going up there and representing all of us. And it was a really powerful opening statement. And I know a great conversation and we were well represented. What I'd like to do right now is I'd like to, for people who are maybe new to the IFA, I'd like to... give a landscape of the organization and how it works. There's a leadership pipeline, there's committees, there's forums, there's all kinds of ways to participate. It's a large organization, there's a lot of work to do inside of that. It's a volunteer, really, a lot of volunteers from the franchise industry that help to make the organization go. Can you give an overview? of the structure of the organization. So if I was a new franchise or coming in, and I said, okay, for the next 10 years, I wanna give back to the industry, I wanna volunteer my time, maybe sponsor, contribute to the organization. What are the steps, what's the path for me to really be a good member and to invest in this industry and the association? into the business model that has given me and my franchise owners so much. Matt Haller (26:11.784) Sure. So we, in terms of membership, so we are a membership organization. We have about 1300 franchise brands who are members of the IFA. And it's everybody from, you know, McDonald's and Dunkin, you know, down to, you know, this sort of hypothetical new franchise or that you mentioned, who's just getting started and, you know, wants to, wants to learn, wants to be mentored, wants to understand what vendors maybe to Jeff Dudan (26:16.884) Mm-hmm. Matt Haller (26:41.224) partner with as they help them grow what wants access to prospective franchisees. So if you're a new franchisor, coming to IFA and joining as an entry level member, we're going to give you an incredible pathway to help you grow your professional network within the franchising community. I think that... And that is, you know, number one, the most valuable thing about becoming involved and showing up at IFA events, volunteering as you learn, you know, over your journey, you know, becoming a speaker at IFA events, maybe not at our convention, but perhaps at, you know, a smaller event like the event, Jeff, you and I were at recently in New Orleans, the Emerging Franchise Or Conference, which is a much more intimate and sort of high touch kind of event. about 300 to 400 people and both learning and becoming a speaker as you scale there. I think I mentioned the CFD program earlier in the program. I would say if you're new to franchising or hiring new people to your company, going through that fairly intensive professional development process, which can be done in about six months. To get your CFE it will you'll be part of a cohort of you know 20 or so people who are going to be your buddies over the next 10 to 20 years in franchising And that's just a pretty cool thing while you also get a soup-to-nuts Education in becoming a world-class franchise or And then you know as you start becoming assimilated into the IFA, you know giving back in different ways You know, every, I always say every dollar that comes into the association, right? You know, we're putting it back out in support of that mission that I talked about earlier, and in particular, we're putting it out in, in service of protecting the business model, the way that you've decided to, to grow your business and support your franchisees businesses. Uh, and a lot of that work and a lot of that, that money is spent on government relations and advocacy work, uh, to protect franchising from unnecessary or overburdened some education. Matt Haller (28:59.208) regulation, excuse me, and just to also then go back into promoting franchising. So again, back to what I said earlier, that 70% of the country that might be interested in opening a small business but doesn't know where to start, right? Helping educate the public through research and through different communications campaigns about the franchise opportunity and associating your brand with the IFA, you have a certain halo effect. right? There are standards that we have in membership, so not anybody can become an IFA member. You have to meet certain criteria. And we evaluate that criteria over time as well. So all these things, I think, are benefits. And we have a team of 40 people here at the IFA that work for the association and can sort of help you, be your concierge, navigate different questions that are inevitably going to come up and be a connector to other people that have faced these. common challenges that all franchise systems inevitably face. Jeff Dudan (29:58.99) From an economic perspective as a franchisor, we can participate in Fran Pack, which is our industry pack, and it's specifically for the advocacy work that's done in the governmental space. I think you can give individually up to $5,000 for that, but the ask is generally a dollar a day, $365, so that we can all be represented globally. you know, by the IFA and the, you know, paying attention, kind of watchdogging what regulations are coming down the pipe. There's been some real pivotal interceptions and oppositions to some legislation that really just kind of strikes right to the heart of small business. And we've been very successful as an organization in doing so, obviously, putting our dollars in membership and then showing up at these events. And Admittedly, I've only operated in three or four different industries in my career. I've never been part of a more collaborative, more collegial, more open business group as the IFA. I, you know, Charlie Chase was the past chair. Was he current chair or past chair? He was past chair. Yep, he was past chair. Matt Haller (31:15.447) immediate past chair. Jeff Dudan (31:18.354) And he stood up and he's the CEO of First Service Corporation, which is a very large small number of brands, but just a very large system publicly traded out of Canada. And I've heard him say this before. He said, if somebody comes up to me and they have a painting concept, if somebody comes up to me and says, I want to do a painting concept, then they think that he's going to be upset or competitively. annoyed by that. He says, no, man, he says, whatever, but if you do it, just do it well. Because the responsibility as franchisors to take care of our franchisees, to do all of the things that we can do to make them successful and to run our businesses in a responsible way, when we get conflict between franchisors and franchisees around the space, it's not good for any of us. I have observed that the leaders of the industry, the Charlie Chases, the Catherine Monsons, all of the Shelley Sons, the David Bars, all of these people that have been at the head of some of the more successful brands over the years, they share without reservation about how to build great franchise companies because I think everybody understands that, you know, to the extent that we self-regulate and we self-educate and we... do a good job of ourselves, then the government might find it less necessary to jump in and put regulation upon us that we might not want. So I would encourage people, if somebody has a family business, one or two locations, and they're looking to get into the franchise space, the first thing they need to do is they need to go to the IFA national event, which is, where are we this year? We're in Phoenix. Matt Haller (33:11.624) We are in Phoenix in February. Jeff Dudan (33:13.802) We're in Phoenix in February this year. So we're, we're coming to you. I'm sure we'll, I'm not sure when this episode, this episode will get out before then, so people will have time to sign up, to register and just show up and really get a sense of the massive number of tracks and courses around operations and sales and finance and all those small nuances of legal, all the small nuances. And then also, um, participate in roundtables and, and get, you know, start your franchise network today. I'm constantly amazed, although there will be, what, three or 4,000 people at this event, maybe 5,000? Matt Haller (33:55.056) More than 4,000 people if we make our goal, yes. Jeff Dudan (33:56.646) more than 4,000 people. And, but at the end of the day, it's actually a very, but that's gonna include some franchisees. This can include a lot of suppliers and vendors and a lot of franchisors. It's actually a very small industry. I mean, in terms of actually number of people that are making things happen. And if you go to that event, you can get access to people that have built some of the brands that you've. known and loved for your entire life and you've been a customer of. So it's really neat. I've always been fascinated by the accessibility of leadership inside of the franchise base. And that's one of the biggest benefits that I've gotten through my career through the IFA. Matt Haller (34:40.156) Yeah, no doubt it is a, you touched on this in your opening, Jeff, but I've been at three associations and by far, right, the willingness to collaborate and share even amongst competitors, just lessons learned and best practices. Yeah, it's really remarkable. So for anybody starting out, that is certainly a benefit of the franchise model. Jeff Dudan (35:04.138) Yeah, there's always room for people who want to do it well inside of it. Well, let's move a little bit towards the protect piece of it. Last week on Wednesday, you appeared in front of Congress, I guess on Capitol Hill. You did a great five minute opening. What are some of the issues today that we are most concerned about from a regulation or legislative perspective? Matt Haller (35:34.436) Yeah. Well, one, before I get into that, I'm just glad that I didn't do what the university presidents did in their very publicized hearing. It was the week prior to me being up there. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:41.454) I'm going to go ahead and close the video. I don't know, they got a billion views. I don't know, you know, and maybe there's no such thing as bad publicity, Matt. We could have got a billion views if you would have taken some unpopular positions, but. Matt Haller (35:54.196) Yeah, yeah, indeed. So I testified in. Jeff Dudan (35:58.891) Was the seat you were sitting in just still smoking hot from those, right? Matt Haller (36:03.736) It was the same committee. I don't think I was in the chair of the woman who at University of Penn. I think she was one chair over from the one that I was in, but it was a great opportunity to highlight franchising and why it's important and also highlight, you know, the top threat to the franchising industry right now is this rule that was finalized by the national neighbor relations board. concerning an issue called joint employment. And this rule goes into effect at the end of February. And essentially what the rule does is it makes franchisors effectively responsible for employees at businesses that they don't directly control their franchisees' businesses and the employees of those businesses. Franchisors absolutely have influence and a requirement under other laws. We've talked about that earlier, to enforce brand standards and ensure their franchisees are delivering on that brand promise. And that takes involvement in the business and it takes what some refer to as soft power, but they're not directly controlling wages or benefits or schedules. They're not directing day-to-day you know, employment activities at their franchisees' businesses. If they were, then franchisors and, you know, that franchisee, you know, under current law should be considered joint employers. And what that would mean is, you know, they could be sued, you know, if there's a, you know, a violation of labor and employment matters, right? You didn't pay somebody overtime or in this situation, there's this is a big labor union priority. They're trying to organize workers. um, in franchise businesses, um, the franchise or, you know, if they were a joint employer, they would be required to sit, you know, at a bargaining table, um, along with all of the franchisees, employees, representatives. And so you have this multi-employer kind of collective bargaining table. Um, you know, that, that is going to be completely unworkable, um, for, for the franchise business model. And, and in fact, it's not really workable. Matt Haller (38:28.312) From a collective bargaining standpoint either like there isn't a room You know big enough to hold all the lawyers that would need to represent all these different Businesses that would need to be at the table to organize a entire franchise systems employees But the problem with joint employment and franchising is you just you can't have both right? So I made this point in my in my testimony you can have collective bargaining and franchising coexist, right? You know, this is not a franchising is not an anti union strategy, right? franchising is a business growth strategy. It's a way for brands to reach new markets more quickly with, you know, other people's capital and local market intelligence on the franchisee side, no franchise or, you know, ever started their company to say, I don't want responsibility for employment matters, I want to just grow and I can grow with, you know, other people's capital and reaching new markets more quickly. But this issue is this issue of joint employment is a big priority of of organized labor. They would like to organize sort of top down. They can be very lazy. It would be costly and expensive to go organize restaurant by restaurant by restaurant and individual business units in any franchise system or service concept or hotel or whatever may be. Matt Haller (39:53.98) They've done, and try to force, you know, business to react. And what's going to happen here, because we've seen this issue play out before, is it's going to be very costly and expensive to franchise orders and to franchisees. And that's not going to be good for anybody because franchise orders are going to do one of two things. They're either going to, now that they have this liability for the way the joint employment standard has been changed, they're going to take a lot more control over those businesses because they have the shared liability and responsibility now. Alternatively, they're going to back way off because they're going to be fearful of lawsuits for any interaction and communication and other engagement with their franchisees. And that is not going to make franchisees happy because they've paid for a lot of the support. that is inherent in the franchise relationship through franchise fees and royalties, other fees. And that also is going to have a negative impact on the consumer because it's going to make things a lot more expensive. If litigation increases and that cost of doing business is going to increase, that ultimately all gets passed along. So none of this is a positive. And like I said, we've seen this before and we don't need to see this again. So we're hopeful Congress will step in and overturn this rule. There's a means to do that through what's known as the congressional review act allows Congress through a simple majority to overturn a major regulation and instruct this agency to go back to the drawing board and either, you know, issue something more narrowly tailored or just back off entirely. The the IFA has also sued. the National Labor Relations Board and Federal Court in the Eastern District of Texas, challenging the rule in three areas. So we're also playing this out on the litigation front. Jeff Dudan (41:59.35) And then what is the Save Local Business Act, brought forth by James Comer? Matt Haller (42:04.996) Yeah. So the Save Local Business Act is standalone legislation that would amend the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act to create a permanent definition in statute that a business can only be named a joint employer if it exercises direct and immediate control over the essential terms and conditions of another business's employee. businesses employees. So when I talked earlier about, you know, a franchise or a prime business, right, being involved in setting of wages, setting of schedules, prescribing benefits, those are direct control elements, right? If you and I are in business together, Jeff, and you're subcontracting work to me, and you tell me exactly what, you know, I need to pay my employees. Right? You're, you're a joint employer of my employees. Like you're, you should be responsible. But if you're telling me, you know, here are the, here are the general guidelines, right? Like our business is, if I'm a, if I'm a construction company, you know, our business is open at this time and we need you to be here, you know, and perform this work over the next six weeks. You know, we're going to pay you $20,000 to do this work, right? It's up to me to determine, you know, the right workforce that I need, right? When those people need to be there, what type of work they need to perform. You know, that's a typical business to business contractor, subcontractor relationship. Um, and all of those kind of general, um, widely accepted business practices are, are now, uh, under this expanded definition of joint employer put forward by the, this NLRB, uh, this, this agency, they are now, um, in disha of joint employment. So any one of those interactions that you and I have with one another. can be, you can be brought to the bargaining table and you can be sued as the prime business. And similarly, nearly anything in a franchise or franchisee relationship can be cited as indirect or unexercised control over a franchisee in the franchising relationship. So this rule is not something that just impacts franchising. There are 71 business organizations from. Matt Haller (44:27.772) the National Association of Manufacturers, to the American Trucking Associations, to the Associated Builders and Contractors that are concerned about this and have asked Congress to overrule it. So it's a broad coalition that the IFA is leading and we're very concerned about it. And I would say to any of your listeners out there, go to save if you wanna learn more about that issue and there's opportunities to get involved with grassroots and telling your members of Congress. that you own a small business or you own a franchise, and you don't want to be named as a joint employer. And they need to reverse this. Jeff Dudan (45:09.23) As an example, let's say a franchisor had a learning management system that was available to anybody for a salesperson or an estimator or a general manager for some particular location. In the operations manual, you recommended that people go through the learning management system and they should score 80% or better and complete all the modules. Is that exerting direct control from the franchisor, just making those systems available? and making that as a recommendation as to how they run their business because it's very subtle but significant. Matt Haller (45:43.216) I wouldn't call it direct control, but I certainly wouldn't say that it couldn't be cited as indirect control, which is an element of this new rule. There's language in the new rule that says, anything having to do with working conditions at another business. What does that mean? Jeff Dudan (46:00.35) Yeah, but I'll... Matt Haller (46:12.784) So this rule is fairly boundless in terms of what an ambitious plaintiff's attorney could bring forward to get another business to the table. Jeff Dudan (46:29.598) Yeah, man, if you want to have great brand standards and you want the customers to have a great experience, then you've got to provide high guardrails and great systems and incredible clarity about how the products and services are delivered. And to the extent that the franchise owners and their employees adhere to that, I mean, that's on them. You can't force them, you can't fire them. You really, I mean, that's the rule. We can't fire franchisees, and we definitely can't fire their employees for lack of compliance. So how much control do we really have? We're providing best practices, tools, education, all of the things that they can get from us, or I mean, in a lot of ways, they could get from other industry associations or things like that. It's just packaged up. tailored for the brand that we're offering. So it's really difficult for me to understand how to redraw that line in terms of what we do and what we don't do. Matt, are there any industries that are more susceptible to or any particular franchise areas that you're more concerned about? For example, restaurants that have a very high employee count. Lots of restaurants, lots of employees, or some of these three-tier models where you have a franchise or a master franchise, a master franchisee, I guess, and then franchisees delivering the work below that. Are those areas that are more likely to trigger joint employer challenges? Matt Haller (48:14.696) Look, I think that no area of the franchise sector is really immune from this because so much of what is inherent just in any franchise system is, you know, it's required to, you know, really make a franchise a franchise, right? Like some element of control. I think it's more a function of where the unions are putting more of their time and energy. And certainly in the quick service restaurant industry, that is a major focus of the primary proponent of this new rule, which is the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union. So I think certainly the restaurant industry, I would also say, you know, in the not necessarily three tiers so much on joint employment as just those with, you know, anybody in kind of vulnerable workforce, right? Like, you know, lower wage, entry level. high numbers of maybe non-English as a primary language. There's a lot of attention there by the unions as well that does tend to play itself out in the janitorial and commercial cleaning areas. But also in, you touched on some of the commercial residential services areas as well. And then lastly, I mean the hospitality sector, less so SEIU and more of a unite here focus. Jeff Dudan (49:31.085) Right. Matt Haller (49:44.736) in terms of organized labor. But look, I think everybody is evaluating how to make changes to the way that they do business right now. That sounds very benign, but when you change the way you do business, that is costly. The franchise relationship can become frayed if there is not clear understanding of why things are changing. and franchisers are not communicating with their franchisees about why this is happening. And I think that also creates an opportunity for, you know, what can I do about it? Right? Well, and back to the advocacy, it's like, we're not doing this because we want to, right? We're not taking things away or exercising more control because we now have liability because we want to. We're doing it because this government entity has moved the goal Matt Haller (50:41.5) And if you're pissed off about that, as you should be, then you should pick up the phone and call your member of Congress and say, you've got something to do here. This is why you've been, at least in theory, why you've chosen to serve your country in elected office and Congress has an appropriate oversight role to play over government overreach by these agencies. And, you know, making it clear, as I did in the congressional hearing, like Congress will be making a choice, right? Do they want to stand up for. this new role or do they want to stand up for the franchise business model? And let's be clear about what choice that they're choosing to make. Jeff Dudan (51:23.198) We certainly appreciate the work you're doing there. It's, you know, at my level here at the franchisor with a couple of decades of experience and then leaning on the shoulders of the people that have come before us, like we were very prescriptive about the way we support franchisees. I mean, like really, really prescriptive in how we build that relationship equity, you know, how we... We consider engagement with our franchisees in every decision that we make. We consider radical transparency in every decision that we make. We understand that the health of the relationship with the franchise network, and that doesn't mean that you're rolling over on a whim of every question. I mean, we are a servant leader organization, but... servant leadership is giving people what they truly need, not necessarily what they say they want, if they're under stress or in the moment or if they're uncomfortable doing something. There's some hard lessons and candor that's delivered because business is full contact and it's hard. Now, we have to be able to get in the pocket, that's a boxing term, with our franchisees. We have to be close enough to them so that we understand that when they're struggling that we're working on the right problem. This can't be... We can't be franchising like at a prison through a glass wall. It doesn't work. I mean, we've gotta be out there with them. We've gotta be paying attention to real issues. We need to be working with them on the real challenges that they're facing. And it's, you know, even though the business model is, I mean, the business model is well-defined in the way that we execute it, but the variation comes in the franchisee. and their background, their experience, the challenges that they're facing, all of those types of things. So for us, we kind of know how to do it. We've learned how to do it one way. And it's high engagement, it's radically transparent, and it's relatively integrated. Now I know that we don't break any of the laws, joint employer laws. We don't... Jeff Dudan (53:38.41) We know what not to do and we don't want the responsibility of managing or being responsible for a franchise or as employees. That being said, it's a little, it's difficult for us to understand where we would be able to peel that back and have it not impact the ultimate success of the franchisees. Matt Haller (53:59.568) Yeah, the problem is, and I said this also at the hearing, there's no clarity, right? There's no guidance, right? You know, a lot of times government issues, regulations that you just don't like, right? But at least there's clarity in many cases about how to comply. This is so unclear and so boundless in terms of, you know, what activities that you are required to engage in to be a successful franchise or. Jeff Dudan (54:04.949) Right. Matt Haller (54:29.652) Um, that are you now not able to do in order to not become a joint employer? Because if you do become a joint employer, there's no incentive to franchise. And, you know, that is unfortunate on a number of levels, right? It's unfortunate because, you know, franchising gives people this incredible opportunity to become small business owners, but they didn't become small business owners to have. the overlord of the franchise or controlling or responsible for every aspect of their business, right? Otherwise, that's why when we say, you know, joint employment really turns franchisees effectively into middle managers. And you didn't buy yourself, you don't want to buy yourself a job in the franchise model. You want to buy a business that you can grow and monetize and, you know, sell or give to your kids or, you know, whatever you want to do with it. And then from a franchise or perspective. Jeff Dudan (55:00.775) right. Matt Haller (55:25.18) you know, franchising is a choice, right? You've made a choice to go, you know, in that direction, versus, you know, owning these, these assets as, as you know, some businesses decide to do pursuing a corporate model, and that's okay, too. But you've made a choice. And, you know, in it with the stroke of a pen, government has made that choice, more difficult, more expensive and unclear, and you don't know how to comply. And that's why I feel like franchising is you know, sort of in this vice grip right now with this rule, you're kind of damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. And, you know, that is something that we need to turn up the volume on, to Congress, to understand and ultimately overturn. Jeff Dudan (56:09.77) Yes, let's get, let's make a goal of some clarity in 2024. Matt, can we touch on a few trends? I'd love to get your perspective on these. Are you good on time right now? Okay, good. Thank you for that. So, are you seeing, from where I'm sitting, and I think it's probably because I've become more broad in franchising of late, but I see an awful lot of new brands popping up. Matt Haller (56:19.014) Yeah. I am, yeah. Jeff Dudan (56:39.838) Are you, would the numbers tell you that there are more new brands entering and maybe some brands leaving the network is the churn greater now than it has been? Or is this the way it's always been? Matt Haller (56:51.76) Yeah, churn is definitely higher by churn, you know, there are going to be brands that start don't, you know, ultimately, you know, three years from now, they will not exist. They will not have, you know, sold a franchise. Or there would have been bought and maybe consolidated into, you know, a competitor brand. So it is and I think that is it's a good thing in on one hand, because, you know, people are seeing the franchise