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Brief Summary On this special episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Sam Hartman —former Notre Dame and Wake Forest quarterback and the ACC’s all-time passing touchdown leader—just days before the NFL draft. The conversation covers everything from childhood setbacks and locker room brotherhood to mental health, NIL reality, and the deeper purpose behind the game of football. Sam opens up about resilience, loss, growth, and what it really takes to lead both on and off the field. Key Takeaways Run your own race : Sam emphasizes staying focused on your own growth instead of comparing to others, especially in today’s social media age. Football is family : The true value of sports is found in brotherhood, shared suffering, and lifelong memories—not stats or headlines. Mental health matters : Sam advocates for performance therapy and emotional awareness for athletes, especially young men. NIL myths : He debunks the idea that most players are getting rich from NIL, sharing the reality of handshake deals and humble earnings. Leadership through self-awareness : The best leaders don’t need to be loud—they need to be observant, consistent, and serve others first. Faith and perspective : Sam recalls formative spiritual moments from childhood that gave him clarity and purpose through life’s hardest moments. Featured Quote “I think the number one thing I’ve learned—from five years old to now—is run your own race.” TRANCRIPT Who Is Sam Hartman? ACC’s All-Time Touchdown Leader Shares His Story Jeff Dudan (00:00) Okay. Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Dudan, and we are on the Homefront today with the phenomenal Sam Hartman. Welcome, Sam. Sam Hartman (00:08) Appreciate you having me. It’s been a while since we’ve talked, and especially not in this setting, but I’m excited to be here. Jeff Dudan (00:15) I’m excited about today, Sam, because anytime we spend time together, I leave inspired, educated, and entertained. We just spent some time together at Donald Miller’s house in Nashville — the great business coach and consultant behind Building a StoryBrand. You were gracious enough to invite me to that mastermind, and I was thankful to be there. So I just can’t get enough of you, Sam. NFL Draft Prep and Dockside Dreams: Sam Hartman on What Comes Next Jeff Dudan (01:01) Let’s start from the beginning. For people who don’t know you — who is Sam Hartman? Sam Hartman (01:09) Probably the kid rolling in the grass at that YMCA t-ball field. I’ve been playing football since I was five, probably throwing a football since I was three. This journey has been filled with great people — teammates, coaches, family. It’s been about resilience, experience, and determination. Jeff Dudan (03:01) I remember that. My son Zach and your brother Joe played together. You were just a little guy running around on the sidelines. It’s incredible how far you’ve come. Sam Hartman (03:21) Yeah, Zach and your family have played a pivotal role in my life. It’s full circle to be sitting here today. The key words for me are resilience — through injuries and setbacks. Experience — six years of college football. And determination — just that drive to never quit. Jeff Dudan (05:17) You were always playing up — with older kids. And you never backed down. That shaped a lot of your grit. Let’s talk about what sports gives kids, especially those who won’t play in the NFL. I Wanted to Quit Football: The Moment Sam Almost Walked Away Sam Hartman (06:01) Yeah. Social media has created a flashy, showy version of sports. But the heart of it is the team. Being around people you have nothing in common with, but who become your brothers. Honestly — I almost quit football. I was fourth string as a freshman. I was about to walk into the coach’s office and quit. Zach stopped me, took me to Cookout, and convinced me to stay. That changed everything. Jeff Dudan (10:22) That’s incredible. Zach didn’t even want to play quarterback, but he stepped in. He knew the chair was warm for you, and that story is just amazing. Sam Hartman (10:50) Yeah — and he came back to help win that state championship. We both played in that game. I’ll never forget that. Jeff Dudan (12:53) So many kids today are chasing highlights, not memories. Sports are becoming ultra-specialized. Kids are transferring schools at 11 years old. It’s tough out there for the ones who just want to play and be part of something. What Football Means to Me: Brotherhood, Adversity, and the Huddle Sam Hartman (14:05) Exactly. My advice: Run your own race. Don’t compare. Don’t worry about who's getting the offers. What can you do today to get better? That applies at 7, 17, or 57. The Blood Clot That Almost Ended It: Sam’s Rib Removal Surgery Before Senior Year Jeff Dudan (19:21) Deion Sanders said it best at our IFA conference: Be where your feet are. You had a huge adversity moment with that blood clot — they removed your rib. Right before your senior season. What got you through it? Sam Hartman (20:30) It was my teammates. Being around the team, hearing the horn, smelling the grass — that’s what I missed. That’s what drove me. I had a yelling match with the surgeon because I had to come back faster. Not to throw touchdowns, but just to be in the huddle. Jeff Dudan (23:27) Let’s talk about mental health and parenting. Kids feel more isolated than ever. If you could give parents one piece of advice for raising teenage athletes, what would it be? Sam Hartman (24:00) Success isn’t touchdowns or money — it’s being present. Living in the moment. Parents need to celebrate their kids’ effort — not just their results. Jeff Dudan (27:22) That’s powerful. I’ve come to appreciate unique ability. Every kid has something that lights them up — our job is to find it and support it. You had great parents. I’ll never forget the sleepover story where you showed up to the basketball game with marker all over your face. Sam Hartman (31:13) Mark Cagno... that sleepover was legendary. He needs to be your next guest. Jeff Dudan (32:19) Now let’s get serious — NIL. You’ve lived in both worlds: pre-NIL and during. What was that like? Sam Hartman (32:35) NIL changed everything. I saw both sides — Wake Forest was the “pure” side. Notre Dame was more business. But people assume I made millions — I didn’t. There was no guaranteed money. No contract. Just handshake deals. Jeff Dudan (35:11) People don’t realize how many college athletes couldn’t afford to go home in the summer. NIL has helped that. But it’s not the golden goose people think it is. Sam Hartman (38:35) Exactly. Most deals are small. And now, with NIL and the transfer portal, it’s just a different game. But I chose Notre Dame because of football. Everything else was gravy. Jeff Dudan (39:48) You were already the all-time ACC touchdown leader — and you chose to have one more great experience. What was it like walking into the Notre Dame locker room? Sam Hartman (41:02) Joe Montana was outside the locker room. Brady Quinn called me. We had mass at the Basilica. It was movie-level stuff. But the best part? Still the team. Jeff Dudan (45:01) Now you're heading into the NFL. You’ve got endorsements, exposure, and distractions. But you’ve always been focused. How are you staying grounded? Sam Hartman (45:14) Self-awareness. That’s the key. I don’t take every deal. I think about how it affects the team. I share my perks with the O-line. If you’re not a servant leader, you’re not a leader. Jeff Dudan (50:00) That level of awareness — understanding cadence and tempo — that’s leadership. Sam Hartman (52:04) It's all perspective. I remember sitting in the locker room at an App State game as a kid. Two players reached out their hands during the Lord’s Prayer. That moment — that energy — it changed everything for me. Jeff Dudan (56:02) I remember that. Coach Moore welcomed everyone into the locker room. The energy was electric. Full circle moment. Sam Hartman (59:04) Now, I’m about to report to camp. I don’t know where I’ll be in ten days. But wherever I go, I’m going to figure out where I fit, how to be an asset, and how to serve the team. Jeff Dudan (1:03:02) You’ve always been a locker room guy. A leader. You learned how to adapt, whether at Wake or Notre Dame. Sam Hartman (1:05:05) Now it’s about doing the right thing — in the locker room, in the community, in the endorsements. People are watching. But most of all, I’ve got to get my playbook and get to work. Jeff Dudan (1:08:13) One last question, Sam. If you had one sentence to speak into someone’s life and make an impact, what would it be? Sam Hartman (1:08:42) “I’m proud of you.” Jeff Dudan (1:08:48) That’s perfect. Thanks for being with us on the Homefront. We’ll be cheering for you every step of the way. u give to a 13:52 young person who finds themselves you know not really sure that they want to make a career of this but yet they're 13:59 they they want to be a part of it right no I mean I I I understand the want and the and I would say it's definitely What Football Means To Sam 14:05 worth it um yeah I mean like I think for me I like you said like when I was young 14:11 right like everybody there's always the kids that just kind of stand out you're like oh that kid's going to he'll be fine and then you yeah when you kind of 14:18 when I would play I'd look and be like oh that kid's really good and then in three to four years you kind of realized 14:23 like I've caught that kid and passed that kid and for me it was always so interesting and I think like you hit it 14:28 on the had was I played up and so I always felt like I was good enough to be there but there was always those kids 14:34 that were way better than me more mature and yeah they had that little Edge on me and so it always I always was chasing 14:40 that and I always was trying to get better but like I showed up to high school like a as a freshman like 120 lbs 14:46 5'8 right and I think in in that instance and then now in this instance 14:53 where I'm showing up to the combine and I'm 61 210 lbs and you got guys like Drake May or you got guys you know that 15:00 are just these Monsters of human beings and you're like wait a second and you start looking and I think the number one 15:06 thing throughout this entire process that I've learned and it I if you could apply if I could have applied it to 15:11 myself when I was 5 years old and I can still apply it when I'm 24 is to run your own race because I think like it's 15:18 so easy like you said to get caught in the social media thing of oh like look 15:24 this kid this kid's in eighth grade and you just got an offer this kid's in you know there's a fifth grader who's you know 61 200 lb like I promise you that 15:31 kid who's 61 in fifth grade he's going to be 6'1 in when he's at my age like all those things are going to and 15:38 there's going to be a kid who's 61 and then he becomes 7 foot and he's going to be the best player you've ever seen but it's all it's all like right here right 15:46 it's like the horse running the race right why do they have blinders on so they don't get distracted by the other Racers yeah and like that whole process 15:52 especially at the combine level is right you're seeing you know these top five quarterbacks all you do you turn on ESPN 15:58 right now who are they talking about not me they're talking about everybody else and it's like how easy it can be to just 16:03 say oh shoot what's he what's he doing what's he doing and there's so many instances throughout my entire life like 16:09 even like as a freshman I'm like well Zach's a starting quarterback what am I what am I doing wrong not why am I not 16:16 why what do I what can I do to get better it was always what's he doing what's that person why is this coach not like me why does this not what what am I 16:23 doing right now to make myself the best I can be so when that opportunity comes whether it's on you know your Superstar 16:28 TR team or it's your local Rec team it's what am I doing with my feet in the ground right now at this point and that 16:36 applies to the 7-year-old 15year old 21y old 24y old 16:43 50y old who's working at this job and is worried about what his cooworker is getting accomplished and not what he's 16:48 trying to do at that moment and it for me is every time a coach like how's this process been it's about running your own 16:54 race not looking over your shoulder not you know why am I not getting talk to you why am I not taking a 30 visit yeah 17:01 what am I doing to get better today and it was something my dad used to say all the time and it's so cliche and I hate 17:07 it and I hated it but it was like have you gotten bigger faster stronger today and you can apply that to anything yeah 17:12 have you gotten smarter have you gotten you know thinner whatever you want to be whatever you want to do it's are you 17:17 doing that and everything else you know you can you can't control and you looked 17:22 at me when you said thinner but so that being said and I will you mentioned it 17:28 again um to put the bow on it um you and Zach had been good friends before that 17:35 um he's in this role uh that you know he was asked to do he did it to the best of 17:40 his ability he knew he was keeping the chair warm for you but to finish that story you both you went on I think it 17:47 was you were maybe 12 and one that year you won the state championship and you both played in the state championship 17:53 game yeah incredible together incredible I I think I threw one completion and one pick I was really excited well you know 17:59 the the the pretty girl came up to me after the game wanted a picture I felt like I was walking on water so it was 18:05 good it was good yeah um awesome what's interesting about what you just shared 18:11 was that there's 10 million young athletes and uh uh 30 million young 18:18 ladies uh you know looking at you and saying man I would I would give anything to be in that position right I'd be be 18:25 anything to be uh all over the media great social media following uh people 18:30 you know almost almost making fun of you during the combine for how good-looking you are and what a good athlete you look 18:36 like and all of this stuff but uh they would think that you have it all but yet 18:41 you still have to check yourself from being envious of other people and envy I 18:47 have found is the enemy of Enlightenment when you can literally do run your own race and you stop being envious because 18:54 you can look at it in business there's always somebody that's uh you know I used to look at it and say oh man 18:59 they're doing really well how old are they and how like how do they get there faster um you know how much how much do 19:05 they have how how big is their business and man it just it is it's Kryptonite 19:10 it's poison uh to do that you got to just be comfortable you know Liv in the 19:15 moment uh and you know Deion Sanders was our speaker at our IFA uh conference The Blood Clot: Having a Rib Removed 19:21 this year and one of the things he said that people really resonated with was be where your feet are be in the moment be 19:29 present you mentioned adversity you've had uh quite a few things surgeries uh 19:36 before uh was it your senior season at Wake Forest with your rib yeah yeah and 19:42 uh so you're you're in Camp and you're um you had had uh surgery on your neck 19:48 before yeah I have the nice nice scar right here from a thyroid procedure when I was like 17 just born with it rare 19:55 defect yeah won the lottery with that one so it was like I'm a case study still I still get text for both events 20:02 like hey can we where you can we use your evidence to you know show it at a a 20:07 medical conference really oh yeah fascinating and then you uh you get a 20:13 blood clot and they end up having to remove your upper rib and this is all 20:18 right before your senior season which is your set up for incredible success right 20:24 what did you tell yourself during that time to keep your head the right place 20:30 yeah I mean honestly it wasn't anything too special like I you know you'd love to have this like moment where I you 20:36 know looked in the mirror and said you know at had I lost all this weight and you know looking at the scar and I can't 20:42 raise my left arm above you know right whatever and it's probably good it was your left side exactly it probably 20:47 wouldn't be wouldn't be here if that was the other way around not going what there um but I I think again it was the 20:53 teammates like I think I never forget the first practice I went to after I got hurt or it was really after I I had 20:59 gotten the blood clot removed and so I was kind of in line to get the rib removed and they wanted to kind of clean 21:04 out the blood clot and I get to go to I get to go to practice I'm feeling fine like it was just a weird I had this huge 21:10 wrap on my arm and whatever and I show up and I'm like I'm like okay like it kind of you remember it right that 21:16 feeling like you hear the the horn yeah right everyone kind of SM the smell there's the grass smell of the grass the 21:22 smell of the turf right and you're like the pads you're like Okay and like it was the first day of full pads too yeah 21:28 it's Camp right there's a lot of pimped up Anger from Spring ball things are going and I'm like wait a second why am 21:34 I not doing this and then that never forget that first team when they go ones ones and ones like team and I'm just 21:41 like tears cuz I'm like that's my job that's mine that's it's that's my 21:47 Ferrari right that's the car that's my you know Fast and Furious that's my you know buildup and you're running you're 21:53 racing that quarter mile in my car and I like and I'll never forget like I hated the the the feeling of not being out 22:01 there so much that that was what drove me to push the rehab and fight the talk 22:07 I got in a yelling match with this like sixy old seveny old lady the doc Dr 22:13 Julie frag who's you know vernacular surgeon known around the world I'm in a screaming match with her about how I can 22:19 I can come back faster than what you're telling me cuz I'm like this there is there is no right you tear your rotator 22:24 cuff there's a six to seven what those weeks or months that you're out right for for this this is like we don't know 22:30 like we've never done it before you no one ever come people are coming back to go live 9 to5 not go play the one of the 22:37 most physical Sports and um and known to man and I'm like well yeah but I feel fine and I'm like little they know I 22:44 can't move my I have no I still don't have feeling on the back of my arm from the nerve damage and it was all these 22:49 things and I'm like but the number one thing was getting back on the field not to go throw the touchdown it was just to 22:54 be around the camaraderie right like the Huddle that is kind of and a probably a 23:00 you know grand scheme of life is the Huddle is kind of dismembering in a sense if we want to go on a real deep 23:05 dive of football at this point especially college football but that huddle aspect I was like that's my spot 23:13 right if I'm on a chest like I'm I'm on that chess board and now I'm off I'm off the sideline and so that was some that 23:21 was the number one motivator for me got it as a society we've never been more 23:27 connected than we are right now and at the same time people have never felt more alone there's more depression Parenting an Athlete 23:34 there's more anxiety there's more mental illness there's more suicide there's there's all of these things um that are 23:41 on the rise and people are trying to get a handle on why if you were to give some 23:47 advice to parents about what their kids need to hear from them in their teenage years what would that be yeah I mean I I 23:54 think obviously that's a pivotal point for a lot of kids and like I can speak to m athletes in a sense and I you know you 24:00 can speak to all but I would specifically say male athletes that are you know trying to reach that next level 24:06 whether it's yep whether it's the next level is you know starting on your high school team or playing in college or 24:11 whatever it is right that's a stressful time I I think there's such a 24:17 misconstruction of how to look at success okay and I and I like I talked 24:23 to it I literally talked to my therapist yesterday I got this new performance coach who's incredible and um we're just 24:29 g i I was in it with another lady and I love she was great and I kind of stopped doing her stopped with her and then 24:35 started moving on to another performance coach and um just breaking down the constructs of what reality is and at 24 24:43 years old you're I feel like I'm so behind the eightball but I obviously hopefully have a lot more time to um 24:48 really dive into but just the years of and what when what ways you behind oh I mean I just think like if I could do 24:55 this if there was a class in Middle School teaching me how to struct failure success and everything in between would 25:01 be the society as a whole would be light years ahead I think especially men and I think you you wouldn't be able to do it 25:08 at in eth grade I think maybe as a junior in high school instead of a sex ed class there should be or there 25:13 probably should be a sex class but a mental health and performance aspect because it's not even mental health it's 25:19 just performance and it's not performance as a football player it's performance as a human as a husband as a 25:25 father all those different things I think you can it's like a muscle you can grow and 25:31 strengthen okay and I think to not go way off track but for a kid right he's 25:38 going to as a teenager you think success is money you think it's girls you think it's throwing touchdowns you think it's 25:44 starting I would say success is living in the present moment being at where 25:49 your feet are at winning the moment right we call all those different things that's going to be what makes the rest 25:57 of your life successful because right I can sit here and remember the times when all I was thinking about was the um 26:04 Senior Bowl while I was training how is that helping me when I'm 26:09 not thinking about okay I got to get my feet underneath me right pun intended in 26:15 this moment and make this throw while I'm still thinking oh what if like I miss a call at the Senior Bowl right and 26:22 then you can I now let's put it into the high school terms or the middle school terms it's like I'm an eighth grade 26:27 quarterback I want to be the St as a freshman I'm out training this offseason getting ready to go to my freshman year 26:32 and all I'm thinking about is oh man like what if you know the coach you know it's too hard I don't understand it when 26:38 you're not focused on the moment you're in right now and for the parent right it's like okay well that sounds great 26:44 that'd be great I'd love to just manipulate my kid I think it's the belief in them and it's the belief not 26:50 that I love you and you're my favorite because you're the starting quarterback as a freshman it's because you're 26:56 working your butt off for me you're not you're working your butt off to get to that goal and I'm proud of you for doing 27:02 that whether you're the starter whether you're the four string whether you're the water boy I love you for your intensity and I 27:08 love for your intentionality of what you're trying to accomplish and what you're trying to do and anything after that is that's not success that or 27:15 that's not the find of my relationship with you yeah I've come to appreciate um 27:22 the concept of unique ability and everybody regardless of what they do if 27:27 they're a teacher if they're an artist if they're uh a videographer you know uh 27:32 the people we've got working here with us today everybody has uh unique abilities that need to be appreciated 27:39 and I think parents can do well to identify really what makes those those 27:46 kids light up and then to unconditionally support them in those things and then there's also getting 27:52 them tools paying paying enough attention being situationally aware enough to say you know what 27:59 um you know it this might not be what they're good at but you know I see that they've got these Tendencies let me put 28:05 them in this and let me give him exposure to several different things and just see where it clicks for him it's 28:11 kind of the same way with uh Jack you know my youngest and you know he we played football for seven years you know 28:19 it's good um but you know never you know never asked me to you know put him in a 28:24 camp or anything like that uh but then when he found lacrosse it was something that he really liked uh it was you know 28:31 a lot of the contact of football and a lot of good skills a lot of speed and 28:36 stuff size didn't matter matter quite as much and then you get to hit people with sticks ex which You Know Jack that's fun 28:44 so um uh so finding people's unique ability and uh supporting inside of that 28:50 and I know you've had incredibly uh support of parents marking l so we've been friends really since that day I 28:56 mean I think we started doing travel baseball together at 7 and you know it just went right on through which leads 29:03 me to a story and I don't know if you remember this but um there was a uh it 29:09 was during basketball season and I don't know if we were in steuarts of the game I think I something like this and you 29:17 know we there was uh it was somebody's birthday maybe y I know exactly it's a good one and we had a sleepover at my 29:25 house y right and yeah you know I'm I'm big about autonomy right let the let the 29:32 let the big dogs hunt you know let them do what they want to do so I went to bed 29:38 uh and we had what an 8: a.m. game or something like that yeah cuz we already we already lost every game the night the 29:44 day before so we had like an 8: a.m. game and uh you guys I think stayed up till 5:00 a.m. for sure or something 29:51 like that so I Rouse you guys out and I you know put your put your jerseys on you and I take you in and your father's 29:59 there and you kids showed up you had bags under your eyes and we all swollen 30:04 all pale you could barely talk uh you're warming up um one of the kids Mark had 30:11 his hair straight up and then you he had fell asleep first of course he had markers all over his face and uh and of 30:17 course I'm just walking in like here they are and your dad he was so I don't think you talked to me for uh for got 30:24 month but um and but the comment was is you know do you want to be sleepover kids or do you want to be do you want to 30:31 be athletes and um there's a lot of Truth to that uh I know that you guys 30:36 did um uh one of the things you guys did was which I really really applaud was you guys did you and Joe did 60 Minutes 30:44 of uh activity every day and it didn't matter what it was you could go down in the batting cage you could throw you 30:49 could catch you could do whatever it is 60 Minutes is a is a yeah that was let's bump that number up so 60 minutes but 30:56 like it's like it's a you have a 60-minute practice on a Thursday you know before your big practice it goes 31:02 two and a half hours that's right okay well and you're late to your 10: a.m. yeah like go so um so I don't know I 31:07 think I think you've done pretty good for a sleepover kit yeah holy cow I just I just imagine like just the fly on the 31:13 wall cuz like I'm sure the other team looked like that too dude you guys were throwing the basketball at the bottom of 31:19 the rim like you couldn't even I mean it was it was the oh my goodness I can 31:24 remember like I remember you remember cag's face with the marker on it all swollen yeah oh man that's awesome oh 31:32 well you know but um I'll tell you what uh there's a book there's a book out there called uh the 2 a. principal and 31:39 it says all great stories uh start after 2 a.m. I don't endorse that I don't think that's true I don't think anything 31:44 good happens after that but you know it was some good that's some com I mean the mark cagno like 31:52 sleepover I'm just I have so many great like memories of him like the chapstick 31:58 story at my h house in Lake Norman is just Infamous with Mark Mark cagno I feel like he should be the next guest 32:04 like I just what is he doing I don't uh I think he's living in New York and uh doing something in finance yeah there 32:11 you go kly that's awesome yeah makes sense so um moving on to 32:19 college and now especially for high-profile positions it's a business NIL 32:24 oh yeah how are you dealing with that or how did you it's different now did so 32:30 how did you deal because Nils happened right when you were in school yeah so 32:35 how did you deal with that yeah I mean I think um it was cool because I got both worlds I think I got the pureness you 32:41 know in 2018 and 2019 then kind of as everybody's world did it got flipped on its head during Co and 2020 um but I 32:49 mean I I I think the the great thing for me was I saw the game at for what it was 32:55 at the beginning 2018 2019 of It's A Team game it's selflessness we're at Wake Forest where when the nil stuff did 33:02 start coming we're like yeah but that's not us like that's everybody else right we're Ohio State yeah we're not touching 33:09 that and um as as it progressed right you could see that you know the there 33:14 were guys on the team where the wheels were turning and and you know the the money is kind of coming and going and it 33:20 was kind of you know a a miniature NFL idea of like yeah hey like what if I 33:25 could get this deal hey what if you know this guy just made a million dollars like I can make a million dollars it's like no no you can't and I think that's 33:32 the misconception of this whole reality is like there is a 5 to 10% of college 33:38 football and that's a that's probably an overestimation that are generous that's right making that money and then there's 33:44 the rest that are making a $500 deal a $300 deal hey you get free food for a 33:50 week or right like all of that stuff one in the grand schemes if you are serious 33:55 about the game and serious about going to play at the next like the NFL like that money's chump change in comparison to what you you could but there's also 34:03 the great side of it where kids are able to pay you know to to fly home instead of hey you get a $2,000 stien like yeah 34:10 you got to save that for food hey maybe you're making 10 grand now and you can fly your your family out for you know a 34:16 a game or the you can fly home for the weekend like those things are incredible like I that was something that being 34:22 able to be around guys and seeing that was so nice you we had kids that with Notre Dame you had such a Outreach of 34:28 you know kids were from Hawaii so it's like their they're able to fly their whole family out all those things are 34:34 that's that's what I think nil is meant to be for right to help compensate the guys for not being able to go you know 34:41 work get a job all those things and the money they bring in um look when we were in school people we had a Fieldhouse 34:48 that had an equipment room and people lived in there oh yeah over the summer because they wanted to stay there and 34:53 work out and there was a month they couldn't afford to fly I mean we had kids from all over the country they 34:59 couldn't afford to fly home they didn't have money for an apartment the scholarship was going to pick up when they were going to get to move back in 35:05 the dorm they had a gap for two weeks and they' sting and live in the in the equipment room in the Fieldhouse yeah no 35:11 it's it's so unnecessary and then they go out and you know sell 50,000 tickets on the weekend exactly and that's 35:18 they're making a million dollars and like you know a million dollars in concessions and that's without ticket sales it's without owns so there is 35:24 obviously there was a need for it there's a great the great things there's the bad things and then it becomes the business side of it yeah because the 35:32 cool thing one being at wake and then going to another Dame is you you kind of see both sides of the spectrum where you 35:38 see a Wake Forest team that struggled this year and partially it was retention and Coach Clon has said it right there's 35:45 the the retention of players that you normally on a on a normal no nil you you 35:50 keep or they go to the NFL and now they're out on other teams and in my 35:55 case I have to play them and so yeah um that part of it you see and then you go to Notre Dame and you see the the 36:02 benefits of it where you get to bring people in and you get to create kind of these teams that have you know Talent 36:07 from all over and they're older and developed and um but then you also see it where it's like these kids are 36:12 bouncing from school to school to school to chase this offer to chase this deal and it's like hey you can do all this 36:20 but then like what happens when you stop performing like is it going to become something where hey you stop performing 36:26 I'm going to take that money back and you're cut like the NFL right cuz then you're cut from the team you're out of 36:31 the organization you don't have a college degree because you've transferred three times right and you're you your money yeah maybe you made 36:38 $100,000 that's going to last you how long and like all those different things 36:44 are what you have to start realizing as this thing progress more and more is like you said it's a business are are 36:50 you going to become an employee you're going to get health benefits are you going to get like yeah are can you get cut like a coach can get fired yeah like 36:58 all those things right and that's great because you learn early right like that 37:03 okay now that when I go into the real world like these things are implications like taxes like I'm getting hammered on 37:08 taxes right now cuz I don't have any assets I need to buy stuff yeah not like shoes and stuff like this but like real 37:15 estate but um all those things was like something like you asked was just like that's the part of the business and it 37:22 was okay the reason for Trans Notre Dame wasn't for me I think Comes This 37:27 misconception of oh all this money that he got oh you know the nil you know he 37:33 wanted the deals I'm like I wish I I won't say the number but the number was nowhere close to anything that everyone 37:39 has estimated like the number that they put up there it was nowhere close I had no guarantee of money like they was say 37:46 hey we're going to get you to this number but there was no signed papers there was no nothing okay there was no so it's a handshake deal it was a 37:52 handshake deal and the money comes from boosters so the money is like there's a collective that they create and then we 37:57 do like a Notre Dame it's really cool you get to you go do like charity work and I got hooked up with um the Ronald 38:03 McDonald House in mwaka and there's obviously Ron McDonald houses all over the world or the country and so I still 38:10 do stuff with them like I did um when I went I went to the Super Bowl and did a stuff with Turbo Tax and they donated 38:17 portions Beats by Dre donated headphones to the kids and during my pro day I had to go back and you know give out to the 38:23 kids in the hospital and it so like there's that side of it too can donate money to the Charities and do all this 38:30 stuff but that's how Notre Dame ran it but it was all this like talk of that and then like when things go south we're 38:35 like oh the fans are like oh they we brought in this kid and we're paying him a million doll I'm like no you weren't I promise you that you weren't if I was 38:42 making a million dollars trust me you would know I'd be driving around in a Mercedes I'd be driving around a 38:47 Lamborghini I'm not smart with that stuff I would have bought something sick you would have known I'd have been private jetting in and out of there like 38:53 I promise you my mom knows she she sees my bank statements there spend money but 38:59 it was for the the game aspect of it yeah and I think that that as you say 39:05 it's a business to me I still see football as the game I play and love since when I was 5 years old and I'm 39:10 playing now but it was just another opportunity because as I know the business of the NFL and what I'm getting 39:17 ready to go into it's even more Cutthroat than it's already is that's right in the in the college level and so 39:23 I said hey I go to another Dame there's an there's an opening in a spot to play at school like Notre Dame and play with 39:29 the golden helmet on under the golden dome under Touchdown Jesus in front of 80,000 people sign me up yeah and then 39:35 they're like yeah but you can make money this way and I'm like oh cool like yeah and that was so that was just gravy on Notre Dame 39:42 top of the fact that it was the next adventure you already had become the what the leading touchdown thrower in 39:48 the history of the ACC yeah whatever something like that yeah something like that you know if you check look that up 39:53 but um so you've but you had accomplished that you'd really elev that program been a big part of it great 40:00 coach great coach uh and you still have a year of Eligibility to go and have 40:07 another incredible experience and that was a driving Factor yeah no I mean it was football and it was the Huddle it 40:13 was they huddle there at Notre Dame we still right this year this going into this year they don't huddle anymore 40:18 that's a new thing but we huddled right you get to go and and on your it'd be on my left was Joe Al you know and you have 40:25 audri ese on my right and you got a bunch of other guys around you wow yeah it's both those and so that whole the 40:33 camaraderie there and you do mass in the Basilica and you do the walk and I I mean the at the the thinnest Parts 40:40 there's five deep people and at the biggest Parts closer to the stadium there's 30 to 40 deep as you're walking 40:46 down you know through this campus that feels like you're in a movie and um you get to go in there and you got Joe 40:52 Montana standing outside the locker room and you know you're that's Joe Montana 40:57 like holy cow and you know Joe thyman called me last night just you know checking in making sure everything's 41:02 good Brady Quinn's another it's good tough that's tough um but again 41:09 those those moments and those things and it again it's all the kind of revolves around the beginning of this whole yeah 41:16 sit down was the team and the teammates and the people around the game that have you know impacted me and impact the game 41:21 and impact the legacy of it for years to come it's not how much money this guy made what deal did he get what you know 41:27 what's like this going on it's what we did on the field together in the locker room right off the field all those 41:34 things that you understand and know yeah right at your time at app is like those are the moments you remember you don't 41:39 remember like 100% I don't remember like you said the touchdown I don't like I I remember celebrating with those guys 41:45 like after we won but I don't remember what touchdown was which and when is this and the ball and all like it was 41:52 it's funny my first college game that I played in I I played my real college game was was App State at Wake Forest 41:59 here you go it was uh our first game of the season 1989 Ricky PRL yeah uh was 42:04 the punt returner and he you know we had some locker room material because the year before app had tied them and kept 42:11 them out of some bowl game or something so the next year we come back and he said something the effective if we beat 42:17 them by it won't if we beat him by a 100 it won't make up for last year and that was the locker room material um you know 42:24 we uh it was my first you know real college game so I was pissing in my pants right you know I was on the 42:29 kickoff return team in the middle and then started at tight ends and um we 42:35 beat him 15 to 10 and what but what I remember I don't remember the plays I remember I graded out well uh and we had 42:42 like average like eight yards on toss around our side so like me and the T we had a tackle that went to the league for 42:48 like 10 years uh Derek Graham and um but what I remember is that after the game 42:55 they had fireworks go off and but we had one and then we're running around the sidelines and all of 43:00 our fans crushed down like it's just that yeah it was that that's honestly I 43:05 don't remember much else about I mean I would have to really think about it but that's the one moment that pops in and I 43:11 remember with all the teammates getting on the bus and how just everybody's just going absolutely bananas uh so um 43:19 amazing so now we're you're heading into the draft um you're going to be an NFL 43:26 quarterback back and you've got all of these 43:31 business opportunities now you you your profiles been raised uh quite a bit and 43:39 yet you need to be focused on getting on making a team winning a job and you know 43:47 moving into this next phase of your career the adversity is going to be there I can't imagine the pressure uh 43:54 hardest probably the highest level SK job in the world if you think about it 44:00 right you look at NFL quarterbacks I mean there's there's 10 that stand out 44:05 and there's another 10 or 15 that are you know serviceable and then everybody else is rotating through and winning 44:12 jobs and it's just the the um the skill level is just so it's so 44:19 fast and it's so High um so you're going to be focused on that yet you have all 44:25 these other opportunities because you're Sam and uh people like you and you've shown 44:32 the ability to come back from adversity to win massive football games and then 44:39 to have the composure after a game to give a great interview to give the credit where the credits do uh other 44:46 people the coaches the team the fans and even in the case of Duke go over and check on uh Riley who was hurt and 44:53 things like that so you've been able to to really be in the moment to be who you needed to be when you needed to be and I 45:01 think that's a skill that's going to serve you exceptionally well in the NFL because of the ability to focus um that 45:07 being said how are you dealing with the distractions of endorsements and all of Dealing With Distractions 45:14 that stuff because unlike a lot of draft picks you have a lot of opportunities yeah yeah I mean I I think it's a 45:21 perspective okay um I mean I think when I was a you know a young guy right like if you told my fresh yourself crying 45:28 getting a cookout milkshake with your son like hey this is where you're going to be this is what you're going to do I'm probably going to be tell you you're 45:34 crazy man and probably screams stranger danger um but also not believe you and I 45:41 think the perspective of that is also saying okay let me sit back and and truly analyze everything that's going on 45:48 right in in a moment in a situation like you were kind of talking about sometimes it's just the nature of it it's how I 45:53 was raised it's the people that I've been put around me to you know mom always talks about just do the right thing right it's pretty simple right 46:00 what's right like it's not you know sticks and so we can go back to the advice to your you know you want to give your kids if you're you have teenagers 46:07 just tell them to do the right thing like kids are smart right like if it doesn't seem right probably don't do it 46:12 and um and I think that goes along right in line with the endorsement deals like there's some deals that you get 46:18 presented and you're like it's just not me and I think that's the authentic part 46:23 and and kind of you know the words and and I really kind of butchered it at the beginning was you know I said resilience 46:29 I said experience and the other one really is self-awareness okay and I think self-awareness it it is such a 46:35 huge thing that not to say that I'm perfect like my mom my girlfriend they'll tell me and my brother and 46:41 probably these people will tell you I'm the least self- Weare person in the world but I've over you know six seasons 46:48 of college football being a captain for four of those years two different schools that's the number one quality of 46:54 a leader that I find so important and find so like readily missing and people 47:03 need awareness self-awareness self-awareness because it's so easy to get caught up in the I got to give my 47:10 employees the best speech in the world I got to make sure everyone's happy I got to make sure but it's sometimes it's how 47:15 am I as a leader presenting the information it's not about the 47:21 information you're presenting