model as a model that can help generate wealth, grow a concept. But there's a lot of risk there too. You mentioned something earlier, Jeff. You're radically transparent with your franchisees and you're very close to them. Matt Haller (57:51.312) you know, whatever product or service that they were selling before. They're in the business of servicing their franchisees. Um, and, uh, that is an incredibly different business, um, than they were in before, and you have to understand what being a franchise or really means. And we've been talking a lot lately about responsible franchising at the IFA and, you know, that's why I think it's particularly important that people who are choosing to pursue, you know, franchising as a as a growth strategy for their business, you know, they get involved in the industry and they build relationships with people like yourself and others who have done this before and done it in a responsible way because you can't be a successful franchisor if your franchisees aren't successful too. And it's as simple as that. And that only can happen if you're franchising responsibly through an appropriate amount of new. new franchise development. We call it royalty self-sufficiency. If you're a franchisor that is only making money because you're selling new locations and generating revenue off initial franchise fees, you're not a successful franchisor. You're not going to last. Your franchisees need to be profitable. That is going to be the greatest sales tool that you can ever have, having third-party validation to prospective new franchisees from your existing franchisees. Jeff Dudan (58:55.638) Mm. Matt Haller (59:20.02) is absolutely the right approach. And so I think if we're seeing new franchisers that are growing that way, you're also then seeing new franchisees that are growing that way. And that is really the sweet spot for franchising long-term. Jeff Dudan (59:36.746) There's definitely a trend over the last decade of accelerated franchise development. And I think that's okay if you have the intellectual capital and the capital and the human capital to support the franchisees. And I get asked, I talk with a lot of emerging concepts and they say, well how much money do I need to get this brand? that I tell people, it's about five times or 10 times more than other people seem to tell them, but it just, I don't see any way around it. You need a certain amount of capital over the first 24 months if you're gonna have normal franchise development to invest ahead of revenue in the support and the technology and the platforms and everything to do it responsibly. And the challenge becomes... if somebody engages in accelerated franchise development, but there's nothing on the back end of it. And once people become under supported and the systems start to break and you've got all these franchisees out there that are needing, you know, that creates, I think, some of the challenges that, maybe some self-inflicted damages that we do to ourselves in the industry. Along those lines, are you... Are you seeing more or less conflict right now in between franchise awards and franchisees as a trend? Or is it about table stakes, business as usual? Matt Haller (01:01:16.08) think that we have democratized the ability to get a message out, you know, through social media and in such, you know, a way. So everyone's an activist. And so I think we see more, but I don't see anything in the data that demonstrates that there is more. So I think you have to look at everything like, like data don't lie. Jeff Dudan (01:01:40.146) I would agree with that. Matt Haller (01:01:45.224) right? And we don't see it in franchisee satisfaction surveys from, you know, independent observers like franchise business review. We don't see it in litigation. Are there, you know, bad franchisors out there? Absolutely. Are there ways for, you know, franchisees to deal with, you know, franchisors that are misleading them? Absolutely. Do we need, you know, state regulators and our federal regulators to do more? Jeff Dudan (01:01:45.707) Yeah. Matt Haller (01:02:14.544) to enforce existing law? Absolutely. Right. But I don't see anything in the data that shows franchisees or franchisors are facing more conflict or litigation. I just think we've democratized the ability to get information out and conflict sells, so I think we also see a lot more media coverage of conflict that manifests itself in different ways. But this goes back to what we were talking about, about the infancy of the IFA and, you know, where we do need better information is, uh, we, we do need to improve disclosure. Um, we do need to improve, uh, what information, uh, a prospective franchisee can get before they make a choice. To decide to partner with a brand as a franchisee and a brand ultimately decides that they want to, you know, make. Jeff Dudan (01:02:48.93) Mm-hmm. Matt Haller (01:03:13.552) you know, invest in that, in that, that franchisee becoming part of their system. And let's be clear, both sides are making a choice, right? There is nobody compelling either person in a franchise relationship to enter into that relationship. Um, can we do better? Can government, the federal trade commission do better to improve disclosure and the requirements that they place on brands to help convey what it is that they're offering to prospective franchisees? Absolutely. Do brands actually want to provide information in a different way? Absolutely. So why isn't government working with industry to help us go back to the roots and modernize the franchise disclosure document and make it something that's available electronically, right? Make it something that's a little bit more user friendly, like turn it into sections that are answering pretty straightforward questions like how much does it cost? What are my obligations? How can a franchise or change the system to improve, uh, you know, what, what delivers on the consumer promise because of changing market conditions. So those are all things that the IFA, uh, is working, uh, to develop a better framework to educate, um, potential investors and allow franchise ors to better present, um, their offering. to prospective franchisees in a really competitive marketplace where there's you know, Three four thousand brands out there talking to the same pool of prospective franchisees Who are you know in a lot of ways turned off just by the way information is presented because it's confusing as hell Jeff Dudan (01:04:58.738) Yeah, and I think to your point, because of the standardized disclosure process and also the ability for people to be effective marketers and salespeople, you can have an emerging brand with 10 locations and they sound the same as a 50-year-old brand with $3 billion of sales. And if you're on the other end of the phone or the other end of the Zoom, it's almost indiscernible between the two. And I think that's gotta be a challenge for prospective franchisees, where they're seeking any sort of endorsement, any sort of a referral, a recommendation that they can to figure out what's the best way to go and which brand do I need to join. I think, I know that some of the states have revamped their Requirements around the item 19 going into next year. So it seems like every year the way that you present the numbers is Chained, you know, you can't do this top third top half these types of things So it seems like they're always tweaking it to try to give the prospects the best view of the financials There is some art and some science around the way that you those item 19s are put together across the various brands so But at the end of the day franchise prospects, they need to invest the time. They need to call franchisees. They need to meet leadership. They need to, you know, they, I think if they run through the process, hopefully they make the decision that's right for them. And a lot of good options out there in franchising, so. Matt Haller (01:06:47.472) Yeah, due diligence is absolutely critical for prospective franchisees. And look, we don't want everybody to come in to the system, right? People that aren't willing to put in the time to do the due diligence, you know, frankly, they're probably not going to make very good franchisees, uh, at the end of the day either. And so this is not a, you know, get rich quick, you know, scheme that, you know, this is a, you know, you're entering a 10, maybe longer your relationship with, uh, with a franchise or. Um, Jeff Dudan (01:07:09.153) Right. Matt Haller (01:07:16.988) And, but, but also you should, you should be able to understand for those that are willing to make the time and investment, um, you know, it should, it should be a little bit more straightforward for them in terms of the obligations that franchise or skip provide. Jeff Dudan (01:07:31.602) Yeah. From a funding perspective, we're going into an election year and I'm interested to know what typically happens in franchising in an election year, if you have any visibility into what to expect or what some trends might be there. And also, home ownership has always been a really important part of hard assets, collateral. that people use to fund their franchise, to collateralize against their franchise. Home ownership is in decline, especially in the younger groups here, due to poor affordability. And, you know, is there a real concern at the IFA about the changing asset base that's available to this next generation of people coming up and their ability to build enough assets to follow their dream of entrepreneurship with a franchise. Matt Haller (01:08:35.996) Well, we've never seen higher rates of people interested in owning a small business, but that is definitely butting up against, you know, just consumer savings and, you know, as you mentioned, home ownership, as well with just kind of the geopolitical, you know, uncertainty related to, you know, we've got two wars that are, you know, out there right now with Russia and Ukraine and with Hamas and Israel. And, you know, then you layer on the uncertainty. Jeff Dudan (01:08:39.724) Mm-hmm. Matt Haller (01:09:06.464) or just lethargic view of the American electorate as we stare down, you know, potential rematch of the 2020 election with, uh, former president Trump and president Biden and, you know, the possibility of a contested election and what that could mean for, you know, you know, decision-making. Um, I think all of this sort of, you put it into a basket and it's not a recipe for, you know, people who, you know, Franchise or's need to make decisions and franchisees, you know, take longer to make decisions so I think the trend that we see is It takes longer from initial lead to closing and I don't think that's gonna get any shorter In the next year just given everything that is out there on people's minds And as I also mentioned, you know the media environment right the media, you know plays up a lot of this And people need to understand what's going on. I'm not like, I'm a big believer in, you know, free speech and freedom of the press. But I think we still, you know, see a lot of kind of lazy media coverage of, you know, different, different trends and things that are out there that weigh on people's minds. And people consume media, not through the traditional forms, right? They... They tend to associate with people that are just reinforcing their existing, you know, values or beliefs or conspiracies, um, that they have. And, you know, there's not a, there's not a feedback loop, um, that, that is, uh, is like it was, you know, in the before times. And I don't even know when that was anymore, but I think a lot, a lot of this, you know, it's just a way of saying it's taken longer. That's one of the trends for. you know, people to make a decision about, yeah, I'm going to pursue this 10 year franchise relationship. Um, and, and that's, that's a problem. Matt Haller (01:11:22.148) Okay, yeah, you're frozen on my end, but I hear you fine, but your video is frozen. Matt Haller (01:11:43.641) Alright, cool. Matt Haller (01:12:10.174) Hehehehe Matt Haller (01:12:41.576) I think we've covered a good amount. No, I'm good if you just want to record a quick, like, you know, wrap up to tie it up. Matt Haller (01:12:55.888) Yeah, that's what mine shows too. Jeff Dudan (01:13:33.009) All right, cool. All right, so it looks like we're recording, Jen, again? Yep. Okay, we're all good. Matt Haller (01:13:34.942) All right, looks good. Jeff Dudan (01:13:46.349) Let's see, there's anything else to get into. Matt, on trends, maybe a fun one. Do you see more celebrities coming into franchising? I think the sports figures, it seems like all of the levers that make franchising such a great business model at the franchisor level certainly extend down to the franchisee level. And I see celebrities and professional athletes and people that wanna make investments in businesses. more and more frequently leaning into the franchise model. Is that what you're seeing from where you're sitting? Matt Haller (01:14:22.46) Yeah, I think a lot of them see, a lot of brands see celebrity partnerships as a way to sort of leverage, you know, an additional tool in their marketing toolbox, you know, in terms of other development. But they also see that, and then celebrities see franchising as a place to deploy capital that's, you know, got a high return on investment. And, you know, with the right management and operating team below them, we have seen it. So, you know, as an example, at the IFA convention in, in two years ago, we had Shaquille O'Neal. Jeff Dudan (01:14:31.825) Mm-hmm. Matt Haller (01:14:52.284) who was a keynote speaker and did an amazing job. Last year we had Drew Brees, not breaking any news here today, but we have another one lined up that is a highly influential person in sports media business that will be our keynote speaker in Phoenix at the IFA convention this year. We'll get ready to announce here really soon. So excited about that. Jeff Dudan (01:15:00.882) Come on. Jeff Dudan (01:15:14.233) You can tell us, Matt, both of our listeners promise to keep it quiet. Matt Haller (01:15:19.821) I'm not going to break any contractual relationships that haven't been finalized yet. Jeff Dudan (01:15:22.326) All right. Well, we'll have to wait, but we're excited for it. I'm sure it'll be another great partnership. Well, Matt, I appreciate you being on today. This has been very informative. Obviously, the more energy that we invest in education around the sector and that we put behind protecting, enhancing, and promoting the industry is good for all of us. This has been an industry. or business model for me that I would have never been able to have the experiences of my life without. And it only really happened for me when I started to join the IFA and I started to rub shoulders with all of the people that were so willing to give their time to some guy who just had a couple of restoration locations and was trying to figure it all out. So I just want to encourage people, man, half a life is showing up. And if you show up and you show up with humility and, you know, don't act. like whatever, people will help you. And ask questions, be helpful, participate. If somebody asks you to be part of a committee or to show up somewhere, if you can't figure out a reason to say no, then the answer should always be yes. And the IFA is a host of people that will give back to you as much or more than you're willing to put into it. So I appreciate your leadership, Matt. I know I was very excited when you got this role a couple, three years ago, and you've done an excellent job on behalf of all of us. So thank you so much for that. Last question, if you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, your go-to sentence, what would that be? Matt Haller (01:17:11.244) It's Don't Ask, Don't Get. Jeff Dudan (01:17:13.633) Ah, don't ask, don't get. Got it. Keep it simple. All right. Matt, how can people reach out to you? What is the best way to contact you if they had a burning desire to get in touch with you? Matt Haller (01:17:27.588) Yeah, well, if you want to check out the IFA, come to franchise.org. You can check out all the programs and things that we do there. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Matthew Howler, and happy to, happy to engage with, with anybody there. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you, Jeff. You're such a great leader in the franchise sector and big supporter of the IFA. and really proud of what you've been building in this next generation of Jeff Duden and look forward to seeing all the great stuff that's to come from you and your team. Jeff Dudan (01:18:07.357) Appreciate you, Matt, and thank you for being with us today on the home front. Everybody out there, thank you for listening.

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Brief Summary In this fun and wisdom-packed episode, Jeff Dudan interviews Preston Rutherford , the co-founder of Chubbies, the lifestyle apparel brand that turned short shorts into a cultural phenomenon. From humble beginnings selling shorts out of backpacks to building a multimillion-dollar D2C empire, Preston shares how the brand was built around joy, community, and disruption. They unpack the power of brand identity, the evolution of e-commerce, and the irreplaceable value of good partnerships. Key Takeaways Build with friends, but build with intention : Chubbies was co-founded by four friends, but success came from shared vision, conflict resolution, and respect—not just friendship. Do things that don’t scale—first : Selling out of backpacks, hosting local events, and collecting early user-generated content helped Chubbies build community and product-market fit before scaling online. Brand beats algorithm : Paid advertising is addictive but risky. Long-term profitability lies in storytelling, emotional connection, and owning your audience. Shorts are serious business : Chubbies owned the “weekend” in consumers’ minds with humor, relatability, and a bold name people never forgot. Mental health through fun : One of Chubbies’ missions is spreading joy and levity as a form of emotional wellness and resilience. Partnerships are force multipliers : Preston credits co-founders and team dynamics as the reason they succeeded—because they kept going and didn’t quit. Featu red Quote “Just start—and don’t stop.” — Preston Rutherford TRANSCRIPT Jeff Dudan (00:03.246) Preston Rutherford, co-founder of Chubbies. Welcome to the home front. Preston Rutherford (00:08.249) Thank you, Jeff. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Jeff Dudan (00:11.67) Yeah, man, how you doing today? Well? Preston Rutherford (00:14.501) Very well. Yes. Thank you. Excited for some Thanksgiving turkey. Jeff Dudan (00:17.234) Okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're sitting here on the Wednesday before. We always start with going back. Would you care to share a little bit about your journey, starting with how you grew up? From Tucson to Stanford: How Preston’s Upbringing Shaped His Entrepreneurial Spirit Preston Rutherford (00:32.405) Of course, would love it. Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, and to two awesome parents. I mean, I had such a... I'm very blessed, very grateful that they... You know, we didn't come from much, but they did everything they could to expose me to everything. Sports, arts, school, best schools, and... I think one of the main takeaways for me there is just having a lot of gratitude towards my upbringing because I know not everyone had that sort of exposure. But I was just a fun, happy kid, lots of energy, maybe too much energy sometimes according to some of my teachers, especially my fourth grade teacher from what I remember. But played all kinds of sports. In Arizona you've got a really long sports season. And You know, I went to, ended up going to Stanford for undergrad, which was just amazing. I have no idea how it happened. Dream come true. And ended up studying urban planning and design, which ended up not necessarily being related to what I ended up doing in the future. But I think more than anything, met a bunch of really wonderful people. who ended up being my best friends, saying the saying being, you're the sum total of the people, the five people closest to you, I really think that rang true for me. And these folks inspired me, taught me, and I'm forever grateful, friends with all of them today, almost 20 years later. After college, it was 2008, so it was tough. really get a job. And many of us. I mean, that was relatively consistent with a lot of us. And ended up joining a startup started by a friend who lived with me as an intern and ended up being there for over four years. And this was in the consumer internet space as was kind of the norm in Silicon Valley. And learned a lot. Solve a Real Problem—Not a Cool Idea Preston Rutherford (02:58.753) learned a lot of mostly, I'd say learned a lot about what to do, but a lot about what not to do. And I'd say the big thing that I took away from that experience was You got to be solving a problem rather than creating a solution in search of a problem. Let's say that's one of the things that we ended up doing. We chased interesting technology but didn't really have a customer, a real problem to solve. I'd say number two was the worst thing is not for people to hate you or what you're doing or what you stand for. The worst thing is for there to be apathy towards those things. So in a lot of ways carried those two learnings toward... the Chubbies experience where myself and three of my closest friends, we had been working for the man for going on five years post-graduation and we just felt like we wanted to start something. We didn't know what. None of us studied computer science so we weren't going to go out and do the crazy social network or iPhone app or whatever it might be. but we felt like we could create something that didn't exist. And I'd say we were more than anything, we were pulled by, you know, a desire for freedom, the potential for controlling our destiny, the potential for creating something, something that didn't already exist in the world. And then just the realization of how great could it be to work with our best friends? You know, there's really nothing better than that. Jeff Dudan (04:39.874) Well, so you're at Stanford and now did you have any entrepreneurial influences in your early life at all? Preston Rutherford (04:42.307) Yeah. Preston Rutherford (04:50.305) Yes, more from, more from, so this is, yeah, going on 25, 30 years ago in Tucson, not a lot of, not a lot of startup activity, but I saw a few of my aunts and uncles who had started some small businesses and then my mom actually started a small business. being a real estate agent, so falling into an existing context but owning her destiny. And I saw the power of that. I saw the flexibility and the freedom that it offered, the infinite, let's call it, earning potential based upon up to you. So those were some of my early experiences. But honestly, some of the ideas really became obvious to me or I was exposed to some of these early ideas while in college. I took one class called technology entrepreneurship and it completely inspired me in terms of how you can create something and it completely changed my mindset of I think admittedly having some limited mindsets around and limited beliefs around I can't do something like this. A person from Arizona who kind of doesn't come from much can't... can't be a person who owns a business, who starts a company. The word company has a pretty big weight to it. So there was a lot of, oh my gosh, this is possible. There are other people around me doing it. And it makes those things that I think were previously very scary much more normal. Jeff Dudan (06:42.254) So in your first role with this technology or the software business that you were in, were you on the sales side of the business, business development? Preston Rutherford (06:52.921) You know, it was business development very broadly defined. You know, it started just as a grassroots marketing intern doing in-person events, going to conferences, being at the booth, kind of, you know, just doing the stuff of, you know, transferring enthusiasm to other people about what we were doing. I think that was the basic piece. And then, yes, it did evolve into business development where there was more of a partner. partnership component to the product, which was very fun. And yeah, effectively it was sales. And I'd say that experience coming, no formal training was extremely beneficial in terms of just figuring out how to generate the maximum result with whatever fixed or creative constraints you had. So yeah, I learned a lot there. Jeff Dudan (07:52.85) So let's jump to 2007 and you're employed. You've got some buddies from college. You go out to Lake Tahoe. It's 2011 and you're on this bros trip. And like what and you guys you were already of the mind that your clothes were a little bit loud. And you were looking to look good and you know be noticed and all of that like all young guys do. Preston Rutherford (08:04.613) Thanks for watching! Jeff Dudan (08:23.926) What happened on that trip that was the kernel of the idea for Chubbies? The Birth of Chubbies: Lake Tahoe, Loud Shorts, and a Big Idea Preston Rutherford (08:30.201) Yeah, great question. I'd say leading up to that, there were some initial thoughts around, gosh, it would be great to create a product that we felt didn't exist. Go back to 2011, oddly enough, short shorts are much more of the norm, and louder prints much more of the norm. But back then, it was very much the very long cargo short vibe. and you know, board shorts, but then, you know, even longer. You know, there was, there was, it was just a very, very kind of like opposite, opposite vibe from what we thought should exist, you know? So leading up to that trip, we were kicking around some ideas. We actually had an old pair of Lacoste shorts that one of us had that was passed down from one of our dads. Jeff Dudan (08:59.743) Yeah, like board shorts. Preston Rutherford (09:28.397) And we thought that was the perfect sample to try to use as inspiration. Just thought it was a great product and thought there was nothing out there like it. So made a few samples, made a bunch of mistakes on the way to getting that first sample. Picking the wrong manufacturer took, we didn't have really any money at the time, but took whatever money we had, and which was a whole different story, but ended up finding someone who. ultimately ended up making some of the product and did a very small run for ourselves and maybe ten more units. And that ended up being the set of products that we wore on this sort of July 4th trip and gave a few to our friends. And it was a very special and notable experience for us. Because It was something that from day one was very community driven. It was us as a group of friends, guys and gals. I mean, even at that time, we tried to make some women's product, but realized there just wasn't the pull that we saw on the men's side. And the response, but it was very much, wow, this is something special. Not that we weren't a group of friends having a great time. before that, but there was something that was sort of inextricably tied and very tight knit, which ended up being central to what we ended up building over time. But it was just a very, very sort of special organic time where it was very much, here's a problem we had, let's try to solve that problem for ourselves, and hopefully there would be other people out there who would be interested. in what we were doing. But, you know, huge assumption to make. But that was sort of the core of it. And it was very much just a fun, fun time where the core of it was just friends and community. And what was so interesting was, to my earlier point about the worst thing being apathy, people would come up to us because they saw these crazy people playing, you know, games on the beach, having a great time, looking... Jeff Dudan (11:25.624) Yeah. You’re Not a Customer, You’re a Friend Preston Rutherford (11:53.081) You could say, stupid or looking awesome. And some people would come up saying, this is so dumb. What are you wearing? You guys are a bunch of idiots. Other people would come up and just be like, what are those shorts? Where do I get them? These are awesome. And no one really, yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:11.854) Well, either way, there's differentiation. So it might not be for them, but they noticed, which is getting people's attention. That's the first challenge. Preston Rutherford (12:16.162) Right. Preston Rutherford (12:23.749) That's right. Jeff Dudan (12:25.086) So you had this background in events. So you're out there, which is by the way, it's tough to get out into the marketing space and do remotes and do events and all of that. So that's some good chops for this. What were the skillsets of the other partners that were initially involved? Preston Rutherford (12:45.837) Yeah, great question. FinanceOps was one of the four co-founders. Another one, a very deep sort of an amazing mix of studied engineering at Stanford, but was one of the most deep thinkers on consumer psychology and marketing. And then there was actually someone, the fourth founder who knew how to make clothing had done it before. Jeff Dudan (12:51.054) Okay. Jeff Dudan (13:13.279) Who had what? Preston Rutherford (13:14.497) who knew how to make clothing. So. Jeff Dudan (13:16.674) Oh, OK. So you've got an engineer. So but I think 40% of the world's billionaires are engineers. Is there process based problem solvers? You've got somebody in finance. You've got your marketing jobs and then you have a product person on the team. What are the like? There's nothing else you could have done with that team other than build Chubbies. Yeah, now you of the group, at some point they decided you should be the CEO. Preston Rutherford (13:35.787) That's a good point. That might be the case. Jeff Dudan (13:45.77) Now, is that only because you're the best looking? Like, how did that decision get made? Preston Rutherford (13:49.389) Gosh. First, first we were, we were all co-CEOs for what we learned was far too long. So we were, we were co-CEOs. And then ultimately we ended up going through a process together where one of us ended up being CEO. And it was actually one of my other co-founders, Kyle. And Jeff Dudan (14:00.273) Okay. Preston Rutherford (14:16.609) So that was the CEO process. And then to the good looking piece, I very much appreciate the compliment, but the other three co-founders were also just very stunning individuals as well. Jeff Dudan (14:32.078) Well, I mean, to scale an organization, you've got to put the right people in the right seats. And the inability for founders or partners to do that is what keeps small businesses small. So kudos to you guys. And you're highly educated people and clearly have trust in relationship and shared vision. that makes it easy. And then the ability to scale, especially inside the clothing industry. I know if you think about, you know, as a Damon Johns, you know, when anytime anybody comes on Shark Tank and they've got a clothing product that they're pitching, he's like, do you realize how impossibly hard the clothing industry is? And the entrenched... companies in there, the fact that you've got to create product nine months before you're going to land it, depending on where you're manufacturing it. And you got to try to forecast like what's going to get pushed through supply chain. I mean, it's probably, I got to imagine one of the more difficult startups to do, but you developed really differentiation and then raving fans. Now I'm a little bit older, so I've got now I do, I have my chubbies on right now. So see, I got. Preston Rutherford (15:47.165) Amazing! The neon lights. Jeff Dudan (15:48.99) Yeah, right. Yeah. So, you know, I'm up for the game, but it's my first pair. So but when I when I ask my kids, they're more than familiar with the everybody else is familiar with the brand. And I have to say these are exceptional quality. Price point was not uncomfortable for me, but like I feel like I got what I paid for. They feel great. They fit well. So. Preston Rutherford (15:52.461) That's so cool! That is so cool. Jeff Dudan (16:17.834) you know, fantastic product. How did you initially, you know, from the original 10 pairs, how did you initially take this product to market? And I think if I'm correct, it was direct to consumer through Shopify. How Chubbies Went from Backpacks to Shopify to National Retail Preston Rutherford (16:35.173) Exactly. You're exactly right. First of all, thank you for the support, wearing the product, that's amazing, and thank you for the feedback on the product. That is so cool. Jeff Dudan (16:41.174) Oh, 100%. Yeah. I just got back from Turk, so I just hadn't changed yet. Preston Rutherford (16:49.105) Exactly. Why? You know, keep the vacation going. So, to your point, Shopify, yes, a couple points there, but even, let's take a step back before Shopify, we did, you were mentioning events, we did events in person. We sold in person. We would invite our friends and friends' friends to a bar. take over the back room and just sort of like lay out the product to have just a little event and sell. We would also, this was also the time that in-person credit card transactions, you know, the square card reader was, just had come out. So we would carry shorts in our backpacks and go to the park and play some cornhole or whatever and people would just come up to us as I was mentioning earlier, like in saying, you know, what are those? Where can I get them? We didn't have a website at the time, but we had them in our backpacks and people could try them on and purchase them. So before Shopify, it was doing everything in person. I mean, one of the sayings is do things that don't scale at the beginning. And that's exactly what we did. The tight feedback loop, the high fidelity feedback loop, the speed of learning that comes when you just. you know, hand-to-hand combat sell to a person standing right in front of you was invaluable. Then you're exactly right. Before Shopify to get an e-commerce business going, maybe six months and a million bucks, right, it was, you know, the barriers to entry were very high. So Shopify very early at the time made it a million times easier. You know, we could be up and running in 15 minutes. And so something like that where very recently, completely prohibited to get started with our kinds of budgets, you now had this macro tailwind that was just making it infinitely easier to get going, to start something, to just put a product up online and start to get feedback. So yes, Shopify and we're, I mean, the business is still on the Shopify platform. It's a, it's a great platform. Preston Rutherford (19:08.441) Then after a period of time, started opening stores. You could find some of our product on Amazon. So then, and in a variety of stores, Dick's Sporting Goods, Nordstrom. So there was that expansion, but yes, in terms of getting some of those initial, that initial customer feedback in person, and then the slightly larger scale of just being able to put something online and reach a much broader audience, that was exactly how we got started. Jeff Dudan (19:32.906) Yeah. So Burton's snowboards, there's a, I think it was in a book. I forget exactly which one, but he would spend nine months of his year traveling the world to see what the kids in the slopes all over the world were doing and what products were they buying. And then he would take that back to their company and say, this is, this is what next year's trend is to be able to do that at some point. uh, you went direct to consumer face to face. There must've been a tipping point where, uh, like vans did it. Like they would go out and they would seed product with, you know, kids. and influencers before there was internet influencing. They would see products in neighborhoods with kids and then everybody would see them wearing the vans and then they would go and buy the vans. So you followed a very traditional and proven method or you could even say, you could make the argument that Nike was done the same way. Phil Knight out of the back of his car, he used to drive around to college campuses and give away shoes. So you followed that traditional product introduction, do the hard work and go out there and belly to belly. move the product, at what point was there a tipping point where you became people, your raving fans started attracting other people to come to you and what triggered it? User-Generated Content Before It Was Cool Preston Rutherford (21:00.901) Great question. I'd say there were two things. One, once our friends started wearing the product, we started what is now a very obvious strategy, but UGC, or user-generated content. That was very much not obvious at the time. It was, if you were selling something, you had to take the highest quality, especially apparel. Jeff Dudan (21:24.642) Right. Preston Rutherford (21:31.237) clothing, you had to go out, spend a million dollars, do a photo shoot with models. And that was the way you got your content out. We didn't have money to do that. So we would just take pictures from our from our friends, post them on our new Instagram channel or account with 10 followers at the time. And that snowball started rolling. But it allowed us to, with zero dollars, start to show what chubbies meant to other people and what that fun could look like. Because it wasn't us telling you what we want you to believe, it was actual people, you know, the social proof component, having fun, wearing the product. And then, you know, the basics of it. power of social media. Their friends would then see it. They would be curious, they would be intrigued, they'd know how to find us on our Shopify store and it would go from there. The other piece, you talk about seeding. We did a very similar thing, but on college campuses and just found communities on college campuses and we did the whole thing of making becoming a college ambassador seemed like you were applying for something very exclusive, even though we took everyone who would go through the process, but made it seem like this is a very exclusive process. Jeff Dudan (22:59.63) That's right. Jeff Dudan (23:06.574) First 25 and now we're doing the next 25, right? Yeah. Preston Rutherford (23:09.181) Exactly, exactly. So that was a wonderful way to, you know, the people who we went to got it immediately. You know, they, from a product perspective, they were used to wearing shorter shorts. They couldn't find them anywhere. The ones that they could find were way more expensive, or they had to go to Goodwill or something, or they had to cut their own shorts. So there was a real need there. And so these folks were so excited to... wear our product, talk about our product, et cetera. So it was those two things that I think really got a semblance of momentum and traction. Mind you, we were still working our day jobs at this time. This was a nights and weekends thing that we were doing because we didn't know, we were risk averse. We wanted more validation. We had no idea how this would go. So it's nights, weekends. Jeff Dudan (23:54.025) Okay. Preston Rutherford (24:09.261) but that was the way that we could de-risk this thing. And it was right around that time when we started hitting a meaningful revenue run rate where it became a little bit more obvious that we should ditch our day jobs. But in these early days, it was all nights and weekends. Jeff Dudan (24:26.67) There have been trends and changes in digital demand generation monthly since you started this business. Two things I'd like to touch on. Number one, Shopify and how that platform has changed and maybe one would say that people, sellers get middled a little bit now on that platform from Amazon and some of the other big players in that space. And then number two, if you were going to start this business today, again, I'd be interested to know how you would do it. Why Selling on Shopify Alone Isn’t Enough Anymore Preston Rutherford (25:05.029) Great, great questions. So massive change, right? I mean, so much has changed. I'm just sort of running through the long list of things. To the Shopify point and to the Amazon point, one of the big things we learned, and I think this also starts to answer the second part of your question, which is how I might do things differently, is Shopify is a great place to start the learning process. make a small amount of product. see what takes, what doesn't take, do more of what takes, and go from there. But then, the big thing we learned, that I think we wish we would have done earlier, so if we were doing it again, we would start selling across multiple channels earlier on. You know, there was, to your point, getting middled out on Shopify. There was this whole idea that going direct to consumer was the future of business. But the reality is, again to your point on middling, it's not direct to consumer. It's rather than selling through a retailer and paying them quote unquote a bounty, you're paying Facebook and Google. So it's just a different toll, different toll road. And once you realize that, and once it became much more obvious that the economics of strictly focusing on scaling your online direct to consumer business, you find that, gosh, I'm spending 100% of my marketing dollars, and I'm only reaching 5% to 10% of my total available market, with the simple math being e-commerce is 20% of total retail, Amazon, Walmart, et cetera, own half of that or more. So we're fighting for just a very, very small pie, but again, spending 100% of our dollars. So I think one of the key things that Preston Rutherford (27:04.173) we would do if we were to do it differently was do less of the easy to measure, hardcore, direct response sort of advertising. Focus more on big, memorable, whether it be, I don't think stunts is the right word, but things like that where spend zero dollars but just come up with a really awesome idea that gets people really excited. or really just focusing on building our brand, telling our story, knowing that it may not. Jeff Dudan (27:38.394) So you're going directly at an emotional response, an emotional connection to the brand, as opposed to a transactional approach saying, click on this and get X percent off, or buy one and get one half, or something like that. Preston Rutherford (27:53.577) 100% which in the last 15 years Became so enticing because you could do that These these new platforms make it so possible to put a dollar in and get three and a half out 15 minutes later And that's a very powerful Dopamine hit right. It's a bit harder to Play the long game and make these emotional connections that don't translate to short-term sales but do lead to Jeff Dudan (28:01.012) Sure. Preston Rutherford (28:22.413) you know, growing resilient baselines of revenue longer term, which is the way brands have been built over hundreds of years, but just, you know, when the middlemen of Facebook and Google came about, it just became a different game. So yes, making that emotional connection, becoming broadly known, and people understand broadly why they're going to choose you versus anyone else. I mean, to your point on price. You can go to Amazon or Walmart and get a pair of shorts for $7.99. And people do that. A lot of people do that, but then there are also some people who choose us. And they do so for a reason. And it is not a rational decision. So appealing to folks, logic and rationality works in the short term, but not in the long term. And I think that those are some of the big lessons. So I think the building of the brand. Jeff Dudan (29:18.73) Yeah, there's a... Branding Is About Variable Profit, Not Pretty Colors Preston Rutherford (29:19.725) multichannel are the two things we do differently. Jeff Dudan (29:23.87) Yeah, I mean, huge risk in. Jeff Dudan (29:30.302) losing your customer permanently to intermediaries. One of my best coaches constantly reminded me to disintermediate any intermediaries between you and your customer. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely and if you want to get lazy and you want to think short-term You want to outsource your customer acquisition to an aggregator? Look, I buy that way. So, you know, it's not I buy a lot of things that way and we all do But it's dangerous and it's a dangerous strategy because then the game can be changed completely outside of your control Everybody's trying to figure out the new strategy or the new algorithm all at the same time And that doesn't help the fact that you're not getting in front of your customers now because they've chosen to sell that attention to somebody else for some other reason. Preston Rutherford (30:21.837) Yes, the slight nuance that I think we learned is that we don't necessarily have to own exactly where the transaction takes place, but we do want to own to the extent possible our audience. And it's building up that audience, that follower base, whether it be email list, SMS list, even on social. And that growth of owning Jeff Dudan (30:37.784) Yes. Preston Rutherford (30:51.245) building that audience, I think we learned is huge. And then it becomes endlessly monetizable in a long-term sort of sustainable way, right? Where the key with any of these businesses that we're trying to build is to make more deposits than withdrawals in our audience, on behalf of our audience. And I think fundamentally that becomes very doable when you're building up this community, this audience. And there are endless ways to build a community where the main way you grow is people understand why you exist. You deliver on that promise and then people tell other people about it. And that hasn't changed. You know, that will always be true. Jeff Dudan (31:37.81) Exactly. So if you were to launch Chubbies today, how would you go about it? Preston Rutherford (31:44.145) I think Shopify would still be the place where I would get going. And I would also be earlier into Amazon, and I would be earlier into going multi-channel. because you would still use Shopify to learn quick because you need that feedback loop. You need to understand what is resonating, but then I think as quickly as possible, we need to be where a consumer is. And then we'd focus much more on just doing free brand building things that are just very memorable. We did some of that stuff in the earliest of early days, but then we started getting on the hamster wheel of handing money over to Facebook and Google. Candidly, we got lazy. So I think we would just not be lazy. You know, we would just do the things that you do when you've got no money and you're scrappy and hungry and do that forever and I think that allows you to grow more profitably and it might be slightly slower But that's not necessarily a bad thing because you're laying a stronger foundation Jeff Dudan (33:01.814) Would you have a podcast today? Why Every Founder Should Be Creating Evergreen Content Preston Rutherford (33:02.849) Yes, for sure. 100%. I would have a podcast and it's YouTube channel. It's been a lot more time on LinkedIn, which is now what I'm trying to get a little bit better at. But yes, this evergreen content creation is amazing. The amount of time I spend listening to podcasts is just unbelievable. And yeah. Jeff Dudan (33:07.338) Absolutely. YouTube channel. Jeff Dudan (33:28.83) It's everything I do now. It is literally, there's going to sleep at night, or I mean, you know, I got Netflix, I've got Hulu, I've got... Amazon Prime, I've got all of that stuff, but equal, if not more, I'm just watching a podcast. It's just more interesting to me. It's unscripted. You have lots of options to pick a flavor of guest host that you're interested in, and anyone can do it. But to your point, they say if you're going to start it, commit for three years. because it takes time. Yeah, and you gotta have enough content. Preston Rutherford (34:11.389) That's the main thing. You gotta have enough content and it takes a while to build trust and to figure out what the heck you're doing. And that's the hard thing for a lot of people. I don't know what the stats are. You probably know this better than I, but the amount of people who quit before three years, 99%, I don't know. That's exactly the point is committing to this stuff over the long term, because this stuff doesn't deliver overnight, but you grow that catalog so that once people find out about you, they can really engage, they can go deep and they can really get to know you and have a relationship with you. And I think this, that's just fundamental truth of business. Just if your inputs are great, you're not going to see the results necessarily right away, but just got to be internally validated and just keep. doing it and it'll pay off. It inevitably pays off. And it's the overnight success that took three years or five years or ten years where we all have stories about that. That was our story. But yes, I love your point. You just got to do it and keep doing it. Jeff Dudan (35:24.722) Yeah, one of the first rules of leadership is accessibility and making your brand accessible to people in a very authentic way is fundamental to building a relationship with the marketplace. Preston Rutherford (35:40.825) That was absolutely one of the key things that our audience loved is they felt like they knew us. They felt like they knew the four co-founders. They felt like they were friends with us. Our big thing was you're not a customer, you're a friend. We are not a company selling product to customers. We are just people making stuff we love for our friends. And it seems slightly trite, but it really changes the way you... Jeff Dudan (35:47.907) Mm. Preston Rutherford (36:06.957) behave and operate the standard that you apply to the product you put out there, uh, the content you make and you're a hundred percent right. People really react positively and our, our experience completely validates this, that people are so much more excited to talk about us because they felt like they knew us and they felt like we were just normal people really just going after this dream. And I think there's an aspirational component to that where we too were in the place where we were shackled by the cubicle for a long time, right? Working for the man. And for a lot of folks, we represented the American dream. What's possible that a few friends with no real experience could get together and start something that people love. And, you know, we were transparent. We were honest. We made mistakes. We, you know, we tried to. Jeff Dudan (36:49.177) Yeah. Preston Rutherford (37:05.997) just be honest in the same way you would with a real relationship. And so yes, to your point that relationship, that trust that you can build by being an actual human, not just a logo in a corporate entity. Jeff Dudan (37:20.558) Do you remember your brand archetype? I know that you may or may not have, I'm sure you went through these branding exercises, but there's hero brands and there's outlaw brands and there's, you know, do you remember, you know, is there a word that the consumer public would say that Chubby's represented to them? The Weekend Is Our Brand: Owning a Word in the Consumer’s Mind Preston Rutherford (37:42.733) The weekend. So, yeah. So that is the space. Everything associated with weekend is the patch of land in the mind of our audience that we intended to own and slightly expand over time. So one of the key manifestations of that was, we talked about Friday at five feeling constantly and the use case around that where you'd take off your slacks. Jeff Dudan (37:45.55) weekend Fun Preston Rutherford (38:12.729) and throw on your chubbies and then the weekend would begin. And all of our content was around the weekend, the fun where you're in control of your time, where you're making memories with your family. So yes, that was the one association we intended to create and basically just spent the last almost 15 years telling that story in a zillion different ways. Jeff Dudan (38:39.506) I almost hate to ask this question, and we can edit this out, but what is behind the brand name Chubbies? Preston Rutherford (38:48.813) Yeah, probably worth editing out. But here's maybe an answer that, because there is obviously this sort of like, quote unquote, like sexual joke, which to the point about being notable and memorable, pros and cons associated with it, of course. But that people remembered that right away. Like that's what? That's the name of the company? Jeff Dudan (38:52.539) All right, well. Preston Rutherford (39:19.169) So there's an immediate rather than some, you know, think of any apparel brand out there where it was either, you know, one of our names or some fancy sounding. This was just ridiculous. And it was kind of the opposite of what you would do. Like you wouldn't start a company with a ridiculous name. It's much more common now, but it was very uncommon back then. It was like, what? They did what? So there was a bit of the idea that this is, Jeff Dudan (39:42.965) Right? Preston Rutherford (39:48.249) just notable and very different that I think led to some of that early awareness. But one of the things that we just like to talk about publicly is, or just in general, there's another component of the story, is just we intended to be the opposite of, at the time, brands like Abercrombie and Fitch that had this... six pack person with their shirt off, the house music bumping, you kind of felt like it was this taking themselves way too serious, you can't come to my party sort of thing, you're not invited unless you're the cool kid. Jeff Dudan (40:31.734) Now here, I think the entire world takes themselves way too serious. Nobody resonates with that. Preston Rutherford (40:38.305) Right, right. And so we just existed to do the opposite of what was done at the time. Like let's, if you've got a little bit of a dad bod or a beer belly, shoot, that's why we've got elastic waistbands. If you get a little chubby, eat a little bit too much steak, you know, again, we're the guys for you. We're not gonna judge you. Come on in, let's barbecue together. Let's have a beer together. Let's just have fun. Be who you are. And that was just very different. at the time from what existed, you know, because it was very much be a model, you know, try to look like the model, try to get that six pack and our ideas, that's ridiculous. Let's just have fun, be who we are, and sort of that's what we wanted to represent. Jeff Dudan (41:30.402) Based on what I can find online, and I'm not asking you to confirm or deny this, just to hear it, small SBA loan to get started, you guys pitching in, friends and family, getting the prototypes done, working your jobs, working it off the side of your desk and on weekends, selling it out of backpacks, and at some point somebody comes along and drops a hundred and twenty nine million dollars on you guys, according to what I found online, could be right, could be wrong, but... You were very successful and the company was acquired. And that gives you opportunities to be more purposeful in your life, to be more selective and do things that are interesting to you and that you want to do. I know you've got family and it's important. And you also are involved and it looks like a good number of startups and maybe some social causes. What matters to you today and how do you choose to spend your time on purpose? Purpose After the Exit: Giving Back to Founders and Brands Preston Rutherford (42:30.253) Yeah, great question. I'd say one of the first things I would say is I can't comment on, even if it was a private transaction, on any kind of exit values or anything like that. Jeff Dudan (42:39.114) It doesn't just you know, you started it with a little and you and then there was a lot at some point You know Preston Rutherford (42:42.37) Yeah. So very, first of all, yes, very blessed that there was any kind of an exit. Just as well could not have happened. So feel like we are so blessed, so grateful. We've been given so much by the ecosystem. So grateful to the team, to our customers, all of those sorts of things. Just filled with gratitude on that front. So that then I think is the segue to the purpose now, which is try to give back as much as possible to the world that gave so much to us, which is the e-commerce, D2C, selling stuff online ecosystem, folks who are just trying to build brands that resonate with folks and be able to start a business, achieve some semblance of freedom, control of time, et cetera. So it's serving entrepreneurs. I think in a lot of ways how you are, Jeff, where, hey, we've learned a lot. I've made every mistake in the book and fixed and learned some stuff, solved a bunch of problems that I think could be applicable to other folks going along their own entrepreneurial journey. So early days, but trying to get better at putting some content out there on LinkedIn, it seems like that's a place where a lot of people are... Jeff Dudan (43:45.366) Mm-hmm. Preston Rutherford (44:10.697) are reading stuff, open to learning. You can reach folks who, you know, are really building companies, building brands, entrepreneurs, and hopefully over time can get a great podcast going with the goal of my particular niche is just helping folks think about how they're going to profitably grow via building a brand. And so I'm really just trying to challenge a lot of the preconceived notions about how it's quote unquote, how it's done today, how you have to spend a ton of money, you know, buying transactions online and you can actually step back and, and invest your marketing resources and activities in building a brand where you're changing people's minds, where they'll come and buy from you when they're ready and. create this compounding flywheel that unfortunately, you know, not a bunch of folks are doing because they really want to just get that immediate term transaction, which is great in the short term, but it erodes fundamentals of the business or it can. It did for