cuz if you come in and you're so above the top and so 47:27 oh my goodness we got to get this done we got to how is that affecting this you know you're you're one coworker here and 47:34 then how is it hitting the cooworker over there and that's not a that's not something that you the way you know oh 47:39 the PowerPoint the colors were off or how we just you know we didn't spend enough time on it sometimes it's like 47:45 okay well I know that she doesn't like you know this kind of coaching technique or this and I can I can't really relate 47:51 it to a workspace I know that this receiver does not like to get talked to in front of people he he's a private he 47:58 he like they pull him aside pull him aside not even pull him aside like don't even it's like the subtle like sandwich 48:04 like hey man dude you've been crushing it this is coach Clawson taught me this right you've been crushing it right that's the bread dude you're you're the 48:11 best you're my favorite receiver throw too oh really you know it's like okay thanks I'm talking you're my tight Jeff 48:17 you're my favorite tight in the throat too you're always open when we're going fast tempo like we 48:23 just you need to get set a little faster but when you're when you're set and you're driving off the ball you're the 48:28 best Titan we got there you go so what did I feedback delivered gave it the sandwich right and it's like those 48:35 things are simple but it's like that self-awareness to not just go Jee you got to get you know sorry you got to get freaking lined up dude yeah 48:42 like and then you're like dude screw you all you do is sit back there and drop back and and then like those moments of 48:49 like okay all right the team had a bad practice right the the organization had a bad week right it's been you know 48:54 we're sluggish we're you know we're dragging our feet all right we got to get everybody up maybe it's instead it's like what am I 49:01 am I doing am I is my energy right different is my is what I'm doing different than than what it should be am 49:07 I holding the standard and it's like you say um they call it like the servant leadership I don't really I think if if 49:13 you're not a servant leader you're not a leader right right like if you're not if you're not upholding the standard if 49:18 you're not doing the right things that you're preaching like you you're going to get fired you're going to get replaced your company's going to fail 49:24 your team's going to stink those are that's the check like you're just checking boxes at that point I think the 49:29 self-awareness aspect comes from these people see me as somebody especially as a quarterback like we talked about as 49:36 you're kind of on a different scale you're on a different level you have the endorsements you have all these things but sometimes I don't take a deal 49:41 because I don't want these guys to get jealous of the deal that I'm taking or I keep it undercover or I take the deal 49:47 and say hey like I do with my old linen it's every deal I did at nerd a and wake had something with them in it nice like 49:53 Joe Walt was in my Google ad or the dove stuff I give my Dove products away to those guys like that that's the 50:00 self-awareness aspect and that's something that like you don't think it's a big deal and then like when you go 50:05 back and they're like like oh like dude we missed like the cuz I got them car heart jackets like dude these car hard 50:10 jackets are great but it's not I'm not you know like some of it's you know selfish because I want them to block for 50:16 and I want them to do their job but it's also like cuz I have the platform because I have the thing that I have my 50:22 self-awareness tells me to do those things because it's the right thing to do well they're not they chose you 50:28 haven't forgotten about them uh you're recognizing and rewarding them another thing I've learned in leadership that's 50:33 important and it's more difficult to do as an organization scales is really being aware of tempo and 50:40 Cadence people can't nobody can Sprint forever so if you want to Peak and 50:47 you're an athlete you're an athletic team you're uh you you want to make sure that you're bringing maximum effort in 50:54 the over the biggest opportunities so sometimes sometimes you got to take a little bit of a break and sometimes you got to let people rest and then you got 51:00 to build towards it and I think great coaches I don't know how Clawson did it but you know the our coaches uh at App 51:07 State I think they could sense when we needed a break and then they sense when we needed to go and it's the same thing 51:13 in any organization here it's like we're pushing we're pushing we're working late 51:18 we got to work overnight to get this done uh we want to get something out for 51:24 Friday you know for the draft out out of this so somebody in this room is going to have to put in some extra effort to 51:31 make that happen uh but then you know then you know when people take a break and things like that so uh 51:40 interesting okay so uh we're we're going into the draft now and uh you're going 51:45 to be watching it here any thoughts or anything you care to share about uh how 51:51 you're thinking about what's going to happen over the next few days I think I mean it it always overwhel around 51:57 perspective I think that's something that you I I've harped on and I harp on I probably said it already but just take 52:04 me back to sophomore year in college take me back to freshman year in high school take me back to when I was five A Core Childhood Memory 52:10 right when I you know saw the NFL I have a great story and this is this kind of revolves around but I wanted to share it 52:16 do you remember taking me and I think it was just Zack to an app State football game when um they had uh what's his name 52:24 the receiver sweat was it sweat or Swift yeah tall 52:29 guy and then um uh what's his name de Edwards um Armani Edwards Armani Edwards 52:36 I I used Swift it might have been yeah I know the last name that was like and we 52:41 went to and we got in a locker room yeah with and um somebody else was there with us because I have a funny story to tell 52:48 after that I can't say on here about that but we went in a locker room after the game and they did the Lord's Prayer 52:53 and I remember sitting there this is one of it was this and a going we went to a Michigan game I know after they beat him but we went that was the 53:00 other reason why I played but we went there and I remember they did the Lord's Prayer and I'm you know you're a little 53:05 kid in this locker room these dudes like you're like oh my like what's going on like and then like everyone takes a knee 53:10 and you're kind of like what's go like and I remember sitting there and then I'm like sit I take a knee and I'm kind of like looking around there's this you 53:16 know Giant football player in front of me and I just two hands there's two football player hands and they're like 53:22 reaching out to me like I'm a part of the team and I'll never forget like that um like those moments of like okay me 53:30 being there at that point yeah and the trajectory it put me on of saying like that's the coolest thing in the world 53:35 like these two football players they had their glow like the tap I can remember the tape kind of like you know that classic after a game tape's kind of 53:41 coming offat up and and they these gloves I mean it was just like and I put my hands and they didn't like look at me 53:47 like what the heck's this little kid they just put their hands out and I said the Lord's Prayer and I don't think I said the Lord's player right at all 53:53 sorry but it was just like one of those things I'm like oh my gosh got up and like it was nothing the one I think one 53:58 of the guys patted me on the back I'm like I didn't do anything like I don't know how that happened cuz I know we went in the locker room we followed the 54:04 team in the locker room yeah and Coach Moore from M State he would he counted 54:09 how many players that he had coached and when you talk to him you'd say we'd have we'd have we have we've had 979 football 54:16 players through this program since I got here like he cared about the alumni he always included the alumni inside of 54:22 that so for whatever reason we were all like alumni players are always welcome to go in we followed them in the locker 54:28 room and I didn't and and everybody got down and we kind of got in there with 54:35 the team it was like three young kids and me and we got in there and you had to kneel cuz everybody was kneeling but 54:42 what I remember is is like do you remember when they first started praying like how loud and deep it was it was CRA 54:48 it was almost like a shock it was like you know and um and then we just got into that huddle yeah that was awesome I 54:55 remember forg I remember that like is and that's like another one of like the whole just camaraderie of like going back to Notre Dame is when they do in 55:02 the Basilica of the we do the um we read the end like those endearments like uh 55:07 queen of Victory pray for us Joe Walt did it and it was always like can you get them all right in a row it's like 20 55:13 different things it's like our lady queen of Victory pray for it and that Echo like when the first time you're in 55:18 there and like the entire team's in there there's people in the background like in the back in this giant just 55:23 cathed and you're just like like chills but that those moments and those 55:30 different instances give you a perspective of just the journey and everything that has got me to this position and the percentages also right 55:39 you think about the percentages who are that have done what you've done in your life right through advantaclean and all 55:45 the different things that I don't know but I know are important and impressive and put you on this pedestal that where 55:50 you're at and the percentage of all the different things that I've done and gone through and went through and at the PO 55:57 that I'm on that obviously can always get better and you're always like you and I are very similar right you're always chasing right you're always 56:02 wanting to be the best and like when I get the call I'll be like holy cow but then I'm thinking okay I need the Playbook I need this so it is like one 56:09 of those things where it's like yeah like this is really cool and people are like are you nervous like you want to you feel where do you want to go and I'm 56:15 like I just want my playbook yeah cuz I know that there's this isn't the end this isn't you know this isn't something 56:22 that like just because this happened just because I'm drafted just because I'm not drafted that doesn't mean I make or miss the team or right it's all just 56:29 an opportunity and then that perspective of saying like that there's not a lot of people that get this opportunity I'm 56:34 going to make the most of it and give it everything I have like I've been doing for the past shoot uh is it 19 years now 56:41 yeah 19 years of playing football and it's like hopefully there's a few more in there and you know then from there 56:46 the once the dust settles the dust settles and life keeps moving on whether you want it to or not right now we're in 56:53 Charleston South Carolina your bags are packed 30 days from now you have no idea where you're living it's prob shoot like Reporting To Camp 57:00 10 days from now 10 days from now you will be some like how quickly do you need to leave it'll be so if I was like 57:07 a first round Pig which I won't be you can if you're betting if I have any prop bets it's that won't be a first round 57:13 pick I got you Insider information there um no it is like a week basically right 57:19 some teams are a week some teams are two if you're like a first round pick you go like right away cuz you got to do media tours but um most teams are like week 57:26 after like that weekend after and then what OTAs so you start otaa so you do like a mini camp that's three days then 57:32 you integrate with the entire team um you're just on the team and it's a bigger like is like 80 something guys 57:37 bigger roster and then it as you go through then you do mini camp and then that like end the mini camp you start um 57:45 you get OTAs and I think you get a month off and then you start mini camp and and then it's integrate Cuts Cuts so OTAs 57:54 are just to get you acclimated their system get get you into town see what you got see what you got let them lay 58:00 their eyes on every all the new draft picks in person cuz not all the because again it's not the coaching staff that 58:06 drafts it's the front office right and they want to see how you mix what you you know what who are you really because 58:12 again like that's the crazy thing is like you do all these interviews you do the combine and you do this and like you 58:18 said it's like especially the quarterback position some guys just show up and it's just not right or it's perfect or hey we got this you know we 58:24 got a first round guy and we got a drafted guy and the undrafted guys is hey we he fits us better than the first 58:29 round guy the four like there's so many variables and especially at the quarterback position to like sit here 58:35 and think oh God man I hope I go here it's going to be perfect it's like you don't know that like you think Brock pie 58:40 sat there and said ah sweet like I'm I know I'm going to the 49ers is the last pick of the draft and I'm going to be in 58:45 playing a Super Bowl in two years no no he was probably devastated he was probably like shoot man but then 58:51 obviously it was the best fit and the best situation and yeah you know you almost you hope hope hey that Happ 58:57 opportunity exactly and he he maximized it whether it be in high school college Sam's Leadership 59:04 or what will be the NFL you've always been a great locker room guy that's one of the most consistent things people 59:11 have said about Sam Hartman is he's the perfect team guy he's a great leader uh 59:18 that comes through in all of your interviews it comes through from all of your teammates and all the coaches they've had nothing but great things to 59:23 say about you how big of an asset is that going to be for you going in to an 59:28 NFL locker room with a bunch of grown ass men yeah for sure we can say that no I'm just kidding yes we can't we did we 59:35 did but they these are grown men they're business people uh they've been at it it's serious um any idea how you're 59:44 going to approach that business as usual for Sam Harman yeah I mean I think to the hit on it I haven't always been you 59:50 know I haven't I was good and then I got to college and I think I tried to do too much okay um and I learned coach Clon 59:56 has probably had the most impact on that leadership style and and just he's so unique in the way that he does everything it's just so it's just 1:00:03 routine yeah it's like you wake up and you brush your teeth coach Clawson wakes up and does everything in in a you know 1:00:09 meticulous and well thought out and well planned order that it's he's the master Puppeteer I think he's one of the best 1:00:14 college football coaches in the world and it's all behind the scenes like you don't see him getting up on ESPN and 1:00:20 talking the talk and doing all the different things that all these new coaches are doing it's he just handles 1:00:25 his business and whether you like it or you hate it you like him you hate him like he's an unbelievable coach and I 1:00:31 learned so much just about how wellth thought out his movements and the way he 1:00:36 does things and it's almost so unselfish it seems selfish where you seem like oh 1:00:42 like he's all he car no he had there's a reason there's a master plan behind everything he's doing and so I learned 1:00:49 so much about just the impact that like what I do what I say and it kind of goes 1:00:54 back to that self-awareness and where I learned a lot of it so when I did the mini transition to this noted a place 1:01:00 that is a I mean completely different entity and a just this massive basically 1:01:05 organization or Enterprise that is global right we were in Ireland and week one and there's we had almost 60,000 or 1:01:12 I think it was 40,000 Americans traveled abroad to watch that game I almost came to that we wanted to go that looked 1:01:19 awesome yeah it was incredible Guinness was just flowing you could smell it on the field I promise you uh they put it 1:01:26 in food they put it in pan it's in everything it's just better over there I'll just tell you that I'm just saying 1:01:31 it's better over there um but it was just like the the ability for me to just 1:01:37 kind of walk in there and be like okay like how can I meticulously go around this where it's a it's not a game but it 1:01:43 is a game because you can always you can go in and say like okay who are my guys that I need to connect with who are the 1:01:49 guys that I can kind of just go out and play and they're going to just kind of come with me and who are the guys I got to spend every second with every time I 1:01:56 see him I got to basically just give him like the biggest hug metaphorically and you just work through that and it's like 1:02:03 I knew walking into that locker room like and I know walking into an NFL locker room to kind of go back to your question was like I can't kick the door 1:02:09 down right like you I did that down here in Oceanside cuz you there's no other reason there's no other way right I 1:02:15 transferred in here like we were 0 and seven or 0 and8 the year before like yeah like I'm going to kick the door out 1:02:21 I'm going to remodel the whole kitchen I'm going to do the bathrooms I'm we got to just completely clean house but like 1:02:26 at another Dame right and then obviously an NFL organization you just got to like kind of peek your head in and say okay 1:02:32 boom there's we got six guy you know like like an operative like you got to just kind of check say where do I fit 1:02:38 into this puzzle where do I fit into this this organization and how can I be the best teammate I can be be the best 1:02:44 really asset to this organization whether that's being the franchise quarterback whether that's being a second string whether that's being a 1:02:49 practice squad guy whether that's cleaning the showers after everybody's finished like how can I do that effectively and that was the 1:02:56 what I learned at Notre Dame and as I went there was like as much as I could you want to press you want to implement 1:03:02 your ideas you want to you know you want to kick that door down but you got to do it so meticulously because you kick the 1:03:09 door down and it hits three people behind you and then those three people are the you know the the starting linebacker the left tackle and the 1:03:16 running back and they can't stand you all lost yeah you got a problem what's 1:03:21 the uh Trash Talk escalation in expectation in the NFL 1:03:26 it depends you play like I know in college it was like young when I was younger it was a lot more and as I got 1:03:32 older kind of guys realize like I I'm very nice they're not going to shake you no like I you it's usually young you get 1:03:39 you were always helping people up tapping people I'm like there was I I was always so proud because we watched every game and I was always so proud 1:03:46 that you were constantly showing good sportsmanship oh even in tough times 1:03:52 even maybe when people didn't deserve it and I thought that people I saw people giving you a lot of respect back on the 1:03:57 field for that oh oh I had so many moments where I'm like this guy is going to kill me and he pulled up I'm like hey 1:04:03 dude why don't you kill me he's like why would I you're too nice I'm like yes it paid off so there's like 1:04:08 that there is a gamesmanship to it I have a there's a little bit I mean I've had probably I don't know if Notre Dame 1:04:14 I ever really talked to anybody but I mean at wake probably when I was younger I probably did a little but it's I don't 1:04:20 think anybody's hit Tom Brady in like seven years exactly I mean they just stopped tip the cap nobody wants to be 1:04:26 nobody wants to be on that highlight clip exactly exactly for sure yeah so uh 1:04:31 if you Google Sam Hartman the first question that comes up is is Sam Hartman single I am not okay well so you you I 1:04:39 wouldn't have asked but you had mentioned a girlfriend before so the answer is no no I have a girlfriend she plays soccer at Wake Forest um and she 1:04:46 she's awesome and uh yeah yeah she's great she'll be down here for the draft and everything so oh fantastic and um 1:04:53 What year she is this her last year she's got more season left because of just the she had a met or red shirt all 1:04:59 right well good luck with that Sam thank you so much for investing this time with 1:05:05 us usually I'd ask people where can people get in touch with you but I don't think you want that no not at all um 1:05:11 what's it what's it like uh going to a restaurant here in Charleston for you today uh it's Unique I mean it's I mean 1:05:19 my I'd say everything is kind of we hit on this before we kind of started recording of just the uh you know wake 1:05:26 force me or shoot High School me thinking you know oh I'm you know I got all this I had a TV show people 1:05:32 recognize me or whatever qb1 qb1 all that you get to a Wake Forest and it's kind of like okay and then toward the 1:05:39 latter half of my career you know that either fame or whatever you want social media status started picking up and it 1:05:45 was kind of the the age difference probably of like the the younger generation at wake to me like I kind of 1:05:51 I I wasn't really in school so I was kind of just I was only if I ever kind of appeared on campus it was a deal and 1:05:58 then you get to another Dame and then it kind of just blows up that's Global and then that yeah that becomes this thing 1:06:03 and then you go to the combine and then it blows up even more um so I mean it it depends sometimes on the thing I have a 1:06:11 a people make fun of my disguise but I have a little bit of a like you know undercover bosses do deal going and um 1:06:18 okay so I I try and you know mix it up and kind of works kind of works it doesn't but it's it's again uh I would a 1:06:27 perspective right if when I was sitting eating my cookout milkshake bring it I 1:06:33 would love to be recognized when I was a freshman and I had a broken leg after a subpar season and I was a backup my 1:06:38 sophomore year please I'd love to get recognize somebody tell me I'm good at what I'm doing or whatever and so it's 1:06:45 all perspective and I try and you know as much as I can make those interactions as positive and as you know profound in 1:06:51 a sense of just being authentic in general because you never know right that impact or that um I always see it 1:06:57 with the Ronald McDonald House that I work with the charity event stuff where you can just really be able to try and 1:07:03 impact somebody's life right because you never know what's going on and that kind of hits on the mental the mental health of everything of like I always am such a 1:07:10 big Advocate um for the mental health for therapy for especially men teenage 1:07:16 and our you know my age your age right to just talk one time cuz you'll be so profound and so like wait what like 1:07:24 you're not supposed to think like that like oh like I'm that's why I'm always tired at this point or this is why whenever I get this I feel like this 1:07:31 when this is going on or sure and and something that like a coach or somebody just to kind of let you know there we we 1:07:38 I call them demons in my head in a sense of just the the demons that have got me to this point got me in this chair that 1:07:44 have pushed me to be the you know a really good quarterback and you know make it through wake make it to Notre 1:07:49 Dame get through the combine get through all this draft prep that push me that probably push you in the same way whatever you call them the voices in 1:07:55 your head that you know that constant drive or also can be very negative in a sense and all those different things um 1:08:02 yeah self-doubt self-limiting belief exact it all it all rolls in there um 1:08:07 but and I you know I'll never know what it's like to be a a well-known person 1:08:13 where you go into any town or any city in the country but there's a lot of good that can come from that and just a kind One Sentence To Change Someone's Life 1:08:20 word to you have the opportunity to impact so many and you're doing amazing 1:08:25 job with it you you take the responsibility clearly uh you take the obligation and you take the opportunity 1:08:32 to do well so thank you Sam for what you do last question if you had one sentence 1:08:37 to speak into someone's life to make an impact what would that be o that's a 1:08:42 good one um I'm proud of you oh man there you 1:08:48 go that's awesome there you go great words this has been Sam Hartman with 1:08:53 Jeff duden we have been on the the H front thank you Sam awesome appreciate you having me on there we go all right 1:08:59 yes sir appreciate you yep All
Brief Summary On this episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with media veteran Larry Wert , former NBC and Tribune Media executive, whose influence shaped Chicago’s airwaves for decades. From hiring Oprah Winfrey and firing Jerry Springer, to launching iconic personalities like Steve Dahl and Jonathan Brandmeier at The Loop, Larry’s career is a masterclass in media evolution. The conversation also explores his current ventures in whiskey, hydration, and healthcare—proof that retirement is just another chapter for high performers like Larry. Key Takeaways The Early Years : Larry began as a diver on an athletic scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, later pivoting into media sales after realizing he wasn’t going to out-dive Greg Louganis. Hiring Oprah : While working at ABC Chicago, Larry was in the room when Oprah Winfrey was selected—against the consensus—based on a gut feeling by GM Dennis Swanson. The rest is history. The Loop Radio Revolution : As GM of Chicago’s legendary station The Loop, Larry oversaw an era of radio that launched cultural icons and pushed boundaries—from disco demolition to edgy improv talk radio. Media Disruption : Larry witnessed the entire media transformation—from three-network dominance to cable, digital, and now decentralized content. He offers a rare behind-the-scenes view of editorial shifts and why personality still reigns. Entrepreneurial Chapter : Post-media, Larry now runs several businesses including: Uncle Nearest Whiskey – Honoring Nathan Green, the Black master distiller who taught Jack Daniel. Bo 3.0 Hydration – A sugar-free hydration product with NFL legend Bo Jackson. Home Health – Providing post-acute care services in IL and IN. Restaurant.com & CardCash – Innovating how people use and redeem reward cards. What’s Next in Media : Larry predicts continued fragmentation, a rise in subscription models, and enduring value in strong personalities. He emphasizes the challenge of maintaining objectivity and the need for trust in news again. Featured Quote “Love and hate get higher ratings than like and dislike. That’s what changed the media game—and everyone had to pick a lane.” —Larry Wert TRANSCRIPT Meet Larry Wert: From Lifeguard to Media Executive Jeff Dudan (00:00.174) can do a little banter but I am hitting record just so I don't forget to do it. How you doing? Man I'm so good it's good to see you. Yeah. Yeah it was. It was. Hey, how are you on time today? Larry Wert (00:04.296) Great, great. Amuel, how are you? Bye, Christ. Bye, Christ. It was a fun night. Larry Wert (00:17.384) I suck, you know, I'm, I got sick two nights ago. Every one of my family had a birthday party. It was like a 24 hour stomach flu and I lost a day. So I'm scrambling. Jeff Dudan (00:25.036) Oh no. Jeff Dudan (00:30.54) No, but I mean, are you, are you good for an hour today? Larry Wert (00:33.16) Yeah, I can make an hour. I need to start driving within an hour though. Jeff Dudan (00:37.166) Okay, well, let's let's do for let's try to get I'll try to get done by here 11 Eastern, I guess that's tenure time. So. So the the we usually do kind of a hero's journey. So I mean, I'd love to go back into kind of how you grew up and early career stuff, if that's okay with you. Anything, anything you're comfortable with family, and early career. And then I've got, you know, what are you doing today type stuff, we did find something then at 1871 project, and I'm sure you got a lot of other stuff going on. But Um, a lot of talk about media, your career stories. I saw, you know, you were connected to something about hiring Oprah and firing Howard Stern. I don't know if, uh, if those are things to talk about or not, but anywhere you want to go with it, let's just have fun. Larry Wert (01:20.904) Great. Sounds good, Jeff. Look, I'm transparent. I've lived kind of in a bubble for my career. And so I'm happy to, I don't know if I qualify for hero status. I'm sure I don't, but I'm happy to, you know, give you the background and do any Q and A you want. So you want to just jump in the pool and. Jeff Dudan (01:37.612) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:41.646) Yeah, let's go. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Welcome, everybody. This is Jeff Duden, and we are on the home front. And today we are with Larry Wirt, who has had an esteemed career in media and broadcasting in the Chicagoland area and parts unknown. Welcome, Larry. Larry Wert (02:01.384) Hey, good morning, Jeff. Maybe it wasn't esteemed, but maybe it was just plain steamed. Jeff Dudan (02:03.214) It's nice to s - Jeff Dudan (02:08.194) Well, we'll, we'll let the listeners be the judge of that. Um, well, it was great. I got to meet you at an event, uh, where we were looking at, uh, it was an investment, uh, event for an NBA team. And we quickly figured out we were both Chicago land people and, uh, decided, uh, based on our conversation to have you on the home front. So really appreciate, appreciate you being on this morning. Larry Wert (02:34.3) Thank you, I'm honored to be here. I really enjoyed meeting you and learning about your journey a bit. And so it's fun to be here with you this morning. Jeff Dudan (02:43.726) Awesome. Larry, did you grow up in Chicago? Larry Wert (02:46.504) I did. I grew up in a town called Riverside on the West Side and I went to a place called Fenwick High School in Oak Park and worked my way to the University of Wisconsin on an athletic scholarship. I was a diver. I always was into aquatics in my youth. Help me get my first job. I put aquatics director in my experience background and they said, what would that be? And I said, it's a lifeguard, basically. just a cooler name, but I competed at Wisconsin and while I was there, I had aspirations to represent our country and compete. And then I went to the Olympic trials and I saw Greg Louganis and I decided I had to get a job. So that little pivot, I was lucky enough to get my first job in a Chicago ad agency called Leo Burnett. And... Jeff Dudan (03:34.702) Right. Larry Wert (03:44.392) before all the consolidation in the industry and that was kind of the eighth or ninth inning of Mad Men. What a wonderful place to start. And they were one of the biggies. While I was there, I met so many people who were on the sales side of broadcasting, selling commercial time. And they all told me that I was miscast in my job and that I really should be doing that. So I was lucky enough to get an opportunity on the West Coast with ABC television. my first sales job. And there was only three networks then, there was no cable, there was no internet. There was not even a Fox. I mean, it was three networks, some radio and a bunch of newspapers. That was media. That was the media landscape. And it was very memorable times. The morning show on our TV station was hosted by Regis Philbin, locally in LA. Jeff Dudan (04:41.39) That's right. Larry Wert (04:43.672) What a blast, my first five years and exposure to Hollywood and television and sales business. Jeff Dudan (04:52.558) Larry, I don't want to get past this point without asking you what your best dives were. Larry Wert (04:57.512) You know, I guess I was considered strong but not pretty. I didn't have the world's greatest linemen and toe point, but I was. Diving Into College Sports and Pivoting to Sales Jeff Dudan (05:03.054) Okay. I can resonate with strong but not pretty. Larry Wert (05:09.096) I competed pretty well and I could do a harder degree of difficulty than many to overcome my lack of form and beauty. And so I was using a three and a half somersault and inward two and a half, one meter. I enjoyed twisting backward and reverse twisting. So I was really... more comfortable with the higher degree of difficulty optionals than I was, you know, simple front dives. But I, you know, I'm... Jeff Dudan (05:42.094) And that's off the off the low springboard. Larry Wert (05:45.32) I competed on one meter, three meter, and a little 10 meter and loved it. You know, the big 10 back then, they had the dominant coaches. Actually, Greg Louganis' coach defected from Ohio State to go coach him in California. If you were fifth in the big 10, you were about seventh or eighth in the world. The Chinese weren't doing it yet. There was always a great Italian and a great Mexican diver. But it was wonderful to compete. Jeff Dudan (05:48.878) Okay. Larry Wert (06:15.1) you know, then and just have that experience along with, you my overall college experience. Jeff Dudan (06:23.694) That's fantastic. And then you moved, you got into media, which very fortuitous. I mean, media has just exploded in ways that you probably couldn't foresee back in the day. I mean, before the internet really, I mean, it's just the evolution of where we get our content and the impact that it has on us. I'd love to unpack your thoughts on what's going on currently a little bit later, but. So you moved out to LA, are we on the West Coast for this job? Larry Wert (06:54.312) Yes, I did. I did my first five years out there, came back to Chicago for a stint, and then I ended up in New York. It was a time where the three big networks kind of dominated media consumption, and people had to make an appointment to watch the programming they wanted. They wanted to get their daily news. They had to go watch when it was available a couple, three times a day, and that was it. They wanted their entertainment programs. They had to make an appointment pretty soon technology started Rearing its head and you had recorders, right? You had the ability to put a cassette recorder in and in tape a show so you could watch it when you wanted and then really, you know the advent of technology kept coming and Technology eventually made it easy to record your programming right on your you know, you're set top box and and then more programming outlets started proliferating. Actually, the ESPN was one of the early cable frontiers and came in quietly with a different business model. It wasn't relying on advertising like we were, it was relying on subscription fees from people who were starting to buy cable. And obviously there was fewer limits on cable station capability. So... There might have been in any given market, five, six, seven TV stations, but soon there was 10, 20, 100, 400 cable channels. And this was all before the internet started popping and which became another media platform. But as we all recall, our first experience with it was more of a dial -up. to communicate with people in chat rooms. And the bandwidth just didn't allow content to be transferred in any reasonable time. There just wasn't enough capacity at that time. So all of this happened, I'd say, through the 80s. And by the time we're in the 90s, you just can see a different landscape developing, a media landscape. So. Larry Wert (09:20.84) And, you know, in big summary, you have technology which started immediately changing consumer behavior. And consumers started, instead of having to make an appointment, they were, you know, they were, they were, they were having their own programming to themselves. That was a big deal. You know, when I started the business model between networks and, and television stations were, we'll give you our network programming station and you know, thank you for airing it so we'll give you some money. And then at some point, the demand started shifting and then the network said, hey, TV station, we're gonna give you that programming, but we can't afford to give you money anymore. It's too expensive to make programming and it's getting competitive. And then. The Three-Network Era and the Dawn of Cable Jeff Dudan (10:08.366) So are you saying the content creators were paying to have their content put on the television stations and the networks? So the television stations were, my wife was in media. She worked for like Trump or communications. And then over the course of maybe in Charlotte, and then maybe over the course of 10 years, I think it was bought by somebody else. Then ultimately gobbled up by clear channel. So what you're saying is, and, and also pick this up from the, um, uh, Bob, oh, geez, who's the guy that did the happy little paintings? Bob Ross. So it was Bob Ross. I also picked this up from the Bob Ross documentary. So, but it was, you know, most of these television stations were locally owned and operated. So they had control of the airwaves. Is that correct? Larry Wert (10:46.536) Thank you. Larry Wert (10:58.888) It's true, you know, thousands of in the country and the networks each owed a few of their own, you know, give it five, 10 or 15 in each market, the big markets, because they wanted to have some access to programming locally as well. So they always had a relationship between networks and then owning some stations. But you're right. That was, that was the relationship back then with networks and stations and how programming got disseminated. Jeff Dudan (11:26.126) Yeah, and I've met several people that we've had in our Homefront Brands franchise owned radio stations in the Triad area, Raleigh -Durham area. That's what their family did for 30 or 40 years. And of course, they got an offer they couldn't refuse. The local family business that owned the radio station here and the television stations. And so really interesting that access was what had value. inside of that versus the content where now it's really shifted to where content is king and it finds every avenue possible. There's and you can get it any there's so many ways to get content and new ways coming out every day. I can only imagine the you know that they have and we've seen the impact in the newspaper industry. We've seen the impact in network television. We've seen the impact in ESPN. where an upstart like Barstool Sports can come out and just absolutely crush. Larry Wert (12:26.6) Yeah, it's such an amazing seat change when you think about what it was and what it is and where it's still headed because audience fragmentation and choice is still, I think, expanding sideways. And again. Jeff Dudan (12:38.478) Who'd you work for in New York? In New York, who'd you work for? NBC? Okay. Larry Wert (12:41.512) I worked for ABC, the network, and then another time I worked for Tribune Media. When I worked for ABC in the 1986, that was the first media acquisition of any size in any notable nature. A small company called Capital Cities came in and borrowed a few billion dollars from Warren Buffett, and they bought ABC for 3 .5 billion. 1986, and I believe they sold it to Disney. 10 years later for 18 .7 billion. So once Warren Buffett had some vision and made a good investment there, but. Jeff Dudan (13:19.854) Yeah, you think, you think, I think, it might not be popular, but I think Warren Buffett one day will be very successful. Larry Wert (13:27.496) You think? Well, success is relative. And I mean, Jeff, you know, but I think I do too. Although he doesn't give a lot of money to his relatives, remember? That's what he said. But he brought up Trump. So I just had a communication with Jeff Trump. I mean, you know, some of the pioneers in this business are, you know, they're still around. And when we reflect on what was and what is, it's mind blowing. Jeff Dudan (13:29.294) I think. Jeff Dudan (13:34.892) I wish he was my relative. Jeff Dudan (13:42.038) Why would he? That's, you'll, you'll ruin them forever. Jeff Dudan (13:58.414) Yeah, absolutely. So how'd you get back to Chicago? Larry Wert (14:02.248) So a very pivotal, fortuitous time in my life. It was early 80 and interest rates were about 22%. Just got married and just got pregnant. And one of my mentors, who was actually one of the news leaders in LA, when I met those earlier years, became a first time general manager in my hometown in Chicago. And he just, he hand picked me back to be a sales leader. And so I was lucky enough to come home and get that promotion and do that job. And then he did something even better for me. He hired Oprah Winfrey. I was in the room. I was around. But a guy named Dennis Swanson gets full credit. A lot of people take credit. But we watched that develop from just from obscurity to the phenomenon. So I was wondering. Jeff Dudan (14:56.11) So what did your team see in Oprah Winfrey that led you to take a chance on her? Larry Wert (15:04.968) It's funny you say that before she was selected, we had a room with piles of DVD tapes of applicants to be the morning show host in Chicago. And everyone in the room at some point voted and most people voted for someone else. But Dennis Swanson, I remember him saying, I have a feeling about this one. And. Oprah was in Baltimore. She was kind of a not very high profile TV host. She looked pretty atypical to what you might see in a morning host position in a market like Chicago. And after seeing her tapes and meeting with her, he felt she had a unique quality that might resonate. He was spot on because her ability to connect with people in an authentic way that, you know, gave credibility to that communication was just amazing. And, you know, some people say, could that have happened today in this environment with all this media? Yeah, I don't know, but it was a vertical climb to call it overall national audience acceptance. I mean, Jeff Dudan (16:25.966) Now she was in the color purple, right? And was that, had she been acting at that point or was this basically the very beginning of her career? Larry Wert (16:33.864) It all came off of her local Chicago television show. About 10 or 12 months into it, a syndicator named Roger King and his brother Michael, the King brothers, they owned, I think they owned the Little Rascals, and they just had a feeling. So they came to our station and Mr. Swanson and they said, we'd like to syndicate Oprah. And he said, what's in it for us? And they gave him a deal for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy because they were just acquiring that. Anyway, that was the deal. It's still, it actually until Oprah retired, that was the deal, 28 years. Those are the most viewed. The Oprah Decision: A Gut Call That Changed History Jeff Dudan (17:16.014) So she is basking in a, as Jerry Seinfeld said, he's living in a dream world of residuals. Larry Wert (17:25.48) Gosh, she did very well. So did the people around her. And yeah, that was a remarkable phenom. But it was neat to be there at that time. And then the acquisition of ABC was also an interesting culture change. And you could see things were starting to really change. And I was approached by a radio station in Chicago at the time. And they were actually my client. Jeff Dudan (17:27.82) Hahaha. Larry Wert (17:56.264) And they said, look, we're going to acquire a station in LA. And the general manager said, would you go back there? And I was a sales manager. He was offering me a general manager position, but I would have had to go back to LA. So in a short order, after 10 years with ABC and a little bit of stock equity and my career was going fine, that was a moment where. The idea of going back to LA didn't sit well at home. So they said, okay, what if, you know, what if you take Chicago and I go to LA? And that's what happened. It was a small company called Evergreen Media. The station here was called The Loop. And the irony is that that small little team in the acquisition of LA under a guy by the name of Jim DeCastro became the world's largest, the country's largest local radio company. It was sold to Clinton Hill. Jeff Dudan (18:53.934) All right, was that Steve Dahl? Was that Steve Dahl? Was that Jonathan Brandmeier? Who was all in the loop? Larry Wert (19:00.712) You're correct. It was Steve at Gary, Steve Dahl and Gary Meyer. It was John B. Ramire, Johnny B. and Kevin Matthews. I brought in Danny Vanaducci. We had sports with a guy named Chuck Coppett. I mean, actually, as we sit here now, one of the projects, my passion projects, I've been working on with some people for four years is a documentary on the loop in Chicago in the 80s. Jeff Dudan (19:04.398) Yeah. Yep. Jeff Dudan (19:13.294) That's right. Jeff Dudan (19:26.03) That's worth doing. I'll tell you what. So I grew up in Chicagoland and I was not very well traveled growing up. I think I went to Wisconsin twice, but you know, we, and then as I started moving around the country and my athletic career and my business career, I would see, you know, I'm like, why are there so many Cubs fans? Right. I mean, WGN, WLS, the loop. I mean, people all over the country. knew about these people and, and consume the content on these stations. And I don't know if it was because it was syndicated programming and, and you did a great job selling it out or whatever, but I was really kind of proud actually when I would, uh, you know, be able to, you know, pull that stuff up. I, I, we identified with it. It's what we grew up listening to. We didn't have a lot of options, so that was it. And whatever Steve doll was doing, uh, you know, we talked about in school. So yeah, that must have been really something and you must have done a heck of a job with that team to really develop that content and distribute it in the way that you did. Larry Wert (20:29.992) Well, the documentary starts in 79 when there was a radio promotion with Steve and Gary at the White Sox game. It was a double header that they decided they didn't like disco and it was at a disco demolition event that went bad. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny. It's kind of starts the timeline of our documentary, but disco demolition has been featured in many documentaries lately. You know, just the Bee Gees. There was one on that loan. Jeff Dudan (20:42.062) That's right. Death to disco, death to disco. Larry Wert (20:59.784) There's a little controversy whether it was a racial homophobic event or was just a promotion that went bad that, you know, they use too much dynamite and the records, people brought their record to get in the game free and then they got blown up and there was chaos. But... Jeff Dudan (21:16.558) That's right. Yeah, they so for people that don't know they they if you brought an album, a disco album, they were going to explode it. They were in the middle of the field, right? Larry Wert (21:27.88) Yeah, like I said, used too much dynamite, records flew everywhere, there was chaos, police, authorities, fire trucks, and they had to cancel the second game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good old baseball game. And there are... Jeff Dudan (21:35.854) shards of vinyl and children. Jeff Dudan (21:43.118) Well, you know what they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Larry Wert (21:46.856) Well, that was really what happened. And then my, you know, my, the lead guy at the loop, Jim DeCastro brought Stephen Gary over to the loop because they got fired from their station. And, you know, then Brandmeyer and what happened to rock and roll great station known as the loop started playing less music and more talk. And these guys became so popular as a cool hip water cooler that we became a bit of a phenomenon too. You know, we, you know, We brought Howard Stern here, it didn't work out. That's, you know, because there was an audience expectation of what they wanted in Chicago. So I think it'll be a fun show. I think we're going to call it, turn it up. You know, how Chicago's Loop changed the face of radio. It was about a 17 year run and excited about it. But it's also about Chicago in the 80s, you know, the Cubs, Chicago, 85 Bears, maybe the greatest NFL team ever. You have Oprah, Bram Mauer became a giant phenomenon. Our other guys. I mean, it was an interesting time here. Jerry Springer is another pivot point in my career. Yeah. Well, after 10 years of this radio role, and we grew to 430 stations, again, Evergreen, when public became Clinton deregulated radio, we just got big. We became, we sold the Clear Channel. Jeff Dudan (22:54.222) Jerry Springer there? Jeff Dudan (23:00.174) Oh really? Larry Wert (23:15.688) But at that point, I get a call from an old mentor, Mr. Swanson, who had migrated to NBC after a lot of years. And he's in 30 Rock. And he goes, kid, some idiot put Jerry Springer on the late news in Chicago and all the anchors quit. It's real crazy. I saw that, Dennis. And he said, well, they want to know who could fix it. And I said, either me or you. And he goes, I'm not going. I already did that there. It's your turn. And... He didn't even give me a choice, but I owed him so much. That's how I joined NBC in 1998, running the station in Chicago. And it began, that was 15 years after that. It was all over Jerry Springer, you know, and who, by the way, rest in peace. I adored him, great guy. We lost him last year. He, he had very interesting, smart guy. He made more fun of his show than anyone. But I did have to fire him when I got there. I took his show off the air and it went to Fox, but I had to keep him in the building as his landlord because we needed the revenue and it all worked out. Jeff Dudan (24:27.438) Nice. Nice. Larry Wert (24:30.792) Sorry. Jeff Dudan (24:31.598) Oh, that's no problem. So Larry, you've had this incredible career. And when we met, you know, we were talking about current business, current opportunities. What kind of stuff are you working on today? Larry Wert (24:50.472) Yeah, you know, this I did have 40 interesting years and great, great people that guided me. And then, you know, all this change, I got to witness it, participated in it. My my last I call it part of my grownup career. I ran Tribune Media, which was a Chicago based giant media company. Most people even here see it as a newspaper, but they owned television stations in. 12 of the top 20 markets, the big ones in LA and New York and Chicago super stations like WGN and WPIX and KTLA in Los Angeles. And when I went there, the company had gone bankrupt. They owned the Cubs, they sold them. It was unfortunately, the company acquired the LA Times in the 2000s and then something came along, a third of all the revenue in newspapers were classified ads. And Craigslist showed up, they lost a third of their revenue, and we overpaid, we, Tribune at the time, overpaid for the LA Times. And it bankrupted the company. The people who bought the debt brought it back, and I got recruited to come in post -bankruptcy, and the decision was to make two companies. Radio Royalty: The Rise of The Loop and Disco Demolition newspaper and then broadcasting and double down and broadcasting. So we did that and we became the nation's largest local television group. And then President Trump did some deregulation and that Obama eventually undid. But we were able to sell our company in 2019 to a company called maybe 2018 called Nextar, a Dallas based media company. They're the largest now in the country, about 70. 2 % of the country's TV stations. And for the first time in my career, I tried to just take a breath and say, okay, now what am I gonna do? I don't want a boss for once or a board of directors. And I always was kind of a frustrated entrepreneur in some ways. And I tell people now that in this last four years, I kind of screwed up retirement. I really messed it up because - Larry Wert (27:14.568) I got over -involved in too many things. So that's how I got to this chapter now. And I'm doing several things. I'm running a home health care company, which is Chicago and Indiana based. I'm running a... Jeff Dudan (27:33.55) Is it medical or medical or non -medical? Larry Wert (27:36.456) Yeah, well, it's for post -acute care at home. So people have orthopedic surgeries or they need wound care, whatever they might need. We follow them home and give them clinicians and nurses to take care of them. And we generally bill their insurance providers or Medicare or Medicaid, whatever it might be. Interesting business. And then I'm... Jeff Dudan (27:47.534) Yeah. Larry Wert (28:06.12) I'm also running a food and beverage company for a company called Jackson and Partners that got, you know, plant -based food has gone through an interesting iteration and they were focused on it. And so I joined, my partner's a bit notable, his name's Bo Jackson. He was a fairly good athlete and yeah, but he's also a food guy. And so we've pivoted a little bit. We still... Jeff Dudan (28:17.486) Yes. Jeff Dudan (28:26.67) Yeah, I've heard of them. Larry Wert (28:35.432) We still sell plant -based items and we still sell Bo burgers, great hamburgers, but we comprised and designed a hydration product last year, 17 months ago, and we just launched it two weeks ago. Thank you. That was a first, from beginning to end conception through regulatory approvals to... Jeff Dudan (28:42.414) Okay. Jeff Dudan (28:53.358) Oh, congratulations. Larry Wert (29:04.198) you know, execution and manufacturing and then learning how to get it up on the world's biggest store, Amazon and our website, creating a website has been. Jeff Dudan (29:13.87) So is the Bo Burger competitive with the Impossible and the Beyond Meats? Larry Wert (29:19.208) It's not, we're actually true Angus beef. But we have some other products that are plant -based. We have different shreds and chicken, plant -based chicken items, and we have some jerky, so some small meals. But Bo is just a great guy and he loves this project because there's so much, this is a big new category. Energy drinks are in war, but hydration, 75 % of Americans are dehydrated. Jeff Dudan (29:22.924) Okay. Jeff Dudan (29:26.7) Okay. Jeff Dudan (29:31.726) Got it. Larry Wert (29:48.936) when we learned the big dog in the category liquid IV had so much sugar, we started thinking, what else could we put together? And we learned with our partner, Cary International, that there are a couple ingredients out there that no one were using yet, kind of new in terms of their efficacy and clinical findings. One's called Capros and it stimulates blood flow, so cardio support. And one's called IU -Flex and it naturally lubricates joints. And we said, well, what if we put, you know, those two ingredients with the right amount of hydration, no sugar. I'm thinking of these three things and came up with Bow 3 .0. And it's, you know, go to Bow3plio .com. You can look it up on Amazon, but we love the product, three flavors right now, no sugar. We added some wellness with vitamin C and zinc and potassium, and we're excited about it. So. Jeff Dudan (30:43.982) Well, I tell you, so I'm an early stage investor in Impossible Foods. We've done well. And we've still got a long way to go there with that product. But it has good distribution. And it competes well with the Beyond Meats. And then one of our more, I've had two guests on that really hit this food thing. I had a DNA expert on called Kashif Khan. cash con and he's a DNA expert and he really talks about how your foods are so critically important. If you get your DNA testing right, I mean, think about this, you have a family of five, you all have slightly different DNA makeup that you shouldn't eat certain things. You know, you can, you might, if you eat certain things and you don't clear certain amino acids that you're going to be. more susceptible to Alzheimer's or dementia or these other types of things. But if you don't eat those foods or you take this supplement, you can head those off. So that's one of our more popular episodes. And then another one, we had Andrew Zimmern from Impossible Foods, and it was all about foods and food scarcity and the stuff like that. So we kind of have a celebrity chef slash DNA health, you know, track running here on the home front. And I'll put, I'd love to have a bow on to talk about a bow 3 .0 if we could make that happen. Larry Wert (32:07.144) Yeah, we definitely can make it happen. I mean, he's just, he's getting busy again. He's go, this is the start of the baseball season. So he's going to go to some training camps, but we'll definitely make it happen again. Jeff Dudan (32:17.422) Alright, well we gotta get him before deer season. Because I think he's a yeah, he goes into the woods, doesn't he? Larry Wert (32:20.23) That's true. I mean, every day around his house, it's either Squirrel or Woodpecker season two. So he's a hunter. But we're excited about this. We'll definitely, he's a much more fascinating hero interview than I am. So we'll set that up here. Jeff Dudan (32:30.718) Nice. Jeff Dudan (32:39.214) I don't know. I don't know. This has been pretty fun. And then. Larry Wert (32:42.152) Thanks. Thanks. So that's all the food and beverage and I got two spirits businesses I'm involved in. One is a whiskey that interesting day today because our CEO was on the talk yesterday and announced a book that's coming out. But it all started six years ago when she showed me a picture from the Wall Street Journal of Jack Daniels and about 80 people with them guys and then they... Jeff Dudan (32:49.262) Okay. Larry Wert (33:11.208) She pointed to one black face and she goes, who's that? I said, you know, she goes, nobody knows. She goes, but I've been researching it for a year and his name is Nathan Green and he taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey. So I think he was the nation's first black master distiller. And he came up with this process called the Lincoln County system with maple. So anyway, she wanted to make a movie. And then the family that she researched said you should do a whiskey in his honor. Anyway, it is now. Nations most awarded fastest growing whiskey for four years and it's it's right now globally Becoming that and it's the distillery in Litchburg, Tennessee Shelbyville exactly where it is near Jack Daniels is the seventh most visited distillery in the world and You know, she just announced a book. It's a real exciting project uncle nearest whiskey Yeah, yeah Jeff Dudan (34:06.894) Uncle nearest. OK. Larry Wert (34:10.312) I should have brought some props. But yeah, it's Friday in Chicago. We doze, but never close, but it's happy hour. And then we launched a tequila a few years back. First, a seltzer, organic, called Freshy, very clean. But then the new tequila is called Authentico, same distillery in Mexico. And we have no additives and no it's. Jeff Dudan (34:12.142) Yeah, that's a little early, but you know. Jeff Dudan (34:19.306) Hahaha! Larry Wert (34:38.664) fully organic USDA supported, and there's thousands of tequilas out there, but we think ours is in a cleaner, affordable space, and we're excited about it. So like I said, I, you know, I, Jeff, I did not retire well. I maybe over, you know, amped my next chapter, but that's why it was so great to meet you and learn a little bit about all you've done and continue to do, you know, even with your... scratching your curiosity niche like this with your audiences. I think it's pretty cool. Jeff Dudan (35:14.638) Well, look, we can't leave. I got asked that question last week. I was leading some roundtables out in Phoenix for our industry association. And why don't you just walk away? I sold my main company when I was 50. And it's like, why would you want to leave with everything that you've learned? Why would you want to stop meeting new great people, solving problems? Business is full of contact. It's a sport. Larry Wert (35:42.504) Yeah, good. Jeff Dudan (35:42.702) And, you know, it's just, it's, it's like, you know, that if you want to fish or you want to hunt or you want to golf and you're, you want to do church stuff, or you want to volunteer at the hospital, I think all that stuff's great if you want to do it. But, you know, for me who I mean, and started building businesses when I was 19 years old, then, you know, I don't know anything else. And, um, I don't know any, I don't know another way to contribute. Firing Jerry Springer and the Springer Fallout at NBC Larry Wert (36:11.08) Well, admirable and I've already raised my hand to you offline to tap into some of your expertise on franchising because there's another business I'm newly involved in as well. So, yeah. Jeff Dudan (36:25.262) Yeah, we'd love to do it. We'd love to do it. Can I? Media today. Carefully wading into the topic. It's. You know, it's gotten very. It's gotten interesting. There's a lot of impact. There's a lot of influence. Oh, both 3 .0 got the hat on. Awesome. I like it. Larry Wert (36:32.296) Yeah. Larry Wert (36:48.008) I thought he'd kill me. I mean, I don't want him to get mad at me. You didn't even promote it. Well, you know, come on, bro. We got a pack of 15 right here, your three flavors. So, all right, plug done. Jeff Dudan (36:53.486) Ha ha. Jeff Dudan (36:59.31) Awesome. The, um, you know, like what's, uh, what, what perspective can you provide for somebody like me who, I mean, I just, I don't know where to get my news anymore. And I don't know, uh, you know, how to filter it. I mean, it used to be, you know, I'd watch 60 minutes. I'd take it at face value. I'd watch, you know, public broadcasting. I'd watch the documentaries. I mean, I, I. I really, uh, growing up, I mean, it was like, this is where I get my news and this is where I get my truth. This is where I get my education, my information. This is, I broaden how I think about things. And I just advertising has gotten so pervasive and, uh, you know, influence and special interests inside of that. It's really hard to understand, you know, not be suspicious of everything that I listened to. Larry Wert (37:50.952) Boy, is that a tough question, because like you said, there's 24 hours a day, there's just so much out there. And so I don't think there's a magic formula. I think that question and that struggle exists for everybody. And depending on your tribal environment, who you hang with and who you live with, which is a big influence, you have to serve. Jeff Dudan (38:14.51) Right. Larry Wert (38:19.368) and trust, you have to decide. And I look, I spent a lot of days on panels defending local news because I learned in the 90s when I was at NBC, it's funny, we were struggling with MSNBC, the channel. It was actually losing a lot of money. People probably don't know that MS and MSNBC stands for Microsoft. And they had made a 99 year deal with Microsoft. And I remember Steve Ballmer pounding a table. being so angry at how badly the channel was doing. And NBC was so focused on doing a objective down the middle news channel. And if they were losing to Fox, which had now been six, seven years underway. And so I know people are rolling their eyes that I said a network was trying to be objective with a news channel. But I believe that that was... always the goal for true journalists. What happened was made clear. And what I've learned is love and hate get higher ratings than like and dislike. So what does that mean? Well, Fox and Rupert Murdoch picked a lane, right? Because there's more love and hate over there. And then, so finally, I'm in a big room at 30 Rock and so why don't we pick the other lane? And there was a whole lot of we can't do that. Jeff Dudan (39:36.332) Yeah. Larry Wert (39:48.712) And then someone finally said, well, we better. And so that... Jeff Dudan (39:53.134) Look, if you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space. I mean, if, you know, people, vanilla content, right? I mean, if we're not on this podcast, educating, entertaining, or inspiring, then nobody's coming back. Larry Wert (39:56.968) Yeah. Larry Wert (40:08.808) You're exactly right. And so look, is there a place or a role for call it, you know, completely objective news? I used to make the case for local media, although stations and local markets are a little bit indigenous to wherever they are. Right. We know that the red, purple, you know, blue states and everything in between. Right. So but I think they strive to do that. I, you know, when I was at Tribune, we did eighty two thousand hours a year of of local news and I can promise you that with news director meetings and daily check -ins, that was our goal. Consumers don't believe that anymore because they're just pounded with what really is editorial, right? And free speech, yeah. Jeff Dudan (40:57.228) Can I ask you a question? Can I? Yeah, it's editorial. Well, so like observationally, there's two real drivers here. Number one is the dollars. Like what's going to get the clicks and the eyeballs to be able to make sure that the station or the outlet makes money? And then number two is there's people behind all of it. So if people, to your point, you got to pick a side, you got to pick a lane, everybody gets in their echo chamber. So now people that are actually at the point of it. And we've seen it go bad with some of these big companies where they maybe throw maybe they throw a commercial out there that didn't land the way they wanted it to. And they upset, you know, part of their base. And so now they've got to come back the other way. But somebody made the decision to say, this resonates with me, it's going to resonate with other people like me. And it should resonate with everybody because in my echo chamber, I'm right. Now, answer me this, though, this is my question. Have you seen those little internet videos? Larry Wert (41:48.68) Buds, buddy. Jeff Dudan (41:55.694) where they clip like 25 different local news stations together and they're saying exactly the same phrase, exactly the same way, with exactly the same buzzword. How does that happen? Larry Wert (42:12.456) I have seen some of those montages and I think a lot of that has to do with the edit room. I do, you know, again, I manage 42 stations and I've watched them a lot. So I think, look, I think you can, we give them enough capability to make that, right? But there's also some liberty taken in the edit room. Jeff Dudan (42:16.746) Yes. Larry Wert (42:41.96) So it's a comedy. Jeff Dudan (42:42.19) Well, look, so like, I own a fitness thing, right? A fitness franchise. We put the workouts in, and then every franchise delivers the same workout. So to your point earlier, if the Tribune media owns 42 different stations, and it only makes sense to centralize the production of content, and then it just gets put out there, so everybody's reading the same teleprompter, it's really not collusion. It's just business efficiency. Is that fair? Larry Wert (43:12.84) There's some centralization and standardization and economy of scale, right? To do that, like you acknowledge. But at the same time, you know, again, I go back to each market has its own, you know, indigenous environment and you have to customize for them. You know, McDonald's looks different in China than it does in, you know, in your market, right? Sometimes. And the menus are a little different. But, you know, I think that's true about local TV. But boy, yeah, we sure look bad when someone... Jeff Dudan (43:17.454) Right. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (43:27.63) Okay. Jeff Dudan (43:36.396) Right. Larry Wert (43:43.304) does, you know, homogenizes an edit like. Jeff Dudan (43:47.182) Well, anybody who doesn't realize that news, I've been, I've done a lot of news and what I realized is these people are so incredible at reading what's in front of them. They have no input. They're not, I mean, they're, they're just reading like they're the teleprompters going, they're reading the script. It sounds conversational. They deliver it so well and they just, they don't have to prep at all. I mean, I'm standing in the back with some of these people that are getting ready to go on. They're not, they're not reading anything. They're just. Post-Media Ventures: Whiskey, Hydration, and Healthcare Larry Wert (44:01.864) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:16.174) They just plop up there and they read the content. They deliver the news like they're supposed to. So yeah, there's no. Larry Wert (44:21.608) Right. And they rarely, rarely write it. They rarely research it. And, and then mistakes are made on both sides. Mistakes are made on the content creation and the edit. And then sometimes things are misread. And then if you clip those things, right, because it's live, it's live. It's, you know, local news is live. National network news is live. And so yeah, stuff happens. And if you edit all the blips and the, you know, it can be entertaining. Jeff Dudan (44:25.998) Right. Jeff Dudan (44:38.734) Yeah, right. Jeff Dudan (44:51.438) It can be, it can be. So any vision into where the opportunities are in media over the next five to 10 years? Is there any trends that you see that maybe the rest of us aren't aware of yet? Larry Wert (45:08.104) I still believe that personality matters. I always have. I mean, that's what made this group experience so unique because we assembled some unique, great, albeit different, but aligned personalities all in one place. So whenever you hit the button, you knew you were going to have some escapism and some entertainment that was all improv, right? Nothing was scripted. But these news cable shows. Those are personality driven talk shows. Most of them fail. Personality driven sports talk sports shows, you know, not when you have an athlete to have a personality, they really stick out, don't they? I mean, you know what? They have both right. And so I just think there's there's value to talent and personality and, you know, but I say it is the fragmented universe of. Jeff Dudan (45:52.302) Absolutely. Larry Wert (46:07.3) consumption is I think it's going to continue. And so, you know, we have so many channels and platforms we can consume from the net result is more overall consumption growing up, believe it or not. But there's only, you know, so many hours in a day. So the only thing that can ultimately drive that is population. And, you know, people really, they still watch a small number of channels with even with all this choice. I mean, So how do you become the choice? How do you resonate, stand out? Podcasting didn't really exist, I would say 15 years ago, per se. I mean, it was possible, but once it became clear that content didn't have to be live, and people were becoming more accustomed to programming to themselves when they want, where they want. All of a sudden this podcast platform became about, because the barrier to entry is pretty low. Now, what have we learned? There's new ones every day, but there's a small percentage of them that get some sort of a scale and some sort of a targeting to that scale. And so it's... It's really what you deliver and then, you know, who you recruit to be your loyal fanship. You know, I mean, you know this, we're all striving to create a connection and garner a loyalty, because that's the great business model. And of course, scale is relative, you know, they don't all have, you know, it's not just the numbers, qualitative and quantitative together matter. But yeah, it's still looking down the road a little bit. The interesting part to me is how do you monetize things so you can support them so they can survive? And those models keep changing. I'm in the spirits business and it used to be a couple of consolidated big distributors. And then you realize they have so much they can't care about a brand. So then you fall back and you find... Jeff Dudan (48:26.638) Right. Larry Wert (48:30.376) some boutique passionate ones. All in this environment, a way to cut through. In media, the model's moving from advertising to subscription. So you either get people to decide that they're going to pay a daily monthly a la carte fee to consume, or you... put advertising in front of more both. But there's been a big shift towards some sort of a subscription model. And of course, yeah, free content is just trying to get enough scale to then monetize it later. Jeff Dudan (49:04.494) Yeah, I - Jeff Dudan (49:09.55) Well, that's true. And I'll say the ones that you're willing to pay for are the ones that are farther out on the edge. The ones that really serve your echo chamber and the stuff that you want to hear more of. You're willing to pay anything to be able to be served what it is that you like and to reinforce some of the positions that you have. You don't see a lot of the, I mean, I don't know. You don't see a lot of the really. clearly objective stuff monetizing out there and there is so much free content out there. You really don't have to pay for anything to be able to get 10 or 15 minutes snippets of the stuff that's behind the paywall anyway. They're just teasers, but there's a lot of it there. So, well, hey, Larry, no, go ahead and go ahead. I was just gonna. Larry Wert (49:48.072) It's a risky idea. interesting phenomenon that's going on is there's so much choice that people are starting to sign up for and subscribe to things that they can never get to and consume, right? And so now some businesses, they count on that part of the model. I'm involved with a company called restaurant .com that just merged with a company called Cardcash. And that's a lot about, you know, getting, aggregating cards that you've earned. The Fragmented Media Landscape: Why Personalities Win Jeff Dudan (50:00.878) Right. Jeff Dudan (50:04.94) Yeah. Larry Wert (50:21.416) balance on one way or another points or a balance and people don't use them all. So Card Cash actually brings value to those and there's an aftermarket for those cards and everyone eats and goes out to eat. So that's a great partnership with restaurant .com. And we're very excited about, you know, for the consumers, helping them use monetize, you know, those type of benefit cards, those type of loyalty clubs, along with having, you know, local restaurant choice and the ability to connect all of that. Jeff Dudan (50:56.814) Yeah, I'm familiar with those two companies and that we've participated in some fundraisers using some of those some of those things. Larry, I want to be respectful of your time. I know you got to jump and get on the road. So we're going to get you out of here on time. Last question for you. If you had one sentence to speak into somebody else's life, what would that be? Larry Wert (51:20.52) guess it's what's on my mind. But just prioritize your time. I don't want to cliche, but obviously health and family and all of those things. But your time and how you use it is the number one currency you might have because it's finite. It comes and goes. So I try to use, get the most I can out of every day. I could tell you do. I hope people realize what an opportunity it is to have the ability to maximize time, maybe too, I don't know, generic and lofty at the same time. Jeff Dudan (52:05.432) Interesting, incredible, incredible truth. I heard last week that 18 minutes a day is a hundred hours a year. So think about the things that, how many things do you do that waste 18 minutes a day where you could develop a hundred hours of a skill. You could learn, in 18 minutes a day, you can learn to speak a foreign language. You can write code, you can develop a business model, you can... Larry Wert (52:17.896) Bye. Jeff Dudan (52:34.318) You can write a book in a hundred hours. You actually, I mean, like with the tools you've got today, there's so many things that you can do, but, uh, you know, and then you burn, you know, two hours on Tik TOK first thing in the morning. Right. So it's, it's, it's a very Sage and there's so many distractions on our time and our attention. Now. I think it's harder and harder to sort that. Larry Wert (52:54.824) They say I've heard that in a hundred hours you can learn any skill and be, you know, pretty adapt at it. So think about that. That's a great, interesting, you know, factoid. Jeff Dudan (53:04.334) Yeah, a hundred percent. Larry Wirt, this has been amazing. How can people get in touch with you if they wanted to? Larry Wert (53:11.784) I'm pretty accessible. I'll put out an email. It's just my initials, ljw at larrywort .com. To a fault, I get back to people. I'll do my best, but again, that time management thing's the son of a gun. But yeah, thanks for having me on. Great to see you again and look forward to more learnings with you together. Jeff Dudan (53:37.358) Yeah, 100%, and that's Larry W -E -R -T, is how he spells it. So thank you, Larry Wirt, for being on the home front today with Jeff Duden, and thank you everybody out there for listening.
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From Clemson Grit to Junkyard Gains: Ben Boulware’s Entrepreneurial Playbook In this no-holds-barred episode of Unemployable with Jeff Dudan, Jeff sits down with Ben Boulware , former Clemson linebacker, national champion, and co-founder of The Junkyard , a fast-growing fitness studio with a cult-like following in the South. Known for his high-impact hits on the field, Ben now channels that same intensity into building culture, leading teams, and scaling a boutique fitness business — all while balancing fatherhood and a bootstrapped business model. From helmet-thumping stories at Clemson to leadership lessons from Coach Swinney and Venables, Ben opens up about entrepreneurship, humility, faith, family, and why your input matters more than your output. Key Takeaways Championship culture starts at home : Ben attributes his grit, work ethic, and leadership mindset to being raised in a tough, loving household by entrepreneurial parents. Control the input, not the output : Whether on the football field or in business, Ben lives by this mantra — focus on effort and let results take care of themselves. The Junkyard is more than a gym : With four locations and 70 team members, Ben built a culture-driven, high-intensity fitness brand rooted in relationships, coaching, and intentionality. Culture > everything : Hiring at The Junkyard hinges on “the 4 Cs” — Character, Competency, Chemistry, and Calling. Applicants must earn the right to lead. Franchise ambitions with integrity : Ben is exploring franchising but wants to scale intentionally — modeling brands like Chick-fil-A that grow without diluting culture. Early exposure shapes legacy : Ben’s own upbringing — and his son's future — are grounded in the belief that entrepreneurial environments create resilient thinkers. Featured Quote “We control the input — all season, all year, every day — and the output takes care of itself.” TRANSCRIPT Meet Ben Boulware: From College Football Star to Startup CEO Ben B (00:00.078) podcast that I've ever done in. Yeah. No, my third ever podcast I've ever done in my entire life. So I researched a little bit and I'm just like, all right, let's do it. Third time's a charm. Jeff Dudan (00:10.218) Alright. Third time's a charm. Yep, right on. Hey, welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden and we are on the home front with Clemson standout linebacker, Ben Bullware. Welcome, Ben. Ben B (00:28.867) Good morning and happy Wednesday. I would say has been, like I'm still playing. It's been, was it seven years now? So former, I'll say former has been old guy, bald. Jeff Dudan (00:36.294) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (00:42.468) Hey, Wednesday's, Wednesday's Pads Day, right? So we'd be popping pads today. Ben B (00:49.486) Tuesday, well, Wednesday, Tuesdays were full pad, Tuesdays really sucked. Wednesdays, it was either hit or miss, we would go full pads or we'd go shells. Thursdays would definitely be like a walk through shells type deal. We had Tuesdays and Wednesdays are our tough days. Jeff Dudan (00:57.267) Ha! Jeff Dudan (01:02.376) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:09.008) Yeah. Yep. Thursday's sudden change specials, all that shells. Yep. Ben B (01:13.538) Probably just praise God. Yeah. Mental Monday, Monday's coach 20 would talk for three hours. And I was telling somebody the other day, like when you're 18, 19 years old, you probably aren't aware of just the wisdom that is being just spewed at you. Cause I remember just like, I need to get out of here. This dude will not stop talking. But now I'm just like I would pay a lot of money to sit in those mental Mondays and let listen to him talk for 90 minutes. Mental Mondays and Leadership Lessons from Dabo Swinney Jeff Dudan (01:42.064) Wasn't that interesting that you got it for free for all those years and people pay them a hundred grand to come give it to them for an hour or whatever they pay them? Ben B (01:45.646) free. Ben B (01:50.766) I was talking about that the other day, like how we just got it for free from Sweeney and from, from Venables and just how elite like Crim Delacrim leaders that they currently were currently are. And those guys take it for granted. And just obviously college football, this is a, uh, can go into a long conversation of where college football currently is, but if some of those guys and me back then would have just stepped back and realized the wise counsel that we had that, I mean, that top zero, like one percent of leadership that those two guys were. It's just elite. Jeff Dudan (02:36.58) Yeah, I don't know Coach Sweeney, but the perception from the outside is that he holds the locker room, culture stays good, everybody participates. And as a result of that, tremendous success for the program over the years. Ben B (02:52.298) Yeah, what the public perceives of Coach Sweeney is what we saw. I mean, it doesn't get any better from a, definitely from a coaching standpoint, but like from a leadership, from a wise counsel, from a husband, from a father Christian standpoint, he just got it. Like he's just made of the right stuff. And you had, I know Clemson fans are been pissed over the past couple of years because it has been, we like haven't been playing at the level that we should be. And everyone just, if a team starts to suck, you want to go to the head, someone's got to get the blame for it. And I will to my grave, it ain't him. Like I can tell you, y'all just knew what the guy was made of. Like there's so many other dynamics to college football that are causing issues, but he is the top of the top, him and Venables. Like. Jeff Dudan (03:45.688) Yeah, I got a question though. Do you guys ever take bets on whether he's going to tumble down that hill prior to the game? Because I watch him run down that hill and I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for him to just eat it, but he never does. Ben B (03:56.662) Never has. I've only seen one guy, a freshman linebacker, when my senior year hit the little jump and snapped his ankle in half. And it's, I guess, it was kind of funny then, even though it was actually a bad injury. The guy was kind of a goober, and he tried to be cool and jump, like this little lip at the bottom. But yeah, almost every game, you'll see someone roll an ankle because they just get a little too confident. So yeah, he's a good athlete though. So he's... Jeff Dudan (04:23.022) Yeah. Ben B (04:26.719) I won't put money on that. Jeff Dudan (04:28.228) Well, I've been in, it's one of the better in bowl experiences. My daughter graduated from Clemson and now I've got a son at Virginia Tech. And if you go to both of those, uh, game days, those are two great, great in bowl experiences. Clemson is, you know, and they let everybody on the field after the game at Clemson. That's kind of trust and inclusion that, uh, you know, the team wants. And, and, uh, it's just, it's a real special place. My daughter had an incredible experience there. She loved watching you play. She really did. So you're number 10. My son was number 10. He was a linebacker. So like we always, anytime I saw 10 flying around, I had a little flashback to, you know, he played over to Elon and was a great high school player. But well, hey, Ben, let's, you know, I'd love to know a little bit. I don't know that much about how you grew up. Can you tell us a little bit who is Ben Bullware? Ben B (05:13.13) Wait. Motocross, Homeschooling, and the Making of a Grit-First Athlete Ben B (05:24.706) So Ben Bullware is someone that grew up in an awesome, just family upbringing. Like I know everyone says like, their parents are the best. Like from my point of view, like just our upbringing and family raising was, and I'm aware of that now as I'm in the season of raising a 10 month old son, my wife, and Jeff Dudan (05:51.72) Congratulations. Ben B (05:54.574) multiple people are like asking you like, hey, how are you going to do this? How are you going to handle this? I'm just like, I'm going to try my best to do it exactly how my parents did it. Because we grew up in a super loving environment, but in an extremely tough environment. You know, you have I have an older brother that played baseball at Clemson. He's two years older than me. I have a little sister who's. roughly 14, 15 months younger than me. And I have a little brother who is three or four years younger than us, there's four of us. So three boys, one girl. My dad started a concrete company when he was probably 24, 25 and still runs the company. So we grew up in a concrete environment. We grew up racing motocross. We were homeschooled until roughly middle school. But my mom, it was a combination of we were homeschooled because my parents are old school, are not fans of the public school system. And also we raced motocross pretty competitively. Like we traveled a good bit across the South. Every weekend we were either in Florida, in Virginia or North Carolina racing. So the fact that my parents, didn't really like the public school system and the curriculum, along with us being very competitive in motocross. We were homeschooled. I ended up having a pretty bad wreck through motocross that kind of like, Hey, this sports too expensive, too dangerous. We're going to transition into public school. It's probably a good time from a social standpoint. And then let's transition into football. It's much safer than motocross. So. Yeah, we grew up super tight knit family. We have a pretty big family in the upstate. Everyone lives pretty closely. I have a lot of cousins that are all pretty good athletes that are close to our age. So the upbringing was as good as it gets, you know? So growing up in Anderson, South Carolina, and then... Jeff Dudan (08:10.982) Yeah. Ben B (08:17.846) getting to play college sports, 20 minutes on the road. I mean, it really doesn't get, for some people, some people are like, I want to go across the world and get away from family. I'm like, I love my family. My parents are some of my best friends. Like, we have family dinner still to this day, every single week. So I was thinking about going to Georgia because Cluetson wasn't going to offer me a scholarship because I'm the six foot white guy down the road. They know that once they offer me, his brother's there. Jeff Dudan (08:26.321) Right. Jeff Dudan (08:38.299) Okay. Why Clemson Made Him Wait — and Why He Committed in 7 Seconds Ben B (08:47.382) His grandpa played football there. We know if we offer this kid, he's going to come. So they were playing hardball, which pissed me off because I'm like, dude, I was the number two per ESPN, was the number two rated linebacker in the country. Like, I know y'all know who I am. Stanford, Stanford was my second scholarship. And then South Florida and Stanford were my first scholarships in high school. And I'm just like. these freaking meatheads down the road won't pull the trigger. So then probably they did, uh, after Georgia did, I remember being in Mark Rick's office with my dad crying when he pulled the trigger. Cause that was super cool experience. Mark Rick obviously is a coaching legend. And then a week later, Clemson pulled the trigger cause I started playing hard. I started playing politics. I'm like, Hey, maybe a bulldog. And, um, finally they offered, I committed within seven seconds. And then obviously Jeff Dudan (09:18.013) Right. Jeff Dudan (09:26.694) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (09:42.906) Oh, so that was the target, right? You were focused on that. Yeah. Ben B (09:46.59) Er, sure. Yeah, since day one. My brother was playing ball there. My parents went there. My little sister ended up going there. All my cousins went there. Bullwears are Clemson folk. So when they pulled the trigger, obviously committed on the spot. And then, yeah, had a pretty fun Clemson career, which we can dive into. Jeff Dudan (10:09.5) Yeah, a few highlights. Of course, college football, playoff national champions 2016. You also got the Jack Lambert Trophy, college football, playoff, the national championship defensive MVP, co-defensive player of the year in 16, first team all CC 2016. Just an incredible career. And again, you were a standout to us as we were watching the games and just the way you flew around and the way you showed up at the point of attack. Always, you know, shoulder square and delivering some, you know, delivering good thump. So, really enjoyed watching you play and the way you did it. What did you learn from the experience at Clemson that you think will help you as you continue your entrepreneurial career? You've got a junkyard fitness now. which is a gym that you started right there in Clemson. And I don't know what your plans are going after that, but you're in the junkyard. By the way, I'll share with you, I shared with you my daughter went to Clemson. She graduated there in accounting. She got a 4.0. She's in law school at NYU. She got accepted. So she's a first year law student at NYU. And yet she applied for a job at your company and was turned down. So. Ben B (11:10.583) Anderson. Ben B (11:30.454) Let's go. The Junkyard Origin Story: Building a Gym From Scratch with a Teammate Jeff Dudan (11:36.436) I'm not sure. Yeah, man. Yeah, she had to go over to she had to go over to F45. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think. Yeah, that's that. Ben B (11:37.542) Really? Ben B (11:46.57) Is she really? That's funny, but also not really. Does she say why? Maybe? Jeff Dudan (11:53.072) No, I don't know. I just I don't I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was about. But anyway, you know. Yeah. Ben B (11:59.01) Is your daughter, is your daughter, Mailey? So I can, so I just quickly looked up her profile. So one of the things that we, and I don't know any, because I've never met with your daughter. One of the things that we make applicants do, well, throughout the onboarding process is do at least 10 classes before they get to my interview. So I look on her profile, she's only done two classes and she ain't been in two. So, but because. Jeff Dudan (12:18.636) Okay. Jeff Dudan (12:23.514) All right. Ben B (12:25.91) people will see something on social media or marketing, and I feel like we do a really good job from a marketing standpoint. Oh, this place looks super cool. I wanna work there. And like, okay, well, you need to come actually try this place out to see if it's something you like, because Instagram in reality is a little bit different. So we make applicants do, before they get through the onboarding process, 10 classes. Just to make sure, hey, did you actually like this place? Because... Jeff Dudan (12:50.012) Oh, that's a good idea. It's a great idea. Ben B (12:54.97) Like you have to be pretty bought in to become one of our team members. Cause we ask a lot of the people on our team. So we know that if, or for the most part, if someone will invest their time, energy and not money, because we give those 10 to them for free. Um, but if they will commit to doing those 10 classes before the onboarding process is done, we, we feel, uh, pretty strongly that they kind of check the, the week calm, the four C's and one of those C's we look for when we hire someone. is do they feel called to be in the industry? And we know that if they feel called or care about it, they'll easily do 10. So I don't know your daughter. So the other ones are character, competency, chemistry, and then called and care. So we obviously want high character folks. We don't need anyone that's perfect because I'm not perfect and I make a million mistakes. We want people that are obviously running Hiring with the 4 Cs: Character, Competency, Chemistry, and Calling Jeff Dudan (13:27.828) Nice. Jeff Dudan (13:34.926) Yeah. What are the other three C's? Jeff Dudan (13:46.993) Love it. Ben B (13:54.694) similar race, competency. We obviously want people that are competent that can do the job at a high level. Me and my business partner, Marcus Brown, who I played football with are two meatheads and we can't afford to have any other meatheads on the team. Chemistry is obviously a big deal to us. Like do they fit in with the team? We do a lot of, like if you ask any of our, we call them junkies across the upstate, like a lot of those people will speak on culture. And that's like, sounds cliche, but I- Like that's one of the things we really focus about like on the, like the community, the chemistry of the one, our team, but also our clients. And we do a lot of like just team events. And if someone like, we know that they're not going to fit in well with the team, like we're just almost set there. They're weird or just like, aren't going to mesh well. Hey, like you're probably not going to like working with our team. If you're not friends with the team. So chemistry is a real, real big deal. Um, we do team dinners, team outings, one-on-ones pretty much every single month, and then the last one is, uh, called care, like do they feel called to, to be in the industry? So, uh, I imagine your daughter, uh, is an incredible woman, but he only did two classes. So she, if she didn't do those 10, I am sure she's great, but she ain't getting thrown into the process. All right. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (15:09.69) Well, look, you gotta check the box. Jeff Dudan (15:19.49) She's great, she's great, she's just not, she's not great right there, that's fine. Ben B (15:22.518) He's probably overqualified. If she's at NYU, she was overqualified. She probably didn't take my job. Jeff Dudan (15:26.18) Well, yeah, she's teaching, she's teaching classes there, core power yoga. So yeah, she's, she loves the fitness stuff and it's, it's a, you know, big part of what she does, but so, so junkyard, like what's, who's the client, what are the goals and what's the workout. What Is The Junkyard? Functional Fitness, Music Tech & Chaos Ben B (15:44.93) So I'll start with a little bit of history, then the workout. So me and I have a business partner named Marcus Brown. He played safety at Newberry, and then his graduate year came to Clemson. Me and my roommate for four years at Clemson was his childhood best friend. So if we were playing on different weekends, he would come into town, sleep on our couch. So that's kinda how we got close. Once we closed the door with football, I'm like, hey dude. Jeff Dudan (16:01.224) Okay. Ben B (16:11.35) I have this idea about this hit studio, but doing it to music. And I could dive really, really deep into the history of, I know we have a time limit, um, pretty much he went to school for nursing. And if you know Marcus Brown, he is not a nurse. So he's just like, I don't want to go to nursing. Let's do it. So we opened up our first location in 2018 in downtown Anderson, because I imagine that, Hey, if this product sucks, at least I'm the hometown kid. And people will give me a pity. membership or a pity support and luckily it didn't suck and we treated people the right way open up our second location in Greenville in the West Village like five minutes downtown in May of 2020 so looking back probably the worst time in the world to open up a business and we got through it we didn't lose any money we didn't make any money but we did not close down didn't have to let anyone go Jeff Dudan (17:09.588) That's great. Ben B (17:10.434) kept the doors open, it was for sure tough. And then you operate a small business at 24, 25 years old in a global pandemic that'll force you to adapt and get creative. So we finally got out of COVID, 2021 was good for us. And in 2022, we opened up our third location in downtown Clemson. And then in October of this past year, we opened up our fourth spot in Malden Simpsonville. in a development called Bridgeway. So we have four spots right now, have roughly 70 people on our team. This is why I'm bald at 29 years old because of all this, but it's awesome. Like obviously I love the workout and I'll get into it, but also just like leading people and like the relationship side of it is what is really, really fun for me. And then just growing a business that's like been bootstrapped like. Me and Marcus bootstrapped this mug. It was just us two. Like I had like a lot of wise counsel with my parents who started their own company when he was roughly my age, but there ain't no like big money or like big backing behind is me and Marcus and a lot of good folk that have just like been wise counsel for us to allow us to help us make wise decisions. So the workout. We're trying to get away from being called a hit studio because some people love that. Some people hate that verbiage. You're like, oh, we hate hit, blah, blah. It's all cardio. So we're trying to go into this verbiage with my rebranding standpoint, a functional fitness studio. So it's again, like it's a workout. You're moving your body. But I feel like for people that like care about that type of workout classes, boutiques type stuff. The verbiage matters. So if you really put out that you're a hit studio, again, some will love it. Some will just totally scare them off. So a functional fitness studio, we, there's three things that kind of separate us. First thing is the format of the workout. So we're the only studio that I know of that uses treadmills, cycles, rowers, and then a functional lifting station. So there's typically four stations in the workout. Not. Jeff Dudan (19:30.836) Okay. In every workout, you use all those, all the... Okay. Ben B (19:35.122) Not every workout. Some days, like yesterday, we did an all mat workout. So we didn't use any machines. It was all mats. So we pride ourselves in not being all cardio because some people love that, some people don't. So we wanna be typically straddled the line of 50-50 where most on an average day, you'll have 50% cardio, 50% functional movements lifting. So like yesterday, Those all functional movements, which our clients are loving. You're getting this vibe in the world about, like I follow Nick Bear. So this whole hybrid athlete, like the running and lifting. So we just are kind of doing that, but along with a little cycling and rowing as well, because those are obviously great workouts. So those four stations and the average normal junkyard workout, run, ride, row, and then we say rage, because it's good marketing, all ours. The second thing that kind of separates us is we made this music software that allows us to work out to the interval of music. So we'll plug in this audio file. This is going to be, it's very difficult to explain this without a visual. It's super simple from a visual standpoint. Like my brother who has autism has done a hundred classes and he understands how the flow works because it's so simple. But when the beat. We'll plug in an audio file and this, it's essentially, it's our logo with like a green background. When the beat and the music has not dropped, the screen and the room is completely green. So we call it your pace zone. So if you're on the treadmill, we say it's like 60 to 70% of your max heart rate, your walking, if you're on the bikes, you're at a slow ride. If you're in a row, you're at a slow like row cadence. The beat and the music drops. And when you naturally would already pick up your pace, Jeff Dudan (21:24.528) Okay. Ben B (21:30.126) because there's like a scientific study that when I'm doing a presentation to companies to try to get them to get a corporate membership, I'll show them the study. But like if you're running and the beat and the music drops or picks up, you naturally just start picking up, running a little faster. So all we've done is create a visual for that. So the whole room will then turn to red when the beat drops. So now if you're running on the treadmill or if you're walking on green, you'd be running on red. On green. Jeff Dudan (21:38.516) Sure. Jeff Dudan (21:47.379) Right. Jeff Dudan (21:57.98) Yeah, and if you're colorblind, you're going from gray to gray. Ben B (22:01.906) If you're colorblind, it might be, we actually have some, one of our coaches is colorblind and we've, Markis who trains all of our coaches has found a way to figure that out. But yeah, if you're colorblind, it makes it a little bit difficult, but we have. Yeah, we found a way to make it happen. We do all the workouts, the music, this is a software that we've created. You won't find it anywhere else because it came out of me and Markis's butt. Jeff Dudan (22:07.962) All right. Jeff Dudan (22:17.288) Well then you still got the music. All right. Jeff Dudan (22:27.473) Nice. From Burn Bootcamp to Rockbox: Jeff & Ben Talk Fitness Franchising Ben B (22:30.318) pretty much. Third thing that separates us is the coaching. So the same way that me and Marcus were coached at Clemson by Coach Venables is in a professional way, a less cussing way, how we coach our clients. I felt like there was a gap in this category of fitness when it comes to intentional coaching. So an acronym that we use at our business is the acronym Jeff Dudan (22:31.291) Yeah. Ben B (22:59.434) and call hire. We, like in the training process, really, really hammer that home. Like you can't call someone hire and challenge them if you don't know how to call them out and know how to know their name. So we really, like that's one of the things I had to interview on Monday. And hey, this is the three non-negotiables that like I really, really care about that I'm never gonna kind of pivot from. First thing is names. Like we are going to address. Jeff Dudan (23:11.741) Yeah. Ben B (23:26.61) every single person by name, it's the sweetest sound, in any language to that person is their name. Second thing is cleanliness, third thing is communication. Like you're gonna communicate at a high level if you're on our team. But you can't call someone higher. If you don't know, like your name is Jeff. Like how am I going to lovingly criticize you? If I'm gonna give you feedback, like bro you don't even know my name. So we coach our clients that are really, really. high level, obviously with love and respect. But if you go to one of our classes or your daughter went to one of our classes and the coach knew, hey, Mailey, she can run at seven, eight miles per hour. And she's going in there dogging it at four. Our coach, hey, baby girl, eight. They're gonna press it four. And I should not hurt anybody. But that doesn't happen in this like. Jeff Dudan (24:12.404) Yeah. Ben B (24:21.142) category of business, it's all rainbows and daisies and everyone's doing a great job. And a lot of times they're not and they need to be coached better. So those are kind of the three things that separate us, uh, from a workout. And just our company is the run, ride, road rage, the music, and then the, the coaching that we do that is, uh, the junkyard. Jeff Dudan (24:44.46) Awesome. And is it all group fitness or do you have personal training as well? Ben B (24:49.782) Yes, sir. So you have 99.9% group. You'll have, we can get up to 40 people in a class, which is really fun. We have like a higher tier membership called Junkyard Plus that will give these folks that are on this membership like one individual coaching session a month, like with Marcus. So 99.9% of the other stuff is all grouped up. We're not an open gym concept. 45 minutes. Yes, sir. Jeff Dudan (25:16.608) All right, and then how long is the class? 45 minutes, yeah, that's plenty to get it done. About what, a three minute warmup, three minute cool down, and everything else is getting after it. Ben B (25:26.818) Exactly. 40, roughly minutes of chaos. Jeff Dudan (25:31.096) Yeah, chaos, utter chaos, utter chaos. I love it. Four stores, all company owned. So I've been involved in two different fitness things over the year. So, um, but, uh, so burn bootcamp. Ben B (25:34.221) Yes, sir. Ben B (25:41.718) Which one did you speak on it? Oh yeah, come on, let's go. Y'all are freaking everywhere. Jeff Dudan (25:48.46) Yeah, they're everywhere, but Devin and Morgan walked into a building that I had for rent when they were working in a parking lot. And I rented them the space. We became friends and we, you know, talked to them about franchising when they decided they wanted to do it. So they're good friends of mine. And Ben B (26:04.942) You were the, give me more on the, I was well informed on, on burn bootcamp, um, that wouldn't, there's, there's one in Anderson, there's one in Greenville, uh, there's in Tinsville. So some of our main workouts, very, very different. And I would even say some of my details a little bit different, but same model. So you were like one of the starting guys, please give me Jeff Dudan (26:14.065) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (26:18.291) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (26:24.804) Well, so I wasn't not an owner in any way, but just more of a advisor, mentor and friend because I was already in franchising. And then I rented them a space. They didn't have any credit. They didn't have any money. They had been turned down for leases. And I'm like, well, the reason that I believed in Devin so much is because when I asked him, I said, why do you do what you do? His sense of purpose was so clear. He goes, I'm gonna build a fit bootcamp for moms and I'm gonna be the first billion dollar trainer. And like he... Ben B (26:53.235) Cool. Those are the starters of it. That's cool. Jeff Dudan (26:55.44) Yeah, him and his wife at the time. I don't, yeah, I think they were either engaged or they were, I think they were married at the time. So I rented them a place. They did all the work themselves. They started it. And then two years later they were, uh, wanted to franchise. So we, you know, so we, we had some sessions together and I just shared what I knew about it and over the years, yeah, we're good friends. And then I also, um, started, uh, I actually acquired a business with two locations called rock box fitness. Ben B (27:21.967) I know exactly that. That literally one of their, are you still involved with them? Jeff Dudan (27:27.633) I own a couple of studios. Yeah. So work, work with them. So that's also a different kind of workout. But yeah, so I've been in around the. Ben B (27:29.958) Gotcha. That's cool. Ben B (27:36.07) still same category though roughly same that's all booty group fitness Jeff Dudan (27:40.58) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so bending around a little bit on the franchise side. So what's your, are you gonna, are you considering franchising this? You're gonna keep it company owned. Is Franchising Next for The Junkyard? Ben Opens Up Ben B (27:50.646) So this is a great question. Great question. So we've dabbled in this a lot, a lot over the past year. So how can I, I'll tell you everything. I don't, it doesn't bother me at all. So I won't get to like, I won't do names and stuff, but so we had probably at the beginning of last year, I'll call it a PE firm. They pretty much are a company that work with Jeff Dudan (27:52.682) Hehehe Jeff Dudan (27:57.384) Yeah. Ben B (28:20.626) small businesses that are roughly our size, like five to 10 units and scale them. So we'll just say a PE firm for lack of a better, like clear explanation on who they are. Started working with them over the past year. Good folk, like definitely some wise, we didn't sign any like deal, but it was initial like, hey, these six months we're gonna create a growth plan for y'all. Jeff Dudan (28:23.17) Mm-hmm. Ben B (28:49.066) Um, and then pretty much it's just like over the past couple of months, um, kind of just died and fell off. Like I haven't heard from them. Um, so they're the two guys that I dealt with, they're like the two owners of the thing are like good people, cool folk. I don't know the baddest thing about them, but hadn't heard from them in a couple of months that they're watching this. They know I'm not lying. Um, but I'm interested in doing it because I'm just, I'm aware like Jeff Dudan (28:56.552) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:08.934) Yeah. Ben B (29:18.466) to get good margins in this business, like your margins increase. If you do it the right way and are obviously super careful with obviously who you're working with, what market you're going into, we know what market works really well for us, then yes, like you can probably get to where you currently are one day. Like you have to, like you're fine with four, but you want to create some family, maybe generational wealth, like. Jeff Dudan (29:33.204) Sure. Jeff Dudan (29:48.36) Yeah. Ben B (29:48.49) You got to do what Burn Bootcamp do, like and get resources from other areas. So I'm interested in doing it. Um, I'm building my house right now. We got our CEO yesterday. So over the past, I'd probably say like end of Q, Q four, uh, January, February. I've been super too involved with building our house because I'm the one that's building it, um, but now since we got our CEO yesterday, we're about to move in. I can get really back into the weeds. Uh, just. growing the business the right way. So yes, long-winded way to say that we are, but I wanna be super, super careful. Like I've met with a lot of people that are in leadership at Chick-fil-A because there's a way to scale and not do it too fast. Like Chick-fil-A has done it the right way, and they've been super careful. Like for the most part, you can go to a Chick-fil-A anywhere and hey, my pleasure. Jeff Dudan (30:19.408) Nice. Ben B (30:45.622) or it's gonna be an incredible experience. So I've met with a lot of their leadership. I met with a guy that's in the process of opening his own and it's been like a year long process for him in the interview just to open his own store. So I know that there's a way to do it at a slow enough cadence, whereas you scale from four to maybe 40, hey, the same way that we operate this Anderson location that it was the day one, there's the same way we'll open up. this 40th location or wherever, like you can't really tell a difference. And I want to be just careful about that because I know that can destroy a business and destroy reputation. So yes, again, long winded way to say I am interested in it. And this, honestly, over Q2, Q3, Q4 this year, or we'll probably start having conversations again. Not sure, we're not like. Jeff Dudan (31:18.086) Yeah. Ben B (31:43.25) legally tied down to anything. So it is a junkyard is open for business and. Jeff Dudan (31:46.032) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (31:49.296) Well, there's different ways to grow a business and you gotta consider all your options. If you ever wanna be introduced to some interesting people in the franchise space to continue to round out your thinking, just let me know. There's a lot of people, franchising is a very collaborative and tight community. And, you know, we're particularly interested in the industry about expanding the reach and relevance of that business model. We think it's the greatest wealth creation business model ever invented. And when you find good people that have a business, there's a lot of people, like in any business, that, you know, will... consult with you or charge you dollars or things like that, but maybe they can't get you all the way there. So you have to, you do have to be careful with, you know, who you get to help you on all of that stuff. But generally when you find good people that have good businesses and they're looking to grow a business, you always want to collaborate and help. because we want to make sure that the franchise industry maintains the highest standards possible. And it does know, and even though we might be competitors and it like, you know, Devin and I, man, we're great friends and that's all it's been. We've done some business deals together, but I never participated in Burn. I just, Ben B (32:57.838) Kind of competitive with Rockbox though. Jeff Dudan (32:59.992) I just helped them and then, you know, with Rockwell, like, but it didn't, our relationship didn't even glitch. I mean, it was just, you know, I'm in this space today. I'm not in it tomorrow, you know, life and business are infinite games. And, you know, you spend your whole life, Ben, you will spend your whole life searching and looking for those, those few people that you can truly trust for those few people that will really cheer for you when you do well. regardless, that will be unselfish in their care for you and the way that they want you to succeed. And I think, and I've learned in my career that people will give you $10 for every dollar that you can take from them. And it's not only to give back, but you need to give first. And those are some things that I've learned in business that. Um, you know, and you stick to those things and sometimes you get burned, just like with employees, sometimes you get hurt because you trusted too much. But at the end of the day, man, you can't, you, you really will go farther if you can surround yourself with a group of people, um, that discretionary effort that care, it's a football team and I'm a football player. I played, I didn't, I, so I played it. So I had a day at Clemson in 1990, by the way, here's my Clemson story. Uh, I was a starting, I was a senior year. I was a starting fullback at Appalachian State University. Clemson was number five ranked defense in the country. Uh, there was a guy on the edge called LaVon Kirkland and, uh, you know, probably, I think he was, I think he was among the first 260 to 270 pound linebackers in the NFL, like that big body linebacker. And they lined him up on the end of the line and we ran toss option. So he was mine all day long. Like, you know, Ben B (34:21.846) Boy. Ben B (34:32.75) Yes, sir. Ben B (34:39.55) Oh, how about that for you? Jeff Dudan (34:40.9) He was a beast. I got him down on the ground. Like one, I got him down on the ground a couple of, you know, a couple of times, but, you know, generally, uh, we lost that game 50 to nothing. And, uh, it was. Yeah. I mean, it was close. I mean, you know, it was, it was close in the first half, but so I was a captain and I'm walking out of the tunnel and I'm, you know, in the front of the line and we just pause there at the tunnel, uh, you know, for whatever reason, the way to go out and the state trooper who was standing there. Ben B (34:50.902) Love that. Jeff Dudan (35:10.836) turned around, put his face right in my face mask and said, you all are getting ready to get your noses bloodied. And I'm like, even the cops? Yeah, even the cops here? We don't, you know, and, but you know, there was 77,000 people that day. You know, I was a Juco kid. I wasn't a great player. Ben B (35:21.449) All right. Thank you for the encouragement. Jeff Dudan (35:36.052) And just to be able to walk out in that environment, walk out on the field. I think we received the kickoff. I was in the front middle of the kickoff line. So, you know, I was out there for the kickoff and played the game at fullback. And we did okay, man, but like we didn't have the speed and we didn't have the depth. And it was just, you guys just kept waves of people coming on the field, just, you know. But, you know, AppState's not a bad program. We've done well over the years. Ben B (36:03.273) program. Jeff Dudan (36:04.024) Yeah, we know how to win there and very proud of the school and proud to be a part of that with Coach Moore. But well, last thing I want to talk to you about and then we got a couple I got two questions left for you. Number one, you grew up in a family, obviously a tight family. What's it like for you being a father? Ben B (36:10.766) Thank you, sir. Fatherhood, Selflessness, and Growing a Family Like a Team Ben B (36:27.79) It's so much fun. God, it's so much fun. It is extremely challenging. So where we've been is in this, so I'm in our little garage apartment right now. So we built this, we've got a three car garage, a little studio apartment above it. And me and my wife have been in it for the past two years. And it's fine with you and your wife. You introduce a little nine, 10 month old crackhead little boy, it makes it a little bit more difficult when he's sleeping in the living room. You got to put them down at seven o'clock. You got to just go in your room and stay there till the following day. So definitely has been a challenge. He didn't sleep till about six months. And the number one way to screw up a person's head and just body in general is eliminate them of sleep. So for the first six months, me and my wife suffered a good bit. And then once he learned how to roll on his face, then it just was nights out for him. But. Jeff Dudan (37:06.269) Mm. Jeff Dudan (37:13.501) Right. Ben B (37:24.806) So much fun. We're getting into a really cool season where he's like not talking yet, just making a bunch of noises. He crawls around like a little bug. He's close to walking, but just so much fun. And, but yeah, definitely it's a challenge. It's a... Jeff Dudan (37:38.996) Is it a big kid? Ben B (37:42.09) His head's big. I got a freaking, I got a noggin. So his head's like on the 99th percentile, but everything else is, he's average his grits, but he's a 10 months old. So we got a little time, but once we get into that season where he's a little over a year old, I'm gonna start putting old buddy through some drills, start working on coordination. But yeah, just so much fun. Definitely teach you how to be selfless. Jeff Dudan (37:43.38) Ha ha! Jeff Dudan (38:01.992) Yeah, he'll be training. Ben B (38:11.81) gone are the days are about you or your wife it's just all about him right now so Jeff Dudan (38:16.776) Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, Ben, you know this because you grew up with a father who was an entrepreneur, but you giving your son exposure to entrepreneurship at a young age will give them an entirely different paradigm of the way they think about things and self-reliance. So, you know, and one indicator of future success as an entrepreneur is whether they had an early entrepreneur exposure or experience early in life. Ben B (38:43.586) Yep. Jeff Dudan (38:43.8) So, you know, it'll, you know, I know like I had my son, uh, when I was building this, this business or the bit, my previous business, and I mean, he'd come to work with me, he'd sleep on a moving blanket under my desk, man, we we'd go to lunch, you know, he four or five years old, we just hold hands and walk across the parking lot and go get some fried trout and French fries. I mean, it's, uh, those are some of the best memories. Uh, so you've got all that right in front of you. So congratulations on that. Ben B (39:00.983) That's all. There you go. Jeff Dudan (39:10.716) I know you're going to be a great dad and hope you have as many as you want. Um, yeah. Um, Ben B (39:15.562) Lord willing. You might know I'm totally about to get in the house. Like, let's run it back. And she's like, I need to breathe. Like, no. I'm like, come on, dude. I grew up with four in our family. So yeah, my older brother already just had his third. He was 31. He wants to have like six, seven. I'd like, Lord bless us with three or four and we'll be good with that. But my wife's putting her foot down right now. It's ultimately a good decision, but I'm pushing. Jeff Dudan (39:45.576) Wow. Yeah, well, things happen. You'll get exactly the number you're meant to have. Last question, Ben. If you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life, what might that be? Ben B (39:51.139) Right. Thanks, Adam. Ben B (39:55.235) For sure. One Sentence to Live By: Ben’s National Championship Mantra Ben B (40:03.49) Kyle, so one of the things that I've been saying for years, and I said it when we won the national championship is on that stage was our team can control the input all year, all season, all night, and the output took care of itself. And for me, that's like worked in my personal life, worked in football, it's worked. in my relationships and business is controlling the input, not the output. So for me, just like controlling the controllables, control the things that are in my grasp that I can actually control. And if I do that day in, day out, continue to toil the soul, more times than not, the fruit will happen and the output will work in my favor. So I feel like sometimes you need luck. Jeff Dudan (40:38.766) Nice. Ben B (41:02.206) you know, but more times than not, it's how much work you can consistently and daily put in. So for me, that's been something that I've tried to live by is controlling the input day in day out. And if I do that, whether the output works in my favor or not, I can go to sleep at night knowing that I did my duty. I tried, you know, I told the soul to control the input, not the output. Jeff Dudan (41:26.84) Yeah. Well, brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. And Ben, it has been awesome to get to know you a little bit. I'm so excited for your business and really appreciate it. Appreciate you coming on the home front today with us. How can people get in touch with you or your business? Ben B (41:46.53) So our, probably the best way is through Instagram. So our Instagram is at the junkyardfitness. Our business is just called the junkyard. We added fitness on the end of it, like on our website, because it was $5 to buy that URL. At www.thejunkyard was like $4,000. So I'm a frugal businessman. So it's just called the junkyard, but online and on Instagram is at. the junkyard fitness. We're extremely active on social. So, uh, following us on there, uh, we have a pretty creative, I won't spill the beans on our marketing tactics, but, uh, give us a follow on, uh, on Instagram. And someone on our team might be reaching out to you very, very soon. And then, uh, my Instagram is just at Ben Bullware. My social media sucks. All it is, is I have three St. Menards. that are extremely stupid. And then my hairy little 10 month old son is pretty much all I post on social media. So you can call the junkyard. Jeff Dudan (42:54.274) I've seen it. I've seen it. Yeah. Ben Bullware. This has been awesome. And I'm Jeff Duden and we have been on the on. Let me hit that again. I'm Jeff Duden. We've been on the homefront with Ben Bullware. Ben, thanks for being on and everybody out there. Thanks for listening.
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Brief Summary In this dynamic episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan is joined by Charlene Li—New York Times bestselling author, founder, and leading expert on disruption, innovation, and leadership. Charlene shares her personal story of growing up as a "walking disruption," her early internet career, and what it really takes to build disruptive organizations that thrive in uncertainty. From Adobe’s bold transition to the subscription model, to how leaders must create movements within their companies, this episode is packed with insights for entrepreneurs and executives seeking to lead transformative change. Key Takeaways Disruption isn’t about technology—it’s about leadership and culture. The tools change, but success always comes down to how well leaders manage people and vision. Future customers drive innovation. Companies must stay obsessed with unmet customer needs—especially from unhappy or fringe customers. Innovation theater kills real transformation. Disruption must be embedded in the core business—not delegated to side projects that never make it back. Culture = beliefs + behaviors. Change fatigue happens when leadership doesn’t commit to seeing transformation through. Lore, rituals, and language hold culture together. Symbols, stories, and even Slack channel names like “Pod Squad” create the glue that binds teams through change. AI strategy must be built on values, not just use cases. Charlene previews her next book, Winning with Generative AI, and shares how ethical frameworks will define success. Featured Quote “Make disruption and change a part of your everyday.” — Charlene Li TRANSCRIPT Jeff Dudan (00:00.782) Please forgive me. Hey everybody, this is Jeff Duden. Welcome to On the Homefront. Today we have an incredible influencer and the author of The Disruption Mindset, Charlene Lee with us today, who is a New York Times bestselling author multiple times over, and somebody who I'm really interested to spend time with today and learn how we can all build better, more innovative, disruptive companies and lives. Charlene, welcome. Charlene Li (00:30.681) Thank you for having me. Jeff Dudan (00:32.51) Yeah, excited to have you on. So I've been consuming your content here and I actually think your book is going to be on our executives reading list now. I've been summarizing it and I really, um, getting out of our own thinking traps and understanding what disruption is like and what the culture needs to be inside of an organization to be able to tolerate it and live with it, uh, has, has been a particular interest to me. Would you mind just a little bit for the. our audience sharing a little bit about your background and even, uh, you know, early, early years where you grew up, how you grew up, that kind of stuff. Charlene Li’s Early Life: Learning to Live with Disruption Charlene Li (01:09.689) Sure. I grew up in Detroit. Um, I'm Asian American. So growing up Detroit as an Asian American, there were very, very few of us. And in fact, in my grade school, when I started, there were no people of color. So it was highly disruptive just being in an environment like that. Um, and so from an early age, I learned how to live with disruption because I was a walking, talking form of disruption in my community. So. I got very used to doing this and I went into college, business school, professional career coming out of Harvard Business School in 1993. I decided to do something very different. Most people were going back to consulting or investment banking and I decided to join newspapers, which is not the most natural thing to do because I could see that the internet was coming, was going to disrupt newspapers. And I wanted to be in Silicon Valley at the middle of that disruption. And so I've made a career of... looking at these new trends in technology and understanding how they will impact business and leadership. And I wrote my first book in 2008 while I was an analyst at Forrester Research on how companies can use this new technology called social media. And I just keep writing books about strategy and leadership and technology. Jeff Dudan (02:23.503) Open Leadership was another book? Yes. Charlene Li (02:25.665) Right. That was in 2010. And after I wrote my first book, people kept saying, OK, I get it. I need to be open and authentic and transparent. How open do I need to be? And that was a really good question I didn't have an answer to. So when I don't know the answer to things, I go do research, and a book sometimes pops out. So I wrote a book about how do you be open? I mean, systematically and strategically, be open. And how open? Because you can't be 100% open. So what are the ways to do that? Jeff Dudan (02:57.166) 2007-2008 there's been a little bit of disruption in technology since then with all of the companies that launched in 2007. Is there anything that as an early... Jeff Dudan (03:11.278) someone who's studying that space early. Is there anything that surprised you as to where we are here today in 2024? Charlene Li (03:18.349) Actually, I've seen, again, I was early into the internet in 1993, 95. I covered the internet advertising, but that drove the dot com boom. So that was my coverage. That was my beat. So I briefed a lot of companies that I just shook my head like, what is your business model here? And so when I look at these disruptions today and people ask me, is this real? Are these new generative AI tools? Are they just a flash in the pan? Again, I've seen disruption now for 30 years, and I've never seen a force as disruptive and potentially transformational as generative AI is. And that's from watching a lot of technology and business strategy. But the thing I keep coming back to, it always comes back to your business strategy and your people, and it comes back to leadership and culture. It always comes back to that. It is not about the technology. It has everything to do with leadership and culture. About how successful you'll be. Jeff Dudan (04:12.706) So the tools are just the tools, and then it's up to leadership to determine if we can disrupt our industry with these tools or if our strategy is good as it is. Sometimes, I think you mentioned in your book, sometimes you've looked at all the options of disruptive activities, but we think we're on the right course. What led you to write The Disruption Mindset? From Social Media to Generative AI: 30 Years of Watching Change Charlene Li (04:41.445) Well, I've made disruption sort of my calling card of my career. And somebody asked me, again, a really good question. So how do you disrupt yourself? And there's a lot of work from Clay Christensen and some other great thinkers, like the innovator Salema, that basically said, if you're a large successful organization, you cannot disrupt yourself. And yet I was seeing all these examples of companies who were doing this quite successfully. So I said, what's the secret sauce here? How do you do this? Jeff Dudan (04:44.843) Right. Jeff Dudan (04:57.186) Yes. Charlene Li (05:09.373) And it typically, the advice has been take your innovation engine, stick it outside the mothership where they can grow unabated without any constraints. But the problem is bringing them back in to change the mothership was incredibly difficult. And so what I found in my research is that there's something that changes fundamentally in companies that if you're going to transform and disrupt yourself, you have to strategically and intentionally do that. And it's incredibly difficult. But I found all these examples of companies that were doing this. And they weren't the usual suspects of like Facebook and Google or Amazon, because who can be those companies? It's like a university. It's an art museum. It is a nonprofit. It is, you know, communications firms and hospitals. So these are companies that are disrupting themselves quite successfully and growing exponentially as a result. Jeff Dudan (06:05.682) Most businesses start in a scrum. So are you suggesting that to innovate, many companies need to create that scrum, move it outside of the organization so that they're untethered from the daily ongoings and all of the head trash, the curse of knowledge, and all these things that are happening in the business of the business on the daily and put a kind of a team outside to really take a more of a holistic look at the business and then find a way to bring that back into the organization? Is that what you're suggesting? Why Innovation Theater Fails: You Can’t Outsource Disruption Charlene Li (06:37.701) I actually think that's one approach and it could work for most organizations, but what I've seen, it usually fails. And what happens is that team develops something beautiful and wonderful. It's really innovative. It's what the customers want in the future. The leadership from the core business comes and looks at that, cheers and applause, gives them a standing ovation. And then the lights go on and innovation theater has ended. They go back to the reality. So I call it innovation theater because that's what it is. It's a lot of focus and lights and action. It's really great. It feels great, but you're not going to change anything that you do. And so my belief is that you've got to bring all of that change into the organization and start transforming and disrupting yourself. So it's really hard because you have your operations that you want to go and continue doing, and at the same time, you've got to change it. And we think about change as a negative thing. We think about order and creating order, because that's what we as leaders do. Actually managers create order and maintain a status quo. Leaders by definition create change. And so if you want to lead, you have to be changing something. And the level of change determines how destructive you're going to be. You say, this is the way we see things today. We see things being done differently in the future. So what does that future look like? Why is it better than today? And if you can get people to identify what that future could look like, it could be just one step. It could be a lot of different steps, but you do not become highly disruptive and transformative overnight. It is a skill and a mindset that you must develop over time. And you have to train your organization to take these steps. And it's hard to do if that engine just isn't there. Jeff Dudan (08:26.526) One thing that tech has done particularly well versus maybe other industries is creating future customers that didn't exist just by, because the customer didn't know either what was possible or how they could use it, or that they even needed something like that. You speak to future customers in your work. How do companies identify who their future customers might be? The Secret to Finding Future Customers Charlene Li (08:50.981) Well, in the beginning, they're probably your existing customers. You just don't serve them very well. And so what I encourage people to do, go look at your unhappy customers, the ones who are complaining, the ones that you sort of on the fringes, they're not the core best customers that you love, who love you. They're the ones who begrudgingly give you their business. And so ask them, what could we do to win more? What could we do to get that 10 out of 10 on the recommendation list? and really stay close to them and identify and figure out if these are new needs that are emerging that other customers are sharing, is it an opportunity that's unmet? So it's knowing and talking to your customers constantly