us. So, we had to learn that lesson. And so, my goal is to just try to share a little bit about how we went through a transaction or a transition, I should say, from... really focusing on the highly measurable near-term revenue pop sort of situation to thinking a little bit longer term, growing a little bit more of a stable base revenue, and just sort of getting to compounding where, again, people, you can't necessarily measure the transaction in the way that you can with, you know, more transaction or conversion based advertising or marketing. But over time, you do start to see it. And it... real, but it's a risk, right? Because it's very different from the way people have been trying to grow or do marketing over the last decade, decade and a half. So my purpose is, hey, made all the mistakes, did it, saw how it hurt our business. It worked for a long time, stopped working. And we found a path that worked for us. My goal is to just try to tell that story and be as helpful as possible so that ideally, if you listen to what we're doing, it'll slightly change the way you think about growing your company. Preston Rutherford (46:33.157) allocating your marketing resources, measuring the financial impact of building a brand, but ultimately thinking about, you know, why am I here? What is the brand that I'm building? Why fundamentally do people choose me versus someone else, versus a cheaper competitor, versus someone else who's telling a different story? You know, why do I exist? And being able to be very clear about that, but then how specifically does this tie to my financial performance? Because, you know. You build brand to become more profitable, not to have a cool logo and a color scheme. So just really trying to tell that story, be as helpful as possible. I like to say that as marketers, we kind of control or can be accountable to revenue, yes, but generally revenue is a vanity metric in my opinion. We very much just want to focus on helping folks drive variable profit. So, you know, if I can help drive. an incremental billion dollars in variable profit across the people who are reading my stuff, listening to my stuff. I mean, that's, that would be amazing. That would be so cool. What Makes Great Partnerships Work Long-Term Jeff Dudan (47:40.386) Yeah. Reflecting upon your time with Chubbies and how it started, what advice would you have for people about partnerships? Preston Rutherford (47:51.963) Do you mean sort of like in the, with co-founders? Jeff Dudan (47:57.17) Yeah, so there's a correlation in our business in helping people get freedom and financial security through franchising where it can really be a benefit to have partners because they can divide and conquer and they have a sounding board, they're sharing a journey and a vision together. So partnerships are powerful. Preston Rutherford (48:20.054) 100 percent. Preston Rutherford (48:25.357) Very. Jeff Dudan (48:26.53) That being said, sometimes they don't work out. There's always gonna be conflict. And I'm interested in your perspective on the partnership that you had with your buddies and anything that you learned along the way that could be beneficial for other people who are considering a partnership structure in a new business. Preston Rutherford (48:37.753) Yep. Preston Rutherford (48:46.133) Yeah, I am the biggest advocate of it fundamentally. You can clearly start a company, run a business all by yourself. Many people can do that. I'm not one of them. Having three other people as partners. Preston Rutherford (49:08.165) The main thing that it did that I would say is that it allowed us to keep going. The only failure in starting and running a company is quitting. That was the key. You mentioned sounding board. You mentioned support structure. You got to have someone to pick you up when you're feeling down, when you feel the friction, when you mess up, when something doesn't go that well. You got to divide and conquer absolutely very tactical, of course, but having other people there to pick you up, keep you going so that you just don't quit, so that you don't stop was the biggest thing. So my biggest piece of advice is, and this is from my, you know, end of one experience is find people you, you respect the hell out of, and that then allows you to have that trust to where you know. They have, we are aligned. We are, there will be conflict. There will be endless conflict, but that's great because we're seeking truth and it's not easy. It's not easy to be wrong. It's easy to feel right, but that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to find truth. We're trying to do the absolute best thing for our customer, for the company, for our team. And I think it took us a long time. You know, a lot of, a lot of, growth in emotional intelligence, if you will, but conflict on behalf of our customer, conflict and innovation on behalf of our customers is sort of why we exist, why we build companies, so I couldn't be a bigger advocate for partnership and just finding people you respect the hell out of and trusting that they have the best interests of the company at heart. and that conflict is a beautiful thing, to embrace it and seek truth, right? Not, not trying to be right. And over time, you'll certainly benefit. Jeff Dudan (51:18.77) Yeah, the ability to rush the conflict and then to resolve conflict in a healthy manner is an accelerator of velocity in an organization. And where I sit in our organization, one of the most important things that I do and that I need to pay attention to, because we've got a bunch of executives. that all come from large, multi-billion dollar, multi-brand franchise platforms. And everybody has their way of management. And trying to, as fast as we've grown, build a cohesive team and then to manage that. We use an outside resource where we go once a month. And I interviewed a guy named Jake Carls, who him and his couple family members started Midday Squares. And... Preston Rutherford (52:07.845) Great, yes. Jeff Dudan (52:10.59) He said they started, I don't know, do you know Jake? Or Evan? Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he was great. And you know, they started their company by just videotaping everything live as they were having their meetings. But before they even started their company, they all had to agree to weekly therapy with each other, like counseling. And he said it was the best thing that they ever did. And I thought that was very smart and very bright and probably made for good YouTube television as well. But. Preston Rutherford (52:12.673) No, not personally. I do know of him, yes, yes. Preston Rutherford (52:29.753) I love that. Preston Rutherford (52:37.921) Absolutely. Jeff Dudan (52:39.714) I don't know if they recorded that, but it's, you know, organizational health, man, has so much to do with attitudes and partnerships and people. I've had some people tell me partnerships and sinking ships avoid them both. And you know, they're both bad for you. But I've had to learn later in my career and especially where you are and to extent where I as I sold the business in 2019. Now if you're trying to. leverage your knowledge and to help as many people as you can be successful, invariably you can't operate everything so that leads immediately into partnerships. So partnership, partnership dynamics, picking good partnerships, good expectations set up front, head off bad disagreements down the road, making sure that there's you spend enough time. between an idea and a decision and a commitment to make sure that it's absolutely clear. So not rushing into things. I mean, there's I've learned a lot in the last five years. My anniversary is selling my businesses in six weeks for five years. So yeah, and I it's gone really, really fast. But man, I have to say I've learned more in the last five years than probably the previous 15 years combined. So Preston Rutherford (53:51.597) Wonderful. Congratulations. Jeff Dudan (54:05.814) I'm just always interested for people like you who had such a successful partnership with some people that you knew before. So that in and of itself can create problems because you have this history as friends. And they say, one thing they say, don't go into business with your friends. Well, maybe, but because you could lose the friendship, but on the other side of that, you also know who these people are. So I think... Preston Rutherford (54:13.295) Yes. Preston Rutherford (54:29.385) Exactly, exactly. Jeff Dudan (54:32.79) Being a good partner, aspirationally, will help people be more successful and expand their sphere of influence inside of the businesses that they choose to get involved with. Preston Rutherford (54:44.729) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, two additional learnings I might just tag on to what you mentioned. One is there are sayings, pretty much saying anything out there, you know, just like these quips, partnerships and sinking ships, whatever it might be. And I'd say one of the biggest lessons or piece of advice I might pass along is it just doesn't matter because if you could just as easily say, oh, I don't have a co-founder, so I can't get started. My biggest takeaway is there's, there are infinite ways to do this. Um, as I've learned more about other brands, it's just amazing how some single founder, some grow in ways that I would have never imagined. And so it's just very humbling. And so my realization is with whatever you got, it just happened to be organic. That there are three other really close friends who I loved and respected who were in the same place in their lives at this time, but you know, acknowledge that there might be excuses that you're making just because you're scared to get started. And that's okay, but just acknowledge that. You don't have to have a co-founder, for instance. It's fantastic, I'm a huge proponent of it. The second thing that came to mind as you were speaking, Jeff, was the idea that therapy might have a negative connotation to it. I wish we would have done that. That's brilliant, I love that. But I like to call it coaching. I mean, in everything we did growing up, we had coaches, right? And, you know, why would we not, we did a little bit of it and it was hugely beneficial, wish we had done it more consistently and with our broader leadership team as well, it's just so valuable to have someone able to take that third party perspective and just walk us through stuff. I mean, coaching is, is awesome. I don't know, I wanted to get really good at soccer growing up and I had a coach. I don't know why it shouldn't apply to one of the most important things in our lives. The Mission Drives the Business—Not the Other Way Around Jeff Dudan (56:53.158) 100%, somebody looking at it from the outside. We need diversity in every aspect of our team that we build with the exception of probably shared vision and values. When we're at work, we want to make sure that we share the values that we're going to make decisions by, we're going to hire and fire by. We have to understand, we have to have clarity of purpose in why we exist. And that's going to lead right into who is our customer. And, you know, but inside of that, now you have all these different roles where you need. You need philosophers, you need coordinators, you need technical people, you need visionaries, you gotta have trail, you have all these different personality types, and we're culture, we use culture index to figure out who everybody is, and man, right down the line, that's exactly who they are. So you have to understand that not, if we built a company, all of Jeff's over here, or you built a company, all of Preston's, it would not work, you'd row in circles, just because we can't do everything. Preston Rutherford (57:52.513) Right. Exactly. Exactly. Jeff Dudan (57:59.854) I mean, there's not a person in this company that is not better than me at what they do. I have my role and it comes with a certain perspective and experience and I'm responsible to bring my piece to it. But I mean, getting the diversity of talents and then those people are naturally not all going to work together immediately. So Preston Rutherford (58:06.745) Right. Preston Rutherford (58:24.666) Right. Jeff Dudan (58:27.21) you know, making sure that you have a third party that is helping everybody understand who everybody else is and why people are in the positions they are and why they behave the way that they do. It's, it's very healthy. It's, it's coaching, it's therapy, it's consulting, you tag it for whatever you want to. But for us, because I mean, I'm pretty simple. in my organization, if, you know, we talk a lot about fake work, right, anytime that anybody's doing anything that is not immediately connected to the strategic goals of the organization or the department or the area therein, then, you know, we call that fake work and fake work has the, it, it just Preston Rutherford (59:13.081) Sure. Jeff Dudan (59:22.09) You know, it slows everything down. So when departments or people are not getting along and they're letting anything get in the way of the goals of the organization, I'm pretty simple. I say, you guys need to go and work it out and come back and tell me that it's worked out or who's leaving. So, seems to work and you know, you don't have to like each other, you don't have to love each other. I don't expect people to hang out after work. You gotta work together. Preston Rutherford (59:39.877) Sure, yeah, absolutely. And I think that the, one of the things. Sure, sure, yeah, absolutely, got it. Yeah, it's in service of the mission, right? I mean, it's the whole missionary, mercenary sort of thing. Like we are on a mission, and as a leadership team, set of founders, we need to be very good at conveying that mission in a way that it is easily understood, because it's commitment that we're looking for. We can learn anything. Our team can learn anything, but. Jeff Dudan (59:58.016) Right. Preston Rutherford (01:00:18.181) You've got to have commitment and devotion to the mission. And I mean, Jeff, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. But that's one of our biggest roles and responsibilities as there becomes a larger team is, and I think you mentioned vision, but how do we do so in such a way where it has a missional component to it? Because that's when I think it really unlocks the special sauce that can come out of people where they just... take things a million miles further and make it a million times more amazing than I or you could have ever done. That's one of the coolest things in starting and building a company is when that stuff starts to happen. Jeff Dudan (01:01:08.578) So I know that you're looking at different businesses. You must get asked all the time to look at things. I saw something called Bodacious Brands that was a LinkedIn link that you had on your LinkedIn and I guess you and Tom, it's probably your, I'd signed up for the newsletter. So we'll see what I get. And I also saw the word Lovegasm on there. So I'm not really sure what that is. What's a love? I saw that somewhere. Preston Rutherford (01:01:25.353) Oh, wonderful. Thank you. That's right. Preston Rutherford (01:01:35.321) It's just a... Jeff Dudan (01:01:38.632) Is that a chubby's word, a lovegasm? Preston Rutherford (01:01:39.845) It is just a ridiculous word that I think was used in a video that Tom and I did, gosh, maybe a decade ago. Jeff Dudan (01:01:49.518) Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah, okay. So that wasn't part of the culture. That was just something that fell out of somebody's mouth and I should probably not say it. Okay. Preston Rutherford (01:01:50.317) where we were, yeah. Preston Rutherford (01:01:57.201) Exactly. I mean, you could say, you could say whatever you want. I think it's one of those things that's kind of ridiculous. And then it's like, Hmm, I'm never going to forget that word.  Trends vs. Fundamentals: Ignore the Noise, Do Simple Better Jeff Dudan (01:02:05.95) Now, now it's a great, it's probably has something to do with raving fans. Preston Rutherford (01:02:08.589) Yes, yes, yes. Jeff Dudan (01:02:13.263) So I'm interested though, your perspective. You're out in California, kind of a hotbed of ideas and things like that. You're venturing a lot of tech out there. You're obviously an expert in both branding and building brands online. What... What do you see as far as trends? I mean, has anything caught your attention here lately that you're looking at and saying, that's really gonna be interesting? Maybe a new platform or a new way that business is going to be assembled to deliver consumers to products and vice versa? Preston Rutherford (01:02:46.925) That's a great question. I think two thoughts. One is, and this is not. Preston Rutherford (01:02:57.025) Not surprising, but new approaches to, quote unquote, influencer, whether it be sort of deeper partnership, bringing in people with existing large audiences who might be a fit for what you're doing. And I don't know what the economic structure necessarily needs to be, but just being able to hop on people's existing audiences and giving these folks. who already have existing audiences, the ability to monetize that audience. I mean, I think one of the big things that I'm realizing is there are a lot of people who, whether they be athletes or they've built up an amazing audience doing something, some of them are just not able to monetize that audience. So being able to bring brand and audience together in new ways where maybe there's an equity component given to that person with the audience, where they can co-create, where that person can become a co-found. is something I'm seeing that is, I think, interesting and really powerful for being able to very quickly access an audience, especially given that accessing an audience is becoming ever more expensive via the Facebooks and Google's paying for eyeballs. That's one thing. The other thing I would say is I and I think we as entrepreneurs can can suffer from shiny object syndrome, where we're just constantly chasing the new trend, the new thing. And I, as I reflect, part of it is, gosh, I wish I would have ignored some of that noise a little bit and just do simple better, right? It's just what are the fundamentals? What am I trying to do? Block everything else out, be internally validated, and just go. And. Now there's no silver bullet, no trend is going to be a silver bullet, no new piece of software, no new blah, blah. It's just, you know, do simple better. You know what's best for you. Don't get pulled in all these different directions. Don't worry about competitor aware, but customer obsessed, right? I think is how Bezos says it, but it's kind of just, you know, blocking out the noise, ignoring the trends and, you know, just doing the old fashioned hard work of making great product, serving customers. Jeff Dudan (01:05:08.622) Thanks for watching! Preston Rutherford (01:05:18.169) telling a story that matters, right? That is resonant and doing that over and over and over and over for decades. Jeff Dudan (01:05:31.362) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:05:36.983) So. I know that you've been involved with causes, Chubbies had a foundation and I've seen your evidence of your involvement in different social causes along the way. Of the things that you're concerned about or you worry about, are there any that you believe today are irreversible or inevitable? Preston Rutherford (01:06:07.633) That's an interesting question. I tend not to think that anything is irreversible. I guess the eternal optimist in me. And I'd say maybe common to many an entrepreneur is one of the reasons they ultimately end up being successful is that commonly held wisdom is that something, the way it had been done was irreversible or something couldn't be changed and they figured out how to change it. So I'd say that's maybe idea number one. idea number two and tied to what Chubbies is doing is just the idea of mental health. And that was a big piece of what was really difficult coming out of school in 2008, for instance. All of the stress associated with how am I going to get a job? How am I going to make sure I find something where I'm... getting to my ultimate success day one sort of thing and the anxiety associated with all that sort of stuff and then maybe the difficulty around starting a business. It's just very hard. So I think that's something that we really care about and the way Chubby's I think has approached it is just through fun, positivity, levity, right? It's just a totally different perspective. If we're... if we're going about our days with a big smile on our face, that in and of itself has a lot of power to. um, trickle and, um, influence how we do everything else. So if we could just bring a little bit of a smile to people's faces, that that's really important. And I think it unlocks all of these different things where people can. More actively pursue their dreams, dive in on something, commit to something over a period of time, do a podcast for three years before they get any external recognition, for instance. Preston Rutherford (01:08:07.065) So I think that's one of the things that I think really matters. A bunch of things matter, can only do so much. I think that's one of the things where we feel like we can have an impact, hence the foundation. Jeff Dudan (01:08:23.39) Yeah, we're also very concerned about mental health. And particularly in one of my brands called Rockbox, we're partnered with a charity that's to write love on her arms, and it's about suicide prevention and mental health. And as I think about social media, and I have three children, 25, 22, and 19 right now, I look at... way that they're wired and they're they have higher expectations now of what life is supposed to be and how it's supposed to play out and a lot of that is just online. You're looking at life online. It's not it's not somebody scrubbing a toilet. It's people are do you know up to something and going somewhere and having fun and then I think grace and kindness is down. Preston Rutherford (01:09:07.225) Hmm Jeff Dudan (01:09:19.698) So, you know, appreciating for everybody, you know, all work is honorable and appreciating people for people for what they do to contribute because all of these roles need to be filled. And, you know, it's just not the, you know, people driving the Bugattis that are contributing to society here. Right. And it's all of us working together. And then I think this has an impact of making resilient individual resilience lower because you're just you just you lose hope. Preston Rutherford (01:09:31.493) Sure. Right. Preston Rutherford (01:09:44.227) Right. Right. Jeff Dudan (01:09:49.654) Um, the internet, anybody that has a great idea now, you go to the internet and you realize you thought it was one of one and you realize it, there's a thousand variations of it out there. It's like, well, why, why should I even start this? And, uh, but what I like about what you had to say today is that. You start at the beginning, you start at the grassroots, you start in the park, you, you have a great product and you take it to people and you. Preston Rutherford (01:10:00.163) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:10:18.066) you connect and you build that way. And I think anybody can start a business. And franchising is definitely a business plan to follow. It's a leverage model where you're sharing the cost to build a brand and the technology stack and the customer acquisition. So more and more things are being franchised and franchising is accelerating at an accelerating rate. Preston Rutherford (01:10:21.281) Yes, 100%. Jeff Dudan (01:10:44.138) And it's a great business model. It's great for wealth creation on Main Street USA for families and people that want to leave that job and join something. And, you know, so it's, you know, but if you go online, I think you're gonna find a thousand reasons why you shouldn't and, you know, take a chance. So I always encourage people to, you know, you mentioned it in the beginning, self-limiting beliefs. you know, limitations that are self-imposed. You know, why me? Why can't we do this? And it's just not true. Like you can really do anything that you're willing to commit to long enough and hard enough. Preston Rutherford (01:11:26.629) That's right. Speaking of franchising, it's just being a wonderful model. One of Archubby's co-founders, his dad was a Wendy's franchisee. And that was just an amazing way to support the family, grow, leverage an existing brand, which is huge, and reduce the friction to becoming an entrepreneur, which is one of the things I love so much about. franchising, just lowering the barrier to entry to be to that freedom. Not that it's easy, not that this is ever easy, but it's just a beautiful structure. And yes, I mean completely agree if you're just looking online, there's going to be tough stuff. I do think however, and we'll see how, I mean I have a six-year-old, so we'll see how I do on this front, but One of my beliefs is, and I'd be curious to see if your thoughts, it's slightly loosely held, but that this stuff has always existed in some form for a long time. This idea of, I mean, you had magazines, you have TV where there's this, oh, there's this amazing life out there. And I think some of the narrative somewhat removes the responsibility that we as individuals have to control our information diet. you know, just take ownership of what we choose to think about, look at, think, participate, where agency has seemingly been removed from the individual. And that is something that I, goes back to just entrepreneurship, franchising, where it's, we have agency, right? No one's going to do this for us. Let's take ownership. You know, you've got this one. relatively short period of time on this earth. You know, let's be the owners, let's be on offense, let's be the creators rather than the consumers. And my hope with my daughter and my son who's nine months is that I can help them put all of that stuff that they might see on social media in context. Great, glad that exists. But you know, I am the owner of my destiny. Preston Rutherford (01:13:53.901) this world, I'm so lucky and blessed that I live in the United States of America, that I have the ability to create anything I want. None of it's going to be easy, but really, the outcome isn't the goal. The joy is in the journey and the joy is in the work, the joy is in the struggle, and that is the beauty in life. And I think a lot of that is not talked about enough. And I think it's, you know... our job as entrepreneurs, as parents, as content creators, to kind of change the narrative there where it's cool to create rather than simply consume or criticize, we can build things, we can be constructive. And that is, it's never been easier to do that, honestly. And those are some of the things where it's just kind of like, let's, it'd be great if we could change the narrative around some of these things, especially for our kids. And... That's something I'm, I don't have the answers, but I'm curious about. Jeff Dudan (01:15:01.766) I believe you're on the right track and I think that is an incredible sentiment for us to wrap up on. I've got a final question for you. First of all, I've really enjoyed this, Preston. Thank you so much for being on and sharing your story. There's been so much wisdom here today, so we really appreciate that. Yeah. Preston Rutherford (01:15:08.293) Great. Preston Rutherford (01:15:15.865) Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. It's been an honor. I'm very grateful. Thank you. Jeff Dudan (01:15:25.222) Awesome. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone else's life, do you have a go-to as to what that would be? Preston Rutherford (01:15:31.405) That's a great question. I'll just say just start and don't stop. Preston Rutherford (01:15:38.145) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:15:38.146) There you go. Keep it simple. Just start, don't stop. Got it. Preston, if people wanted to reach out to you, where can they find you? Preston Rutherford (01:15:47.201) LinkedIn, come find me on LinkedIn. Just Preston Rutherford, in between the Preston and the Rutherford is a little shorts emoji. And I'm trying to write some posts where I just kinda try to share some wisdom and it'd be awesome if you'd take a look, comment, help this learning process. Collective learning is sort of the experiment on LinkedIn. So yeah, just check it out. Let me know what you think. What can I share that would be useful? And yeah, and then hopefully someday, Jeff, I can have a podcast that does as well as this. But that'll be something again, to eat my own dog food as it were. Be working on for three years before anyone hears it. Jeff Dudan (01:16:35.758) Right, that's right. Well, thank you again. This has been absolutely amazing. I've really enjoyed it. And we appreciate everybody out there listening to Preston Rutherford on the home front. Take care. Preston Rutherford (01:16:50.529) Bye bye. Thank you.

Brief Summary In this powerful and timely episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with retired Brigadier General Tony Tata to unpack the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza from a military and geopolitical lens. Drawing from decades of defense strategy and firsthand experience in the region, Tata breaks down Iran’s role, the intelligence failures, the humanitarian toll, and what the U.S. should be doing differently. This is a masterclass in national security, foreign policy, and leadership in the face of complex global crises. Key Takeaways Iran is the disease, Hamas is the symptom : Tata explains how Iran funds, trains, and directs multiple terror proxies across the Middle East, including Hamas and Hezbollah. The Abraham Accords threatened Iran’s dominance : October 7th’s attack was a calculated effort to disrupt growing normalization between Israel and Arab states. There was a critical intelligence failure : Relaxed sanctions and softened policies led to gaps in U.S.–Israeli intel sharing. Civilian casualties are weaponized by extremists : Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and civilians to slow operations and gain international sympathy. Tunnel warfare changes everything : Sophisticated underground networks in Gaza complicate combat and humanitarian efforts. U.S. policy must refocus on deterrence : Tata advocates for economic strength, energy independence, and a stronger posture against Iran. Featured Quote “Iran is the disease. Everything else is a symptom.” — Brigadier General (Ret.) Tony Tata TRANSCRIPT Setting the Stage: Why Israel’s Geography Makes It Perpetually Vulnerable Jeff Dudan (00:03.386) Welcome everyone to the home front this morning. We have retired Brigadier General Tony Tata, US Army on with us today. Welcome Tony. Tony (00:13.871) with your job. Thank you. Jeff Dudan (00:16.99) Tony, the reason that I asked you to come on this morning was to talk about the situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip from an educational perspective. Myself and many others, as this has escalated, has gone to the internet and spent a lot of time researching the region and... the actions and reactions that are happening. And I really wanted to get your perspective as somebody who's traveled the world and has spent a lot of time in this area in diplomacy and try to get an understanding of, or maybe raise our understanding of what's going on over there right now. I'd like to start from a macro perspective if you would speak to the geopolitical situation, what challenges does the geography that exists create, and maybe set the scene for deeper conversation around some specific issues. Tony (01:28.35) Yeah, great. Thanks, Jeff, for the opportunity. The state of Israel, and there are a lot of debates about when it came into existence, how long Jewish people have been there. Yeah, we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, a Jew from 2000 plus years ago. So. put all of that aside because that's something that academics and internet warriors will come up with different facts or make up different facts to argue whose land that is. It is somewhat of a territorial dispute, but let's just take the situation as it is today. The state of Israel is a piece of land They've got Lebanon in the north. They've got in the northeast Syria. That press along what's called the Golan Heights. You've got Jordan in the east and you have Egypt in the southwest. And inside Israel, you've got the Gaza Strip to the south that borders between the southern reaches of Israel and Egypt, the western or eastern portions of Egypt. And then you've got the West Bank, which is inside Israel. Jerusalem where the embassy was moved to. So you have the Jewish people Tony (03:09.29) and Israel was really established as a safe place, a safe state for the Jewish people post-World War II. And the Arabs around, some are very moderate and get along great with Israel, and some are not so moderate, and want to eradicate Israel and the people there. A lot of this is fomented, Jeff, by Iran. Iran has habitually exported since the early 80s after the fall of the Shah and the rise of the theocracy there. The terrorist groups throughout Yemen, the Houthi rebels way down on the south part of the Arabian Peninsula, the Shia militia groups in Iraq that continuously attack U.S. bases and forces situated in Iraq and Syria. And then you have Hespelah in the north of Israel in Lebanon. And then you have Hamas, who is sort of the primary antagonist right now, all funded. by Iran and as terrorist proxies for carrying out their own ends, ways, and means for Iranian foreign policy. And so that's sort of the setting the table for what's happening today. On October 7th, Hamas conducted a surprise attack. into Israel and really murdered, slaughtered, you know, innocent Jewish people at a concert in their homes and conducted atrocities that are not consistent with the Geneva Conventions, which is an important distinction because they're October 7th: The Goal Line Break and What It Means Tony (05:23.522) People try to make a moral equivalency between what Hamas has done and what Israel's doing. And Israel, I've been there, I've been to the Golan, I've been down to the border with Gaza, I've been to Jerusalem, I've laid a wreath in the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem with the Israeli Defense Forces. So I understand the culture of the people, the threats that they face. Tony (05:53.956) is an existential threat for the Israeli people and adhering to the Geneva conventions and adhering to minimization of civilian casualties is paramount in everything that I've seen the Israeli Defense Forces do as I've operated with them. And so I say all of that to provide the larger context. They are surrounded. They have a constant threat. And Iran is funding all of these different groups. And essentially what you have is someone that's, you know, if a football team is on your one yard line, every play and you have to have a goal line stand, that's essential to use a football analogy. That's essentially what Israel is having to do is prevent that touchdown and on October 7th the defense didn't hold up on that goal line stand to use that metaphor. Jeff Dudan (07:03.634) So this is an ongoing conflict using many proxies. And when you research this, you realize that there's always attacks and counterattacks. There's always anti-terrorism operations going on. There's people getting killed all the time between all these factions. And what would... the events of the seventh do, what would be the strategy, in your opinion, around that to escalate this conflict in such a drastic manner? Tony (07:46.894) But the why would Iran and Hamas do that or. Jeff Dudan (07:54.746) Yes, what was the strategic, you have to, none of these actions happen in a bubble. They might be new to us, but they're not new to the ongoing relations between the countries. They had to understand that this was taking things to a new level, and so you have to assume it was done with intention. Tony (07:58.758) Mm-hmm. Why Iran Chose This Moment: Disrupting the Abraham Accords Tony (08:14.619) Yep, yep, yep. Great question. Jeff Dudan (08:16.166) and strategy. What would be the strategy behind something like that? Tony (08:19.894) Yeah, the strategy is Iran sees the traction that the Abraham Accords were getting and the normalization of relations between Arab nations and the Jewish state Israel. And for example, UAE and Israel, Bahrain and Israel, Morocco and Israel, others, even Egypt, lots of initiatives and. The essence of the Abraham Accords, however maligned they get by mainstream media, is that you use economics to bridge centuries of hatred and that are sort of baked into the cultures. And so a lot of traction there with that. And a lot of, and I was part of that when I served as undersecretary of defense for policy. The Abraham Accords included weapons packages that helped create offsetting balances of power and that kind of thing. And so I spent a lot of time talking to both, for example, UAE and Israel policy peers within their ministries of defense and making sure that we had this right. And I mentioned that because it was well along the way. It was fully baked in some cases and partially baked in other cases where these economic relations were Tony (10:10.854) starting to trickle down and normalize relations between the countries where the more that you can exchange ideas and cultures and you say, well, you know, they're not that bad. They're not that bad. So Iran can't have that, right, because they're a theocracy and it's in their national interest to drive the United States out of the Middle East and eradicate, eliminate the state of Israel. And so Iran and the Shia influence, the Shia, you know, Iranians are Shia for the most part. And then most of the rest of the Arabian Peninsula is Sunni and they have a lot of disagreement, but in this case, the Arab world is aligning to support one another and at least with information and statements and diplomacy to try to have the back of the Palestinian people. And so the overall strategic goal of Iran, who calls all these shots from a terror exportation standpoint, is to disrupt the momentum of the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations with Israel by other... Tony (11:51.698) Arab states and to continue to foment distrust and discontent in the region so that they, Iran, can continue to expand its hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula. Jeff Dudan (12:13.154) It seems like there are many paths to escalation, maybe first and foremost coming from Lebanon through Hezbollah with their weaponry that they have and their ongoing conflicts that they've had with Israel and Golan and the other areas. The Real Escalation Threats: Hezbollah, Syria, and Proxy Traps Jeff Dudan (12:42.494) What do you see as the greatest opportunity for this conflict to escalate to a much broader situation? Tony (12:55.74) Yeah, you know, about two, three weeks ago, he had Hespelaw in the north, with, you know, the leader was getting ready to make a big statement. He made a big statement and everybody was concerned that Hespelaw was gonna come in and attack from the north and Syria was gonna attack from the northeast. And, you know, the... you know, hearken back to the, you know, the mid-70s when you had major tank battles and, you know, where Israel was having to defend from interior lines in the north and the south and so forth. That was a concern. I didn't see that and I was pretty consistent on whether I was on... It didn't matter what cable news show I was on. I said, I believe that Hespehla is a fixing operation and fixes a military term to make you Israel have forces in the North. so that you can't reinforce in the south. So it dilutes your ability to mass on the real threat, which was Hamas in the south. And so they did probing. They've exchanged artillery and all that. That's classic, faint fixing operation to use military terms. Syria, I don't think ever really seriously ginned anything up. The real threat for escalation, and it's a coin toss, depending on who you talk to, there is reticence in the administration today to confront Iran in a major way. Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Policy Empowered Iran Tony (14:45.866) And we've talked for, you know, the last few minutes about how Iran is fomenting all this discontent, not only fomenting, funding and supplying weapons and also the rhetoric that goes with it. And so, do you treat the symptoms? which is Hamas and Hespelah and Houthis, or do you treat the disease, which is the theocracy in Iran? And I think from a policy perspective, if I were in my old job advising the president, certainly one of the options to be laid on the table for the president to look at would be an option that takes on in a non-boots on the ground way Iran and attempting to dismantle some of their oil infrastructure, reimpose very strict sanctions because remember the administration lifted the sanctions on Iran. They are now selling billions of dollars of oil to China. Jeff Dudan (15:58.782) That's right. Tony (16:04.614) and a lot of that money, they unfroze assets to go to Iran. And even though that's supposedly earmarked for humanitarian aid, it's fungible, right? If I know somebody's gonna be paying my mortgage, then I can take that 10,000, 5,000 or whatever it is and use it for other things, right? Jeff Dudan (16:31.55) Tony, are those policy decisions that you just mentioned connected directly to what we're seeing happen today? Tony (16:40.33) Yeah, I think so. I think the policy decision to eliminate the sanctions on Iran, or not enforce them is probably a better way to put it, to unfreeze Iranian assets in exchange for some hostages that Iran had, to take the Houthis off the terrorist list. All of these things are done in an attempt to appease Iran, but we don't get anything back from Iran, right? I mean, there's no... What we get is they were training the Hamas operatives in Iran, teaching them how to do the parachuting in and the... the tactics and they rehearsed the October 7th event in Iran. And so this laissez-faire approach, it's very different than the maximum pressure campaign that was in the previous administration that was having some effect on their ability to export terror throughout the region. And so that policy makes a difference. And so what we're seeing today is a result of a more funded Iran, a more emboldened Iran. And frankly, one of the things that concerns me is the intelligence failure that happened here. There was an intelligence failure from the US standpoint and in Ukraine also, and then there was an intelligence failure obviously in Afghanistan and so When I when I think about you know the border US border is that the fourth intelligence failure that we're gonna we're gonna find out about and so You know obviously these national security is best done in a proactive way Four Intelligence Failures: Afghanistan, Ukraine, October 7th... and What’s Next? Tony (18:57.954) figuring things out ahead of time, predicting what's happening, having policies that attempt to shape it so that you have less opportunity for those that want to harm us to harm us. So that's, I'm really concerned about that. What's that fourth intelligence failure that's out there right now? Jeff Dudan (19:24.83) Well, simply put, once somebody shows you who they truly are, believe them. And the core of the ideology in Iran was not going to change, regardless of us loosening, you know, unfreezing assets or loosening restrictions on them. And so we, maybe we've got what we, we've got what we bought right now. Tony (19:52.653) Right. Jeff Dudan (19:52.97) And with respect to the border, I've talked to more than one person in, you know, in circles. And there's a big concern that we've probably let in some people that maybe we shouldn't have kind of nestled in with. with everybody else that's coming in with the loosened restrictions and what not, which is a concern domestically for our security. Tony (20:27.678) Yeah, absolutely. They, you know, any government's job is to first and foremost protect their people and their property. So talking about Israel, you know, Netanyahu's job. is to create a national security, a secure space, a secure terrain for the Jewish people to live. Same thing with this administration. The security of U.S. citizens is job number one of any administration. And the policies of any administration should reinforce domestic security because you know national security is a domestic issue if people don't feel safe then certainly they can't pursue life liberty and happiness right so consistent with our Constitution so that's that the it's in today's world national security and domestic security are Jeff Dudan (21:32.062) Hmm. How Tunnels, Civilians, and Propaganda Slow the IDF Tony (21:44.014) inextricably intertwined and certainly haven't operated around the world. When I was in Afghanistan and we were raiding Al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in our intelligence, we assessed that we disrupted two plots to attack the United States. This was pretty early on in the whole. Afghanistan drive, but to the extent that we can have intelligence assets that are working with other nations so that we can have eyes on, ears on, pictures, etc., imagery, signals, and so forth to build an intelligence picture to continuously assess. the threat and then take appropriate action within the United States. That's sort of the whole purpose of our intelligence community and our national security community. Jeff Dudan (22:56.938) Moving back into the conflict at hand, speaking of intelligence, signal mapping within the region, identifying cell phones of known operators of Hamas, mapping tunnels, apparently. the majority of the weaponry and the forces are can or are contained underground and are which makes it very difficult to identify movement and also to access by the IDF and then identifying operations basis of operations basis of where they're launching or defending What role, where were the intelligence failures specifically leading up to the situation? And then what do you believe from an intelligence perspective is important right now? Tony (24:05.974) Yeah, so on the failure side, we have, we, the United States, has intelligence sharing agreements, arrangements with Israel. And I'm told that some of those were adjusted, rearranged, not enforced in light of this overall outreach to Iran. over the last year or two, which would explain either why we weren't watching or if we watched and saw and didn't share. Either one is really bad. But that would explain sort of the failure aspect. And when you're trying to reach out to Iran, who, as you said, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. If they're shouting, death to America, death to Israel, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of negotiation space there. So. But in this outreach, one of the things that we found is, and Congress found this out, there were three or four Iranian, some call them spies, some call them sympathizers, but they have top secret clearances and they work in the Department of Defense and Department of State. And so it's not too hard to draw a line between, for example, the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations is... Tony (26:02.222) She's a U.S. citizen of Iranian descent but communicates regularly with the Supreme Council in Iran. And these emails were uncovered. Before congressional testimony, she would... go and make sure that she's saying what the Iranian Supreme Council wants her to say. And it's not a stretch to assume that if she has access to every piece of intel that comes in particularly with reporting to the number two there, reporting to the special ops assistant secretary, who when I was the under, reported to me, these people weren't there, of course. It's not a stretch to assume that Intel was just not shared. So you could get a micro look at it like that in a macro sense, the appeasement strategy with Iran, perhaps they just weren't watching. And you know, the worst case speculation is they knew and didn't tell. I would never... speculate that but it's certainly I've seen people. So that's the failure part. Now what's important now and I've been you know this pause business where Israel you know gets attacked and then all of a sudden you know immediately you have people saying oh don't strike back or as soon as they get some momentum all you need to slow down. Why Pauses Hurt Military Momentum—and Help Hamas Tony (27:49.934) You know, we need to let Israel defend itself, right? If Israel's not safe for the Jewish people, then what's the point, right? And what I know about combat operations is that... when you have signals intelligence, imagery intelligence, human intelligence, every layer of intelligence that you can possibly have, you can use what time, precious time you have to develop good plans that protect your people and then try to go find the hostages, try to go and... destroy Hamas who attacked you and that momentum, offensive momentum has a quality all its own that's really hard to capture because as you're pressuring Hamas they have to communicate. They have to say, hey I'm getting attacked over here, oh I'm moving over here, I'm going here. and they have to move because either that or they die or get overrun or get captured. And so when you have people talking and moving, all your intelligence assets are able to pick up on that and it creates this operations intelligence cycle that gets inside the decision cycle of the enemy, Hamas, and allows you to be more successful. these pauses do that are being coerced onto Netanyahu and others by people who don't, frankly don't understand what I just said. Tony (29:43.854) or perhaps they do and want Hamas to be able to regroup and refit because it's like a pick six in a touchdown or in a football game. You've got all this momentum and then you've got to stop and now they're refitting and your intelligence isn't as good. So that's to use another football analogy. And I do that because you were a football star upstate. phone. Jeff Dudan (30:14.042) Well, so the latency, any latency between an insight garnered by intelligence and a resultant formalized plan and subsequent action reduces the quality or the effectiveness of the intelligence itself. Tony (30:34.722) Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right. The, you know, you could apply that to the business world or whatever, but the, now that we're paused, right, and, you know, the pressure on Netanyahu's got to be enormous, right, because these hostages that are being doled out in a barbaric fashion, little kids, children, women. 80 year old, 70 year old women and it gets heralded by the media as if, you know, it's, you know, the benevolent Hamas captures. It's barbaric and but what's happening is that There, Israel defense forces are hunkered around Gaza City now and continuing internal cleanup operations, right? Kordon and searches. And so the pause to me comes at sort of a natural time in the operational sense of, of comedy of tactics, operations and strategy. After Gaza City: Why Southern Gaza Must Be Next Tony (31:56.852) played it about right. He got Gaza City. He's got it surrounded. There's still a lot of little tactical skirmishes happening inside all of that. He's clearing the tunnels. He's clearing the building. He's got a lot of work to do to make sure that that's 100%. You know, there's no enemy in there and so he can pause now. and begin and you know I hope and I'm sure that he's planning for the next phase to go to southern Gaza which is you know a different kind of warfare and it's going to be some of us more open land and it's a different kind of fight than the urban fight that he's had. There is some obviously Tony (32:56.855) If they're able to get the hostages back, or the great majority of them, and continue to plan, under no circumstances, if I were advising Netanyahu, would I entertain any kind of permanent ceasefire? Because he's got to get to southern Gaza. And Israel, in my view, is a great enemy. what I know about all of the actors and players here. Israel needs to clean that place out and dominate it, dominate that battle space and then reconstruct it and then figure out some path forward. I don't think the UN is a good arbiter. They have their... Tony (33:51.366) They have too many Islamic extremist sympathizers inside the UN that don't like Israel. borne out by the statements coming from the UN Secretary General and others. And so it would be a good opportunity for NATO out of area mission or some combination of UN, NATO, and even the African Union coming together, some kind of global peacekeeping thing. Because you look at Gaza, it's right there and much like Beirut, it's been destroyed by this Islamic extremism. And it's unfortunate because the people there, you know, Beirut used to be the banking center of the Middle East, and today it's a hollow shell of itself. And... Gaza could have been, if all these millions and billions being sent for weapons have been sent for hotels and restaurants and economic development, it would be a resort now. And it's all beachfront property. And The Value of Hostages in Modern Conflict: It's Calculated Jeff Dudan (35:07.514) Oh, it's all beachfront. I mean, it's, yeah. Tony (35:13.77) But Iran doesn't want that. They want the hatred, they want the division, they want these people to suffer. Everybody, the Palestinians, they don't care. The Supreme Council there, they don't care. They want people to suffer so that they can continue to foment discontent. Jeff Dudan (35:40.114) perspective, what is the value of hostages to Hamas and how do you anticipate them maximizing their leverage in that regard? Tony (35:56.802) Yeah, well, I mean, we put a price recently on hostages, about a billion a piece, from a monetary standpoint, with Iran. Six hostages, six billion. And then a few weeks later, after that deal, there was American hostages being held by extension Iran. So it's... we very clearly define the value, monetary value of hostages. Now these hostages, you know, are fungible just like money is fungible. So one Israeli or one American hostage in Hamas, you know, the barter that's been defined is you will release one hostage taken not in accordance with Geneva Conventions for three Palestinians that terrorists who were detained in accordance with Geneva Conventions. So that's a pretty outsized gain for the Palestinians, but this is the tough spot that Netanyahu who is in is that if you've got parents saying that I want my three year old child back, that's being held by Hamas. I mean, how do you how do you say no to that as a leader? And understanding that you have an overarching responsibility to ensure that this never happens again. And so that tension between creating the buffer, defeating Hamas and getting the hostages back. Jeff Dudan (37:22.886) No, you can't. Tony (37:42.818) is a very small eye of the needle to thread. And I think he's doing it. I think he's doing it well. The value notice that I think there's been one at the time that we're talking, one American, a young little girl released and... and the other Americans are probably, they're the billion dollar a piece hostages, right? So just the transactional value is three terrorists for one hostage, non-American. And then... Tony (38:30.554) one American hostage for a billion dollars. So that seems to be kind of what, you know, if they're looking at a spreadsheet, you know, what they ought to be able to get, which I'm sure they've developed. But it's larger than that too, because there's this, they're able to, they being the Hamas, is able to now dilute the anger. The longer this goes on, it almost, they almost appear benevolent. Oh, we're going to release 10 more. They could, you know, at any day, release them all and quit firing rockets at Israel. But they choose to, in a very barbaric, sinister way, hold these hostages. And they're not being held just by Hamas. They're being held by Palestinians. A doctor was holding one, a teacher was holding one. So Israel's not far off when they say that there's not as many innocents as you believe. If these people are holding the hostages, why not just turn them over if you're a doctor and your duty is to first do no harm or if you're a teacher used to dealing with children, why not on your own accord turn them over? And of course the answer is because they'll be shot and killed by Hamas. So it's a barbaric situation there that we need to learn some lessons from this and I'm concerned that maybe we're not. NGOs and the Human Toll: Who’s Helping and Who’s Not Jeff Dudan (40:21.242) while we're talking about the people, are there NGOs for humanitarian aid that are able to operate in this environment? And if so, who are they and what challenges are they facing? Tony (40:38.634) Yeah, so the non-governmental organizations and private volunteer organizations, NGOs, PBOs, they, you know, the Red Cross, of course, is the big one, the UN. There is a heavy slant toward... the anti-Israel slant in large part toward these NGOs. And when you talk about the aid getting in, that's been part of the mantra here is pause so you can release hostages and pause so that we can get aid in these. this potpourri of NGOs, non-governmental organizations, to bring in the aid. My question, and what I talk about is when I'm on TV or wherever, is if Iran is able to get rocket launchers and ammunition and... rations etc to the Hamas fighters, why can't they get the supplies then to the Palestinian people? That's the first thing. The second thing is that the Palestinian people that are exiting to the south, why don't the neighboring Arab nations, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, take them in? And there's a reason for that, right? I think part of it is they don't want to, they want to keep, those people are fodder. Tony (42:39.35) for the larger geopolitical issue of whether or not Israel belongs there, right? They're the cannon fodder for... the fight that the you know indefinite fight that is you know that is Iran wants to go into infinity. And so they don't want them to leave because they want them to be stuffed right in there and suck it up and suffer whatever consequences that Israel you know has to levy on them after Israel has been attacked. These NGOs that come in there really see one side of this thing. And it's true, every war-torn area I've been, it doesn't matter who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, however you define that. you know, women and children and young men and, you know, old men and old women, you know, citizens, they're all human and we lose sight of this human aspect, you know, with all the dehumanization that is going on today from governments and techno-fascism and, you know, politics of personal destruction and the dehumanization effort. We forget. Everybody tends to forget. that, you know, the young girls that were raped and killed at the concert in southern Israel, they were humans. They had families. The kids, the young Palestinian families, you know, they're humans and they just trying to live a life. And there are... Tony (44:31.086) cultures and education indoctrination that goes on, that is detrimental to this larger goal that we should have of, you know, we're all on this planet. None of us are making it out alive and. you know, we should try to get along because everybody's just a human trying to get along. And these NGOs, some of them are good and that's what they do, and some of them have ill intent. And they end up... from a social media standpoint, perhaps spreading misinformation. And I want name names, because everybody's, I feel like everybody's trying to find some path forward here with this travesty that's happening. The Tunnel Warfare Playbook: Lessons from Vietnam to Gaza Jeff Dudan (45:34.75) from a tactical perspective, we're talking about people and in Gaza, as you mentioned, these are families with children that have hopes, dreams, they want their children to do well, they want them to be educated, everybody wants the same for their children, we want our children to live a life better than we did, whatever that means, and so the crisis is real on all sides of this for those people. And one of the analysis that I was watching was talking about really a couple of things that were, that would slow down. operations. Number one is the people. So asking people to, you know, warning them and saying, we're going to Gaza City, we're going to start in the north, we need everybody to move to the south. And then they then they said, now that we're here, we're going to be moving to the south and everybody needs to move to the sea. And it's, you know, that puts a lot of pressure on the civilians who are trying to get out of harm's way and carry whatever they have on their backs and then move. to the south and of course there are, there may be forces that are telling them no, you need to stay right where you are because if you're here then that slows things down. And the other thing I'd like you to, you know, comment on from a velocity perspective or a challenge perspective is these tunnels, right? So in, I'm not a historian, but in the South Pacific in World War II, I think we had, we dealt with tunnels. In Vietnam we... dealt with tunnel warfare, has the ability to, I mean, is it, I don't know, but I'm asking you the standard operating procedures for dealing with tunnel systems, entrenched combatants inside of that, is there anything you can do other than send people down there and have it out in these areas? And I didn't, I mean, the extensiveness of the tunnels, many of them. Jeff Dudan (47:44.762) in Gaza are concrete, fortified, reinforced. There's some logistical things like some tracks and wagons and things like that. So it's a very sophisticated and ongoing operation to expand the network of these tunnels and you can move people even from Gaza into Israel in some cases with the tunnels near the border. So how has the... the dealing with the tunnels and also then the complication of the civilians. How does that slow down operations for the objectives of the IDF? Tony (48:25.886) Yeah, you know, Islamic extremists in the last 20 years of combat that we've seen have no issue in Hamas, I would put in that category, using civilians as human shields. It's just, it's part of the game for them. And so you're right when you say, you know, they're not allowed to leave. because having civilians on the battlefield complicates things immensely for people who don't think the way that these extremists think. And they actually value human life, and they want to preserve human life. And I know that Israel, I've been in their operations center, they take extreme caution when targeting anything to try to minimize or eliminate civilian casualties. And of course, in combat, that's really, really hard. So that's the first thing. Now on the tunnels, what I would say is that it's, you know, the issues are related in that if, with the tunnels, if you indiscriminately try to bomb and close the tunnel mouth or collapse it or whatever. You don't know if they put a bunch of civilians in there or a bunch of hostages in there. And so, and I've been in a couple of tunnels, tunnel mouths in southern Israel that connected to Gaza that they had cemented, they found them. I mean, these things are just like. Tony (50:19.026) uh you know holes in the desert and it just you know they pop up and they're very challenging to find uh there are different uh you know i my last assignment in the army i was leading the counter roadside bomb effort called Joint IED Defeat Organization. And we had about four billion dollars trying to, you know, this was at the peak of our young men and women being attacked by Iranian and mostly improvised explosive devices. Soleimani had created the explosively formed penetrator. And one of the things that we saw, a couple of things we saw, is that if we had a tunnel or we had a house, they could rig that to explode when an American unit went in there, a four-man squad going into clear house, or you go under a bridge on a road, you collapse it. You know, lots of different things can happen. And so this Iranian connection, they're experts at these kinds of wicked, destructive, improvised explosive devices. And so as you look at the tunnels, you've really got to approach each one independently and very cautiously. We developed, our private sector developed, we helped fund. a ground penetrating radar that could find tunnels to some depth and actually see what's in there. So to the extent that, when I was in this job, I was part of my working with the Israeli Defense Forces, I'm hopeful that in the last, you know, Tony (52:23.438) 12, 15 years, that technology has matured and gotten much better. It was decent back then, and if it's improved, then they're able to either have something low, like a drone, go fly and look for anomalies that find these tunnels, or something high, and that can cover more terrain and find something ground troops to and then you can assess it and there are ways to look at the tunnel and put some you know we've got robotics that can get in there and cameras and so forth to protect human life you can send you know a bot inside that can then transmit back what they're seeing and then if you're pretty sure Tony (53:23.312) you know close both ends of it and be done with it right and move on to the next one um and you know so I don't I think these tunnels were are more logistical networks that uh moved to the hospital uh where they had their command center beneath it or they move to the elementary school where they have another command center. That this is how fiendish Hamas is. They (Hamas) put all of their command centers beneath the kinds of things that normal human beings would say, you know, please, please don't go near that hospital, elementary school, you know, it's a daycare center, but that's, that's what they use as their, their shield. Right. And so it comes full circle back to the use of civilians on battlefield with these tunnels. What the U.S. Should Be Doing Right Now: A Four-Pillar Strategy Jeff Dudan (54:21.222) Tony, thank you so much for being on today. This has been an incredible education for all of us on the home front. If you were advising the administration today, you know, what would you have them consider that they might not be considering right now to improve situation as best as possible. Tony (54:52.886) Yeah, great question. I always look at things for really the elements of national power. What national power? can we bring to bear on the situation that serves our national interest? Because at the end of the day, that's not to be harsh, but that's all that matters, right? US national interests, this administration, any administration's number one job is to serve the American people. And so what best serves the American people? There's a domestic component. and there's an international component. My advice for what it's worth is to domestically reignite an aggressive energy exploration and permitting process. so that we can become a net exporter of fossil fuels, while also having the green agenda that, you know, decarbonization and all that, which, you know, is important. And what that does is it reduces, it eliminates a major concern of, it reduces the relevance of the Persian Gulf to the United States. And that reduces perhaps the number of troops that we need to have over there for actions on the Arabian Peninsula. So that would be the first thing. You know, the rest of the world gets their oil from that area, but if we can be a net exporter, that means that it's not as important to us. Tony (56:46.038) The second thing I would say is that Iran is, believe them when they speak, death to America. They're not benevolent. They will never be benevolent. And so take a different approach with Iran. Show the big stick, you know, that Teddy Roosevelt thing, speak softly, carry a big stick. And compel them to stop this exportation of terror throughout the Middle East. The funding that goes to Hesbullah and Hamas and Houthis And if they don't, then there should be some punitive action. And we can do that from afar. We can dismantle a... oil, oil field, oil infrastructure. What is it that Iran cares most about financially? Their oil infrastructure, their nuclear reactors. We can very easily impact those. So I would have a flexible deterrent option as they're called on the table. that if Iran doesn't, you know, tell Iran, you know, from an information management standpoint, Iran, stop this or we're going to consider something more harsh. And then diplomatically, so diplomacy, information, military, economic. Diplomatically, I would stop this engagement. Tony (58:25.874) a meaningless engagement with Iran because it leads nowhere. It leads to October 7th and just get harsh with them. And then from a military standpoint, have the option prepared to be harsher with Iran because they're the disease. Everything else is a symptom. Then economically, I would re-impose very, very strict sanctions and I would enforce those sanctions. so that they can't send the amount of oil they're sending to China. One of the second-order impacts of all of what's happened over the last three years is that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have coalesced and become much closer from a cooperation standpoint because they see us as a common enemy that is not... acting in our own nation's best interests. And so their opportunity for hegemony, for territorial aggrandizement, Ukraine, Israel, Afghanistan, all of that, they see as an opportunity. And so I would recommend flexing a little muscle and shoring it up through diplomatic information and economic means. Jeff Dudan (59:52.111) They have certainly taken advantage of our lack of focus. Tony (59:56.51) Yeah, no question about that. Jeff Dudan (01:00:00.178) Tony, thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today on the home front. Tony (01:00:07.218) Always my privilege to talk to you, Jeff, and the Homefront Brands team. Jeff Dudan (01:00:11.602) All right, take care. Thank you, sir. Tony (01:00:13.879) Thank you.