to identify these new opportunities. And as you grow your market, you get more comfortable with having other adjacencies and sometimes even taking huge leaps. But what I like to say is if you're very clear on you're who your future customers and everyone in the organization knows what that future model is, then people in the front lines can say, wait, I think I found one here. They shoot up a flare literally inside the company and say, everyone come around, we have a, we have a future customer here. Let's listen, let's learn from them. Or they can identify these needs that may not be heard, but the hierarchies are broken down. The communications are broken down so that we can actually collaborate and identify this, the information from the front lines. gets up to the executives who actually can make decisions to go in these strategic directions. And before you couldn't do that, you just didn't have that connective tissue. And that's what's really different now than what it was 10, 15 years ago. We actually have these communication tools that shrinks down the organization and allows us to be much more connected to the front lines and to our customers. Jeff Dudan (10:41.898) Have you worked with a client who was in a situation where they realized that their current customers were going to be obsolete and they were forced to find new future customers? And how do they go about it? Charlene Li (10:58.101) Yeah, I'll give you, um, you know, an oil company, you know, very traditional customers, and they know that the market is changing, like, you know, just process, you know, oil, but no engine, like engine oil, gas, automobiles, exactly. So they knew that the market was changing and the way they characterize it is that we traditionally have pulled stuff out of the ground and find markets to sell it to. Oil Companies and Green Energy: Transforming When You Don’t Have To Jeff Dudan (11:04.846) Cooking oil, what kind of oil are we talking here? Body oil, oh, just oil oil. OK, got it. Charlene Li (11:23.953) Now we have to switch our mindset to say, what does the market want in alternative oils and green oils and non-carbon oils? How do we develop these new things and then make them? It is a completely different mindset. And my work with them was they knew strategically what they needed to do, but culturally and as leadership, they didn't know how to do this. And if you've been around any oil refinery manufacturing or delivery, safety is a major issue. And so their thinking was for 30 years now, you've told me I'm successful as a leader when nothing goes wrong and nobody gets killed. Now you're telling me break things, you know, fail fast and break things. I'm like, that doesn't compute. So what's the model for this? And again, when you focus on customers. Jeff Dudan (12:01.774) That's right. Charlene Li (12:14.281) It takes it out of that internal focus. Like what are we doing versus what is it our customers want? And you become very, very focused on what is it that they need a tuning to them. And then changing the things internally because you're of your desire to meet the needs of these future customers. Jeff Dudan (12:32.918) Just by definition, successful companies are companies that hit their forecast, top line and bottom line. They, from a very little variance from a Six Sigma perspective. So they're efficient, they're effective, they deliver not early, not late, but right on time. So these are the types of companies that get rewarded for lack of variation, which could imply lack of variation. How difficult is it sometimes? I mean... You know, sometimes a new broom sweeps clean. Uh, when your companies are going through this transformation, do they, you know, how deep do they have to go in changing people, process technologies, uh, to be able to really unlock something new? I, so my, my business coach for nine years was the president of Husqvarna North America for 18 years, and he took them from 29 million in sales in North America to, uh, $530 million in sales. through a dealership network. And what he shared with me was that at every $100 million of growth, that they needed to take all of their assets and put them out on the curb and only bring the things back into the building that were gonna get them to that next $100 million worth of growth. And at $500 million in sales, they had less than half the staff than they did at the $200 million in sales because automation. technology, efficiencies, the supply chain, all of those types of things. So being innovative and disruptive is it takes a toll on an organization in lots of different ways. And I can see how companies don't have the courage or the stamina. The motivation must be great for a company to disrupt themselves. That being said. The market's a great motivator and if you don't disrupt yourself, then the other fear is that you're going to get behind somebody else is and they're going to service those future customers and they are no longer your customers. Adobe’s Big Gulp: Losing Profits to Win the Future Charlene Li (14:34.413) Right. And so which is where I find the future customer focus to be so compelling because this is not about becoming number one in the marketplace. It's not about getting the most profits. It's about really this external goalposts of your future customers. And it's constantly moving forward. You always try to catch up to that. I'll give you an example of Adobe in the book. And I found this amazing back in 2011 or so they'd realize that the cloud was coming. Nobody was pushing them to move into it. All of their customers were perfectly happy buying CD-ROMs. And they said, we need to move to the cloud because there are these new customers, pro consumer users, people who don't want to pay thousands of dollars to use Adobe products. And the customers hated this idea. The employees like, what do you mean? We don't know anything about how to do this. And as a publicly traded company, when they ran the numbers, they knew they would be unprofitable for eight straight quarters. And yet they went ahead and did this because they believed that this future customer would be so much more lucrative and they could also provide them a better product by having things in the cloud constantly updated, not updated every 18 to 24 months. So they did this. They went to wall street and gave them the guidance. We're going to make this progress, this change. It'll start hitting a year from now. Expect that we're going to lose a lot of money, but the number you should look at is how many people subscribe. And they had so much confidence. they could hit their numbers going down. So to your point, Wall Street likes predictability. And because they told them a year ahead, we're gonna lose this much money, and they hit that number, their stock started taking off as they lost money. So you can see this amazing graph, red line of their profits going down and their stock prices is going up in a fishhook. That just doesn't happen by accident. It was absolutely intentional, strategic. And this team executed so incredibly well. They were practicing the ability to run the business, know the market and they could pull these switches to make these things happen. They had the discipline inside of the organization to hold things together as they went through this transition. And I can tell you as an analyst following Adobe at the time, I kept getting phone calls from so many people saying, you will not believe the crazy things we're doing as a company right now. It is insane. We are. Charlene Li (16:59.209) up in arms and like so focused on this change. It is incredible. If we can pull this off, it'll be a huge change in the business. And that's exactly what they did. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:11.062) What was happening in Adobe the two or three years before that, that led them to explore this option? Obviously, recurring revenue is the darling of Wall Street and all of our FP&A analysts. Everybody likes recurring revenue. So there's that. The ability to hang on to a customer and create lifetime value of a customer through a subscription model. People getting hooked on your product for maybe a lower. cost monthly versus having to invest in it and then upgrade it and it getting obsolete. So you know, there's all of these things, the way we buy things today, but they were early to adopt to it. Were they in a red ocean? Was their market share shrinking? Were they concerned about their ability to update their technology? What forced them or what led them to be this bold and courageous? Charlene Li (18:03.685) Yeah, but again, they, like everyone else in 2008 to 2010, had suffered because of the financial fallout. And then in 2010, they talked about having one of those epic strategic planning off-sites. And it was then when they started thinking, could we actually do this? And so let's figure this out. So they said, this is two thirds of our business. Our business is $3 billion, $2 billion we're putting on the line here. But this seems like it's really interesting. It makes a lot of sense. No one was doing subscription businesses at that point. Nobody was. And their business looked great. They had 95% in the market. Nobody was really competing against them. They really didn't have to do this, which is why it was so fascinating to me. Because what drove them wasn't competitive pressures. It was from them saying there was a market with unmet needs out there. And we believe we can serve them. So they started creating the products, tested it in Australia, really found the numbers to be pretty compelling. They launched it in the U S they still kept the CD-ROM product as a hedge. They were nervous, like looking at the numbers and it was when they finally cut off the fact that said, you know, we'll keep supporting the existing CD-ROM, but we're never going to do that again. Everything, if you want all the updated stuff can only come from the online subscription and when they did that. Jeff Dudan (19:11.031) Mm. Sure. Charlene Li (19:27.449) 50,000 customers signed a petition saying, let's go back. And they said, no, we burned the boats. There's no going back. Jeff Dudan (19:34.75) Well, so anybody that was in possession of a CD-ROM was able to continue to operate, but then the new subscription people were incremental, but it was a fraction of the revenue. They probably had a whole new support model, uh, infrastructure that they had to support, so they were probably upside down in their development and their R and D costs, all of that. So, well, kudos to them because now there's a dozen things on my credit card that, uh, get paid every month to different people like them. Uh, so. Kudos to them. Now, is that, you talk about a big gulp in terms of your future customers. Can you explain what that means? Strategic Inflection Points: How to Know When to Leap Charlene Li (20:12.269) This is when you make that bet. When Adobe literally stood around the executive room, they were literally holding hands with each other, looking each other in the eye going, we're gonna do this, right? This is our big gulp moment. We take that big gulp. Jeff Dudan (20:14.507) Okay. Jeff Dudan (20:24.022) All right, so big lump in your throat. That's what you mean. Big lump in your throat. If this doesn't work, we're all out of a job. And. Charlene Li (20:29.985) Yeah. I mean, like you're betting things, right? And people are so reluctant to make big bets, to take that big goal, to step over that line. Because what if we're wrong? Well, this is why you have contingency plans. This is why you do scenario planning. This is why you have lots of different options there to mitigate the risks. So this takes practice. Jeff Dudan (20:32.641) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:36.354) Yeah. Charlene Li (20:52.805) to take those big gulps. You take the little gulps along the way and you don't necessarily do nothing and then one day make a big gulp, you just won't be able to do it. But when that moment comes, can you make that decision? Can you take that big gulp? And this is, again, if you're choosing to go in, but also when things are coming at you, when disruption is coming at you and you must take that big gulp, make that decision, will you be able to make the decision? Or will you be frozen? and unable to decide. So this is almost insurance to say that if you can handle disruption that you create, when disruption is coming from the outside, you'll be in golden position. You'll know exactly how to deal with that. You and your entire organization will be geared toward being able to handle these kinds of situations. Jeff Dudan (21:40.754) I imagine you work with mainly Fortune 500 or even 100 or Fortune 50 companies in the consulting that you do. Is there a size of company that is better at being intentionally internally disruptive than others? Is there a pattern that you've been able to see when you walk into a client opportunity and you're like, oh, I think these people can, I think these people are going to be able to pull this off. Charlene Li (22:07.873) Yeah. I work with a lot of different size companies, again, the sort of largest companies that you can imagine, but also fairly small ones, even startups. So it just keeps me fresh and looking at lots of different options. It has less to do with the size of the company or the industry, and has everything to do with the leadership. Has everything to do with, does a leader have a vision? Do they have the determination to stick with it? Jeff Dudan (22:14.9) Okay. Yeah. Charlene Li (22:34.853) Because it's great to have growth plans, but the reason why growth plans are so difficult is you run into a wall at some point. And that wall, it just hits you in the face. You're like, okay, I did not anticipate this. What do we do about it now? And the resilience of your leadership and your team, the culture that you have built up to say, what do we do when we fall into that wall? We run smack into it because it will inevitably be there. And the companies who are not prepared for that, they're just like, yeah, we're just going to grow. but they don't anticipate these obstacles. They haven't prepared themselves for this journey. It's like, I go to Burning Man and you prepare and you prepare, you bring water, you bring food, and you're prepared for anything that could go wrong, including showers and blood storms. And I've just gone for three years and I'm a complete, so I'm a complete addict to it, but I love the disruption that it causes and the way, the perspectives I see. Jeff Dudan (23:11.967) Yes. Jeff Dudan (23:15.986) How many years have you gone to that? Just three? That's three? That's pretty good. Charlene Li (23:29.229) But it's the same thing when you go on a disruption journey, you have to be prepared. You've got to know that your organization is strong, resilient, and be able to compensate when things don't work out well. So it is not a pretty picture. I think of it as a very messy process. And when you're in that messy middle, that liminal space, you've left the safety of what you've known, but you haven't arrived at where you want to be yet. That is an incredibly. frustrating, but also invigorating space, because you're no longer constrained by either the past and the future. And you can be incredibly creative. You can look around and say, how we can do anything we want? What are the constraints that we want to put on ourselves? And I do think constraints are extremely important for people to know, this is the direction we're heading in, not north-south, but we're going in this direction, we're going east. Like, what is that direction? I mean, people go off that path. heard them back in. So I like to say that organizations should be able to answer three questions. Every person in your company should be able to answer three questions. Who is our future customer? Where are we headed? What's our vision for the future? The second question is, what's our strategy to get there from where we are today to that future? And the third question, each person should be able to say, this is my contribution to making that strategy a success. How am I going to execute? What am I doing every day to make that strategy successful so we can reach that future and serve that future customer? We call it alignment. We call it communications. It is something that leaders don't do enough. We think we say it once and everybody knows it. And I like what the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, would always go and say, I'm Jeff Weiner, I'm the CEO of LinkedIn. Home Depot, Burning Man, and Getting Close to the Customer Jeff Dudan (25:18.498) That's right. Charlene Li (25:26.381) purpose is to connect the world's professionals and he would bring up a value or a strategic asset that they were looking at. And then someone said, you know, you do this all the time. When are you going to stop doing it? And he said something very wise. He said, I will stop doing it when people stop looking surprised. Jeff Dudan (25:46.07) That's brilliant. So I have a mug here and it says, speak a bold future into existence. And that's kind of my catchphrase. Because I believe it's the leader's responsibility in your parlance to create a movement, but also to speak a bold future with clarity a thousand times, not just once. You can't just tell the company story one time or when you have a new employee. over and over and over again as that vision is changing, as market opportunities present themselves. So I built a business in the restoration, remediation, emergency service, disaster response type space. So interestingly, we had a DNA that was when we hit that wall, as you described, I would look around the room. And I would say, am I willing to bet my house, my kids' education? Am I willing, what am I willing to bet on the people sitting in this room that they're going to, they're going to follow through on whatever it is we decide, whatever course of action it is. And sometimes it was a drastic play that we needed to make. And every time I would, I would be like, these people are going to commit. They're going to get it done. I mean, up to including, I mean, having people that really worked in the office, you know, in hurricane Katrina down in the pit, you know, retrieving medical records from a VA hospital, you know, under armed guard by the military, you know, and making sure that these secure medical records got to where they needed to get to because you had to have security clearance to do it. So now the challenge, the flip side to that in our organization was we were entirely reactive. Like we were like firemen. So something would happen and there was nobody better. Like we would leap into action. We knew where our stuff was. You know, but then we would get back and just like firemen, we'd clean our stuff. We'd set it back up. We, you know, do the business of the business, you know, somebody would be there making dinner now. Um, and then, uh, you know, and then we would, but, um, we struggled, I think a little bit to innovate, to, to think about future customers because, um, so on one hand, you know, we, we had that, uh, responsiveness, reactiveness, that resilience, uh, I mean, it was very addicting to be helping people in the way that we helped people. And. Jeff Dudan (28:03.874) the complication of trucking to the Caribbean or halfway across the country to set up in a disaster zone with no power, no water, all of that. It was an exhilarating thing and when done well, it was something worth celebrating. But we probably didn't have that disruption mindset. We're working in a very red ocean with lots of competition and just kind of scratching it out. So I wonder if something would have happened to us. where we needed to make a material shift in the way that we did business, acquired customers, you know, how effective could we have really been at that? Charlene Li (28:43.637) Well, I think it again, I came out of a business myself where it was highly competitive as an analyst and again, these giant billion dollar companies, hundreds of million dollar companies like Gartner and Forrester and IDC. And I was starting a tiny little firm. It was four of us. Like how do we compete? And so we just did a blue ocean strategy move where we said, we're not going to charge for the research, we're going to give it away for free, but we're going to pump exactly, exactly. Yes. Jeff Dudan (29:06.366) Yeah. Oh, getting naked by Lencioni, right? Have you read Lencioni is getting naked? Yeah, perfect strategy. Yeah. Charlene Li (29:14.273) Exactly. And so free is a business model they couldn't compete against. And, you know, and so it was understanding our customers that people were dying for this research. They really wanted it, but they couldn't afford it. And so they were trying to piece it together from various news reports. We're just going to give it away for free. And then we'll make it back because if a hundred thousand people versus five thousand people would read it. So at 20 times the people reading our research, we had to have a very small percentage of them convert. Jeff Dudan (29:32.703) Mm-hmm. Charlene Li (29:43.385) to highly repeatable consulting projects for it to make money. So that was the business model and everything was written so that it made people just call us out of the blue. So it was a hundred percent inbound for business. So it was great. It worked really well. But the thing is, is that when you're in the business, when you're working in the business constantly versus working on the business, and this is a constant leader issue, when do you have time to withdraw? Jeff Dudan (29:57.346) So you would go in. Yeah. Charlene Li (30:13.189) to step back. And one of the most interesting interviews I had for the book was with the president of Southwest Airlines. And he asked him, how much time are you spending on strategic issues, like medium to long-term issues? He goes, about 50% of my time. I'm like, that's a lot. Most people say, spend 70% of your time on immediate operations, 20% on medium term and 10% on long term. He's spending 50%. on medium and long-term and most of it was long-term. And his response was, if I don't do it, who will? Everybody else, they can do all the operations. That's why they're there. They don't need me, I just get in the way. So I come in and on an exception basis, deal with the things that my operation leads can't deal with. No one else is gonna look and be able to tie all these connective tissues to be able to see what the future opportunities are for us to grow. Jeff Dudan (30:48.878) That's right. Jeff Dudan (30:53.623) Right. Jeff Dudan (31:11.394) And that's why that person's in that position. I had Vern harness on the podcast. Uh, we're a scaling up company here and, uh, Vern was great and he came on and he said, our biggest recommendation today to executives is that for four to six hours a week that they find a studio or somewhere to go that's just them that nobody can get to them and you have whiteboards and you have paper or whatever your preferred methodology is, and just to get. turn off everything and just think about your business. That will give you more clear thinking and more clear, all of your insights and directions are going to come out of that time. And I've started doing that as well. Okay, not every week, but I'm doing it. And I have to tell you, it's the most I come out of there energized. I feel like the daily grind of the business is kind of not wearing on me anymore. And you really think optimistically about the future, the people that are around you in the business. So I see that. And again, if I'm not doing it, if everybody's punching their cogs out here, whatever it is that we do, they could be working on solving the wrong problem. Their ladder could be up against the wrong building. So somebody has to have an idea. And I also think that getting out into industry, getting out... Like you had said, speaking to customers, spending time out in the field. We're shooting a television show with our franchisees. It's called Heroes on the Homefront, and every month we're going out and spending a day with a franchisee and their family, and we're shooting, and just really, the things that come out of that, the ideas that come out of that, what do these people really need to be successful? It's very, very meaningful, so. Charlene Li (32:59.994) Yeah. I worked with a client, Home Depot for a little while. And the amazing thing, you couldn't find any executives in the home office on Thursday afternoons because every single person takes off Thursday afternoon to go work in a store and they have an assigned store they go to every single week. They put them on apron and they're serving customers or they're stocking the shelves and they're out there talking to employees and talking to their customers. And it's a requirement that everybody in the home office, executives home office do this. Jeff Dudan (33:03.639) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (33:09.792) Okay. Charlene Li (33:27.109) and they were assigned a store to go out there and do it. So it's, again, the thing that we don't do enough unless you deal with intentionality. So staying close to your customers, understanding what's going on, that visual connection can't be substituted. You can't hear it from people coming up the hierarchy. You have to experience it yourself. Jeff Dudan (33:51.47) I like to move on to culture. I know you really have defined your future customer. Leaders need to create a movement and then there's all this great work around culture and I think some really unique thinking around it. Where would you start if I was a client of yours and you had questions around my culture other than the three that you've already mentioned? Like what would you look for to assess? my culture in our organization. The Three Beliefs of Disruptive Culture: Openness, Agency, and Bias for Action Charlene Li (34:23.497) Yeah, I have three beliefs of disruptive organizations and they are openness, agency, and then a bias for action. And so I try to take the pulse for where the organization is. Are people open in the way they communicate? Again, I wrote a book on open leadership, so with a lot of background on the fact that is when you have greater transparency, you have then people taking responsibility also for it and creating accountability. People are like, I'm trying to get people to be accountable. I'm delegating to them. That doesn't happen unless they have ownership, which is where agency becomes very important. When people have agency, they feel like they own the problem and they own the solution. And they believe they can solve this problem. They have all the resources. They don't have to ask for permission from somebody else to be able to make a change in impact. And the third bias reaction says, we have no time to waste here. Our future customers are moving further and further away from us. So instead of trying to be perfect, we're gonna aim for done. Perfect is the enemy of done. And yet in business, we are not given permission to fail. We can't take, we won't go further than what we can be successful at. We wanna hit 100% all the time. We wanna get the A's. And that doesn't work when you're in a disruptive transformative state because things will not go right. And so when you reward people for taking on the ability to act. regardless of whatever the outcome is, the confidence comes from knowing that no matter what the outcome is, you're going to be okay. You're gonna be fine. And so when you know that, then you can take a lot of risk. You can take a lot of things within, again, guidelines if we'd agreed to. And if it doesn't work out, we're fine. Thank you for taking that risk, because we would know so much more than we have now. Um, and so this whole idea of fear and failure and how we deal with it as an organization becomes really important. So the way I like to work with an organization, we do a very simple thing. We get people together in groups, if we're in person or again, online and with, you know, virtual whiteboards and we take sticky notes and we write down the beliefs that are holding us back. Cause culture is just simply your beliefs and the behaviors that stem from those beliefs. So what are the beliefs? Charlene Li (36:42.797) What are the behaviors that we show up with? What are the things we say, the things that we do, the things we believe that are holding us back from being successful? And it's not an issue. People write down tons of things. You put these little sticky notes into the middle. As a group, you figure out, like, which are the common ones here? And usually there were like two or three that really rise up to the top, but everyone goes, yeah, we don't wanna believe that anymore. Then as a group, Very importantly, you decide we're not going to believe this anymore. We're going to replace it with a belief that is going to move us forward. And one organization I worked with had this beautiful value of respect. And over time, it had morphed from being a place of we respect that great ideas can come from anywhere to respect is a behavior where you do not agree with your senior person in the room. If you're going to disagree. You have to take it out of the room, go through all the back channels, make sure everybody's agreed, and then you can bring it back. And then the leader will come back and be like, okay, we've changed things. And as you can imagine, that just didn't work. Right. And so they realized that for them to do the transformation they wanted to, they were going through a huge business strategic change, they were going to have the change of one value of respect. And so they systematically replaced that old value with a new definition of it. Jeff Dudan (37:48.011) Right. Culture Isn’t Soft—It’s the Difference That Makes a Difference Charlene Li (38:05.517) define the bad behaviors, and they said, these are the good behaviors we associate with the new beliefs. And they intentionally took a year to systematically change that up and down throughout the entire organization. So I look at companies like Uber, where the CEO came in and said, we're going to change our culture now. We're no longer gonna be tech boys. We're going to really figure out what the kind of culture and they intentionally did that and change your culture in six months. They had conversations with people who didn't believe in working this way. They were no longer a cultural ad. They were a cultural detraction from what they wanted to build. So they were like, this is not a place for you. So you can systematically change your culture, but you have to intentionally do it. Jeff Dudan (38:48.055) You sh- Jeff Dudan (38:52.958) Right. What would be an example of openness inside of a culture? Is that being collegial? Is that being doors open? Is that the Ray Dalio thing where, you know, radical transparency, where everybody's rating what everybody's saying on this big board as it's going along, like what, I mean, what does an open culture look and feel like? Charlene Li (39:16.293) The open culture is when there's tremendous trust in the organization and you can trust they will speak the truth. They feel like they have the safety, they have a psychological safety to be able to speak the truth and know that the consequences will not come down on them individually and that the truth will be welcome. One of the interviews I had was the chairman of Nokia and he had a saying, no news is good news. I'm sorry, bad news is good news. If you have bad news. Jeff Dudan (39:19.426) Okay. So people will speak the truth. Charlene Li (39:45.509) Tell us so we can fix it. No news is bad news. So if nothing, if I'm hearing nothing from people, like what's going on? That's not good. Trust isn't there. People aren't telling me what's really going on. And good news is no news. In other words, good news is great. OK, this is what we expected to happen. That's fantastic, but it's not really news that we have to deal with. This is what we expected. So the fact that he would welcome bad news, like you've got to bring it forward. And people hate being in the messenger because they're afraid they're going to be the ones who get shot. So when you can make it safe, when people can trust that they can bring things forward, the Amazon has this beautiful leadership principle that is disagree and commit, that means we can strenuously disagree with each other. I have so much respect for you that I'm going to tell you the ultimate truth, what I think the situation is, and I'm going to really fight for my place, for my position. And yet when that decision is made, I'm gonna be 100% committed to that decision, regardless of whether it's my idea or not. Like truly committed, no sandbagging. No, it wasn't my idea. I'm not gonna help his idea or her idea become successful because I don't think it's the right direction. No, you're 100% committed to that. Therefore, if it succeeds, it's because it was the right idea and we put everything against it. But if it doesn't succeed, that it was the wrong idea, even though we put everything against it, and we'll know so much more, and then we can go on to Plan B, which might be your idea. But you won't know this until you're 100% committed. So this ability to disagree and still maintain strong relationships is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Think about just in our personal relationships how hard it is sometimes to tell somebody, to give them feedback. that you know is going to help them, it's going to help your relationship, but it's hard because you want to be nice to them. And you realize I'm not being nice to them if I'm just not transparent and honest, and do so and tell them in the most caring way possible. So disagreeing, giving feedback that's constructive, being open and having those strong relationships that allow you to do this is a really important foundational thing to all of your culture. Jeff Dudan (42:08.814) One thing I stumbled across in the book, which is particular of particular interest to me is this concept of lore and it falls within your culture operating model, your structure, your process, and then your lore. But it's something that I talk about a lot. I've got infographics about I've got in my book, I have an infographic that talks about rituals and routines, but you say that the lore is the soul of an organization and that lives in its rituals in its symbols. and it's in its stories. And that is, I have, I've been preaching that exact, almost verbatim message in my companies for the last, um, I don't know, 10 or 15 years because, uh, and, and I think I got it from, um, Herb Kelleher, the nuts book. I think I got it from Southwest where he said, uh, an organization's culture is in a culture as an organization's memory and it lives in the stories or something like that. And when I do initial training, whenever I do a training, sometimes I'll train groups of people and I will, it is just full of stories that share the examples. You know, if you've got to water what you want to grow. So I'm sharing stories that exemplify the behaviors that make you a hero within this organization, this industry, this network or whatever it is. How did you. First, you incorporate that as a big part of your model. Can you speak a little bit to that and how you developed your thoughts on lore? Lore, Symbols, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves Charlene Li (43:38.805) Sure. Again, the three parts of the operating model were structure and process and then lore. Structure and process are things you can write down. It's visible to everybody. And so you can communicate that fairly easily, essentially. Here's a decision and you go. But the softer side of culture, this lore, it's not written down. And it's also shared. It's created over time. And it's probably the most powerful way that we create culture. Jeff Dudan (43:48.567) Mm-hmm. Charlene Li (44:07.593) And it's probably the use, the least intentionally used aspects of these levers that you can pull. We just don't intentionally create stories and rituals and symbols that can really reinforce these things. So that company I was talking about, about the respect, they started changing the stories. They went back to their founder, found all these really rich stories about how he exemplified and, and use the. value of respect in the original way it was meant. They went through rituals about how they would hold meetings to make sure everyone's voice was heard, and in particular, to look for dissenting ways to do this. So they had different ways of using these operating systems to pull the lever to make respect, to retune what respect meant. So I think the best way to think about these things is they are all narratives that you are building. and allows each person to build their own meaning, their own stories on top of that narrative. Because it's again respecting this belief of agency that everyone can understand where this comes from and that they have the ability to act, but they need that foundational understanding. So the best strategies are ones that are stories where you are telling, this is the journey, we're beginning here, this is the battles we will fight, the obstacles we will overcome, how we are going to win against. the competition and really save the customers and serve them. And this is where we're going to end up in this glory in the future. So when people can remember that story, they make it their own. They add their own embellishments to it. They become engrossed in that story. They want to be a part of that story because it's so compelling. So stories become very, very important because it's part of that creating of a movement. because it's no longer my boss's story or the board's story, it's my story too as well. Jeff Dudan (46:06.27) You know, we use some assessment tools and there's all different types of personalities and work styles and characteristics that go with these different profiles of people that are good fits for good jobs. So remembering details, you know, engineer type people might remember certain details really, really well. Other people might remember numbers, finance things really well, but you know, universally. Everybody remembers stories. We're tribal people. So we communicate, we curate stories intentionally. Our franchisees can use stories that have been curated from other franchisees and they can say, we, we worked with a hospital that had this problem and there was this situation and this happened and then this is what we did. Well, it wasn't them necessarily, but it was us. So they can lean into that story while they're out there creating their own. And like you said, building their stories on top of it. Can I add one more item to lore? You don't have to rewrite the book, but maybe a blog. Unique language. Leadership Requires Time to Think Charlene Li (47:06.029) Peace. Charlene Li (47:14.929) I love that. Jeff Dudan (47:15.35) So I talk about stories and I talk about unique language. And here's a simple example of that. We started this podcast maybe last April or last May. And it was a project and we had several people working off the side of their desks. And it was, you know, is it gonna work? You have to commit to something like this for a long time. And we were very fortunate that we had some team members that were very talented and creative so that they could set up the, you know, do the creative, we could do the editing, we had some other team members that were really good on social and were able to slip into people's DMS and get some really good guests really early, which helped us get additional guests. So, so it started building through the year and we look at it and we said, you know, marketing matters, promotion matters, brand awareness matters. This is really working well. If we put some dedicated resources behind it, then You know, we think that we can do something really great with it. And a handful of people raised their hand and said, I'm willing to take a chance and give up my other job in the, in the main company and come to this one. And, you know, just please don't cancel the podcast after I give my job up to somebody else, right? So there was that, there was that risk. And, um, but immediately within a day, a tech screw popped up and it said pod squad, right? So. You know, and we call that out in our training. As you, you know, when I, there's, we run call centers, we run sales centers, and there's unique language that refers to how appointments are set in there. We have a homecoming instead of a convention. There's unique language that is created, you know, sometimes people get a little bit crazy with the three letter, you know, the abbreviations of things, and that gets a little bit, like new people can't catch up on that, but. Anytime there's a club or a group or an organization that people care about and want to feel a part of unique language pops up inside of it. And if you, you identify that and then you work that into your talk and you work that into your rituals, and if you tie all of this together, it really creates. Um, uh, a sense of belonging and a sense of connectedness. And, uh, I found it to be very powerful because. Jeff Dudan (49:28.738) Culture matters a lot when things get really hard. Cause it's easy to say, why am I doing this? I know that we have to do this for the business and it's probably gonna take some evenings and maybe some weekends or some travel or whatever it is. There has to be something that ties people together, a sense of belonging and a sense of real agency. I love the word agency. I hadn't really used it or seen it, but it fits so well. inside of this discussion. So yeah, really that, that all of that really resonated with me. And it's, it's not the soft stuff. It's the difference that makes a difference inside of companies that thrive and survive and ultimately do great things. Charlene Li (50:12.505) Yeah, I have yet to see a an organization thrive without the soft work. And we may think of it as soft, but it's only because it's not like numbers driven. It is incredibly hard to do this. And it's, it's a testament to the people who do it well and spend a lot of time thinking about it to your point. Culture eats strategy every single day for breakfast. You could have the most fantastic strategy. Jeff Dudan (50:24.382) Right. Yes. Charlene Li (50:40.685) but if you don't have the culture, it will not be executed. And at the same time, you can have a great culture, amazing culture, and a medium-okay strategy, and you will be wildly successful. Jeff Dudan (50:52.886) Yeah, that's fair. Charlene Li (50:53.065) And so I will always over invest in culture. And one of the hardest things you deal with when you're trying to create a lot of change is change fatigue. And the reason you have change fatigue is when you're trying to create change and you put all this effort into it, and then at the very last minute, it fizzles out. It's not continued. The leader just says, they got bored or they switched opinion. They said, this is too hard. Let's try the new change of the day. And people just get exhausted because there's no payout at the end. So to understanding the temperature, understanding how do you have that responsibility and accountability, the agency to help carry the burden, it all ties together into making sure that when you're starting on that road for change, you can actually get someplace. Cause there's nothing worse for a change than for the change to stall and just loses that momentum. If you're not truly committed to it, people can then. they're going to be less likely to follow you. Jeff Dudan (51:53.206) Well, change implies an inflection point. And in my experience, an inflection point in your life or in a business really includes three things. Number one, people, the people you're responsible for, the people that you care about, the people that wanna do something with you or for you or whatever. The second thing is there's a great adventure at hand and an opportunity to capitalize on, and then there's a risk of loss. So those three things, when you identify that you're in a point and you're saying, well, I'm going to have to give something up, but this could be great. And now we've got all these people involved, like, wow, this might be a point of disruption or at least a fork in the road that you need to consider. And I see, you know, the change, um, uh, the change, how did you say it? Fatigue, the change fatigue. Uh, I experienced that. So we, we were a straight up contractor type. business where we did a lot of reconstruction, a lot of heavy stuff that was done in the industry. We wanted to change our model to something that was higher, all the services were high margin. We didn't have our cash out on the streets. The services were complimentary. So we really wanted to change our model. We knew it would be probably a smaller model on the top line, but we knew that our franchises would be safe and they could be much more profitable at a much lower revenue