Brief Summary Andrew Zimmern is more than the guy who eats bugs on TV—he’s a culinary philosopher, global citizen, and unapologetically curious soul. In this powerful conversation with Jeff Dudan, the Bizarre Foods host opens up about his early addiction and homelessness, his path to recovery, and the values that have shaped his career in food, media, and impact. From kitchen jobs at 14 to cultural commentary on the world stage, Zimmern shares timeless truths on leadership, legacy, and why food is the frontline of solving the world’s biggest problems. Key Takeaways Work is healing : Andrew’s first job at 14 gave him self-esteem and direction that his personal life couldn’t provide. Addiction thrives in isolation, recovery thrives in service : Getting sober and living for others transformed his life and career. Be the only, not the best : Focus on what makes you unique, not what makes you comparable. Food systems are broken—but fixable : He believes we can end child hunger in America for $17B annually, a rounding error in the federal budget. Processed food is a national security issue : The health crisis it causes costs $1.5T a year—and feeds into Big Pharma, Big Ag, and systemic inertia. Create your own luck : The viral Witch Doctor episode that saved his TV show was filmed on instinct, not a script. Featured Quote “Ask for help. It’s the most human, powerful thing you can do. Grace lives be tween tho se words.” — Andrew Zimmern TRANSCRIPT The First Paycheck: How a 14-Year-Old Zimmern Fell in Love with Restaurants Jeff Dudan (00:02.263) Welcome Andrew Zimmern. How are you? zimmern (00:06.053) I'm good today. How are you Jeff? Jeff Dudan (00:07.863) Oh, I'm so good. I really appreciate you being on. Look forward to a great conversation. Can we start back in the beginning? I'm fascinated to know how you got your first job at 13 or 14 years old. How did that happen for you? zimmern (00:26.442) Selfishness and self-centeredness is the greatest motivator of all time. I was a typical 14-year-old alcoholic in waiting. I hadn't really... I had tried pot and I tried drinks a couple of times by the time I turned 14 in the summer of 1975. Um, so I was already like exhibiting that, that slingshot behavior of hyper responsibility and hyper irresponsibility, sometimes within the same day. Um, and I remember making a comment to my father, you know, in, in May or early June of that year, uh, talking about how excited I was, uh, to spend time at our summer place. Um, and I must've said something about my, I just remember his response was. there is no more allowance. You're turning 14. Yeah, I turned 14 that July. And he said, you need to get a job and make sure that you save enough money so that you have money during the winter. So what you earn during the summer, you don't need to spend. You know, food and room and board is paid for. You live in this house, but my recommendation is you save money. Obviously I saved none of it. And, you know, he suggested that I do the, take the job that all of my friends were taking. Everyone I knew went to work for the same three or four landscaping companies. And that meant you woke up at 430 in the morning at 515, a truck came by your house, picked you up, you hopped in the back and sat on the edge of the truck and you went to the job where you, being the teenager, you hold wheelbarrows of dirt. either out during an excavation or in if they were building berms. And you basically just you were the low man on the totem pole doing a really interesting physical labor job. I was interested in none of that because you got home at 3 in the afternoon. Your day was done. You're tired. Not a lot left to do. I wanted to sleep in each day, go to the beach. There were girls. I was getting... zimmern (02:49.294) I wanted to hang out with girls, I wanted to do drugs, I wanted to do all these kinds of things. And I wanted to cook. And so I immediately got, I said to my father, fine. And the next weekend when I was out at our place, I got on my bike and I rode to my godmother's seafood restaurant and I applied for a job. And of course she hired me and I was basically peeling vegetables and shucking clams and oysters. And that was the first time at age 14, I collected a paycheck in a restaurant. And I don't think I've lapsed a year since in collecting a paycheck from a restaurant. So I think it's been like 48 years in a row. Nowhere near a record, but for me, it's something that I've done for just about the, well, I've done it the longest of anything that I've ever done. I love food people. I love that job. I loved hanging out with older folks. I loved learning. I loved plating six oysters with a couple of little cups of garnish and a few lemons and some parsley sprigs and watching it along with a clinking gin and tonic cross the dining room to a waiting customer who would always take that first oyster and slurp it down and then... kind of give that nod like, that tastes good. And I felt an immense sense of immediate gratification and pride in what I was doing. And I was off to the races, I was hooked. Jeff Dudan (04:30.455) How did you get to work at that age? Were you in New York at the time? OK. zimmern (04:34.146) No, no, this was out in Long Island. I quickly, the first day I hitched, which was easy. I mean, this is 1975. I left the house an hour early. First car that came by was someone who lived down the street and knew who I was by sight. You know, you kind of know the kids in the neighborhood. Where are you going? I'm going to the quiet clam. Are you headed in that direction? Well, of course, you know, it's right. I mean literally like three miles down the road and they just dropped me off and then when I got to the restaurant and I met up the other people who were working there on my first day I just said hey I live on this road and here's my you know whatever Tuesday through Sundays anyone want to give me a lift home or but and there were always people driving back I mean you have to remember this is out at a part of Long Island where there's basically in those days, one road that went up and down sort of parallel to the beach and it was pretty easy. Pretty easy, yeah. And then I found out there was a server that lived on my block that had a car, lived on my street. And so then it became super easy just to bike down to their place and then every night take the bike home. But I very quickly learned that it was more fun to go out with everybody afterwards than to go home. Jeff Dudan (05:35.991) Yeah, they had to be going your way. They had to be going your way. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (06:00.887) Similarly, I worked, I grew up in Chicago, and there was a great Mexican restaurant called El Matador out in Bartlett, and it was where my parents hung out, and they thought it would be a great idea if my brother and I, and I was in seventh grade, so I'm 12 years old, would get a job there. And so we would show up at three in the afternoon, we would fold 400 napkins into triangles. then we would eat a family's, everyone would get a plate of enchiladas and then the restaurant would open and we were bus boys to start with and we would bus until midnight or 12.30. We'd get a percentage of the tips from the waiter. But my second year, I actually moved behind the bar. So now I'm 13 years old. I'm lighting people's cigarettes and sliding drinks and all that. And then I moved into the kitchen and I was a chef's assistant. So I would play the appetizers. and get those out. And what a formative experience in both good and bad ways. Teen Jobs Build Real Self-Esteem (Even if You’re Doing Dishes) zimmern (07:04.99) You just, I mean, just getting out and working, be a part of life. I mean, I tell my own child, it's not what you do, it's doing something. It's, I just think it's vitally important. And what I loved about working a quote unquote, real job summers, and then I was so in love with it, I wound up working one day a week. I convinced my parents to let me work in restaurants in New York one day a week during the school year. But being around other people lets you see and learn from their experience. You don't have to make every mistake yourself to learn from it, right? That's number one. Because in working with other people and you see them make mistakes or tell you about situations in their life that didn't work out, you then are able to garner some wisdom from that. And you are able to gain something that I think young people need a lot of at a very formative place in their life. Regardless of how my 20s turned out, I... I developed a sense of self-esteem at work because I was out in the world doing something that I wouldn't have found any other way. Jeff Dudan (08:11.791) No, no. And what I like about what your father said. So I have three children, and I took the position early that the age of accountability is 14. And I've taught you everything that I can teach you about what's right and what's wrong, work ethic by the time you're 14. So when they're going into high school, man, I really gave them a loose bit. And I feel like it was reverse psychology, maybe. zimmern (08:26.775) That's right. Jeff Dudan (08:39.391) because then they're accountable for their mistakes and they had to do the consequences, none of them gave us any problems. So I think me taking that approach, I'm glad it didn't backfire, at least maybe it hasn't yet, maybe it will, but I've got 22, 25 and 19 now. How about you? How old's your son? zimmern (09:01.236) Uh, he's 18 and a half. Jeff Dudan (09:03.087) Okay, awesome, awesome. At some point, you ended up going to Vassar, and that's another similarity. My daughter's at NYU right now. And oh, by the way, we went there and stayed with her, and I thought I knew what good food was until you get into the city and you go to these restaurants. And we went to a place called Lartusi, and I know there's thousands of places. You probably. zimmern (09:32.15) Yep. I know what it is. Jeff Dudan (09:32.647) Never heard of, are you familiar with that? Yeah, unbelievable. I'd never had Italian food that tasted like that. So you get spoiled there. It can make you broke going there. So you're in that environment and then you get to be a chef. And at some point, that environment didn't sit well with you from an addiction perspective. And I know you talk a lot about it. The Pirate Ship Years: Why Addiction Thrives in Restaurant Culture zimmern (10:01.07) I think it's actually the flip side. I think I was extremely at home in restaurants because you can have that kind of life there. It doesn't mean that you can't be working at an ad agency or a shoe store or on Wall Street or as an actor and have it, but there is something about, especially in the 80s, this pirate ship of a restaurant. Jeff Dudan (10:10.121) Yes. zimmern (10:27.05) where you're done working late at night and everyone, it's sort of like letting off steam is the thing you do. And so it's an easy place for an addict or an alcoholic to hide a little bit. And I also found a lot of like-minded people there. There were folks who, you know, nobody says I'm an active addict and alcoholic. I need to fund my addiction because that's what I'm really focused on is using. I'm gonna go get a job teaching or I'm gonna go get a job on Wall Street. Said no one ever. Some people find themselves in that position, you know, by accident, but no one says, oh, I'm gonna take this job with a lot of responsibility. However, a lot of people say, yeah, I'll wait tables three days a week and the rest of the time I'll just be getting high. Jeff Dudan (11:02.909) Right. zimmern (11:20.514) I wanted to work in restaurants. I wanted to keep cooking. I wanted to learn everything about the business. I was a voracious learner. I was insanely curious about everything. And at the same time, I found a place that was easy to do, number one, while I was using, and number two, to keep going afterwards with the other crazies that you could identify out of the group of... 75, 80 people in the restaurant, the three or four that liked to party the way I did, it was easy to find them and keep it going into the next morning and just go back in to work. I think my addiction and my experience with working with a lot of addicts, alcoholics, and getting sober is that it would have flourished anywhere. And it quickly during the 80s went from something that I would deem somewhat manageable. Rock Bottom: Homelessness, Moral Collapse, and Getting Sober Jeff Dudan (12:10.851) Mm. zimmern (12:15.394) to completely owning me. I mean, in every sense of the word, where everything went through the filter of, does it allow me to continue to drink and drug my way through life? Eventually losing my moral compass completely and being 100% a user of people and taker of things, engaging in lots of illegal activity. homeless for 13 months, squatting a building in lower Manhattan that was deserted, living with street people on a... I was a street person. I mean, you know, it's living on a pile of dirty clothes and it was a miserable existence and none of that was enough to convince me that maybe I had a problem with drinking and drugging. Just wasn't. That's how bad the disease is. Jeff Dudan (13:11.639) What do you think it is about addiction early in life? You see so many business celebrities and I mean, it's almost like anyone who's popular and who's done something great had this experience early in their life. Is it a shift where they become fearless? And I know for myself. I started with nothing, $2,500 in a briefcase. I mean, absolutely from zero. And if I lost it all today, I think I could start over and do well. I think I could do it again. So, you know, but when you're in that position and you're struggling with addiction and you've got some really bad habits and you're working completely without a net, because anyone that might've helped you will no longer help you. When you, you know, people become homeless when... zimmern (13:43.991) Me too. Jeff Dudan (14:00.319) the last person that would have helped them will no longer let you stay on the couch. And when you lose, I've worked with the homeless shelter here in Charlotte quite a bit, and it's, what we have to do is we have to reconstruct that network for people. And you've gotta rekindle connections with family, and you've gotta, because once you lose that social network, like you have nowhere to turn, well the only place to turn to is the streets, right? So, but then you see this early life experience, and then, zimmern (14:04.248) That's right. The Hero’s Journey: Tragedy, Recovery, and a Life of Purpose Jeff Dudan (14:29.203) all of a sudden people have an incredible career and make a massive impact in other people's lives like you have. Why do you think that is? Or why was that for you? zimmern (14:36.842) Well, I think if you get sober, well, it's actually something I've done a lot of work considering. I've heard a lot of people speak about it over the last 30 plus years. And I always go back to Joseph Campbell's, the hero's journey. It's an essential human truth that if you go through an immense amount of tragedy and you survive, Jeff Dudan (14:52.992) Mm-hmm. zimmern (15:05.862) you have a wealth of experience that if turned around and focused for good can be an extremely valuable sort of education resource, right? But you also are transformed and predicate your life on a much different basis. So, you know, yes, I got sober. Yes, I was a talented person and a smart kid before the drugs and alcohol sort of masked everything up, sprinkled me with the little love and respect and dignity from other people and I started to flourish. I think the difference with people who become, I'll just say hyper successful in their field is that they've taken that tragic set of circumstances and completely redesigned their life so that in my case, I led a life that was entirely based on self, fueled by a thousand forms of fear and self that always created behaviors in me that later put me in a position to be hurt. And when I got sober, I predicated my life on developing a relationship with a power greater than myself. admitting that there was one in the first place was a big, big deal for me. And then predicating my life on helping other people, doing things for others. And as I experimented with that and I realized it was making me happy. It was also making me happy with whatever I had. So if all I had was the local success in a restaurant, and if I was still a chef in a restaurant here, my first one that I opened in Minneapolis in 92, if that had been it, I'd be... zimmern (17:10.73) just extremely happy and joyous and free because you're accepting and at peace with what you have. Now, there was a thing inside of me that is very competitive and wants to grow everything. And I remember being in a family counseling session, kind of like an exit interview for your divorce. The, yeah, they do. The idea is, or was, that my ex-wife and I felt very strongly that we should learn to at least get along and speak with each other so that we have the ability to co-parent our child more effectively. And so I said, sure, I'll give a couple sessions with this family therapist that had helped us the year beforehand and helped me decide 100% I wanted to be divorced. Jeff Dudan (17:40.427) They have those? The Shoe Salesman Story: Why He Was Always Going to Build Something Big zimmern (18:09.11) But there was a really interesting thing. I found it absolutely fascinating and I don't think a month has gone by I haven't told this story. I'm in there and my ex-wife at the time was, one of the big issues was my television career was growing and growing and growing. And she said, that's not good for the family and me and all the rest of this. I had my reasons why it was. And the... The therapist turned to her and said, what job do you want Andrew to have? And she's like, I don't know, you know, something normal. And he's like, this is just an exercise. Name a normal job that you want Andrew to have that you'd be okay with. And she just sat there, she went shoe salesman. And the therapist turns to me and says, Andrew, are you okay with being a shoe salesman? I'm like, 100%. And I meant it. And he then followed up with me. He says, OK, what does your first year look like? And I said, I'm the best sales. I sell more shoes than anyone else in the store statewide or in my region. I find out whatever that number is, and I beat it. I become the number one guy in the region because that's my fastest track out of. you know, putting shoes on people's feet and getting into management or supervising other shoe salesmen. He's like, great. And he turns to my ex-wife says, you okay with that? And she's like, yep. And then he says, what does your second year look like? And I say, I leave the company and I go build 400 of these stores in China. And he looked at me and nodded his head. And he looked at my ex-wife and said, do you see who you've married? It doesn't matter what he does. Doesn't matter. He's gonna do the exact same thing. He's gonna grow it and figure out a way to make it more interesting because that's the joy that I have in life is taking things that I've created and if there's an opportunity to grow them to do that. Jeff Dudan (20:22.447) I sold a significant business in 2019 that I built over almost 25 years. And my wife's comment was, I'm looking forward to spending more time with you. I waited three days and I've launched 31 businesses in five years. We can't help it. It's, it's who we are. zimmern (20:42.826) It is who we are. And I will say this, the pursuit of work, while at the same time trying to grow in life as a human being, spiritually, mentally, physically, has meant recognizing that for myself, time at home with family, time where I'm just out on the disc golf course, playing disc golf with my buddies, just giving each other a ton of crap, taking the afternoon off from work just to go fish or something is really, really valuable. That's been the big difference maker, I think, for me. At least now, I do some things that are not work related. The problem for some of us is that... Jeff Dudan (21:23.413) Yeah. zimmern (21:38.026) What we do is actually the thing that I would wanna do for fun. I wanna cook, I wanna make television, I want to do those things constantly. I came home from a, I was six cities in seven days. It was just one of those brutal weeks that you just can't wait to get home. I was really exhausted. And just too much on the calendar over the course of a week, which happens sometimes. And I got home Saturday and I kind of, you know, cleaned the house and helped do some chores and, you know, do all that kind of stuff that we do and that needed to be done. And some friends were in town for dinner, which was Sunday. And so I invited 12 of them over for dinner and I got up at like 8 in the morning and I cooked from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon for these 12 people and just put out a big spread and enjoyed my time with my friends. Now I did it because I wanted to enjoy some time with my friends. I wanted the end result. Most people would say, you just got home, why do you want to cook all day? It's kind of my yoga. I mean, in the middle of everything, I wasn't thinking yesterday at all about my little problems and the other things, my wants and desires or whatever tapes were going on in my head about problems with this kid or a problem at work or whatever. I was I was just centered and in the zone and it was fun. You know, I guess loving what you do has its benefits and has its challenges. Cooking as Therapy: Why He Hosts 12 People After 6 Cities in 7 Days Jeff Dudan (23:18.263) Well, it's therapy. It's an act of service. It's an expression of love and care for people. It's sharing your talents with those who you care the most about. And it's good. It checks every box. I do want to ask you something you said was really interesting to me, because I think that this is an impediment to a lot of people trying to build a career. zimmern (23:20.716) Mm-hmm. zimmern (23:33.331) It is what it is. Jeff Dudan (23:45.151) You said the being happy with where you were in the present, not having an expectation that it was gonna, if it stopped there, that you'd be okay with that, which meant that you had a focus on what you were doing right there. You weren't looking at a hundred different things and losing focus. Jerry Seinfeld, I'm trying to be a stoic, but I look at Jerry, I'm watching comedians in cars getting coffee and he says, Our lack of focus leads to our lack of greatness. And for me, when you said that, I tell our young people in our organization, you win the next opportunity by succeeding in the one that you're in. And if you overlook what you're doing right now, you lose, you're not gonna get the next opportunity because you didn't maximize it. And people know whether you maximize it or not. Were you... an accidental celebrity or was that something that you did intentionally back when you were in, well you're still in Minneapolis and then you started writing and then you got on the radio and you got some radio shows and then that turned into some celebrity. zimmern (24:46.914) Well, very accidental. zimmern (24:55.03) Well, that was intentional, that there was some strategic work in there, but the celebrity part was accidental. So I'm in this restaurant, I create this great restaurant. A lot of people that, not my opinion, but local food scribes or whatever, it was, here's the deal. Jeff Dudan (25:02.771) Okay. zimmern (25:18.61) I came from New York, I was extremely accomplished culinary and I get out of the halfway house and I realized there's no good French restaurant in town and a French bistro every town should have a casual French bistro onion soup steak frites I mean it is a concept that is track record proven and here we were in a big city Minneapolis that didn't have a French bistro so it was to me looking at what was missing. And yeah, in the rearview mirror, it's an act of entrepreneurship. Identify a problem and you have a business. Identify a lack of something successful somewhere, which is a different type of problem. You can create a business. And so we created this French bistro. It became very successful. I thought the food was really great. Was it the best restaurant in town? I don't know. There's always two, three, four that, you know, vie for that. But was it, you know, was it up for discussion? Hell, yeah. I was very proud of what I built. Over the course of those six or seven years that I built the successful restaurant, my partner didn't wanna grow it. He just wanted to stay and take what he was taking out of that business. I was looking to see how we could, when are we doing the second restaurant? When are we gonna do the to-go food shop with pates and tureens and sliced meats and stuff? And you have to remember, this is 25 years ago. So, you know, looking back in the rear view mirror, was I right? Could we have done that? Absolutely. Am I thrilled that my partner said no? You bet, because what it did was is it made me leave the restaurant. I realized I had the wrong partner. And I also had to do a lot of inventory work. You know, I really had to do some writing and figure out what I wanted. And I realized... An Accidental Celebrity: From French Bistro to Food Philosopher Jeff Dudan (27:02.4) Yes. zimmern (27:14.814) It wasn't that I just wanted to expand that concept. I just wanted a bigger audience for what I had to say. And I mean that in the broadest sense. So it could have been just food. I could have grown that food thing. And I, with each store, with each business within this mother company, I would have been telling food stories, my story to other people, right? But. Jeff Dudan (27:40.191) Yes. zimmern (27:41.638) I realized that I wanted to tell stories about society and culture and that I had this feeling in my gut that we were starting more and more in America to define ourselves by the things that divide us. We were growing in impatience with each other. We were growing in intolerance with each other. And I identified this thing. And then I looked at food. And I saw this. company that Food Network was growing. And it was just people cooking behind a counter. Every show on Food Network, they weren't into game yet. And they've never really done travel. They've dabbled, but they never really did. Mostly because they were owned by the same company always that had Travel Channel and other networks that did that kind of thing. And I realized I needed a bigger audience. So I quit the partnership. and I immediately went out and got a job working for the local glossy magazine, but they only had like a third of a job available for me. And then I went to the radio station and that was a one day a week food show is how it started. Ultimately I was doing drive time radio in on this talk 107 station. That was my favorite job. Jeff Dudan (29:01.031) Were these new platforms for these people? They didn't have a food segment and you pitched it or? zimmern (29:05.61) No, no, well, yes and no, yes and no. With the food radio thing, it was another radio station was experimenting with it. They thought I'd be better at doing a two hour food show on Saturdays. Eventually I got moved to drive time because it got really, really good. The local magazine, I started out writing one column. I wound up then being given a senior editorship position and doing six or seven pieces in our food section. and winning a lot of awards and realizing with, well, I had a great editor who helped me become a good writer from a decent writer. And then I was doing this TV thing over on a independent TV station that got sold to Fox and became a Fox O&O. And I wound up doing one segment a week, then three, then I was a fixture on the morning show. there and it was when you put it all together, I learned in those three jobs how to write, how to communicate, how to communicate consistently. I mean, you do three hour drive time radio, people are not listening for three hours. One person, the same person may listen at 1 30 one day and 2 30 the next and you better be the same person. You better be the same at you know, hour one is hour two is hour three and deliver the same amount of enthusiasm and interest in what it is that you're talking about. And obviously I learned a lot in the TV station because as a local TV reporter, you pitch your segments, you write your segments, you shoot your segments with a videographer, then you and the videographer typically edit them together. and I learned how to do all the aspects of my craft. I sort of created a syllabus for myself to learn the things I needed to do so I could become expert. I spent my 10,000 hours or whatever across three jobs pretty quickly, knowing intentionally that I wanted to have a television. I was telling people when I left the restaurant that my ultimate goal was to have a show on television. Now, zimmern (31:24.734) Again, this is 25 years ago. So today I get asked every day, oh, I want my own TV. Everyone wants their own TV show. It's great, go ahead and make it, put it on YouTube. You can do your own website, create your own thing. I mean, it's very democratic. And I mean, look, there are people on TikTok who are getting 25 million views a day, right? Doing food stuff and telling stories. So, and making a lot of money. So it does work, this democratization of... Jeff Dudan (31:45.387) Yes. zimmern (31:53.646) of the internet and social media has been a boon for food creators. But at the time, there were limited avenues. I pursued all of them all the while putting together tape of myself and pitching show ideas and eventually Discovery Networks, which own travel channel, said, well, this sounds interesting. Come talk to us about it. And I did. And we made a sizzle. We then made a paid for. piece of a develop sizzle. Then we did a pilot and then ultimately that became the series. And then, you know, the show was not doing, it was doing well, but not great. And I didn't know, but the series was probably gonna be canceled. You either hit your number or you don't. And if you are losing viewers over the first three or four episodes, that's not a good thing. And... We were up and down and up and down, which typically means eventually you're just gonna go down. And my fear was we were trying our hardest. I thought we were making a great product. I later was proven to be right. Just that the show was new. It had no marketing budget assigned to it, right? And we were the lead in hour to a very, a strong show. And I did the third episode, which was our... zimmern (33:30.282) the episode in Odovalo, Ecuador, where a medicine man made me undress and then he beat me with branches until I broke out in hives everywhere and he spat on me and he poured 151 on me, homemade hooch lit me on fire and he took guinea pigs and beat them against, beat, oh, it's a great one, beat them against my chest until the animal died. The idea was it was an exorcism. It was a witch doctor. Jeff Dudan (33:50.577) I missed this one. Jeff Dudan (33:59.34) Mmm. The Witch Doctor Episode That Saved Bizarre Foods (and Launched a Career) zimmern (34:00.002) captured all the evil spirits and all of these things, then burnt them and took the ashes and threw them in the river. That was the third episode that aired of Bizarre Foods season one. And it aired on a Monday night. Wednesday night I got a call from a booker on the Jay Leno show, the Tonight Show, and said, we saw the clip of the witch doctor and showed it to Jay, he loved it, can you be in LA tomorrow night? And I said, I don't think so, but I can be there on Friday." And they said, okay. And I showed up Friday night, I did the Tonight Show, and suffice to say the ratings the following Monday were really, really good. And I wound up doing the Tonight Show with Jay three or four times, and it kind of set the show. Without that Booker seeing that episode, I don't think I'm sitting here today. Jeff Dudan (34:53.611) Yeah. zimmern (34:56.758) with you. I think my career goes in a different direction. But sometimes we need those seconds and inches thing. Now, if I'm sitting there with my kid, I tell him I create my own luck. We worked hard. We made a good program. I was proud of all of it. And the reason why I was in the Witch Doctor scene was never in the show. We were stuck in this town and had nothing to do from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. And I have a cameraman and I have a producer and me. There's three of us. Today I travel with 18 people, right? There were three of us. And I told, you know, and this is probably really instructive for our listeners because I didn't wanna waste any time. And I saw a story I really want. There was a sign that said, brujera, witch doctor. And so I had my translator there. I said, what is that? You know, what is that? He says, it's a witch doctor. I said, yes, I know the Spanish word, what do they do? And he said, well, this one is actually an exorcist. And I said, can I get exorcised? And he said, sure, it's 25 bucks. And I'm like, okay. And I then went to my videographer and he's like, dude, I'm tired. I'm like, dude, I'm getting an exorcism. Let's shoot this thing. And I had to convince my photographer and my producer. And eventually they said, okay. And when it started, you could just see the three of us were like, this is magic television. It may have been the best five, seven minutes of TV. It was certainly the best five, seven minutes of TV I've ever spontaneously made. And the whole thing was created instantly and it's a really, really fun moment exploring culture in another part of the world, but it put me on a path that I would not have been on otherwise. Jeff Dudan (36:50.463) Yeah, The Tonight Show makes a lot of people. I mean, it's that they know. I mean, I listen to a lot of comedians, and it's just like, I got the call, I got the shot, and it all changed from there. Were you immediately comfortable on television? Was there a time where you were like, ah, you're looking at it and you're uncomfortable with it, or were you just, I don't care. This is what we're going to do, and I'm comfortable with it. zimmern (36:53.31) It was insane. zimmern (37:15.874) both. I think anyone who says they're instantly comfortable with it is lying. You actually have to learn the blocking and tackling part and then you're comfortable. And that's why I'm glad I came out of Live Local News. That was the best learning ever. When I talked before about finding the story, editing the story, I remember they sent me out with my Jeff Dudan (37:20.935) Yes. zimmern (37:45.334) two-hour morning show, local morning show. And we all have watched local morning television, right? It's very low budget, some of it's really goofy. They sent me, it was like the week before Halloween, they sent me to a corn maze. And they're just like, you have five four-minute segments, figure it out. And by the way, you get that assignment at noon when you're leaving the day beforehand. So you have to come up with some cool things to do, get some people that, you know, we had a school band, there was a maze. One of the, someone didn't show up and I did the Blair Witch thing where I took a flashlight and just ran through the thing, holding the camera. I mean like, stupid, stupid stuff. But you learn, you learn the craft that way. You learn how to talk to the audience. You learn how to sort of be yourself on camera and either people are gonna accept you or not accept you. There are a lot of people you know, funnier, smarter, better looking, more interesting, all of that stuff. And the audience doesn't want to follow them week to week to week to week. Network to network, show to show. It's a really honorable position to have. Is there something inside of me that I just naturally have that makes me appealing to people? Yes, I believe there is a piece of that. But I also believe that there's a lot of people who have that and blow it because they're lazy and they don't wanna learn how to actually do the job. And there is some blocking and tackling to all that. When I got to do the first season of Bizarre Foods, everything in television was about what we refer to lovingly in old TV as the standup. I'm like, I look at the camera. right down the barrel and as I'm walking down the street I say, here in Tokyo, Japan there are thousands of asadachi, small little humble restaurants with single cooks preparing for it and you describe what you're going to do and then you literally have to walk in the door because the producers feel if they don't see you walk in the door then how do you get there, right? It's a very old way of doing television. Today we just start out in scene with the guy handing me food Jeff Dudan (39:58.999) Right. The Art of TV Storytelling: Fearlessness, Repetition, and the 10,000-Hour Rule zimmern (40:07.578) And through a series of exchanges with him, we bring out language that we can then cut and put ahead of it that describes where I am and what I'm doing. So we no longer have to do standups, right? To learn how to do that so that then you can figure out new and different ways to introduce material. How to talk, when to talk, write down the barrel to the audience, when to not, when to ask a question, when to not. Those are learned things and it's a very vital important part of doing the job. Jeff Dudan (40:48.279) getting behind the camera, getting in the editing room, writing, drafting in advance. Also, I'm fascinated by the three hour radio show because you wouldn't think about it, but you've gotta assume there's new listeners coming on all the time. So writing a show where people can jump on, but yet for people that are on, you're not duplicating what you're doing. Or a four minutes in a corn maze. Like it's highly creative. And it, what's that? zimmern (41:18.366) with no lights, with no lights. The dawn hadn't come up yet. And we were having, we didn't have enough lights in the van. And so I mean, it's just like first hit, I just Blair witched it. And it didn't matter whether it was good or not. What mattered is the network, the director just needed me to do something. Jeff Dudan (41:23.575) Right, oh, with no lights. Oh. zimmern (41:47.39) If it's good, great. If it's not good, people will forget it by the next morning. There's a lot of stuff in live local news that's not very good, but you have a chance the next day to reach every day a new beginning, right? And I guess what it taught me is a little bit of fearlessness, a little bit of just do your best, it's gonna be okay, and patience. And quite frankly, patience is faith. Jeff Dudan (41:53.079) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:57.559) Yes. zimmern (42:15.578) You have to have a belief that it is going to work if you try it, right? I think, you know, a show that some people view as fat white guy goes around world and eats bugs, would that be the thing that launched all of the other stuff that I do? Turns out, yes. Jeff Dudan (42:39.735) Ugh. Do you subscribe to any life philosophy, or have you developed a kind of a view that you share with other people? zimmern (42:54.014) lots of them. Don't be the best, be the only. It's really hard to qualify or quantify what's best. There are many bests, just depends on who the consumer is. Jeff Dudan (43:04.759) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (43:08.311) But unique is describable. zimmern (43:12.354) If you're the only, it really is easier, you know? And I look at different people in different worlds and they are an only. And I think that is, it's an easier way to try to interpret things. I've learned to shut up, you know? I've learned that... Jeff Dudan (43:15.735) Yeah. zimmern (43:39.346) I have to evaluate everything through, I ask myself three questions. Is it true? Does it need to be said? And if it's true and needs to be said, is it up to me to say it? And the third question is the one that always gets me. It might be true. It might need to be said. It's not my job to say it. It's someone else's. And that's how I decide when it's my turn to speak or not. Right? If I'm the only person that can communicate it, I communicate it. If it's not, then don't be a selfish son of a bitch and let other people communicate the idea. And that's very important as a business owner because I want everyone to feel like they're contributing. So unless I'm the only person that can say something, I like to keep my mouth shut. I've learned that, you know, over the years of owning several different businesses. And I really think that being curious, staying teachable, trying to be patient tolerant and understanding with other folks, all of those and the other examples I gave you are guiding principles and ideas. But if I had to pick one, it's the idea that Don’t Be the Best—Be the Only: Andrew’s Life Philosophy zimmern (45:06.69) doing things for other people is what we're here on planet Earth for, and that is not... zimmern (45:17.374) or I should say that is 100% compatible with being a capitalist and a business owner. 100% compatible. I'm always striving to do things for other people. And it doesn't mean that everything you do, you need to give 5% of it to a child. That's not what I'm talking about. But in the creative businesses that solve problems that make the world a better place, in the attitude of always lifting up other people here in the workplace, trying to at least, and making them feel heard and known. There are so many different ways in which we can be always giving and certainly in my private life it's what I predicated all on. And I think with without that I'm really lost. It doesn't give me, it doesn't give me, it takes my compass away, takes my compass away. Jeff Dudan (46:15.287) I was listening to Elon Musk on, I think, Lex Friedman, and he said, you know, depending on what people's beliefs are, but we've occupied this planet for about one one millionth of its existence, and we have a very short time here, and we have conspicuous consumption, and we accumulate things, and then people that accumulate things, like the billionaires, 75% of them have, so they're going to give 90% of it away. So we chase things throughout our life and we want these things because it's what we do. And then when you have enough, what I came back to in this whole train of thought was, you know, our whole goal is just to make life a little bit better for some people for the time that we're here. Like that's this, I had this kind of like an hour and a half conversation with my mother about, you know, and it was really, you know, it comes back to the fact that like if we are making making it just a little bit better for the people that are closest to us and anybody else that we can impact that's inside of our audience and helping people along the way. And you've done that, you can feel pretty good about it. zimmern (47:25.422) Do you, you've seen the movie Caddyshack? Jeff Dudan (47:28.983) Yes, I have. zimmern (47:31.774) And when Bill Murray has the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama, he asks him what's the meaning of life. And when I was filming Bizarre Foods, I had the opportunity to live with, live with about 20 different tribes, protected tribes, that have very intense spiritual systems all around the world. And these kinds of shows take years to pre-produce and years of petitioning to the governments and because they regard these tribes as sacred cultural institutions and try to prevent their interaction with modern people. And whenever I found someone who I believed to be, and it was usually the shaman or religious leader, spiritual leader of that family group or tribal people, I would always ask them what the meaning of life is, always, because I was just, I mean, these people had something on the board. I watched them do too many miraculous things. I mean, suffice to say, and we documented a lot of them, others we didn't, and it would just take too much time, but I mean, I saw some things that are just inexplicable to me other than these people have some sort of connection that we don't. And I remember in Botswana going through a trance dance and being taken out of my body. We documented the whole thing in our Botswana episode with the Jeune Troisi. And the shaman who performed this act of out-of-body experience on me, I needed to ask him what he did because if anyone else had spoken to him in between the time it ended and he kind of passed out and was carried and put inside his little hut. I sat outside his hut for like 10 hours because I needed to be the first person to talk to him because either I was crazy or I had just experienced something that was inexplicable. And I believed it to be the latter. And he comes out of his tent. zimmern (49:45.314) and I had the translator there with me and he asked me what I was doing and I told him and I said, did you pull me out of my body? He said, yes. And I said, I had this image of you looking through pages of a book in my life. And he said, yes, you know a lot about us. We don't know a lot about you. And you showed us some pictures, but I wanted to know more. And I was... I was blown away that we both had this image and I asked, he's walking away from me like I'm a moron for asking these questions. Like, of course I did that, right? And I said to him in my own broken way as he's leaving me, why are we here? Right? I mean, human beings have asked that of themselves and of other people. Jeff Dudan (50:22.903) Right. zimmern (50:43.426) usually in a position of power for as long as there have been human beings, right? I mean, we've recorded it on cave walls and, you know, canvas and art and sculpture and everywhere that you could imagine and books and music, all trying to explain what our relationship is to the outside world, to each other, to a power greater than ourselves. And I'm just fascinated in finding out what different people think about this. And this one... uh witch doctor shaman bom in who's a jean toasty uh tribal member in uh the aha hills outside of maun in batzuana was the person that i had have met in the history of my life that i truly believe and by the way i should also mention there are dozens of the most famous Anthony Bourdain, Brotherhood, and the Founding Fathers of Food TV zimmern (51:40.246) this other shaman with this one tribe are the only two people in the world that astrally can project themselves. They've put numbers and drawings and letters and shapes inside caves 100 miles away. And then these men have done their trance dances and then woken up and described what's in those caves. Right? So, and I'm talking about like not. not a Capella University on, I'm talking about like University of Indiana, which has one of the best teaching universities for anthropology in the world and a lot of other very big global international organizations. And Bohm turned to me and shook his head like I'm an idiot, which I was, and he just looked at me and he grabbed me by the shoulders and he said, we're here to make other people happy and love them. and walked away from me. Like, of course that's our only reason for being you idiot. I supplied the parenthetical comment, but it stuck with me forever. Jeff Dudan (52:40.119) Hmm Jeff Dudan (52:47.639) Yes. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (52:55.543) Can I ask you a question about Anthony Bourdain? Where did you find common ground with him? I know that you did work together on your shows, and it appeared as if you had a friendship. Where was common ground with him? His lifestyle and your lifestyle diverged, particularly around alcohol. zimmern (52:58.03) Sure. zimmern (53:10.007) Oh yeah. zimmern (53:23.118) We came from the same place. We understood the same language. We believed the same things. We were interested in the same stuff. When I was at Travel Channel, my first season was his second season. We were back to back for my first three years and built an incredible evening on Monday nights that essentially launched that network. Because when you have your two highest rated shows back to back, you can put Jeff Dudan (53:24.823) Mm. Jeff Dudan (53:37.271) Yeah. zimmern (53:52.154) ones before or after. It's a programmer's wet dream, right? I mean you can just build shows and then ultimately split us apart where he had Monday, I had Tuesday, and then we were able to support two shows underneath us and it launched, you know, Dohani Jones' show, Adam Richman's show, on and on and on during the sort of the heyday of Travel Channel. And You know, quite frankly, we basically did the same thing. We just had two different ways of storytelling and two different points of view. And, you know, some of my closest friends and people I admire beyond words like Alton Brown had a great... travel show for a year or two. There are other people who have, I think, attempted to do what we do on lots of other networks. I can think of a whole bunch of people on PBS, a whole bunch of people on YouTube, but no one has really managed to capture that. I think a lot of it was timing. This was the beginning of that. And so you can only have sort of... Jeff Dudan (54:48.119) Right. Jeff Dudan (54:58.263) Yes. zimmern (55:01.266) a few, it's the way we look at our country's founders, right? I mean, I hate to say right place, right time for Ben Franklin, but you know, right place, right time, Ben and John Adams and all those guys. I mean, they did the work with their, yeah. But lots of great leaders after them, lots of global, you know, important people and foundationally creating our country. But you know, there's only one group of. Jeff Dudan (55:09.591) Yeah. Yeah. Hey, look, they put in the work. They put in the work, but right. Yeah. zimmern (55:29.59) founding fathers, right? And so in this world of food, travel, TV, you know, I think that, you know, there's us. And so we had that in common. We also enjoyed each other's company immensely. We were both married, both had children the same age. We talked a lot about kids. And I think there was no more interesting human being I've ever met. Jeff Dudan (55:38.551) Yes. zimmern (56:00.162) uh then we could sit here and talk about you know 1950s and 60s French new wave cinema one night and the next night be in a grunge bar listening to some new punk rock band and the next night be in the back ass end of you know of queens eating Thai food at a place that no one had discovered yet and just never run out of stuff to talk about. He was an extremely, extremely kind, loving, beautiful human being who was incredibly bright and wickedly funny and I loved him and continue to love him very much. Jeff Dudan (56:46.199) Yeah, he was a poet, one of one. And I don't know if you can see over my wall, but like he's up on my wall back there. He's got the top right on my wall of people back there along with Chappelle and Norm MacDonald, and Serena and a couple other people out there. Food is the Frontline: Scarcity, Processed Crisis, and Feeding America’s Kids zimmern (57:04.01) Yeah, there's, yeah, I've got them up on my wall too. I was lucky enough. You can see it, you can see it there. That's from a theater show. It's the poster from a theater show that we did together where we were in conversation that was one of the funniest nights of my life. It was a blast. Jeff Dudan (57:09.367) Yeah. Hehehe Yes, right there. Jeff Dudan (57:33.751) I would love to get your thoughts oddly enough on food. And because we hadn't talked about food much, but we have food scarcity in this country. We have obesity in this country. We have processed foods. And I had a guy named Pashif Khan who... owns the DNA company out of Toronto, Canada. And we had an hour and a half, incredibly interesting discussion. And since they mapped the human genome, and then he took that information and he did a study with 7,000 people and he mapped out, oh, you know, and I don't wanna butcher it, but basically if you have these three different genes, this one will cause you to accumulate certain things, this one won't clear those things. And if you know that, then you can eat foods or take supplements that are going to address that. And he would contend that you can, chronic diseases, if you would just know what to do that you could push them off 10 or 12 years, or maybe even indefinitely. And so we have that, apparently we're starting to have that. Now, what's interesting is, right, we grow up in a family, I grew up in a family of five, everybody is diabetic but me. but we all ate the same. So clearly we have different genetic makeups, but based on, and I grew up in Chicago, so it was cheesy fries, Italian beefs, deep dish pizza, and those things, and then I moved to the South. Now I live in North Carolina, and I've got a, you know, I married into a Southern family, so you've got that. But we don't customize the way that we eat based on who we are. Now we can say, well, we need to eat whole foods and we need to eat healthier. But what do you see? And you've traveled, obviously, what is 173 or 179 countries and the perspective that you must have on how we eat in this country. And I'd be interested in that. And then what you think we need to do to make us healthier. zimmern (59:53.03) How many hours you got? I mean I spend 20 hours a week, I spend 20 hours a week working on food issues. I believe we need to change laws to change outcomes for people in this country. I've come to that belief because I've been a part of every nonprofit and every from Jeff Dudan (59:54.967) Well... Jeff Dudan (01:00:05.751) Okay. zimmern (01:00:17.83) No Kid Hungry to Gen Youth. I mean, I'm on more boards and I mean, I've been headass and overcoat in this issue for 20 years. And the only thing that works is giving these issues the teeth that laws provide to actually solve the problems. We can solve the problems. You brought up one of them, genetics. If we were able to test people and give them recommended diets and incentivize them to eat that, our healthcare costs would go down. Jeff Dudan (01:00:37.687) Yes. zimmern (01:00:47.798) be a massive success economically for this country where healthcare costs are skyrocketing and medicine, everything costs too much. So by example, I do not ignore science. I think science is very, very important. We need to acknowledge it. I will tell you that we need to distinguish between dollar, financial poverty, time poverty, food poverty, opportunity poverty, right, and navigate those differently. I've been in countries where people are financially poor, don't have opportunity for growth, don't want to. I'm talking about small tribal fishing communities in coastal Africa on the island of Madagascar, okay? You know, Yama the fisherman who I spent a week with and his kids are going to be fishermen and their kids are going to be fishermen as long as there's a world that's extant and Madagascar stays the way it stays. But they never worry about food. They have an unlimited supply. The island is tropical. They grow things. They fish for things. I mean, it's like literally, he's never had a problem. I've talked to him about this. Never had a problem feeding his family. Doesn't make any money. Doesn't need it. He trades fish for clothes and things in the local market. They live in a small village, right? So when modern... Jeff Dudan (01:02:05.943) Right. zimmern (01:02:28.342) When the modern world reaches Yama the fisherman's village, he's screwed. That's the problem, okay? But I only illustrate that to mean that we have to distinguish between those that they're not all the same, they need to be dealt with differently. When it comes to hunger in America, we have, and this is not red or blue or left or right. Jeff Dudan (01:02:32.983) Yes. zimmern (01:02:53.858) This is simply a civic issue about moving our country forward. We do not have a, well, we have several food problems, one of which is we spend a trillion and a half dollars treating the results of most people over consuming processed foods. We have a processed foods issue that Jeff Dudan (01:03:13.751) Hmm. zimmern (01:03:14.326) has created an untenable situation in my opinion when it comes to healthcare costs. We spend a trillion and a half dollars a year on it. That's equal to our annual federal budget. I mean, that is the scariest number out there. my opinion. We don't spend that much on criminal justice system or other systems that would be helped by feeding. Kids who eat have better outcomes. They just do. They cost less. They're lower drag on the system in terms of health care costs. Criminal justice system by and large only would be treated about half. as many if we actually fed people better. The problem in our country with food, by the way, we waste 40% of our food in America that's pre-consumer contact, which is why immigration reform is so important. We actually, I mean, speak to anyone big agribus, I mean, you know. Jeff Dudan (01:04:13.335) Oh. zimmern (01:04:19.878) I've spent a lot of time on farms and I did a whole series of this on MSNBC called What's Eating in America. We went to the biggest farms in America in the central coast of California and watched them just till lettuce under the ground because I don't know of people to pick it. Same thing with Jeff Dudan (01:04:34.007) Okay, so that's what's behind it is our ability to gather it and ship it. It's not that it's substandard and they're just throwing it out. Okay. zimmern (01:04:41.95) That's correct. That's correct. We're the richest, most successful, most highly developed culture in the history of the world here in America. There's never been a nation like this one as exists today while we're talking. We can. We have the ability to food to feed. Let's just take kids. It's an easier one to talk about. Jeff Dudan (01:04:55.319) Hmm. zimmern (01:05:09.17) Number one, from a moral standpoint, anyone who's out there for keeping kids hungry should raise their hand. I don't think anyone would, right? I mean, who wants to keep kids hungry? Okay, so we all agree, we need to feed kids. But 20% of kids don't know where their next day's meals are coming from. We have built a system in this country of highways, schools, community centers, churches, access points. We've developed an economy, robust economy, with a lot of food companies and a lot of farms. We actually could statistically, and I've talked about, I was lucky enough to be one of the 300 participants chosen to be at the president's conclave on hunger, nutrition, and health the September before last in Washington, DC. you know, I don't think I need to give my CV, but trust me when I tell you that I talk to everyone who knows what's what about this issue. And we can statistically eliminate childhood hunger in America. It will take about six weeks because you just have to reroute the trucks and reroute the food. We have to put equipment into schools and other places where we took the equipment out of during the Reagan administration. So the people are actually cooking wholesome and nutritious food. We have the vegetables. We would have to fix the immigration reform issue. So let's just assume that we're able to increase the number. By the way, we've eliminated about 30, 40% of those specialty visas that we need people from other countries to come help us harvest all of our food and work in our meat industry, et cetera, et cetera, so we can get the product out the door, so to speak. And we take about four and a half, five, seven weeks, depending on who you talk to for this, a very short amount of time. And the cost is 17 billion dollars the first year and goes down to about 14 billion dollars a year after that, because the first year is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in there. And I'm using just the top line budgetary items. Jeff Dudan (01:07:14.743) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:07:21.079) That's nothing. That's absolutely nothing. That's three Washington commanders football teams. That's all that is. zimmern (01:07:23.752) It's actually. 