volume. And still there was work to get there and all of that. So what we did was, well, we started running, trying to run both models at the same time and people got exhausted. And ultimately we never stopped doing the other stuff in favor of the new stuff. So there was a day and we had basically 33 main clients, insurance companies and insurance adjusters, and I wrote a letter, uh, well, I typed a letter and then I printed it and then I signed it and then I put it in the fax machine because that's when it was. And I don't know we had email yet, but so I faxed it to all of our customers. And within a week, all of our work stopped. A hundred percent. And I knew though, that now we would either sink or swim because we knew where to get this new work and we had to recondition our clients just to send us that work and we, we had to create some new diversification of lead sources for this other stuff, but until I basically stopped this, this other work. Jeff Dudan (54:20.014) the company, the team was just reverting back to the norm and doing that. And that's really the challenge with change because there's self preservation too. And, oh, if we do this change really well, maybe it eliminates 20% of our staff. And so there's, there's all kinds of things that you have to really, as a leader, make sure that you are very intentional in the communications and in the process and in the order in which you do things. And then at the end of the day, to your point, people just have to trust you. I mean, they have to believe that you're making the right decision, that they've had a voice in it, that there's been due consideration to the new strategy, and that, you know, it's likely to work out. And then they can commit fully to it. They might disagree, but they have to commit. So yeah, fascinating. Fascinating the work that you get to do. Charlene Li (55:12.245) Yeah, I really enjoy it because it points to the optimistic side of leadership and also the very pragmatic side of it. I am extremely pragmatic in thinking about what's feasible, what's not. And also what are the steps you have to take to get to that point? But I believe in having it because as a leader, you're just optimistic by nature. You believe that change can happen. Otherwise you wouldn't step into that leadership role, into that position to make that change happen. Jeff Dudan (55:16.753) Mm. Jeff Dudan (55:40.47) What was your undergrad in? Oh. Charlene Li (55:40.569) Um, and, and I just admire leaders who have the gumption and belief that change can happen. So, and there are so many things in our world that need to change to be better. Big and small. And we're not going to get there by incrementally turning the screws a little bit. We have to take these leaps of imagination, of optimism and believe that we can actually do this and then take the pragmatic steps to build the foundation so that we can get. Jeff Dudan (56:10.198) I'm interested to know what was your undergrad in? Charlene Li (56:13.697) My undergrad was in basically international relations. So it was looking at all the social sciences. It was called social studies, but my focus on comparative government and international relations. Jeff Dudan (56:17.151) Okay. Winning With Generative AI: A Sneak Peek at Charlene’s New Book Jeff Dudan (56:23.022) Okay, all right, fascinating. All right. So you now have a group called Quantum Networks, and there are programs available here, newsletters, circles, and groups and things. Would you care to talk a little bit about what that is and who typically takes advantage of that content? Charlene Li (56:44.365) Yeah, right now I'm not running the groups. It's primarily just the newsletters, the content, the live streams that I do, and then the speaking advisory, and also do coaching, executive coaching. And so most of the coaching work that I do is around executives who already do a great job of running their companies, but now want it to become much more disruptive. So it's a different mindset, different skill sets, as we talked about. So how do they get that gear moving for themselves, but also for their organizations? Jeff Dudan (56:54.434) Okay. Charlene Li (57:12.037) The advice we work is mostly, again, you want to go through a transformation around culture. Increasingly, the advice we work I'm doing is around generative AI. It's the topic of my next book. I've been deep, you know, just up to the eyebrows in terms of generative AI over the past year. And that's what I'm working on right now is a book on that called Winning with Generative AI. And it's a 90-day plan and a blueprint of how to create your generative AI strategy. So beginning to end, nuts and bolts, you'll walk out of it. in about three months with a full-blown plan that will include execution plans for the next 18 months, six quarters. Jeff Dudan (57:49.166) That's a lot of value in a book. Charlene Li (57:51.585) Yeah, fingers crossed that, you know, the reality is to publish a book when something's changing so quickly, people think I'm insane. But again, I think that there are some true visions about how do you create strategy. And in my research and talking to companies who are early on, the thing that allows them to deal with all this change is they created a firm foundation of their purpose and mission, their vision, their values and their business strategy. Jeff Dudan (57:53.44) Yeah. Charlene Li (58:20.813) These are the things they could start with. They didn't start with use cases, they didn't start with the technology, they started with these foundational ideas. And they worked in particular on having a decision-making framework, an ethical framework, responsible AI framework that was integrated into their business strategy right from the very beginning. So this is not something that was separate from the core of what they did. And the other really interesting thing is they looked at it very strategically and treated it like a transformational force. So the top people in the company, the CEO, the C-suite, the board was engaged with this. It was not treated as a technology that was shunted over to the IT department to figure out. They treated it like a transformational force that it is. And as a result, their strategy really talks about how do they build competitive advantage? How do they protect it? And how are the business opportunities also changing and evolving with this view of the future customer? Jeff Dudan (59:18.558) I think it's going to be high value because you have access to these early adopters and the people that are really driving dynamic change in their organization. And then the majority that's going to follow, you know, people like me that want to see, you know, how, how did it help these other companies? I think, I think, uh, and then giving them the plans. I think it's perfectly timed and very appropriate, uh, for you to do. And I'm looking forward to get my copy. When's it going to come out? Charlene Li (59:42.602) We're targeting end of April at this point. Jeff Dudan (59:45.17) Okay, so that'll be Charlene Lee winning with Generative AI coming out in April. And it will, we will, uh, now I'm not going to wait until then to start our transformation, but you know, I'll let you speak into our journey at that point in time. So, but well, Charlene, uh, this has been great having you on here today. I really appreciate your time. Uh, I've learned a lot and I really respect your work. I really, uh, it resonates with me a great deal and we will be. incorporating some of it into our company very, very soon here. Final question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone else's life, what might that be? Charlene Li (01:00:26.514) Make disruption and change a part of your everyday. Jeff Dudan (01:00:30.622) Even my marriage. Charlene Li (01:00:32.973) Even more so. So, because when you get, when you are, I made it a goal of mine to have an adventure every day. And I did this a couple years ago. I saw a woman with a tattoo that said adventure. And I go, why do you have that? And she said, I've traveled all around the world and I have to be home here now. It was happened to be an awesome for a conference called South by Southwest was I have to be home. But I, this is a reminder to me that I can have an adventure every day, just simply sitting even with myself. I can have it. Jeff Dudan (01:00:36.589) Keep it fresh. Jeff Dudan (01:00:43.207) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:01:03.022) I love it. Charlene Li (01:01:03.558) And it serves me so well to be curious, to look for ways to learn, to have disrupt, to change, to just appreciate how much is still unknown in the world. And it helped me so much during COVID when these four walls are shrinking in on most of us. I was like, how can I have adventure today? What can I do to keep things fresh? So to look for change, to embrace change, to look for disruption, it is a mindset. It is a lifestyle. So I would encourage people to seek out change and disruption because of the way it makes you feel, makes you feel alive. It makes you feel curious and adventurous. Jeff Dudan (01:01:45.09) love it perfectly said. Charlene Lee, how can people get in touch with you if they would like to connect with you? Charlene Li (01:01:51.993) You can connect with me through my website, follow me on LinkedIn, message me there, subscribe to my newsletters. I have an email one and also a LinkedIn one. So please stay in touch. That's how I learn from your own, it wants questions and their experiences. Jeff Dudan (01:02:05.89) Fantastic. Thank you for being on the Homefront today. This has been Charlene Lee with Jeff Duden on the Homefront. Thank you for listening. Charlene Li (01:02:08.889) Thank you for having me.
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Brief Summary In this flavorful episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan welcomes Steve Lieber, Vice President of Business Development at BurgerFi and American Pizza Champion. From humble beginnings as a busboy to launching an award-winning burger chain and competing globally in pizza-making, Steve shares his passion for food, people, and responsible franchising. The conversation covers everything from crust chemistry and the future of fast-casual to creating social impact in Costa Rica and challenging the status quo in franchise sales. Key Takeaways The restaurant industry is a great equalizer —education isn't required to rise if you work hard and care about people. BurgerFi’s founding mission was to prove the American Dream still exists , with over 65 employees rising from hourly to leadership roles. Pizza success depends on science —flour temp, yeast activation, and doming all play critical roles in award-winning crust. The clean food movement matters —BurgerFi eliminates antibiotics, growth hormones, and high-fructose corn syrup across its menu. Franchising must be responsible —Steve co-founded Vetted to advocate for transparency, profitability, and protecting new franchisees. Food is a platform for global connection and community change —from Costa Rica to Melbourne, pizza and burgers can make a difference. Featured Quote “Work hard and help as many people as possible.” — Steve Lieber’s final words on the podcast and his mother’s lasting advice TRANSCRIPT From Busboy to BurgerFi: Steve Lieber’s American Dream Story Jeff Dudan (00:03.03) Hey everybody, this is Jeff Duden on the home front. Welcome everybody out there. And I have the pleasure of introducing Steve Lieber, who is the vice president of business development at BurgerFi. Welcome Steve. Steve Lieber (00:17.09) Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me on the show. Jeff Dudan (00:19.638) Yeah, a hundred percent. So we met, oh, maybe a month ago and had dinner together. And I thought that you would be a fascinating guest on the home front with us today based on your life journey in food. Would you care to just go back and share a little bit maybe about your early days, early career, or how you grew up, start wherever you want to. I know where we're going to end up. Steve Lieber (00:44.074) Yeah, well, you know, Jeff, one of the things that I'm most proud of, and I think the reason why we started BurgerFi was that the restaurant business is a great equalizer. And you don't have to have a lot of education. If you have eighth grade mathematics, that's about all you need. You don't need to go to college. You don't need to, you know, you can really move up from hard work. And I still consider myself a busboy. Today, actually it was yesterday, but today we celebrated BurgerFi's 13th anniversary, the very first restaurant. And when I'm in the restaurant, the best way to go talk to a table is to come up and tidy up the table, and to pick up some dirty napkins. And it's just a way for me to get into the table. And I always felt that even when I was a busboy, I was still running the show. Keeping the bathroom clean, keeping the tables turning, keeping enough clean tables. You never wanted a customer to be waiting with food in their hands and no table to sit at. So then I met the owner of BurgerFi, now it's a public company, but the founder at the time, and he was a car dealer, I think he has about eight car dealerships in New York City. but he was a self-made guy. He was, you know, he was a tow truck driver and worked his way up and became an auto mechanic and then was selling Honda motorcycles. And they were selling Honda motorcycles and they came in one day and they had a picture of the Honda Civic. And they said, hey, you wanna sell this car? And he's like, well, where are you gonna put it? And the guy goes, well, we'll shove over the motorcycles and we'll put it right there. And obviously the Honda Civic is, I think, the biggest selling car, one of the biggest selling cars of all time. And that led him on a multimillion dollar journey. And then I said, well, what do you wanna do? Why do you wanna make a burger restaurant? He said, well, we opened up this gastropub in Delray Beach called The Office and we have lobster tacos and we have a Tomahawk steak. Jeff Dudan (02:45.794) That's right. Why BurgerFi Was Born: The $20 Burger That Changed Everything Steve Lieber (03:07.15) and we have this beautiful menu and everybody orders a $20 hamburger and a beer. So I want to open up a burger and a beer company, take it nationwide, but I really want to do it because I want to create the American dream and prove that the American dream is still alive and well. And I'm happy to report that since that time, I think we have 65 or 70 people that started as hourly employees, and now they're the director of training, the director of a regional part of the country, running 20, 30 stores. So we have all these great success stories of people that started with us and made a career out of a hamburger job. Jeff Dudan (03:55.946) many BurgerFi locations are there today. Steve Lieber (03:59.126) There's 108 today, but we're getting very close to 109, I think, is happening in New York City. We just opened up Altamont Springs, Florida, I think at the beginning of the week. So they're coming hard and fast again now that we're finally coming out of the haze of COVID and people are coming back to restaurants. The restaurant business model has changed completely. So when we started this thing, BurgerFi was 85% dine-in and 15% takeout. 0% was ordered online, 0% was delivery, 0% was drive-through. Now we're 85% dine-in, 35% from delivery service providers and still the same 15% takeout. So... Everything has changed. Jeff Dudan (04:58.806) Do you have international locations? Steve Lieber (05:01.102) We have restaurants in Saudi Arabia right now. Yeah. And then we're, yeah, we're in some discussions with a couple of other countries. Canada looks very promising for us. And then we're also interested in some stuff in the Middle East. But, you know, this year, you and I found out at the TITUS Center where we were talking with Bill Edwards that it's one of the biggest years of political uncertainty in the last 40 years. Jeff Dudan (05:04.596) Okay. Steve Lieber (05:30.146) He said to us that there were 64 different countries holding national elections, controlling 51% of the world's GDP. So it's going to be an interesting year with the elections. Hopefully, you know, everything will come out and be pro business and everybody can just put their head down and work hard for their family and keep putting food on the table. Jeff Dudan (05:56.298) Yeah, 100%. Steve, what was your first job in food service? Serving, Not Studying: Steve’s Early Lessons in Hospitality Steve Lieber (06:01.114) First job was a busboy. I was at the Bagel Barn in upstate New York. And for 99 cents, you got two eggs, home fries, a bagel, and coffee for 99 cents. That was 1974. Steve Lieber (06:26.494) And I was the busboy and I got paid cash off the books, just in case there's any, I hope there's no IRS agents on the call right now, but. Jeff Dudan (06:35.698) I sense that you're past the statute of limitations on that. I think you're probably okay. We'll edit that out if you want. We can edit that out. Steve Lieber (06:40.837) But I'll tell you what. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, the making of that cash every Friday or whenever payday was, I'll tell you what, that immediately got me hooked on the restaurant business. I love talking to people, I loved keeping the restaurant clean, I love having my money fill up in my pocket a dollar at a time, and then I guess I never lost that adrenaline rush. Jeff Dudan (07:10.878) Yeah. And then where did you go from there? Did you, were you ever chef? Steve Lieber (07:18.33) No, I became a pizza chef. But I went to, at that time, it was called the Catskill Mountains. It was two hours outside of New York City. It was a resort area. And it was at the very end of, very, very popular in the 50s and 60s. And then it was reaching the end of its rope in the late 70s. And I was a server at some of the hotels there. And then... Jeff Dudan (07:20.618) Okay. Steve Lieber (07:47.21) And then I actually went to school for chemistry. So my cousins are doctors. I enjoyed chemistry. I was good at it, but I just didn't feel that I had the, you know, the hardcore studiness to become a doctor. And then I realized that, you know, feeding people and taking care of people on special occasions and dining out, you know, was kind of taking care of people in a different way, in a shorter basis, you know. Jeff Dudan (08:17.719) Yeah. Steve Lieber (08:19.702) And then I was lucky that I was able to hit a few great companies in a row. I did two years with Planet Hollywood when I was very young. And then after Planet Hollywood, I went to the Cheesecake Factory very, very early on. There was only five Cheesecake Factories in the United States when I started. So it was an incredible ride and incredible growth and a ton of money. So it was super, super exciting. And then when when I was with them in Washington, D.C. and then when they were expanding to Florida, I moved to Boca Raton with them and opened up a couple of restaurants there. And it was great, great stuff. Coal Oven Kings: New York’s Pizza Dynasty and Winning Secrets Jeff Dudan (09:03.838) You've won some awards for pizza. When did you first start making pizza? Steve Lieber (09:12.046) I started making pizza and playing around with it in the early 2000s, but I started working at a Cole Lovin pizza place. Cole Lovin is known as the first pizzerias in America were Cole Lovin, Lombardi's in New York City, and now there's Patsy's and Grimaldi's and John Oblika Street. Jeff Dudan (09:35.714) Dude, I was at John's on Bleecker Street. I ate lunch there on Friday. Spent four, I just got back last night. We spent four days in New York. Where's the other place we did on Christopher Street? It's a brand new place. Oh, I should have the name of it, but John's was great. And it is one of only 14, I believe, coal-fired pizza places in Chicago, in New York, out of over 2000 pizza places, correct? Steve Lieber (09:40.994) Ah! Steve Lieber (10:04.678) That's correct. And many of them are all have lineage to the original Lombardies, either their grandfather or somebody worked at the original, you know. And so those are the pizza dynasties, exactly, the coal oven pizza dynasties. Jeff Dudan (10:13.526) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (10:19.894) Yeah. Linda tree. I Linda tree. It was Linda tree on Christopher street. They've only been there two or three months and we waited 30 minutes. They do slices of eight pies. Uh, and if anybody's going, uh, the cremini mushroom with a truffle was my favorite. But so they had eight, eight different slices and from, I don't know, 11am all the way to maybe 10pm on Sunday. Steve Lieber (10:37.454) Hahaha. Jeff Dudan (10:49.47) slices as fast as they could do them. I figured that was a five, ten thousand dollars an hour they were making. It was crazy. It was crazy. Steve Lieber (10:56.978) Well, you know, New York is like that. But remember, New York is truly, you know, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. That's where the expression comes from. I mean, if you don't get good coffee, you're shut down. You know, if you don't have good bread in New York, you're shut down. If you claim you make good pizza and you don't, you'll last maybe five months. You know? Jeff Dudan (11:14.966) Done. You're out. Jeff Dudan (11:24.877) Yeah. Steve Lieber (11:27.078) They don't cut you the slack. There's too much competition. But like you said, it raises the bar for everybody. And one of the things that you just made me think of is, Will Giordara from Eleven Madison Park, he just has the book, Unreasonable Hospitality. That book, I was listening to the audio book about how, he really wanted to become a Shake Shack general manager. And Danny Meyer put him in Eleven Madison because he thought it was a better fit. And then he talks about how he went from being nothing to the number one restaurant in the entire world, beating, you know, Per Se and the French Laundry and some of these other La Berta D'Anne and other great restaurants. That story about unreasonable hospitality. I think if you apply that in any company, the way people treat each other, the employees treat each other, the way they treat the guests, the surprise and delight and shock and awe kind of techniques being used on a regular, regular basis where it's not chucking on anymore, it's just part of the routine, really will just put your business in a class by itself. And so... I recommend that book for everybody right now. Jeff Dudan (12:57.29) Yeah. So you took your inspiration on pizza from the city. Steve Lieber (13:04.898) Yeah, so what happened was, you know, obviously I love pizza. And then I took over this pizza restaurant in Boca Raton. And and then I was flipping through Pizza Today magazine. And the owner said, hey, what are you doing? And I said, you know, I'm going to go to Las Vegas. And he's like, well, what are you going to go to Vegas for? And I said, well, they got a big pizza show. And I want to meet this guy, Tony G. I couldn't even say Jim and Yanni at the time. You know, I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. So I said, I'm going to meet this guy, Tony G. And he's like, yeah, so what? And I was like, well, he's a pizza acrobat and world champion, you know, many times over. And I think I want him to come to Florida and do some type of children's charity event. And what happened was, Andy Roddick, the tennis player, his mother is in Boca Raton and she runs Andy's Children's Foundation. Scott Sabb from the rock band Creed also had a children's charity. And then the Sun Sentinels, the local newspaper has a children's charity. So we put them all together and we had a three-day weekend where we brought Tony in and he taught 250 kids how to spin dough and we had magicians. Then he made some of the best pizzas that he made, that he won on Food Network, won a gold medal on Food Network, won the world championships in Italy. And we auctioned off some of those pizzas. And one of them we auctioned off was one of Scott Sapp's guitar from the rock band Creed. So he raised like 18 or $20,000 and gave it to the three charities. And then at the end of the weekend, Tony says, oh yeah, by the way, I'm giving a pizza class next week in Matica, California. If you want to come, you know, you can get certified as a pizza maker by the Italian government. Then you become a classic Italian pizza yolo. And I said, you know, obviously if Tony, the best guy in the world is asking me to come, you know, I'm going to spend the money and spend the week. And then I did. And a year later, I want to. Behind the Scenes of a Pizza Championship Victory Steve Lieber (15:28.246) up competing in the best pizza in the United States in Orlando at the American Pizza Championship, and I won on my first attempt. So I was an incredible, I think I just had an incredible teacher, you know. Jeff Dudan (15:43.198) Okay, so what is the secret to a great crust? Now, if we all watch Dave Portnoy, right? You know, one bite, y'all know the rules, and it's gotta be just cheese. I mean, I'm sorry, that's my preparation to go into New York for four days, was watch as many Dave Portnoy reviews as I could, right? So I could understand like what I was looking for in a good pie, and, but. Steve Lieber (15:53.006) Hahaha Jeff Dudan (16:09.354) you know, they say it's the water in New York and that's why the bagels are so good and all of that. Like you're in South Florida, I guarantee it wasn't water out of the tap that you were putting in your dough. Steve Lieber (16:18.358) Yeah, well, you know, people thought that it was the water and water does have something to do with, you know, if the water has too much minerality in it or, you know, hard water, that will be a problem. What really was the problem in Florida was the temperature of the flower and then the temperature of the finished product. So what happens is If you have a bag of flour and it's sitting in the kitchen day after day after day after day, and your kitchen is hot in the 90 degree range, which is not unusual for Florida. And now you take that 90 degree flour, that whole bag, and you dump it into the mixer. The Hobart mixer has a certain friction coefficient, it's called. What it'll happen is that temperature of that dough will surpass 110 degrees or so. And at that point, the yeast dies. And when the yeast dies, it's not gonna wake up again. So then you get a very flat pizza that snaps and kind of very flat bready and kind of texture. So it doesn't get that light airiness because the yeast didn't wake up and start eating the flour and changing it to carbon dioxide and simple sugar, giving it that light. And then the best pizza makers, like in, you know, in Italy, Jeff Dudan (17:18.974) Hey. Jeff Dudan (17:25.131) Yeah. Steve Lieber (17:44.558) Those guys wanna show you the slice and they want you to see like a big bubble in there, like a cornice to have the maximum effect so that the yeast has now done the digestion and the pizza is much more lighter and easier to digest. And that's the key when you're at the super, super high levels of competition that separate. And again, you can have a good day or a bad day. You can make a great batch of dough or not a great batch. And when I was in Orlando, I brought my chef with me, and I made 30 pizzas for practice, 30. So you can imagine that was about three hours straight of just making another pie, going back, making another pie, going back. And every time I'm trying to put the sauce exactly, I was using a... a squeeze bottle. So I was putting out like toothpaste almost, you know, perfectly round. And then I was placing the truffles exactly where I wanted them and placing the green onion. And then it's my turn to compete. And my chef says, you know, Steve, I think you should put a little black pepper on the crust. And I'm like, what are you talking about, chef? I just made 30 pies in a row. Jeff Dudan (18:43.691) Yeah. Steve Lieber (19:08.682) And now you're telling me that I should put black pepper on the crust. And I'm about to go on right now, like I'm next up. So I'm sitting there and I'm making the pizza and you make four pizzas when you're in the competition. And then you put all four in the oven and you get to pick which one is the best one to give to the judges. And I'm deciding, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And then finally my hand just goes by itself and reaches for the black pepper and goes around each of the pies. And then sure enough, as we, you know, when we looked at the finals at the winning, you know, when I won, it was 211 to 207. There were four judges and on one of the judges score sheet, it said black pepper on crust, a nice touch. So we don't know if that swayed it. Jeff Dudan (20:04.606) Nice. Steve Lieber (20:08.422) But it certainly made a difference. And then like what you were talking about earlier about the up skirt, you know, looking at the bottom of the pizza and making sure that it's, you know, snappy and crunchy and has a, you know, kind of like a black polka dotted kind of look to it. That's, you know, your ideal kind of crust, you know? Jeff Dudan (20:17.592) Mmm. Jeff Dudan (20:30.518) Yeah, I said the word undercarriage, like, you know, cause Dave Portnoy is like, ah, good undercarriage. And I said it like three times. And then my daughter threatened me as not to say it again in front of her friend. So, but, you know, but you know. Steve Lieber (20:43.662) When you say undercarriage, I say upskirt, so that's even worse. Jeff Dudan (20:46.706) Up skirt. But you know, I know what you're saying. The crust had these little air pockets, these bubbles in it. When it came out, it was like inflated around the edge of the pie. And then when you bit into that, it had just the right mixture of kind of burnt texture, crispiness and air. Then of course the cheese and the sauce was great. And so I'm from Chicago. So I'm a Lou Monati's, Giordano's, Gino's East. That's what I grew up with. Each slice of pizza is two and a half pounds. You can eat one, maybe two. You gotta go, there's defibrillators everywhere in those places. So it's, I mean, it's just heavy, heavy pizza. So I never really got exposed to the New York. Now, Neapolitan style, is that the classic New York style or is that something else? Steve Lieber (21:21.67) I'm going to go to bed. Steve Lieber (21:41.898) Neapolitan is actually Naples from Italy. So that's with your double zero flour, your San Marzano tomatoes, your live yeast, sea salt, water, olive oil, very, very strict ingredients on the Neapolitan. They have the two different police forces, the VPN and the AVPN, where you have to get certified and your ingredients have to get certified and all that. Jeff Dudan (21:45.405) Okay. Steve Lieber (22:10.99) So then there's New York street slice. Now the beauty, the beauty I think of the coal oven, that super high temperature, which is what we use at Anthony's coal fire pizza, which is also part of BurgerFi, we have 60 coal ovens. And the beauty of that coal oven is that pizza cooks so rapidly at eight or 900 degrees is that the cheese is melting perfectly. and has that creamy texture. You know, you go to New York and you have a street slice that's been baked at 500 or 550 in the Baker's Pride, and all of a sudden you got orange oil running down your sleeve. Well, you know, and you're using those paper napkins, those white napkins to blot it, right? Well, the pizza man didn't put any oil on the pizza. It's cheese disintegration because the pizza, you know, the cheese was sitting in there so, so long. So... Jeff Dudan (23:08.93) So what are you thinking, like four minutes? Is four minutes at 900? Steve Lieber (23:09.242) You know, the beauty, I think at 900, you know, it can be done in 90 seconds or a minute at 20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think those are the, you know, the typical for those, the very high wood fire and the coal fire. Both are doing that thing. And again, you're putting it very close to the fire. Another beautiful thing about when you're working with the live fire like that, So the fire is coming up over the top of the oven, you know, from the coal in one direction or the other, right? The beauty of it is, is when you have a, let's say you do put a mushroom pie in there, you know, or somebody wants spinach or something that has a lot of water content, when you lift that pie up on the paddle and you're lifting it up off the deck, the flames are going over the top beautifully like this, and they're steaming off any excess water. And that's called doming. And that doming effect really cooks the toppings and heats them up just properly and evaporates any residual water that's on the top of the pie. Jeff Dudan (24:18.594) So is that like they lift and pause like the experienced guys they lift, pause a little? Steve Lieber (24:21.594) They lift and almost turn the, right, without sliding the ding off the peel, and you're turning it towards the fire to get the texture. And when you see it done, it's really, you know exactly what's going on and the flavor effect is incredible. And then a great pie, like the Italians are making. Jeff Dudan (24:27.682) We're both turning our heads, like we're looking in an oven, we're lifting. Jeff Dudan (24:36.556) Nice. Steve Lieber (24:48.878) When that comes out, you should put a splash of some nice olive oil on it, a couple of leaves of fresh basil, if you like, a little grate of Reggiano Parmigiano or Pecorino Romano, which I did on the black truffle pizza that I won best pizza with. The Vagabond Pizza Champ Takes on the World (and Gets Beat with His Own Dough) Jeff Dudan (25:10.91) And then it wasn't enough that you won in the United States as the number one pizza maker. Somebody called you and said, we're having a global competition. What was that all about? Steve Lieber (25:13.894) Thank you. Steve Lieber (25:24.758) Yeah, so I thought it was my friends playing a joke with me. I came home late one night. I always like closing. And I particularly like closing on the busy nights, because I always wanted to say, oh, I was there when we did 30,000 last Saturday night, and I was there at close. I always liked that feeling, that I was part of that achieving that big sales goal or something. So they call me up and they say, hey, you know, this is the, obviously they were speaking with a big Aussie accent and the, this is the global pizza challenge. We, you know, we'd like you to come to Melbourne, Australia. And I was like, come on. And I hang up the phone and sure enough, about, you know, 10 hours later, they call back again and they say, no, wait, this is really the global pizza challenge. We heard that you're the American pizza championship. You won the American pizza championship. you think you can come to Melbourne, Australia. And I said, well, how long does it take to get there? A couple of days. Well, as long as there's flights, I'll come on out. And I went there and I remember getting there in a long, long flight, about 26, 27 hours altogether. And I hadn't shaved in and I was wearing a hoodie and I looked scruffy and I walk up to a tent and they have the whole the whole park decorated for pizza. There's ovens on the stage and everything. And there's three chefs all dressed in immaculate uniforms with all kinds of ribbons and awards on their chest. And I walk up and they're like, they look at me and I see their eyes open up like looking at me and they're like, can we help you? And I'm like, I'm the American pizza champion. And I could see like their eyes roll like, oh my goodness, like, are you kidding me? Spent $5,000 for this guy to come all the way to Australia. And now look at him, he's a bum, you know? So we had a little friction on the exchange, you know? And they're like, wow, why don't you go to your hotel and freshen up and do whatever. So I went to my hotel and I had my uniforms all pressed. So now... Steve Lieber (27:48.562) I had my chef jacket with all my companies all over. So mine kind of looks more like a NASCAR jacket than awards that like these chefs have, but it was kind of fun. And I had my fingernails done because they take a lot of pictures of my nails when I'm making pizza. And I walked up and the guys didn't recognize me. And I go, hey, I'm the American pizza chef. You were just talking to me like three hours ago. And they go, oh, the vagabond. So that was my nickname. I was the vagabond for the competition. And then we had a great time. They had about 12 Australian competitors to win the Australian national championship. And then they went against us. They had Italian, Austria, Japan, Slovenia. I was from the US. They had Italy, France. So it was a great competition. And then... Simon Best, the Australian champion, he had run out of dough. And so I said, okay, why don't you use some of my dough? And Simon winded up beating me with my own dough. So, so in Australia, I get a, an asterisk. I get second place, but kind of with a, with an assist of first place there. Jeff Dudan (29:08.654) Well, you know what? The universe rewards those types of acts of generosity with good karmas. So I'm sure it came back to you in some way. Steve Lieber (29:20.994) Yeah, I think like I told you for a busboy traveling the world to Australia and China and Paris, you know, all for somebody else paying, you know, to me that's winning, you know. Jeff Dudan (29:35.466) Your pizza reputation and your work took you to China. It's taken you, I've seen where you were making pizzas in all different countries with their local ingredients to try to come up with what, you know, the conversation we had, what would be the pizza in this region and what would it have to look like? What were some of those places where you tried to incorporate local ingredients into a pizza? Costa Rican Pizza Innovation: Pineapple, Pork, and Toasted Coconut Steve Lieber (30:02.37) I think you and I were just talking about my most recent trip to Costa Rica, where I have the honor to be the adopted father of four girls and one boy. I have five children down there. And we went to Haco Beach, which is known for the World Surfing Championships every August, is held in Haco Beach. Jeff Dudan (30:08.718) That's right. Steve Lieber (30:31.038) And my friend had a pizza place and I decided it was time to make Costa Rican pizza. And I had for many years, I'm from New York, we don't understand Hawaiian pizza in New York. You know, we don't, you know, dull pineapple from a can doesn't really make sense on pizza with whatever you want to put it with ham or bacon or Canadian bacon or whatever junk you had to throw with it, you know, so it always tasted metallic to me and I never got it and then I went to Costa Rica about five or six years ago and I had a pizza with local ham and Local Costa Rican fresh pineapple that's golden in color like vibrant yellow gold and of course it was a a totally different taste and experience. So we knew that the Costa Rican people love what's called chicharron. Chicharron are chunks of pork. So we said, can we smoke some pork belly, cut it into little tiny pieces, cubes, put it in the fryer so that it becomes like little bites of chicharron, put the thin slices of pineapple, bake that in the oven, and then when it comes out of the oven. Can we finish it with some toasted coconut, which is very popular, cocoa they call it. So pina, cocoa and chicharron is the new. So while we were doing that, we wanted to get the blessing of Tony Gimignani. Since Tony had written the pizza Bible and the pizza Bible has 23 different styles of pizza in it. So we called Tony to kind of tell him that we were making, to get ready for chapter 24 in the book. the next chapter. So we text him and say, hey, Tony, we're making Costa Rican pizza, man. We want you to give your opinion. We're putting chicharron and we're putting pineapple and we're putting coconut. And he texts back immediately, wow, that sounds great. And then we continue making our pizza. And about 10 minutes later, we get another text and it goes, don't they like corn over there? Steve Lieber (32:57.154) Here's Tony now thinking of a new, like what do you want to put on it to, and I remember the first time after I had won best pizza in America. Now he has three Guinness Book of World Records and 13 world titles. So there's no competition between me and him at all. But I did say, hey, Tony, you know what? I got, I just opened a new burger joint, man. I'm gonna be the first guy in America. Jeff Dudan (32:58.298) Yeah, now he's thinking. Yeah. Steve Lieber (33:26.118) to win best pizza and best burger. And he's like, dude, I already got a burger place in Las Vegas I'm working on. He was so competitive that no matter what, you know. And now he's serving his pizza at every single sports arena in San Francisco. So the Golden State Warriors, the San Francisco 49ers, the baseball giants. Jeff Dudan (33:33.538) Ha ha ha. Steve Lieber (33:56.519) the Vegas Knights in hockey and the Vegas football team. So he's doing all of them, just killing it. Jeff Dudan (34:09.237) What's his brand with his pizza? Does he have a chain? Steve Lieber (34:11.634) Well, he has several brands. In Las Vegas, they're called Pizza Rock. Pizza Rock. In San Francisco, his main restaurant is called Tony's Pizza Napolitana. Everybody in the world tried to talk him out of it, you know. He said, no, you know, I wrote the pizza Bible. I'm going to make a pizza. I have three restaurants on the same street. I have, I think, six or eight different ovens. He has a wood oven, a gas oven, an electric oven. Jeff Dudan (34:39.181) Hmm. Steve Lieber (34:40.806) Cole Lovin, he has them all there. And he said, I'm gonna make every single style of pizza and everybody in the whole world kept saying, why don't you just do four styles? Why don't you do this? Well, last year, the store did $13 million in one single unit, so over a million dollars every month. So Tony stayed true to what he believed and was able to pull it off. He happens to be the best teacher in the world. Building a Burger Brand for Women and Families Jeff Dudan (35:02.071) Wow. Steve Lieber (35:12.226) he's able to pass his pizza skills onto his employees. He's created several world champions. Laura Meyer, I know is one of his disciples. I think she has four or five world titles. A lot of people connected to him have great world titles. And, you know, so it's just great to be around people that are just spreading the knowledge and spreading the business and just really just doing it for the... for the love of the industry. Jeff Dudan (35:42.698) You obviously have a pursuit of excellence when it comes to food. How did you take that into BurgerFi and what was the vision? Steve Lieber (35:54.266) Well, at first I thought my boss had lost his mind a little bit. Like I said to him, I said, why are we gonna do a burger joint? The last restaurant we did together was an Italian restaurant. What are you thinking? Do you think everybody can just open up a burger joint and just do it? But as we studied it and I went across the country to In-N-Out and to Whataburger and to Five Guys and Jeff Dudan (35:59.254) Well, I think everybody thinks that. Steve Lieber (36:23.174) and to Shake Shack and to Five Napkin and Spotted Pig and DBGB. What I noticed in Five Guys in particular, you had all these great burger brands, but there really was not and there still is not a burger brand that's really for families and there's still not a burger brand that's really, there's not even one that's really Steve Lieber (36:52.35) ever make a burger brand, you know, specifically for women. So our design, because we knew that there was this big white space for families, and McDonald's used to be a great family brand back in the early 70s, you know. The milkshake still had milk in them, the meat was still good back then, the potatoes, and then somehow they got 19 chemicals in the french fry oil. I don't know, you know, how you could possibly do it that much from one extreme to the other. We use just for the record. Jeff Dudan (37:24.291) I actually still have a French McDonald's french fry from 1970. Steve Lieber (37:28.103) Yeah, you're saving that. It'll be worth money on eBay for sure. Jeff Dudan (37:31.622) Looks just looks like the dab on it. Steve Lieber (37:33.894) So we have oil, potatoes, and salt. And we think that that's good enough for the ingredients for French fries. We don't think you need more than that. So anyway, going back to the story, as I looked at all of these great burger brands, in and out, the meat was fresh. But guess what? It was loaded with antibiotics and steroids. Five Guys, the same thing. The meat was fresh. Wendy's, the meat was fresh. but it was still loaded with steroids, growth zones, and antibiotics. I'm really saddened today, very, it happened today, I think, or yesterday on the earnings call for Tyson's chicken. Tyson had completely moved away and was serving no antibiotics, never ever in