0.0027 percent of our annual federal budget. It's a rounding error. So as my friend Jim McGovern, a congressman from Massachusetts, is always fond of reminding me, Andrew, it's a not a, we don't have a hunger problem in America. We have a political problem in America. It is beyond my understanding. Jeff Dudan (01:07:33.943) Yes. zimmern (01:07:56.482) that there isn't bicameral and bilateral. creation of a bill that would pass with no one against it to feed kids in America when you're talking about a rounding error. Now, the sway for economic conservatives is the amount of money that would come back into the system from this, right? One of the hallmarks of the food stamp program is for every dollar that goes out, it's $1.17, $1.19 comes back, right? One of the benefits of a charity on whose board I sit, The Giving Kitchen, that gives money to people and the food service workers who are in crisis, is that if you actually pay their rent and they don't get kicked out of their apartment, and you feed them for a couple months while they get back on their feet, then they're not accessing public services, and they're not going to the emergency room for their doctor visits and all this kind of stuff. And it actually saves our economy dollars, right? and they keep work days rolling so they're not missing work. Imagine if we were able to feed all those hungry children. Test scores would go up, attendance in schools would go up, that frees up parents, we'd save job days for parents that don't have to take days off from work, single parents especially, to take care of those children. The the health care costs, the criminal justice costs, zimmern (01:09:33.962) and a family meets the public dollar, those dollars that spend, that pressure on our economy would go down. It doesn't necessarily automatically pay for itself, but I will just point out $17 billion a year max to feed all the children in America statistically eliminate hunger versus a trillion and a half dollars a year for these big three or sorry, big four processed food related diseases. Imagine after eight, nine, ten years, we haven't even spent a hundred, well we've spent two hundred million dollars, right, in ten years, a little less. How much money Net-Net would come back into our system? Staggering, staggering, a huge game changer for this nation. I can't think of a more important thing, and by the way, I have no desire to be a that deprioritizes hungry children over other issues. It doesn't matter whether you are left, right, in the middle or from Mars, hungry children, it's almost a genocidal choice because it disproportionately affects people of color and women. So if we have the solution and it costs that little money, it's a rounding error, why can't we muster the political will to do it? Now I also think, concomitant to that, we need to have a cabinet level position for food. Food represents such a large part of our GDP. Independent, just independent restaurants, that's not chains, it's just independent restaurants, I think are seven and a half percent of GDP. If you start to figure in all the other restaurants and places that food connects, farms, hotels. I mean, you take the piece of the bowling alley and their food service thing and their pizzas and microwave hamburgers, you add up all the food systems in America and you're at almost a quarter of our nation's GDP. It literally is the driving force for tourism. Baltimore, Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay, take away crabs and watch, you know. zimmern (01:11:51.574) 500,000 jobs disappear and whole sectors of the economy for Maryland disappear, right? You know, it is absolutely crucial that we have one office that oversees all of this instead of five government agencies that manage pieces and parts of it that don't talk to each other. So I think we need to have a cabinet-level secretary for food. and one office that handles all of them. We do that and we feed children. We're on our way to solving a lot of the problems in America today. Jeff Dudan (01:12:26.359) Do you have an opinion as to why we have so much processed food out there? Is it because that's what's made available? Is it because of the way it tastes better? Is it? I mean, it's just to me, it doesn't. zimmern (01:12:34.274) Green. read. zimmern (01:12:42.314) I don't believe it tastes better. It's, I mean, look, I believe, I believe in, in hamburger helper, okay? I wanna explain what I mean by that. If there is something to which you add meat and you make a skillet dinner that costs a few dollars a portion or less than $2 or whatever it is, Jeff Dudan (01:13:02.199) Yes. zimmern (01:13:10.27) And you can feed a family of four inexpensively with a home cooked meal, where you can sit down at the table and actually share it and talk with, you know, the mom, dad and the 1.95 kids that they have, right? I am so pro hamburger helper, it's coming out of my pores. What I'm against is the processed food that's necessary to go into the sauce, when in fact the sauce can be made. Jeff Dudan (01:13:28.215) Yeah. zimmern (01:13:39.862) with very natural ingredients. And I can do it as quickly as you can make hamburger helper. I can melt a tablespoon of butter to a tablespoon of flour and make a roux and add a cup of milk to it. And there is my sauce that's very healthy and nutritious that then can bind all those things in that creamy, delicious thing. My version is called a bechamel. It's got a fancy French word, right? And I can do that quicker than most people can pour the packet in and add boiling water, right? Jeff Dudan (01:13:41.559) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:13:57.463) Sure. zimmern (01:14:09.27) But I would want there to be vegetables in there. I would want it to cook for five minutes longer. It needs to be convenient. But if you cut carrots, onions, broccoli, celery, I'm just talking about the more inexpensive vegetables out there, or even just adding frozen vegetables to that, which are still nutritious, right? We've learned a way to freeze vegetables and maintain their nutritive qualities. It is, I'm very pro hamburger helper. I'm against. using unnatural ingredients and other things because what it does is, is it allows very large food companies to profit on unhealthy foods that we know are bad for us. These companies, however, are multinational gazillion dollar companies that hold a tremendous amount of sway and power in our world. Now It took about 30 years between the discovery that cigarette smoking was bad for us, for us to essentially ban TV commercials, do all the things to limit cigarettes. And we've seen a huge fall off in cigarette smoking. Kids no longer think it's cool. It's not in movies, it's not in commercials. The bad guy takes a puff of a cigarette, not the good guy anymore, right? The Marlboro man doesn't exist. It took the same amount of time for us to put seat belts in cars. When I was young, when we bought the family station wagon, my father tucked the seat belts in between the area where the back of the seat and the bench of the seat met because that seat belt would never be pulled out, right? Now, anyone out there who gets into a car with my kid, every time we do put your seat belt on, put your seat belt on, put your seat belt on, I mean, like a broken record. Takes 25 years for those social justice movements to move through the system. Jeff Dudan (01:15:40.919) I'm going to go ahead and turn it off. Right. zimmern (01:16:02.57) with enough velocity to actually change behavior in America. We have been at this food thing probably for about 17, 18 years in seriousness, right? I mean, really put it front and center. The last presidential election was the first one where a food topic was asked at a presidential debate. That delighted me, but also shocked me. We should be talking about literal kitchen table issues at kitchen tables and at elections, right? How do local, and I'm talking about it at the community, city and state level, as well as the federal government. We need to be talking about these issues. These are the vital issues of our time. How do we feed and keep people healthy? I'm not sure there's anything better. If people, to your point before about processed food, Jeff Dudan (01:16:48.791) Mm. Jeff Dudan (01:16:56.759) Yeah. zimmern (01:17:02.29) If we're not healthy and well and feeding folks our best, then we're not taking care of our fellows, our fellow human beings, right? And let's start that at home. Let's grow where we're planted and then export that wisdom out there. I don't think there's a reason for doing it other than greed and an inability for some people to wanna do the work. Jeff Dudan (01:17:22.199) Yeah. zimmern (01:17:32.234) We know on every single level that having people eat nutritious, healthy food saves money, solves problems. I mean, you know, we could just keep going. I could repeat what I've said for the last half hour. I would also point out, and people don't think of it this way, food is an international and domestic security issue as well. If we keep people fed and happy, Jeff Dudan (01:17:32.727) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:17:44.087) Sure. zimmern (01:17:59.226) and export food jobs overseas or create companies that use overseas labor and skill to create food businesses, those are good for our national security and international security needs. We build friends by doing that. Help people help themselves. I mean, it's a Bible, give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, different. Jeff Dudan (01:18:18.007) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:18:23.991) Mm-hmm. zimmern (01:18:28.098) I'll give you a great example. Sweet potato vines are a gourmet treat in Japan. They pay a fortune for them. A lot of Japan looks like the, you know, New England, got the same kind of weather. They have snow in Hokkaido, great skiing, right? Okinawa in the south, more like South Carolina gets hot in the summer, right? Big long island chain of a country. They can't grow sweet potatoes down to sandy gravels, not right. All the rest of that. You can literally like asparagus grows a foot a day in the Midwest under the right conditions in Haiti, a country desperate for businesses. You can grow sweet potatoes and just watch the vines grow. I mean, that's how rich the soil is. It's volcanic, right? It is the perfect place to grow it. 88, 90 degrees every single day, 12 months a year, start a sweet potato vine company there and ship them to Japan and watch what happens. I believe capitalism and entrepreneurship can solve these problems. And if we focus in the food space, we can solve global problems. But it is a national security interest of ours. Climate crisis. immigration reform, domestic security, international security, hunger, waste. These things all intersect. They all sit under the same tent. I've given talks on this at South by Southwest for many, many years. Um, it's why I'm personally such a, you know, I try to pick my battles. It's why I'm such a proponent of aquaculture, uh, and how important aquaculture is to solving our problems. I believe we should eat wild fish stocks. But if we're not farming seaweed and farming fish on land, at sea, in fresh water, in salt water, we are not going to be able to feed this planet in 50 years. It is an existential crisis that we are enduring. I could go on and on and on. I should say I have a really fun substack. If people go to andrewzimmern.com, we have tons of recipes, lots of fun stuff, lots of entertainment. zimmern (01:20:40.026) I occasionally address things like this in my sub stack. We have a lot of recipes and then ask me anything, conversation that would, I do a video, ask me anything segment every week. And if people want to dive into more of this with me and build that community, go to andrewzimmer.com. Subscribe to my sub stack. My website is free, thousands of recipes, lots of info, but that's the way we're gonna do this together. Jeff Dudan (01:20:56.119) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:21:07.927) So What's Aiding America has a lot to do with societal impacts and changes. Of the things that you are concerned about, are there any that you would say are unreversible or inevitable at this point? zimmern (01:21:25.646) I'm starting to feel that way about our climate crisis. I think that's the only one. What's Eat in America was the best piece of work I've ever done in my life. It was six hours on MSNBC. We did our climate crisis episode and I went to four or five places in America where food has disappeared. Jeff Dudan (01:21:36.919) Thank you. zimmern (01:21:56.218) And then one, the apple in Minnesota that's threatened. And just to give people a quick notion, the most significant and prolific oyster bed in the world was in Apalachicola, Florida. And the oyster bed that sat there, more oysters were harvested annually out of that bed than any other oyster bed in the world. And For that reason, dozens, dozens of processing plants sprung up to can and pack and freeze oysters, seafood restaurants, tourism, home prices shot up. People were building mega mansions on the water. It was a beautiful part of America, beautiful part of Florida. Great, great people. The rain changed and it moved a little bit, just a little bit. And over the course of the last 20 years, there are now no more oysters in Apalachicola Bay, zero. It went from being the Michael Jordan of oyster beds to the person no one heard of oyster beds. And the reason is with a little less rain, the water became a little more saline, saltier. And so invasive species that like the water a little more so they came in, they're called oyster drillers, dead. And now you can't grow oysters. There are some people that are trying to raise oysters to revive the genetic species of oyster there because occasionally they find a couple and they're struggling. The town has essentially boarded up. It's one of the most depressing places I've ever been. Jeff Dudan (01:23:39.959) Yeah. zimmern (01:23:45.962) you know, you want to buy a big home on the water, go there. They're available for pennies on the dollar. It is a, it's a very, very sad story. And the people who used to, the oyster men, who used to work 12 months a year in that business, now do stuff like fishing, guiding, and duck hunting, and carpentry, and a mixed bag of jobs. And so you can see families starting to change, and there's not a lot of future down there for a lot of people. Now, Every month we learn that our climate crisis is getting worse. We're not doing anything to stop it. Um, and what we are doing to stop it isn't happening in enough time. That same rain that has left 10% less in. Appalachicola has moved north to Minnesota where I live. When I moved here 30 years ago, We had soft spring rains and never had a problem with planting crops and we had soft fall rains and never had a problem with harvesting. We now have drought in the middle of the summer, I think seven years in a row. I experienced it at my own house. We're losing trees right and left, never used to. We have to run sprinklers all the time, never used to. Now I'm trying to plant grasses that don't require sprinklers, right? Because I want to do my part. But we have these very heavy rains in the early spring that are a bear to deal with. And then more importantly, we have these heavy rains and big storms in the fall. Those big storms call what's called apple cracks where all the apples crack where the stem goes in. And of course the USDA, because they don't understand food, remember my call for a food czar, insists that those apples not be used for juice. Even though any apple farmer will tell you all we do is rinse them and juice them. Apple cider can be pasteurized. There's no problem going in there. It's just we can't sell a cracked apple, right, to a consumer as a fresh apple. Now we can't juice it, can't can it, can't turn it into applesauce, can't jam it, can't bake with it. We have an antique set of laws that can't keep up. zimmern (01:26:03.466) with this enduring climate crisis that we have, that's shifting weather all over the world, that's the one that I think is going to get us. And I hope I'm wrong, but of all the, I mean, look, five years ago, you know, everyone was still saying 2050. Then it was 2037, then 2032, then 2025. And the latest studies just released last week, these are by global institutes with the smartest people in the world working on it, have all said that one and a half degree raise is inevitable, that we missed the opportunity over the last eight, nine, 12 months to just stop, to just put the brakes on it. And when I see companies stand up and pat themselves on the back saying, Well, we're gonna, you know, McDonald's, we're gonna only, you know, they use organic eggs by 2030, it's too little too late. When I see countries like ours deprioritize electric car building to a very, very small number and sustain the use of fossil fuels in America. I'm really disappointed because we know what those contributions are. Factory farms and the methane that they produce. Horrific. The chemical runoff that goes into our water just keeps making exacerbating the climate crisis, not helping the climate crisis. So that's the one that scares me a lot. And again, I say this not to be divisive. This isn't red, blue or left or right. This is this is simply, you know. Jeff Dudan (01:27:30.135) Yeah. zimmern (01:27:47.978) very, very well-documented science that we need to deal with as a country and as a planet. Otherwise, we are in really, really bad shape. Jeff Dudan (01:28:01.975) You see things happen like impossible foods and impossible burgers trying to use less meat which reduces the gases and that kind of stuff But it doesn't get I mean it doesn't get incredible traction. It's everybody doesn't Are they? zimmern (01:28:13.386) No, and those are bad products. Yeah, I mean, one of the problems that they've had, probably the biggest fall off in the food business over the last 18 months have been plant-based meats. They spiked, and I don't know if you've noticed, they kind of have gone nowhere. All the fast fooders put an impossible burger on their menu, now they're all off. People want it. Jeff Dudan (01:28:26.391) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:28:40.087) Well, Andrew, I may be an investor and early stage investor in one of those concepts. So, yes, I have noticed. zimmern (01:28:46.898) So it's a tough one. A lot of the cell-based products won't scale fast enough or they require too much energy. All the cell-based seafood products, the average American consumer isn't going to be able to buy it. And I've tasted some salmon cell-based that is mind-boggling. Jeff Dudan (01:28:51.703) Yeah. zimmern (01:29:15.006) And if they can get it the last 10% and scale it up fast enough and reduce the water usage on it, so that the offset is more reasonable, I think we're really onto something, but that's a really, really big challenge. I would rather see us, and from an investor standpoint, I would rather see us take some of that money that billionaires are putting into cell-based product and did put into plant-based product. and put it into food systems that we know work already to solve our shorter term problem, not look for much longer term gain. And I'm not saying, Jeff, that you're part of the problem or your investment is, I just think we've learned now since we all said, yes, let's put money in. And believe me, I did the same thing with the plant-based chicken product called Tindle. So, I mean, I'm right there with you. I thought that was going to be the answer. We learned it's not the answer. So again, let's not repeat and not learn from history. If we can get more workers harvesting plants and get people eating more plants, we don't need plant-based foods, per se. We do have some really interesting scientific discoveries going on in the world of protein fermentation that's absolutely mind-boggling that I see it's some very sort of high-end. Conclave's that I attend where the science that's coming out over the next couple years has now sort of jumped this Cellular and this plant-based and gone into actually capturing proteins and in the air and fermenting them and then juicing the process with Amino acids that are found in other proteins That I think may actually be The the savior companies will see there's one on the market now zimmern (01:31:16.654) called Nature's Find, F-Y-N-D. That's really, really fascinating. Jeff Dudan (01:31:18.903) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:31:23.095) Is that an additive or is it the product itself? zimmern (01:31:26.298) No, it's the problem. Well, these are products that are made from a protein that they found in Yellowstone Park. Some NASA scientists researching something over here, found something over here, and they were smart enough to recognize, wow, that's a different amino acid structure, but it's a protein. Wonder what would happen if, and then these guys left NASA and created Nature's Jeff Dudan (01:31:28.887) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:31:51.031) Yeah, well, leave it to the rocket scientists. zimmern (01:31:53.482) Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's pretty fascinating, which is why I believe in business. I believe in... I mean, look, General Mills and Cargill are two companies out here that get pilloried all the time. General Mills, because everyone says, oh, they make sugary cereals that kill our kids. And Cargill, because people are like, oh, they ammoniate meat and all the rest of that. Big business is lousy at telling their own story. There's no company in the world or government that spends more money researching drought resistant grain than General Mills. Number one. And the reason is, is that Big G, their cereals division, is their most profitable. So as they see problems globally getting wheat and rice and other grains, they have to be looking at things like kernza and trying to figure out how to get more kernza per stock. Right. So they're doing that. Cargill, for all of the things you read about on the front page that people feel they're doing poorly, and by the way, I don't have a business relationship with either one, I just know them intimately because they're Minnesota based. Cargill are the ones who looked at the aquaculture problem and said, we have a solution, we'll create a one-to-one product instead of one-to-eight for feed for aquaculture, especially for salmon. So, We were feeding eight pounds of salmon chow to fish to yield one pound of meat at the end. That's not sustainable. Now we're one to one. In fact, we're almost negative on it in terms of how much feed it takes to raise them because of they're now finding ways to use fish bones and fish skin and other species around the world. Jeff Dudan (01:33:22.871) Mm-hmm. zimmern (01:33:42.834) and safely transport it and turn it into fish pellets. They also developed the machinery that times the food. So none of it's falling to the ground. They're feeding the salmon less food, but more frequently putting less per square meter in these giant tents in the middle of the ocean. And so salmon aquaculture went from being a little sketchy to being one of the most dependable and reliable of all the... uh, aquaculture systems that we have. And, and a lot of the reason that aquaculture has exploded is because of the work that companies like Cargill have done to address the feed issues, which was the biggest barrier to success there. So, you know, I believe the answers are out there. I believe financially, I mean, I'm stunned from an energy standpoint that the, the batteries in cars are still reliant on so many, uh, high end. metals that we need. I'm holding out hope against hope about the hydrogen batteries. You know, I mean, the problem there, of course, is that hydrogen is essentially free. So there's not as much money to be made on it. So, you know, that sadly, while capitalism, I believe, will save us, I also believe that capitalism is a root cause of some of our problems. When you asked me about processed food, Jeff Dudan (01:34:49.207) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:34:57.463) Haha zimmern (01:35:08.922) It's simply greed. I mean, you know, you can't, you go to a business and say, hey, stop selling pop tarts. They're not good for kids. We need to feed them whole grains and eggs and juice and other things to start their day that are more natural. And vegetables, we need to eat. Our breakfasts in America need to look more like the ones in Japan, but go ahead and try to change food culture that quickly, not gonna happen. So it's a very difficult challenge. Jeff Dudan (01:35:32.215) Right. Well, so you have lobbies and you had mentioned that laws and legislation is going to be what it takes. So you've got let's see. Well, you've got right. You get the food industry lobby right off the bat that's doing very well with all of the things that are in our pantry. And then you have Big Pharma, who is doing very well treating the things that. those foods cause for us and doing very well inside of that. So without legislation and a hard stop and just saying, look, this is the way that we need to eat and here's the way that we're going to do it, that's trillions of dollars of business change. And there's, and politically, the way that it works is it's gonna be small steps to nibble away excuse the pun, at this problem. zimmern (01:36:30.402) You mentioned diabetes being in your family before. Between pills like metformin, dozens of different types of short and long-term acting drugs like Xemgline, Ozempic, and Novalog, all the things that people inject themselves with, some insulin-based, some non-insulin-based. Jeff Dudan (01:36:33.079) Yes. zimmern (01:36:57.01) as well as medical procedures for everything from amputations to eyesight to all kinds of stuff. You know with cardiopulmonary issues and diabetes you add those in to those other two groups that you talked about and is it statistically try to get those companies off the gravy train when they know they can give away hundreds and hundreds of outspend everyone. Jeff Dudan (01:37:14.647) Yes. Jeff Dudan (01:37:25.495) That's right. zimmern (01:37:26.37) to make sure that we sort of stay sick, it's a problem. And it's why we are in desperate need of legislation to get ahead of this. And by the way, and I'm very concerned about divisiveness in our country from a cultural standpoint, which is why I remind people, this is not left or right or red or blue, this is forward. diabetes and the other processed food diseases, all the other things we talked about, affect everyone in this country equally. It does not select liberals or conservatives or reds or blue states. Well, I should say it does disproportionately or certain food issues and hunger and other issues that do disproportionately affect Jeff Dudan (01:38:08.631) Yes. zimmern (01:38:22.846) what were all red states in the South. I mean, Georgia is now kind of a purple state, and I don't wanna get into a political thing, but there are a lot of facts and figures around those issues. A lot of our poor states tend to lean right, but this is an equal opportunity issue. I mean, grandpa still gets the heart attacks too early, kids are getting juvenile diabetes too early. It's... Jeff Dudan (01:38:50.871) Yes. zimmern (01:38:54.647) it's kind of a mess. I will end on this note. I am still very optimistic. And the reason is that I do believe in what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, which is the indomitable nature of the human spirit to want to collect information and do good things in this world. I believe in that. I believe that's bigger. than the challenges that are in front of us. I just think we need to get more juice in that system. And here's what I mean by that. When you ask me about things I believe in and I talk about with my teams, we all have the power and wisdom inside of us. It's like we're lamps with arms and we're carrying around our own electrical cord. And we're just looking to plug in somewhere to get some more juice. You know, I believe we come built with everything that we need to overcome these challenges. I think what's important is that we find that energy resource, which is why, you know, I was another reason why I was eager to come on and talk with you. I think the more we have these conversations, the more people that are like us who are talking about actual real world issues, I don't want Cargill or General Mills to go away. because I actually need their distribution systems, their global factories, their standards and practices groups that understand how to feed a hungry planet. We need big food. We just have to eliminate their bad practices and accentuate the good ones with other people and start to level that playing field. And I think we can do it. Jeff Dudan (01:40:39.863) Andrew, you have been incredibly generous with your time today, and this has been just a joy and a pleasure for me. I want to thank you for spending this time with us. zimmern (01:40:49.23) Oh, I appreciate it so much. Thank you for supplying some great conversation and take care, enjoy North Carolina. What a beautiful place to be in the fall. Jeff Dudan (01:41:00.023) Yeah, last question. If you had, you have one go-to sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be? zimmern (01:41:08.999) Ask for help. Jeff Dudan (01:41:10.647) Yes. zimmern (01:41:12.838) I think I spent a lifetime, half a lifetime, and never, and I mean never said the words I don't know how to do that, can you help me? Now I've never conversely had anybody ask me that and say no I won't help you. As human beings we yearn for that. Sometimes it's ego. Oh I'll help you. You know I mean yeah thank you for recognizing I'm so smart. I'll help. At the end of the day the humility and the grace that exists between one person asking another person for help will move mountains. Jeff Dudan (01:41:34.039) Exactly. Jeff Dudan (01:41:40.087) Yes. Jeff Dudan (01:41:57.719) Andrew Zimmern, thank you for being with us on the home front. Jeff Dudan (01:42:05.879) If you don't mind.

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