their chicken. They said that marketing campaign failed and that it hurt their profitability. And now they're going back to antibiotic induced and growth hormone induced chicken. So I'm probably not gonna eat much more chicken knowing that, but as I started to identify that, I was like, how can we have to buy Mexican Coca-Cola because the Mexican Coca-Cola is made with natural cane sugar. And in America, they don't make it with natural cane sugar. They make it with high fructose corn syrup. But in Mexico, they realized that high fructose corn syrup leads to childhood obesity, so they don't allow it. But we allow it in America. When we went to Saudi Arabia, we were antibiotic free. They said, so what? Everybody's antibiotic free. There was no special selling point. So in America, the fluid supply system had been so bastardized. that it was wide open for us, that if we said, we're gonna have meat with no steroids, no growth hormones or antibiotics, it's gonna be grass fed and finished with corn. We're gonna try to have no sodas with high fructose corn syrup. We're gonna have ice cream and frozen custard made with no high fructose corn syrup. Then we started to question, hey, can we get gummy bears that are... Steve Lieber (39:54.662) that are organic gummy bears, you know, and we started to get crazy and get obsessed. Then we changed the bacon and we got a nitride free bacon. You know, we were using a hundred percent peanut oil at the very beginning for a very, very long time. So all of these things that we did, we realized would be very important to mothers, very important to teenage women. We made a veggie burger that was quinoa, lentils, carrots, zucchini, sauteed mushrooms and onions. Chemicals in Our Food: What America Can Learn From Abroad Jeff Dudan (40:16.512) Yes. Steve Lieber (40:24.602) That was one out of every seven burgers we sold at the beginning because we didn't have chicken on the menu and everything. So all of that was by design, the fixtures in the restaurant, dim the lights and everything, and the nice wooden finishes was all to appeal to families and women. And I think that's what we need in America. We need more of those kind of comfortable neighborhood family burger joints. Jeff Dudan (40:52.298) Yeah, so I think I'm going to share a personal experience. It's a sample size of four, so please nobody take health advice out of this anecdote, but my wife's grandparents both lived into their 90s and my sister-in-law's grandparents, her grandfather passed when he was 103 and then this weekend her grandmother turned 100 and she's still alive. Both of them lived on a farm. Both of them raised cattle. Both of them had their own gardens and ate their own vegetables and ate their own foods. And we do the best we can with organic and hormone. But it's like, you just can't get away from it. I mean, it's like, how, like to actually eat like that and not be, not take stuff out of the group. Cause you don't really know what's in stuff. I mean, we do Chick-fil-A a lot because the perception is, is that Chick-fil-A is somehow healthier and maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know what Shaq Big Chicken's gotten his, I don't know how he gets his breasts of chicken so big, but they're apparently quite large. But. Steve Lieber (41:48.775) Ha ha ha. Jeff Dudan (41:51.454) I mean, how do you, I mean, at the end of the day, you're just like, you know, I'm hungry. And we don't, you know, we don't find a way to get, uh, all organic, all natural foods, even though we try to eat as healthy as we possibly can. And you just wonder about, you know, how much of an impact all of these hormones and chemicals are having on our, uh, on our quality of our, and length of our lives. Steve Lieber (42:16.39) Well, there's no question about it. All these cancers and prostate cancer and all these other cancers that are happening, or there's no question that those are the result of all these chemicals in food. And, you know, the red dye, I think I'm extremely concerned about it. You know, I think that growing your own garden is a great idea for everybody. You know, obviously, it's not sustainable in a lot of environments, but In Costa Rica, I'm fortunate to live next to one of what you call those blue zones, you know, where people eat rice and beans for breakfast every morning with one egg and they have a cup of coffee and they're walking around and they're tending to their garden and they're not sitting at a desk for eight or 10 or 12 hours by the time you had in the car in the commute and everything like that. So they have a lifestyle. And then, you know, they call it Tico time. Jeff Dudan (42:52.277) Mm-hmm. Steve Lieber (43:15.982) So if you have, you know, if this podcast was supposed to start at four and I showed up somewhere between four and 418 or 420, you would be, that would be expected. You know, that's Tico time. And you wouldn't even have said like, Steve, you're late. You would have just went along like, well, but that's four. He's here by 420. And nobody makes a big deal here. They would stress out, you know, like that was disrespectful to, why would, why did you leave Jeff hanging for 18 minutes? You know? There they don't stress out about that. So there's some interesting things that you learn in life. I think that you and I connected right away because of a lot of similarities about believing in hard work and I think our core values align and I think we need to have more conversations about core values. Jeff Dudan (43:50.221) Yeah. Steve Lieber (44:13.806) helping others. I mean, I know you were there. I don't think the Titus Center was paying you a large fee to be the keynote address speaker, but you were doing it out of your love and for the students. And when I was thinking about the event this morning, and I was thinking that this guy, Dr. Hayes, is a genius because here he is. He makes his own miniature conference. for two days so that the students actually get the feel of like going to a Las Vegas show with the breakout sessions and the keynotes and meeting high level people with multiple brands and really successful operators and franchisors and legends that write books like yourself. And I remember when I met Dina Dwyer a couple of years ago as well. And that's what it's about. It's about sharing these core values. And if you just work hard and if you just put a little money on the side and you just buy good company stocks and just leave it there and just forget about it and then come back 10 years later, all of a sudden, you're in a good place. I think if we talk more about core values, the days of crushing the enemy and squeezing the most out of our employees, you know, and, you know, those days are gone. Thank goodness in a way, you know, and that's what I think why you and I connected so well. And I think that's what, you know, I think why we want to have these podcasts. And that's what I think we need to talk about is bringing back core values. I mean, Jeff Dudan (45:49.538) Yeah. Steve Lieber (46:04.954) bringing back the American dream, like the owner, the founder of Burger Feisette, he said, I wanted that if you work hard in two years from now, I want that person to be a general manager running a store, making 10 times what they made as an hourly employee. And that really was the intention that we went in. Yeah, we wanted to make some money on top of it. And year, the founders made a little bit of money, but we really wanted to change lives. And I know that's what you like to do in the franchise business as well. But that to me is the beauty of this business. That's I think why you and I met, and then I think that's why I'm on this podcast. Jeff Dudan (46:48.886) I've always liked being a gardener and planning things and watering things and growing things. There's a satisfaction from that. And you talk about Dr. John Hayes, who runs the Titus Center at Palm Beach Atlantic University. And he had an incredible, I mean, he wrote basically authored David Sandler's Bicycle Book, which people still use today as a basis for. Sandler sales training, he was the head of many different franchise systems. And now here's a guy who's probably 70, I think he said, or, you know, pushing it or right at it or a little over it. And he's has to raise the funds for the Titus center and he puts this on, he's got all of these students and they're so proud to say, I've been in Dr. Hayes class and I took his classes. They get a concentration of franchising out of there. And then he helps place these kids and it's not a huge cohort of kids. I mean, it's less than a hundred students. that are I think in the franchising concentration program with him. But he's just decided that that's the way that he's going to make his difference in the world by creating this incredible environment for teaching young people, the business model that's meant so much to all of us. And then when you shared with me that you've adopted the five children and how you invest in them and how you spend time in Costa Rica and you make a difference there plus the charity work that you did for children early in your life. But I really resonate with that because there's just, I mean, those are the people that are going to run the country. Those are the people that are going to run the world. And the more that we can invest early in these young generations and give them these examples of hard work, examples of success, pouring, anything that we've learned. And that's why I love doing the speaking. It's because it's an opportunity just to basically condense these lessons that I've learned, picked up all these scars, and somebody else just can write all these things down and walk out the door with them and use them in their life. And that's it. Like that's the end of it. I mean, that's where it ends. If there's anything that happens after that, Jeff Dudan (48:59.594) I had a bunch of people reach out to me after the conference and, you know, looking for different opportunities or, uh, different business relationships. And sure, that stuff always comes from it, but the opportunity to really just take a moment and slow down and give somebody something that costs you nothing, but can mean everything to a decision that they're making in their life and make an impact in their path and your trajectory, like That should be something that we are all obligated to do. Steve Lieber (49:32.574) Yeah, it's really great to be part of that magic that's at the Titus Center. I think you met my partner, Mitchell Nolan, who was a graduate from the Titus Center. So, Mitchell was one of the top students in Dr. Hayes' class. He's 22 years old. He has an MBA. He's squeaky clean and I'm the exact opposite. Jeff Dudan (49:46.475) Yes. Responsible Franchising, Vetted Brands, and What Needs to Be Fixed Steve Lieber (50:01.914) So he has the bow tie in his profile picture and everything. And he was so pro franchising and franchising is the way. And then I said, hey, come over here, Mitchell. I want to talk to you. There's a few scams that are going on out there in franchising. There's a lot of unreputable franchise sales organizations. There's these brokers that, you know, they always talk about how many deals they signed, but they never talk about how many successful franchisees they have on the other end of the tunnel. You know, how come none of them ever sell that way? I kept saying to Mitchell and I just kept jabbing the kid and jabbing him and say, you know, we got to we got to do something. We got to disrupt the franchise industry. So Mitchell and I said we. we want to start a franchise group called Vetted. That's the name of the company. And Vetted, of course, was taken. So we took V-E-T-T and the number three and the letter D. So that's our logo. And we said, what if the only franchises that we represent have great food and guest experience, simplicity of systems? Jeff Dudan (51:26.802) Mm. Steve Lieber (51:27.01) strong labor and inventory control, powerful operational marketing support and positive unit economics. And what if we only wanted to work with brands that had those five pillars or we would help them get those five pillars and that our ultimate goal is for 70% of all franchisees to be profitable. So that's what we've done and that's what we started. We just founded it, you know, the end of last year. We just started this year. We already represent a few brands. Um, but we, we feel that we're going to, we're going to put, you know, these, these franchise sales organizations, these guys are not going to like us so much. Now there's certain ones that do a fantastic job, you know, they're, they, they're very upfront. They have very great disclosure. They talk about the cons as much as they talk about the pros, you know? So those companies, you know, we have no problem with. It's the. It's the burger reams of the world that stole people's franchisee, franchise fees and ran away with the money and other companies. The Quiznos debacle of years ago, those type of things that we want to protect people from. And I think that Mitchell and I will also be good public speakers because he'll have the Jeff Dudan (52:37.858) Right. Yeah. Steve Lieber (52:49.326) the 22 year old's view of franchising and I'll have the 62 year old view of franchising. Jeff Dudan (52:56.092) So, what are the services that Vetted will provide for companies? Steve Lieber (53:03.474) For early franchise wars, we provide legal, you know, we work with the legal team to get FDD and FDD compliance. We're very strong in operations. We do some great franchisee recruitment under, you know, using social media and LinkedIn and other stuff like that. So those are our basic Jeff Dudan (53:22.615) Mm-hmm. Steve Lieber (53:32.002) enter into deals where we will help the brand grow in exchange for some equity in the brand so that we're not going to leave them, we're going to be with them. And again, we think that that's the smart way to sell franchises and that's what got me and Mitchell fired up is that we kept hearing Matt Haller walk around talking about responsible franchising. Jeff Dudan (53:58.416) Right. Steve Lieber (54:01.77) I think 12 years. But you tell me if I'm incorrect. And have before two years of the last two years, have you heard responsible franchising for the 10 years prior to that? No, I have not either. And I took very much offense to that. It's like, here I am paying $5,000 a year or more sometimes in my IFA membership fees. And turns out that they're not even vetting the other members. Jeff Dudan (54:14.018) Have not. Steve Lieber (54:30.83) that are in the club. What was the famous Groucho Marx quote? I don't want to be a member of a club that wants me to be a member or something. So I started to get a really bad feeling about that. And then Mitchell coined the phrase, well, that makes it sound like responsible franchising is kind of like responsible driving. Like, aren't you always supposed to be a responsible driver? Jeff Dudan (54:39.656) Any club that would have me. That's right. Steve Lieber (55:01.314) Weren't you always supposed to be about responsible franchising? So I'd like to hear your opinion on and I know responsible franchise is very important to your company and it's been. But I don't I don't think you like the word being tossed around so lightly by the franchise association, I don't think, you know. Jeff Dudan (55:19.99) Yeah, I mean, even great franchising is hard. And if you look at the great brands that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years, you can go back in their history and they've all had some upheaval, some problems, some challenge with a group of franchisees or, you know, or just, just something that went wrong because the, you know, franchising is the promise of a proven model. And the challenge is that things change. Customer acquisition changes. I mean, when I was first starting franchising, I mean, we were using the Yellow Pages. So where has that changed, right? All of the permutations of lead aggregators and then pay per click. And now you've got Meta and Google and oops, we broke our system. Now everybody has to figure out how to pay twice, twice as much for leads while we're trying to get this stuff fixed. You know, so, you know, all of these, you know, so I think what it comes down to is, are you committed enough to your franchisees? Number one, to be honest and transparent with them, to have a relationship where it's like, Hey, I'm not going to keep telling you that everything's easy and everything's great. We're working as hard as we can. You're working as hard as you can, but we're in a competitive space and everybody's competing and everybody's working on the same stuff. So you've got to be vigilant. with respect to the things that you focus on and where you put your money. The other thing is you have to be committed to, you know, the relationship with these people long-term. Some of them are gonna go through a divorce. Some of them are gonna get sick. Some of them aren't gonna be that good at the business. So you've gotta slow down and you gotta take time with those people and find a way to transition them where they don't get hurt and as little as possible. And you sacrifice your fees. You sacrifice these things to make sure that like, Okay, maybe that franchise didn't you said 70% of them being profitable that was your goal, right? Well, that would imply that 30% of them, you know are there's gonna be some challenge where they're breaking even or worse. So you know you've got to You know you you've got to make sure that you never as hard as franchising is that you never lose your heart for people And that you never let the you know Jeff Dudan (57:44.682) your money get in front of the right decision for somebody. And if somebody made a mistake and got into something or something went wrong for them, then like you just gotta do the right thing by them. And as long as you're willing to do that, get on the call, get face to face with people, go sit in people's living rooms if you need to, and try to be resolution focused. I talk about, you know, football's all about angles and leverage and certain businesses are all about angles and leverage, you gotta maintain your leverage. You got to constantly have angles because it's a transactional business. And if you're not winning, you're losing and all of that. Well, franchising is a respect and resolution business. Like we don't, we're not successful unless the franchisees are successful. They need us to be effective, efficient, professional, uh, you know, pursue excellence and make sure that we're doing the homework to give them the right guidance and provide the right support. And it's just not a short-term relationship. It's not, it's. It is not it is not a transactional relationship with franchisees. So I think when things get irresponsible is when people are focused on, you know, some when the transaction gets in the way or obscures the views of what the real commitment is to the franchise system. And you see over time, like that doesn't mean you're soft. And that doesn't mean you give you give in to every whim and wish that people want. You lead, you're accessible as a leader. You take responsibility for things that don't go well. You create radical transparency in truth in your organization. You be data-driven and numbers first so that people are dealing with honest information when they're making decisions. And then you hang in there when times are tough. And if you do that, over time, The right thing's going to happen. The franchisees are going to make the plays that they need to make to be successful. Your team's going to make the plays that they need to be successful. But that's just it. None of that sounds like easy. None of it sounds like a shortcut. And you know, it's a responsibility when you place franchisees in a system that is like you own them, you own the outcome for them. So as long as, and anything other than that is... Jeff Dudan (01:00:05.518) probably irresponsible. Steve Lieber (01:00:10.35) I think the same way. That's why I always felt that I could never use brokers because to me, during the learning process to learn about our brand and learn about our brand and about our brand and learn about our brand and learn about our brand and learn about our brand and learn about our brand and learn about our brand and learn about stores closures during COVID and to learn about why we don't have high fructose in the corn syrup, in the soda. All of those things that really mattered wouldn't matter to a broker, in my opinion. And then I also thought that relationship building during the process is critical to understand Jeff Dudan (01:00:33.353) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:00:40.746) That's right. Steve Lieber (01:00:50.938) why that person is buying the business? Is it just another restaurant because they have other restaurants and they can't build out their portfolio anymore of the first brand? Looking for a second brand in the same trade area or the first time franchisees? So all of those nuances and finding out what they're there for, getting them in the discovery day and- actually getting them to work in the restaurant or play around and see themselves in the business of what a day in the life would be. I think to me, those are too critical to farm out to a broker or a franchise sales organization. What’s Next: Buckstar Café, Incubators, and Franchises That Heal Jeff Dudan (01:01:35.478) Yeah, that's fair. Steve, what's next for you? You've got Vetted that's starting. And do you have any other personal restaurant ideas that you think about and maybe one day you're going to launch? Steve Lieber (01:01:58.862) Well, I promised my daughters that we live in a very, very teeny tiny town called Opaula, Costa Rica. And it's a very quiet agricultural town and very poor. So my goal is to open up a little tiny coffee shop in the town. And I joke around that I'm going to call it Buckstar instead of Starbucks, you know, in reverse. And just to have a little bit of Costa Rican coffee every day, because they drink coffee throughout the day, something that people can afford, but that they'll be free Wi-Fi, there'll be arts and crafts, because my kids are all artists and their mother's an artist and she actually you know, is pretty good painter so we can have like a little art studio so the kids can come there. And I just want to make a safe space where kids can come and eat and get a little, you know, egg sandwich or something. I'll start off with probably just donuts and coffee and then expand the menu as we go. That's going to be my final love project. And then, you know, I think what we'd like Vetted to actually become is We, you know, selling is okay and it's nice and we want to help brands grow and whatever. But I think what we would work best at is that we would partner with some people that have private equity money or some private investors and that we would actually run an incubator for small brands and help them get started. And I think that would be great. And if we could do a couple of those. Jeff Dudan (01:03:49.004) Yeah. Steve Lieber (01:03:55.438) We love, like I told you, we love the idea of a burger brand that's exclusively for women, you know, geared towards women. Men will still eat there anyway, but that is geared. We think, exactly, we think Asian food is finally getting accepted. And then what you were talking about before, listen, if I could afford to go to True Food Kitchen every single day and Sweet Greens and... Jeff Dudan (01:04:06.838) Well, sure, if that's where the women are. Steve Lieber (01:04:24.386) and Cava and a couple of those other places, I would eat there constantly. The problem is that they're, they cost are very high because the food is organic and it's great. But I hope that this is the first time in history that Americans and young Americans in particular will start support those helpful brands instead of, you know, going back and eating the unhealthier foods, the fried foods or whatever. And don't get me wrong, I love fried chicken and fried everything, but I think first, you know, we have to cut it down to once a month, you know, for stuff like that. Jeff Dudan (01:05:06.518) Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, Steve, this has been great having you on today. I really appreciate it. Particularly enjoyed our pizza conversation, especially since I was just in New York this last week. And observationally, and this is kind of along the lines of what you're just talking about, and we walked between five and 10 miles a day. I mean, we went to get gelato at this great gelato place, and, but it's like, well, it's, any, my daughter's like, anything under two miles, we're walking. And so it's not uncommon to go for a 20 or 25 minute walk. 25,000 steps is what they did on their day. I had to work a little bit, so I didn't walk with them as much. But you have all this great food, best food in the world. I mean, just like you said, if it's not good, it's gone. So just, it's all just food and drink. And generally, the people are in pretty good shape there. Like they're just, they're walking. all the time. And I realized, I mean, the observation I made to my wife on the way home was I didn't realize how much I didn't walk at home. I mean, I'm seated a lot. I walk to my car, I drive, and then, of course, I go and I pay to work out. If you would walk all day and walk everywhere, you wouldn't have to do that. So, you know, it's healthy lifestyles. We just don't have, it's not built in here. Healthy eating, healthy activity, it's just not built into the way that we function. And I agree with you. I like going to Clean Eats. I don't know if you've seen that chain. It's a franchise model. They've got great stuff there. But yeah, I mean, it's more expensive. I walk out of there with a good meal. I'm not fully satiated, but I know that I ate really clean and really healthy and it was good and it was a little expensive, but. You know, I go there anytime that I have the time to do it. So, but. Steve Lieber (01:07:05.522) I expected that these home ready meal things, the blue apron and all those chef things, I thought that those would catch on a little bit more than they did, but of course they don't. Again, I think that unfortunately we've been programmed by the food producers. It's an oligopoly in the grocery store. Only about seven stores control, seven companies control. Jeff Dudan (01:07:14.05) Yeah. Steve Lieber (01:07:33.094) most of the grocery store, you know, the Unilever's and Car Grill and Procter & Gamble and so on. But the bastardization and the chemicalization of the food and the sugar, our FDA did not protect us. And again, a lot of times, you know, we get this very cavalier American attitude. Oh, you know, I don't need my seatbelt. I don't, you know. I don't need somebody to tell me how to protect myself, that I shouldn't smoke around kids, and all these crazy cavalier attitudes when, hey, maybe we're just trying to look out for you when you might be making a mistake for yourself. And then one closing note, since this is a New York pizza show, we're gonna give you the hottest pizza place in New York City right now. It's actually in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Okay. And it's called Rosie's Pizza Bar. Okay. Rosie's Pizza Bar, founded by a guy named Giulio Adriani, who has won several world championships, and then his best friend Aurelio. And the pizza that they're making there is Italian style, light, great. Jeff Dudan (01:08:38.658) Okay, Rosie's Pizza Bar. Steve Lieber (01:08:59.322) Great tomatoes and toppings. Very eclectic restaurant, but definitely one of the top in New York. Jeff Dudan (01:09:07.986) On the list, we'll hit it next time. Steve, if you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be? Steve Lieber (01:09:10.33) Bye bye. Steve Lieber (01:09:17.498) One sentence, I'm gonna use the one that I close out my emails with and the one that my mother told me, you know, as her last words. And my mother said to me, work hard and help as many people as possible. Jeff Dudan (01:09:19.391) or a few. Jeff Dudan (01:09:34.262) Beautiful. Steve Lieber, thank you for being on the home front with Jeff Duden today. Steve, how can people get in touch with you? Steve Lieber (01:09:42.702) You can contact me at Steve at BurgerFi.com and LinkedIn Steve Lieber, Twitter at Steve Lieber, and 305-409-3594. That's 305-409-3594. Jeff Dudan (01:10:10.178) That's Steve Lieber, L-I-E-B-E-R. Steve, thank you again for being on the home front and thank you everybody for listening. Have a good day. Steve Lieber (01:10:18.582) Yep. I hope I see you out at Multi-Unit Franchise Conference in Las Vegas. Jeff Dudan (01:10:23.774) I'll be there brother and you're gonna tell me where to eat. All right, hang on. Steve Lieber (01:10:26.395) Alright, pizza rock.
Brief Summary In this powerful episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Mo Massaquoi—former NFL wide receiver, Georgia Bulldogs star, and founder of the leadership consulting firm Vessel. From surviving a Liberian civil war to building elite football teams to leading organizations through change, Mo shares how his unique journey forged his philosophy on leadership, performance psychology, and organizational health. He opens up about career-ending concussions, the ATV accident that took his hand, and the rebirth of his purpose through service to others and corporate transformation. Key Takeaways Great teams win—freestyle fails. Mo draws powerful parallels between elite sports teams and businesses: alignment, trust, and role clarity are non-negotiables. You don’t get credit for hard work—only the right work. Individual performance means nothing if it doesn’t advance the collective goal. Culture starts at the top—but has to live at every level. Performance systems must be backed by lived values, not posters on a wall. Listening is the most underused leadership tool. Answers often exist within the organization—but leaders must create the space to hear them. NIL and transfer culture need guardrails. Mo shares firsthand insights on how college sports is evolving, for better or worse. Business athletes need structure and autonomy. High performers thrive on clarity and accountability, not micromanagement. Featured Quote “The unknown opportunities excite me more than the future makes me nervous.” — Mo Massaquoi Jeff Dudan (00:00.195) Hey, it's nice to meet you. Thank you for being on. Mo Massaquoi (00: 03.172) Likewise, likewise. Pleasure to connect. Jeff Dudan (00:04.267) Yeah. Do you go by Mo or Muhammad? Mo Massaquoi (00:07.462) I got my mo. It's easier to say. Jeff Dudan (00:10.064) Okay. And it's Massaquah, right? Yeah, I remember. I remember watching you play. Mo Massaquoi (00:12.642) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (00:18.731) How long have you been in Charlotte? Jeff Dudan (00:20.947) I came out in 1989 on a football scholarship to Appalachian State University. And yeah, so came out in 89. I grew up in Chicago. Mo Massaquoi (00:26.791) Mm, AppState. Love it. Mo Massaquoi (00:34.109) Okay, we're about... Jeff Dudan (00:36.157) Northwest suburb, Schomburg. Mo Massaquoi (00:39.423) Oh, random. We used to live in Waukegan in North Chicago. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (00:43.891) Okay, okay. Well, hey, let's, let me just, we'll kick it off so we can cover all that on the show. Anything you want to promote today, Mo? Mo Massaquoi (00:56.282) Um... I guess not directly, indirectly. I'm a leadership consultant, focused on strategic alignment and change management. Outside of that, maybe some philanthropy stuff, but it's just, we'll see how the conversation naturally evolves. Jeff Dudan (01:05.496) That's all business. Jeff Dudan (01:14.657) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:18.863) Sure, sure. How are you on time today? Mo Massaquoi (01:22.582) I have us marked until 1030. Jeff Dudan (01:25.483) Okay, all right, we may or may not use it all. Okay, well, we'll go back and record an intro and do all that kind of stuff, but we'll just kick it off right here. All right, you ready? Three, two, one. Hey everybody, welcome to the home front. I'm Jeff Duden, and today we are on with Moe Massaqua. Welcome, Moe. Mo Massaquoi (01:48.494) How are you doing? It's a pleasure to meet you. Jeff Dudan (01:50.719) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely a fan. I remember watching you play in the NFL. So I'm excited to get to share this time with you today. And I know you're a Charlotte native. Why don't we start by just hearing a little bit about, you know, your background, how you grew up, where you grew up, and then we'll just take it from there. Mo Massaquoi (02:12.246) I love it. So my family's from West Africa. We're Liberian and my mom, dad, they moved to the States to escape a civil war. They had me in Charlotte. I'm from Hidden Valley in Charlotte. So. Jeff Dudan (02:13.656) All right. Jeff Dudan (02:22.307) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (02:29.174) The North Tri- and Sugar Creek area is what raised me. We left for a little bit and went to Chicago in the northern part, North Chicago, Waukegan area for a little bit and then came back down to Charlotte. So Charlotte's very, very near and dear to me where you're doing great work. Jeff Dudan (02:48.459) Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate it. We had William Ward on our podcast and he also escaped the same civil war and came over here. He's just had his podcast just about a month ago. But yeah, tough over there. Have you ever been back? Have you? Has your family gone back to Liberia? Mo Massaquoi (02:58.708) and Mo Massaquoi (03:09.058) Been back a couple of times. I'm slated to go next year. My grandma's actually here right now. And so when she goes, I want to go back with her. It had been way, way too long. Jeff Dudan (03:20.311) Yeah, it's settled down a little now from what I understand. Mo Massaquoi (03:23.666) Yeah, it's stable. A lot of the countries are stabilizing in the 21st century. And so it's just exciting to see what's taking place. Obviously, there's a lot of challenges, but I think everything's trending upward. Jeff Dudan (03:40.235) Nice, nice. Do you have brothers or sisters? Do you really? Where'd you fall inside of that? Mo Massaquoi (03:43.486) I have four sisters. Yeah, four. I am the second oldest. Yeah, so very, very interesting. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (03:51.027) Okay. Jeff Dudan (03:56.427) Yeah, to say the least, right? That's fantastic. So I spent most of your time growing up in Charlotte then, and you played at a, I think an undefeated team at Independence here. They had a great run. Was it Chris Leake? Was the quarterback with you? Mo Massaquoi (04:07.285) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (04:17.538) So Chris Leake started the whole thing, anchored by Tommy Notts, who's still winning championships down in South Carolina. I think he's up to like 15 now or something, wild. And when you play for a guy like that, his expectation is that you're gonna win every game. And if you're not winning, that you can win every game. And so you basically, you go out there and you... Jeff Dudan (04:27.222) That's right. Mo Massaquoi (04:40.426) You work knowing that good things are gonna happen and you work to improve and the attention to detail and just that experience changed my life. I don't know how things would evolve because you're taking kids. In my case, my family's not from here and not really understanding how America works. from, you know, challenging background and you're giving them hope and belief. And a lot of guys went on to play pro, a lot of guys went on to get scholarships and continue their dreams of playing. But just the life lessons that you get of, you know, how to be on time, how to be disciplined, how to be accountable, how to set high expectations, how to not compromise in life. What are you actually going to, what are you focused on? How do you strip out all the noise? A lot of that came from TK and, you know, I think 109 games in a row, seven straight championships, that independence run. So we had a good time. Jeff Dudan (05:34.86) Yeah. Yeah, when did you first start playing sports? Mo Massaquoi (05:41.666) I started playing, I think organized sports in the second or third grade. Yeah, we had moved to Chicago for a little bit and my older cousins were playing and you know, I'm probably five years younger than them and so you wanna do everything that they do. And I was terrible. I think my first jersey number was 70. They put me at like offensive guard or something like that. Jeff Dudan (05:49.386) Okay. Jeff Dudan (05:59.375) That's right. Jeff Dudan (06:07.724) Hey man, you gotta learn the organization from the bottom up, right? I mean, well, hey, no offense to the linemen out there. Man. Mo Massaquoi (06:11.542) You gotta learn it in the trenches. No, but you know, I was never destined to be an alignment. I think the most I've ever weighed was like 215 pounds or something. So that's not material to block anybody. But it was a great experience. Once again, you're learning. You're learning how to get hit. You're learning how to get up. You're learning how to be in the cold. You're learning how to be around people. Jeff Dudan (06:24.783) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (06:39.017) So, yeah, second, third grade, somewhere in there. Jeff Dudan (06:42.583) Yeah, I can imagine your families over here. You're working to assimilate. Probably we're working. Your family's working hard to make a living with the community, family, family members and all of that. And then you they want you. You want to go off and play the sport. Was it did your sisters get the same type of opportunities growing up? Did they get involved in athletics and stuff like that? Mo Massaquoi (07:12.114) Yeah, everybody got a chance to do, you know, what they enjoy, whether it's cheerleading or their respective activities. Me being the only boy having boy cousins, I think our trajectories were just different. But the concept of what sport was made no sense in Africa. At that time, there were no, you know, you play sport and then you go be a professional anywhere. Or you get a scholarship. That's like an American construct that was just foreign. And so you get the typical immigrant parent focused on education, do your schoolwork. You go to school, be a doctor, lawyer, whatever the case may be. But as a kid, you're just like, eh, this is very interesting. I'd rather do this in life. And as time continue to grow, you get a little bit better, you get a little bit better. Jeff Dudan (07:52.382) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (08:03.562) And then you get a first scholarship offer that's like, oh, you know, you mean I don't have to pay for school? This is very, very intriguing now. Jeff Dudan (08:09.336) Yeah. What subjects in school interested you when you were growing up? Mo Massaquoi (08:17.042) Psychology, just, you know, that's what I studied. So I have an undergrad in psychology, master's in industrial organizational psychology. And it's really the fascination of, I'm born in America, but culturally I'm Liberian. And so you're always feeling inside out in a lot of places and just understanding how people come into the world, how they present, how they perform, what motivates them, all those different things. Had I not played football though, I probably would have gone to school to be an architect. Jeff Dudan (08:18.679) Okay. Jeff Dudan (08:32.011) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (08:47.571) I love buildings, have some family friends in Charlotte who are architects and just very fascinated with the work both on the commercial side and the residential side. So I just love design. Something in design would have been the route. Jeff Dudan (09:03.915) Yeah, so then you're going through high school at Independence. You're playing for a coach that demands things at a high level. You've got this incredible run. You're surrounded by great players. And I will tell you, so yeah, I grew up in Chicago, played in a 6A program there, basketball and football, came out to the Carolinas here. And I really didn't have a perspective for how good the athletics was around here. But just by example, We grew up, I have three kids, my oldest is 26 right now. And I don't think Huff was a thing when you were here, but we got Huff High School now. Was Mallard Creek a thing when you were here? Mo Massaquoi (09:40.942) Mm-mm. Huff wasn't a thing, Mallard Creek, Weddington, like all those schools are within the last decade. Jeff Dudan (09:47.155) Yeah. So, I mean, huge growth area, but just, just by way of like the quarterbacks that we played with in the same league, dads hanging out, uh, Sam Hartman, who was the quarterback for Notre Dame this year, and who's, uh, going somewhere in the draft. Mo Massaquoi (10:03.683) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (10:07.579) One of the first teams I coached with my youngest son, Drake May, who's projected to go number two in the draft, was me and his dad coached Drake and my son on that. We got Will Greer, who was with Dallas, you know, played at West Virginia, played at Florida, so, and these are, this was all like, this was not in our area. This was our friend group. And I was like, man, these kids are pretty good, you know, but I didn't. Mo Massaquoi (10:12.808) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (10:20.878) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (10:29.57) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (10:32.707) You know, I didn't realize like we were, you know, amongst all these NFL quarterbacks here, so it was, it's, it's a hotbed of talent. It really is the Carolinas and Charlotte area in particular. Mo Massaquoi (10:46.73) Yeah, people don't pay attention to it. You kind of leap over it when you talk football and talk sports in general. You get down to Florida and Georgia and Texas and California, and I think they just have just bigger cities that they anchor on. But if you go through the Carolinas, there's a lot of talent. You know, I went to Georgia. There's a lot of talent that came from North Carolina, you know, with the Gurleys of the world and the Keith Marshes of the world, the Danel Elibries of the world. Jeff Dudan (11:00.697) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (11:05.036) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (11:12.782) And if you just spread it out holistically, you know, Hakeem Nix, he won a Super Bowl, who's from Charlotte, was a vital member of that Giants team. So there's a lot of guys making noise. You know, we claim Steph Curry and Chris Fall as well, so. Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (11:18.915) That's right. Jeff Dudan (11:25.812) Yeah, oh yeah. Oh man, when Davidson was making their run, it was crazy here. I mean, it was, it couldn't be like, and I live, uh, like two minutes from Davidson college, it was, it was off the chain when he was, uh, I'd never, we'd never seen anything like it. Town was on its head. It was great. Um, yeah, yeah. Um, how'd you pick Georgia as a school? You had a lot of, a lot of offers. Georgia has always been a powerhouse. Mo Massaquoi (11:48.095) I love it. Jeff Dudan (11:59.685) what made the difference for you to pick Georgia. Mo Massaquoi (12:05.068) You know what's interesting? Once again, I had no connection to any of these schools. The Ivies versus the SEC versus the PAC versus the whatever. No knowledge of them. So a lot of it, honestly, is just feel. You go visit a lot of these places. You understand, do I like the town? Do I like the city? This is before NIL and before all the other things that take place in college sports now. And it's a gut reaction, to be honest with you. Georgia had a situation where it's not actually that far away from Charlotte, about three, three and a half hours, depending on who's driving. They had two senior receivers graduate. You read through that? They had two receivers graduating, so there'd be time to play early. Athens, UGA is a great school. Jeff Dudan (12:39.939) Yeah. I'm going to go to bed. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:55.503) Great school. Mo Massaquoi (12:57.518) So you try to factor all those things in, but in all honesty, when you look at some of the other schools, they have great things too. So it's very confusing because every week you want to say, I'm going to this school, I'm going to that school, I'm going to this school. And eventually your mom's like, you know, just figure it out over time. But all things considered, Georgia, Georgia was the best decision for me. Jeff Dudan (13:19.311) So you show up as a freshman. Actually, I was a walk-on, so I walked on to the University of Northern Iowa, man. I'd only played two years of high school football, so I really wasn't very good, and I wasn't very polished. I played receiver as well, because we got a coach that wanted to throw the ball, so I was a basketball player. So he recruited me and said, man, you should try this football thing. And I was like, all right. I was about 6'2", so I'm not going anywhere in basketball. So. Mo Massaquoi (13:35.819) Mm. Jeff Dudan (13:47.487) So I'm like, yeah, I'll try it. And I ran out, I ran out and caught a lot of passes and fell down. I mean, just, I mean, you know, but I liked it, right? And, but when I showed up there, for me, especially being a walk-on dude, it was hard. Like it was stressful. I didn't feel a part. You're, I, you know, I was getting beat. like beat, it was the first time I was really up again, you know, as they said, okay, well you're a tight end now and you're on the scout team. Right. So here you go. Um, what was it like for you walking into Georgia? You were obviously highly recruited. Um, what was that experience like for you? Was it stressful? Uh, how long did it take you to acclimate to the life of a student athlete? Mo Massaquoi (14:36.366) I don't know, I mean, great question. There's different layers to it. There's the football side, there's the student side, there's just a navigating campus side. I remember when I first got on campus, you know, Athens, 30-some thousand people, and you got these bus systems all over the place, and so you're trying to get to class and figure out how you survive. Jeff Dudan (14:44.535) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (14:55.05) And I called my coach, they recruited me and I was like, hey, you know, what bus am I supposed to take? And he's like, listen, Freshman, figure it out, all this recruiting stuff is over. And so you're like, okay, you know, the court period's over. But on the football side, I think coming from a place like Independence was helpful because we had a, you know, already kind of sophisticated offensive system. We lift all the time. And so that part of it was just continuing the momentum. Jeff Dudan (15:16.238) Mm. Mo Massaquoi (15:21.614) and really paying your dues. So not coming in with the big head, not coming in like you knew everything. But also being confident. Like I want to play as a freshman, I want to contribute early. And just believing in yourself. And so it was the school side was more complex than the football side. And you get your kinks as a freshman, where you miss assignments and you miss plays and you get hit. But over time, your body just kind of builds up and it's like second nature. Jeff Dudan (15:54.179) Did you play as a freshman? Yeah, just straight out on the field. Mo Massaquoi (15:56.246) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (16:00.646) Yeah, so in camp, actually I tore my hamstring or and so pulled it really bad. So missed the bulk of camp. Uh, and so. Play the first game, second game, played more. And then I think about a third game, uh, we were off and running. Jeff Dudan (16:04.481) Okay. Jeff Dudan (16:19.331) Nice. There's a lot going on with NIL today. You probably wish NIL existed back when you were in college. Do you have a view on that as to the impact that it's making in the college game in as much as people being motivated to move around from college to college and people making decisions based on? you know, grabbing their money now because you don't know what's going to happen. Right. I mean, one ACL and you know, you, you'd be thankful you got your money. Uh, what's your, what's your view on that? Looking back at it as an athlete that it didn't exist when you were there. Mo Massaquoi (17:01.578) I mean, it's complicated and it's very complicated because when we were there, we were poor. And you know. Jeff Dudan (17:03.179) It is. Jeff Dudan (17:10.343) I remember, I always, hey, never a better weekend when the Pell Grants came out, right? I mean... Mo Massaquoi (17:17.803) Pell grants and bowl gifts kept us afloat. Yeah, and you saw it. We had a couple of guys at our program who star-type players that they were just literally just trying to survive because they didn't have resources and they got jammed up for it, unfortunately. And it's not right. Jeff Dudan (17:21.542) Yeah, it was a long weekend. Jeff Dudan (17:33.305) Right. Jeff Dudan (17:37.251) Which doesn't seem right. I mean, it does not seem right when you're bringing in a hundred million dollars for a school and you're stuffing stuff from the training table in your pockets for the weekend or whatever. Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (17:43.942) 1000% Mo Massaquoi (17:51.834) 1000%. So I'm all for the guys getting paid, the girls getting paid, anyone that plays to get paid. I think where it's very complicated, those people aren't making wise long-term decisions. They may leave for $5,000, $10,000, $25,000 bump. There's only a certain crop of individuals that are really getting the real, real NIM money, and then everybody else is making decisions that may cost them. Whereas, do you want the short-term win now, or do you want the long-term win? Jeff Dudan (18:18.177) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (18:21.5) in Part of the complex, the challenge with NIL is people are moving around so much and they're chasing the NIL that they're not really tethered to an organization, a university. And so where you call App State home, there's kids that have been to two, three, four, five schools and they don't really have a home. They haven't developed relationships. And so whenever the game is over, it'll be over for everyone. They don't really have a community that they can pull on. And so I'm all for them getting paid. Jeff Dudan (18:33.135) That's right. Mo Massaquoi (18:52.764) I just hope that individuals use a lot more wisdom when they're making the decisions to say what do I actually need, what is my fair market rate, and then where is also the best place that I should be to accomplish the thing I actually want, whether that's great education, play professionally, be connected to a great university, all of the above. Jeff Dudan (19:13.375) Yeah, you don't foundation is important and lots of different ways relationship, the school, the area, people build a life on top of where they go to school and can leverage that. Two things I have learned. Number one, people will almost always work to their comp plan. And so they will and then to every any system that gets created gets exploited. to an extreme. So, you know, you put it, I mean, I've created, like I've been building businesses since college, man. And it's like, okay, I put a system in and then there's somebody's going to take it to an extreme and leverage that the way it wasn't necessarily intended to be leveraged. And so you have to be really careful anytime you create, you create three rules that creates 10 loopholes. Mo Massaquoi (19:42.479) Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:05.839) for people to exploit those rules. And now you've got, so it's all right, well, we're gonna have this transfer portal and we're gonna have NIL. And then, you know, you get a situation out in, you know, in Colorado where it's like, he walks in and says, everybody needs to leave because I'm just bringing all new players in. And it's within the rules, you're allowed to do that. I don't, you know, I think I was fascinated by what Deion Sanders did out there at Colorado this year. And he's actually come and speaking at the IFA. So I'm excited to get to meet him out there in Phoenix in about two or three weeks and interested in to hear what he's got to say when he speaks and stuff. And, um, you know, but I mean, it's like, there's okay, here's the new normal. Here's the new rules. Now we're going to, you know, we're, we're going to use that to the extreme. And, uh, you know, because if, and then if you don't, somebody else will. So when you're, when you're in a. Mo Massaquoi (20:37.684) No. Jeff Dudan (21:02.243) when you're in an environment where the margin of error between players is so small and competitive advantage is so material and important, then you have to take full advantage of every, everything that you can possibly come up with. And that's what the great coaches do. Saban does it, Balachek does it. I mean, they, they come up with, you know, any little loophole that they can to create any advantage that they can. Cause great coaches, like I've coached a lot and I've always talked to our staff. And I've said, You are responsible, you know, if the players play the game even, and we as a staff can create one extra score and one extra turnover, then we will win the game, you know, assuming that our players, you know, if they can play it even. So we have to give an advantage. So we would wreck our brains to come up with, you know, and when you're talking about 12 and 13 year old kids, you can train them pretty quickly over two quarters of football to look for something and then not look for something else in the fourth quarter. I mean, you know. Mo Massaquoi (21:44.078) Mm. Mo Massaquoi (21:55.362) Hehehe... Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (22:02.379) So we'd spend half a game training these kids to, you know, that we're going to do this. And then, you know, when we needed it, we would come back with something else. We did. I am. I'm embarrassed to say, though, that we won practice that I did discontinue that one of my coaches, we would kick off sometimes. And like. I don't even want to say this, Mo. This guy would overinflate the football. So it was so hard. Mo Massaquoi (22:09.879) Yeah Mo Massaquoi (22:24.526) Thanks for watching! Jeff Dudan (22:30.019) and it was one of those plastic ones, it was so slippery, and that's what we would kick off with. And sometimes they would fumble it. So like that's, again, like you're allowed to do it, but like that's bending the rules to an extreme. Shame on that man for, you know, doing that to 12 year old kids. But that being said, you know, that was the one, how he decided he wanted to create a turnover. But... Mo Massaquoi (22:32.834) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (22:41.317) It... You know... Mo Massaquoi (22:53.058) Hehehe Jeff Dudan (22:58.231) But anyway, so do you have any vision as to where this NIL stuff is going to take things or what to look out for? Mo Massaquoi (23:07.442) I think the market corrects itself. From a monetary standpoint, the only, if you're contributing to these collectives or NILs, if it's not a reputable player, if you're just paying kids, you're gonna wanna return on that investment. And the only real return that you could maybe say is a national championship, maybe a conference title. Jeff Dudan (23:09.812) Okay. Jeff Dudan (23:22.927) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (23:31.706) Outside of that, even if player ABC goes first overall pick, that does nothing for the person writing that check because it's for bragging rights to your respective schools. I just don't know how a person continues to contribute to a war chest like that if, one, your school isn't successful, but after you win, it's like, okay, are those boosters at Michigan going to... Jeff Dudan (23:40.548) Right? Mo Massaquoi (23:58.602) pointing up, you know, the alleged 13 million dollars that their rival school is contributing to next year. So I think that starts to level out where the novelty of this space of just throwing money around and participating in it isn't going to make sense for people writing those checks over time. I think that the kids that learn how to be marketable and branded a certain way, they'll be able to. Jeff Dudan (24:04.12) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (24:25.238) get the true name, image, and likeness benefits. But outside of that, I just can't see, because the operations to run these programs are already high, and not a lot of schools are profitable. And so you have a non-profitable entity trying to raise money for something else. The top pre-med schools, yeah, they're profitable, but if your football program's not profitable, chances are the rest of your programs aren't profitable either. Jeff Dudan (24:55.323) That's right. Mo Massaquoi (24:55.47) um and so it's a double loss there um but i also think that go ahead Jeff Dudan (25:00.331) Yeah, so, no, I was gonna say, yeah, so if they get a Nike sponsorship or Under Arm or something, that's gonna go with them wherever they go, more than likely. So you're saying that those are the kids that are marketable are gonna be able to get those outside deals and then the NIL stuff from the universities, the university money will be less or, you know, there's no cap on it, but it'll even out at some point. Mo Massaquoi (25:10.1) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (25:29.234) Yeah, it's I would say if the player isn't a name that everybody knows that their NIA up deals with will continue to streak significantly. And then the transfer portal, they're going to get a grip on that. Which I have mixed feelings about because coaches leave all the time and they leave these kids in situations that You're not always buying into the school. You're buying into the coach and the leadership Mark Rick had a lot to do with me coming to the University of Georgia not just the University of Georgia and so Jeff Dudan (26:06.34) Right. Mo Massaquoi (26:09.09) That's challenging. I think the window in the number of transfers has to get figured out so it doesn't You don't have kids transferring during bowl season. You don't have kids transferring multiple times to different things but then it becomes a little a little more chaotic like the The average student wouldn't transfer Three four schools just you know take sports out of it. And so Jeff Dudan (26:32.376) Right. Mo Massaquoi (26:33.834) I think everybody should be able to transfer, but just how you transfer is starting to get a little complicated because a lot of these kids are probably being recruited in the situations that seem greener, and they may not have the right guidance to actually make the right decision in the long-term interest of themselves. Jeff Dudan (26:51.967) And you know, the quarterback position, they're gonna be a little bit more surgical too because you can see who's on the depth chart and it might be a situation where you might not wanna go to Alabama because who's already there? And you're gonna be looking for a spot where you're gonna have the best opportunity to get on the field. So I know the DJ from Clemson ends up out at, where was he at? Oh man, Oregon State maybe? Mo Massaquoi (27:13.974) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (27:20.691) Oregon State and I think now he's going to Florida State. Jeff Dudan (27:21.843) Yeah, I think so. And, you know, so the quarterbacks and they, you know, I mean, you've seen it, we see it here in high school. Kids will move around high schools based on, you know, quarterbacks. So they'll go somewhere else in high school to get in the program that they want to get in to get the visibility and the reps that they need. So well, awesome. Well, I certainly for whatever everybody's doing in college football, God bless them, because I love watching it. It's. Mo Massaquoi (27:51.798) I love it, would not want to be in it. That's a headache. Jeff Dudan (27:54.495) Yeah, yeah. So then second round draft pick, did you go straight to Cleveland out of Georgia? Mo Massaquoi (28:03.602) Yeah, Cleveland, you get drafted and three days later you're on a plane. What, it's a fascinating thing. I've never been to Ohio, never been to Cleveland, you know, kind of geographically where it is on a map, but you have no real connection to it. And so it was a different experience because you're coming from the South. I'm coming from the South. Jeff Dudan (28:10.618) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (28:29.59) And then I go to Cleveland, the weather's different, the culture's different, all of the above. But one thing I will say about Cleveland, they have some of the best people in the world. Like if you meet a person from really Ohio, they're some of the most loyal, honest, hardworking people in the world. You just have to get ready for the code and the elements. You learn what a lakefront is really quickly. Jeff Dudan (28:52.587) Yeah, that's great. You had a great career, put up great numbers, and all of that. And then people may or may not know, but then you had an accident. And you were, what, five years into your career? Things were going well. How much of your career do you think you had left at that point? Was it, do you have any sense of that? I'm sure you've thought about that quite a bit. Mo Massaquoi (29:07.351) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (29:19.042) So I was actually retired. The thing that shut down my football career was I kept getting concussions. I had the big concussion in 2010 against the Steelers. And then after that, I just kept getting them. I got two the next year, first preseason game, my fourth season, I got one, and I just could not stop shaking the concussions. And so I retired from football after concussions. And had it not been for concussions, how... Jeff Dudan (29:25.129) Okay. Jeff Dudan (29:38.424) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (29:48.394) I think my rookie season started. You never know if you break another bone or have another body part injury. But I definitely think I probably could have got double the length of time from a just pure athletic standpoint. And so retired from football, went into finance at Morgan Stanley, didn't really love finance, but it... Jeff Dudan (30:02.019) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (30:13.798) wanted to get like a real job per se after playing sports. And then I was a few years in at Morgan Stanley and was riding ATVs. I'm here in the South. We got a lot of land and unfortunately, this ride did not go well. ATV ended up flipping, shattered my left hand, you know, trying to brace the fall. After Jeff Dudan (30:16.453) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (30:37.634) I was just tumbling off the ATV and then that shatter, they just couldn't put my left hand back together. So that ended up being amputated in 2017. Jeff Dudan (30:46.903) Yeah, yeah, that's tough. And you've got a prosthetic now that you use, at least what I've seen online in the videos and stuff like that. And you were working at Morgan Stanley at the time. So did your career get, I imagine it got interrupted in a way there from the accident? Or did you kind of, were you able to get back to work within a few months? Tell us about that time. Mo Massaquoi (30:51.497) I do. Mo Massaquoi (30:55.491) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (31:13.702) You know, what was interesting about that time is it was the first time I probably just stopped, uh, in, in taking inventory for, for where I was at. Cause the, the gift in the curse of being an athlete or being competitive is that you're trying to go, you're trying to compete, you approach everything like a competition and so transitioning from sports, like, okay, what's the next challenge that I have to go figure out whether I like it or not. I'm going to go hunt it down. Jeff Dudan (31:40.231) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (31:42.834) And so this pursuit of Morgan Stanley and getting Series 7, Series 66, doing the best job, that was the thing. But I hadn't really stopped to say, okay, is this where I actually want to be? And the accident was a very painful experience, but when you're losing body parts and you're recovering, I think I had about... Tennis surgeries, some that remove things, some that clean things, some that go back in. It's just a long recovery time, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Anything that you want to pull on has to get addressed. And it was at that time right there where I kind of returned back to the core who I was and the fascination with. psychology and performance and how to do things actually interact. While I was at Morgan Stanley, that was actually the thing I was more fascinated with. I wasn't fascinated with the markets. I was fascinated with what people did in their business, how they led their teams, how they aligned strategy, how they put people in the right position. And in a lot of ways, it's kind of sport where that's where you're trying to do on a week to week basis, game to game, season to season basis, where you have a game plan, how can we execute it from a team standpoint for whatever this goal is. that we're trying to achieve. And so went back to school a couple of times, got a master's in industrial organizational psychology from the University of Georgia, went and did like an EMBA program from Harvard Business School, Program for Leadership Development. And that was the thing that kind of gave me the itch that sport had, where you're looking at business from the business aspect of what is this business actually doing, but then you're also looking at it from the people's standpoint of how do these employees lead this business to success. And a lot of that is what alignment, a lot of that is what role clarity, a lot of that is sharing institutional knowledge, development employees, really in a cohesive way so that the system can continue to move forward seamlessly. Jeff Dudan (33:48.759) Was it during this time during your recovery from the accident that you had the thought about starting your own business? Mo Massaquoi (33:57.182) Yeah, I had, you know what's interesting? I'd never really, this is gonna sound crazy. I never really knew what I wanted to do. Even if I were to, I'm not one of those people that say, growing up I always wanted to be a football player or always wanted to be a professional athlete because I just had no context to how America worked, my family did and then I'm learning all this stuff on the fly. And so it was never really a... a thing and then I just seen the problem a lot of times. And when my accident happened, a lot of companies would reach out and say, hey, can you come talk to us about change management? Can you talk to us about resilience? Can you come talk to us about performing under pressure? We're going into a new season. It'd be some type of fundamental change. They'd have a new leader. They'd be merging business together. There'd be disruption in their business. And so the more that individuals would ask me to come speak to their organizations, I'd ask the next question of, okay, after the speech, how do you solve for it? And they would have an answer. And so they said, Hey, can you come in and, you know, work with us? And so it just kind of gradually grew from adding value and word of mouth spreading, uh, that, you know, I, I could provide solutions in this area. And so it, it was kind of birthed organically. But if you were to ask me, I'm sitting in a hospital bed, you know, I get my last stitches out, I get my prosthetic device, is this the path that I'm gonna choose? I didn't know it existed, to be honest with you. Jeff Dudan (35:25.857) Right. Right, so it was very organic and you obviously had a heart and a passion for leadership. You know, because what you're talking about is like the people piece of business and it's people, observationally, people that do the people piece well and that are disciplined and intentional about culture building and communication and change management. We all need to be served and satisfied in a certain way to be our best. And in a lot of ways, the locker room is a very raw environment for leadership and how leadership manifests itself and who steps up, who talks, who talks when the coaches aren't talking, and how does that person get nominated to do that and who follows and how does everybody get aligned. I mean, it's the difference between a championship team and an almost championship team is... very small in terms of, but subtle but significant difference in the way that they approach their organization and their accountability and obligation to one another. So it's not surprising that you would gravitate towards that based on your background. So it just started organically, people started calling you and obviously as a... high profile college and professional athlete, you get a lot of opportunities to speak in front of people, people like you to show up and get you to sign their stuff and say a few words. And so for you, you did well enough at that to where people started reaching out to you and saying, can you engage with us, come talk to us? Is that kind of how it happened? Mo Massaquoi (37:01.067) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (37:19.126) Yeah, because it's, you know, a lot of people are familiar with my story. And a lot of people have really dynamic stories. And what you start to understand is this person has a challenge that they're trying to solve. And while the story is cool, they also want to know, can you take it a layer deeper? And that was actually the reason I started going back to school because I was in situations where I get asked questions. Jeff Dudan (37:24.301) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (37:32.761) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (37:44.81) And I had an opinion on it, but I didn't feel like it was rooted in the substance that it needed to be. I didn't understand how the business worked. I didn't understand the financials. I didn't understand the strategy behind it. And so I'm like, OK, I want to go figure out, at least get exposure to how to think about this in a sound way. That was the reason for going to Harvard. And then. Jeff Dudan (37:55.099) Got it. Mo Massaquoi (38:04.074) You just like, okay, what is engagement? What is motivation? How are you crafting jobs that people have clarity of what they're doing, that they have enough autonomy, that they care about the work, that they, like all the true structural things that you can actually measure and put data to. The ability to combine those two things gives a very unique view of how the business works, how the people work, how they function together. And leaders, they just hadn't had that. approach we were looking at from a true org site perspective while also speaking in a language that they understand. Did you have to understand what is the business trying to accomplish? And sometimes, you know, making money because we have shareholders, regardless of all the other things that we care about. And so I think it's the trust that a good job is going to be done. I think it's the understanding that I'm passionate about the work and I'm going to continue to grow. Jeff Dudan (38:44.548) Right. Mo Massaquoi (39:00.598) and develop. I think it's a sound approach rooted in science, rooted in, you know, good theory, sound practices. And over time, you know, word of mouth spreads that, hey, this person was able to add value. Hey, this person came in behind XYZ organization and they were able to add value. And so the organicness of how all this continues to evolve is something that I'm really thankful for. And it's something I don't take for granted because The flip side of that is I live in Atlanta, haven't played in Georgia, get a lot of opportunities from the Georgia network if I do a bad job. It also goes from here to there really fast. And so there's an extra layer of just making sure that I always add value or tell the person this is outside of my scope, here are three names that... Jeff Dudan (39:38.607) Right. That's right. Mo Massaquoi (39:59.007) may be able to accomplish what you're looking for. Jeff Dudan (40:02.255) The name of your company is Vessel, correct? And who is a typical customer for you? Mo Massaquoi (40:04.534) Mm-hmm. Correct. Mo Massaquoi (40:11.774) Yeah, that's a really good question. So it's, it splits from a consultant standpoint, working with companies that are under 500 employees, probably under a hundred million dollars of revenue. And that's where you could really go in, help them design their vision, their mission, their goals, help them design how the organization functions, role clarity, workflows, how you really share institutional knowledge, work across silos, understanding what is the strategy. If it's larger than that, I get a chance to go, you know, whether it be the Microsofts of the worlds, the Truices of the worlds, the, you know, Louis Vuitton's of the world, do a lot of workshops and off-sites with those teams. They're too big to actually consult with, but from a training standpoint, you can go in and provide solutions for them. And so those are the two areas that I play in. Smaller companies, able to consult, You can take them from A to Z and if for bigger companies, you're coming in more on a, you know, focus basis to train in a construct that they care about. Jeff Dudan (41:24.315) What types of tools do you, maybe not necessarily by specific name, but what types of tools do you walk in with your toolkit in terms of being able to analyze people? Do you have some go-to stuff that you incorporate into your process? Mo Massaquoi (41:43.094) Yeah, it is the measurement of, okay, not how engaged your people are just for the sake of being engaged, but how much do they believe in the strategy? How much do they know the strategy? How much do they feel they have the resources to do their job? How much do they have coworker support? I think sometimes we get caught up in the fluff of people like working here, but are your high performers likely to leave, or is it your low performers? are we measuring the things that actually move the business forward? And so usually going to go in, do some type of focus groups to get a diagnostic of what is taking place. Um, but then you, you want to dive deeper to understand how these things are being impacted across different regions of the business, different demographics of the business, different roles of the business. And that gives a comprehensive picture, because if you don't know what you're dealing with, you can say, Hey, I'm having XYZ problems. in reality at something else. And I think that's where the org site becomes very helpful to truly diagnose very precisely what we're dealing with. But then if you look at a lot of businesses and you ask them, what is the business actually trying to do? You'd get a million different answers. And so some businesses actually have good fundamental strategy, but how the strategy is being executed. Jeff Dudan (43:00.485) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (43:03.71) It's just chaotic because people aren't always working on top of mind things. And so then it becomes my job to understand, okay, how does this strategy live in the organization? How do we make sure that we communicate this so that everybody's on the same page? And how do we give people the tools to then execute on that strategy? A lot of times that's sharing institutional knowledge where it's not me coming up with something new and innovative. It's Jeff already knows this. Madison is trying to figure it out. Jeff and Madison never work together, so they don't know how to share that. And so how can we make sure that everyone that may have this particular challenge, but then conversely Madison knows something that Jeff doesn't know. How do we cross pollinate that? Which is a lot of what we do in sports is where I may see one of my teammates doing something well, and then I'm going to adopt it. That's because we see each other. Business isn't always that transparent, but I'm seeing the behavior. through the lens of what the coach is trying to drive for the game plan. And so that that's a lot of the work of just understanding the strategy, communicating the strategy, helping people implement the strategy in a way that isn't a commodity. It's in the unique ability of the organization to create a competitive advantage. Jeff Dudan (44:24.819) Yeah, man, you said a lot there. So when the third person walks into a room, that's when politics starts. And organizational health ignored leads to fake work. And fake work is a book that I read and I just, I love the concept of fake work. Mo Massaquoi (44:36.671) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (44:52.479) when the right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing and simple communication cadence would have solved it. But now you've created latency inside of a business because something, you know, any, you know, part of my job is the things you said that I wrote down, clarity, belief and engagement like that is that sits right on the lap of leadership. And it's our job as leaders to do nothing, you know, if we don't do anything else, make sure that. There's clarity. We're working on the right problems. There's belief that people actually believe that what we're doing matters. So they're going to be passionate and committed to it. And, you know, they're not just punching a ticket and leaving things undone. And then engagement. Like, is the, is the, is the, is it too many meetings? Is it not enough meetings? Is there an avenue for people? Once there's an insight or an action that's apparent that it needs to get done. is there latency between that awareness and that action? Because I think my job is, you know, and I've done a lot of startups. Like I don't, you know, we're not Microsoft over here, I can tell you that. So we work in a lot of scrums. We work with a lot of franchisees. They're small groups, you know, four, five, six people or less even sometimes, starting up a business and like, okay, well you've got to start right at the beginning and you've got to start this business here. Franchiseurs are relatively small in staff in comparison to the reach that we have. I mean, we're not a national company with several hundred locations, but we only might be 60 or 80 people here at the home office. So, so, you know, that's, that's a small business really that we're managing here. And, you know, fake work happens when people's activities and their focus has gotten misaligned with what the ultimate goal of the organization is. So, and it happens all the time. I mean, things go off track. If you're not focused on the outcome, and then, you know, somebody created the project, and now the project is the deliverable, but the project no longer has anything to do with what the organization, the vital few things that the organization needs to be brilliant at to help its, you know, customers or franchisees or whoever succeed. So, you know, what you're talking about is, there is so much work to be done in organizations. And... Jeff Dudan (47:15.951) Um, you know, conversation I had this morning with one of our executives was, you know, is this the right place for everybody? You know, culture, I mean, it might be that, you know, somebody might be a better fit elsewhere in a different type of organization. I mean, if, if we're, I mean, we're kind of in this phase where we're in a super hyper growth phase, so it's kind of around the clock where if you go to a $2 billion healthcare organization, you might be able to put a more more definition around, you know, when's work time, when's not work time, when does it start, when does it end, what the project gets delivered. You really don't know where it goes after you deliver it, but you assume it goes somewhere, and as long as you deliver it, you're gonna get a good review. Like there's some people that are more comfortable in a structure like that, where we're super entrepreneurial, and you've gotta really have a thirst for the dynamic. You've gotta have a passion for helping new business owner after new business owner after new business owner get started. You got to care about these people and their families. Like, and if and if that's not the level of engagement that you want, then this is probably not the best place for you. Mo Massaquoi (48:29.542) Yes, it's, what becomes interesting is that, you know, companies have these values, they have these missions, but they don't always live them out. That's the other challenge. And so you may incentivize things that are actually against your mission and values. And I learned a valuable thing. You don't get credit for hard work. You get credit for the right work, but you don't get credit for just being busy. You don't. Jeff Dudan (48:38.475) Mm. Jeff Dudan (48:54.089) I love that. Mo Massaquoi (48:56.866) It is, and you don't get credit for individual performance. You, there are no moral victories that the organization isn't succeeding. Your good accomplishment isn't, it doesn't push the needle for it. And I think, you know, when people are looking at performance reviews that are just looking at certain things, they're not looking at these behaviors that actually push the business for it. So that's why we're. We're starting at the foundation of mission and values and goals of what is the organization trying to accomplish and these individuals are feeding into that mission and they're living out these values to accomplish these goals, not their individual goals unless they're. They're aligned. And if you look from a sports perspective, that is the thing that makes a good team succeed. That everybody, regardless of compensation, role clarity, everybody's trying to do their job from the walk-on to the star player to the training staff to the equipment manager to the people in marketing. The system all works very cohesively. And if you do get somebody that's operating out of that system, they're calling out on it. There was an NBA player recently who had 67 points and the team lost and the coach was getting on because the way that this individual was going about getting these points wasn't in the best interest of team. The same thing happens in an organization, whether you have a person that's low-fund, you have a person that's not carrying that weight, a person that's only in it for themselves. And so you have to be able to identify those things with precision to see where they're coming from, who's contributing to it, because those things don't actually push the business forward. And so... The more you allow these things to go unchecked and while we are in dynamic environments, you still have to organize the chaos in a structure that allows your organization to thrive because it's not clean. We're like, on Friday, we're always gonna do this. On Monday, we're always gonna do this. Things ebb and flow, but you do have to create situational awareness and values that people can have as a reference point of, if we do these things, it gives us a higher likelihood to succeed. Mo Massaquoi (50:58.608) Not 100%, but we have a higher percentage of winning in the way that is sustainable to us than not. But if we do these things, for sure, we may have success, but we're not gonna maximize our output. And that's a question that we start with on everything, is this system, has this system reached its potential? The answer is always no, unless you're dealing with a narcissist. You've never hit your potential. There's always room for growth. And so you try to take away the ego. You try to take away the me-me nature. You try to figure out what's in the best interest of the system. And actually when the system does well, people benefit, if the system's designed well. So. Jeff Dudan (51:42.799) Business athletes want freedom within a framework and creating the conditions where discretionary effort can happen and be rewarded. It's a, it's nuanced in designing organizations that are going to attract and retain people that really are up to something and going somewhere and want to give that discretionary effort. All great teams are built on discretionary effort. I mean, people doing more than is expected because they're just driven to do it. And that's why like the sports team, I wrote a book called discernment. It's the business athletes regimen for a great life through better decisions. But that term business, what I've observed is. Some people they don't care about a lot other than doing their absolute best and they get you know hyper focused on Winning whatever opportunity that it's in and I tell young people all the time you win the next opportunity by succeeding in the one that you're in and That's where the sports field is The perfect example of that because if you don't give the great discretionary effort, you're not hustling downfield You're not you know, you're not getting that extra, you know getting up to the second level you're letting your blocks go or whatever Guess what? You know, there's no performance review you're gonna sit down at the end of the quarter. Like it's tomorrow in practice, like you are now second. It's immediate and it's tough to do that in the business world, you know, because we've got processes and laws and all of that kind of stuff. But, you know, creating as close to a meritocracy as we possibly can where, you know, people that do. the extra and deliver on the results. I love what you said. There's no credit for hard work. You get credit for delivering the right work. And that is stolen, Mo. Thank you for that. That will be appearing frequently in my talks going forward. So. Mo Massaquoi (53:38.81) Go for it. But those are the type of things that are contributing to engagement. Do I have autonomy? If you're just telling me everything that I have to do. you know, a person is going to check out. Is this task actually significant? You know, do I feel like if I contributed to it, I'm getting rewarded in the right way? Like all these things are the things that factor in. If, you know, there's a big asterisk vibe, if you've recruited the right talent to begin with. Now, if you have people that... Jeff Dudan (53:47.834) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (54:08.458) aren't going to buy into this. It's like a very talented player that wants to be selfish. There's nothing that you can get this person to do for the team. But if you have people that are bought in and you give them these elements that keep them engaged and they believe in where you're taking them and you have a sound strategy and the system is actually working cohesively together, I mean, the output of that is exponential. And that's what becomes exciting. But let me back up. The thing that I've actually learned to do is give grace, which sounds crazy because a lot of times leaders aren't thinking about these things. They're thinking about running their business. They're thinking about the industry that they're in, or they have domain expertise in a particular thing and they've just grown organically and they never really wanted to manage people. They've never been trained to manage people. And so it's not all the time that they are intentionally doing these things. They're actually doing the best that they can. And so when you get someone that's actually trying to grow, that's open to grow, and they're trying to figure out how do I create this environment to accomplish the thing that we all want, that becomes really exciting because you see the growth take place and you see the system continue to improve and they buy into it. Jeff Dudan (55:21.719) Yeah, I mean, anybody can refine skills and grow skills if they're motivated to do so. The best athletes that I've worked with do not want to be micromanaged. They want that autonomy. They take pride in what they do. They like to deliver. They like to win. And, you know, but it's no not, you know, talking about grace, it's funny you said that because I was. Mo Massaquoi (55:28.725) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (55:50.523) what I was going through my head is, is like, but that's not for everybody. Other people have things in their life going on or, you know, it just doesn't, you know, maybe the work doesn't matter that much to them because there's other priorities in their life. And I would encourage those people if they're not passionate about where they are and what they're doing and they can't get passionate about it, that, you know, they might be delivering some work and they might be punching a clock, but I would encourage them to really take a step back and do some soul searching and say, What is it that I'm passionate about? I was listening to a Huberman podcast, and I don't remember the author, but he wrote a book called Mastery, and he was on Andrew Huberman this morning, and what connected me to listen to it, it was like a three-hour podcast, I think I got about 45 minutes in, but was that he was gonna talk about how people find their purpose. And Andrew Huberman said that at the end of every semester when he taught, he gave out. three book recommendations that he thought would change the students' lives. This book, Mastery, was one of them. You can look and see who the author was. I'm sure people can find it. We'll put it in the show notes. He was talking about saying he had a career and then he went into publishing or something and he just said, I was never really that passionate about it. I didn't want to do it. Then when he started writing... and doing the things that he's doing now, he goes, I am so passionate about what I do, I'm so happy that I get to wake up every day and do exactly what I want, it just fits me. And he didn't wanna work for somebody, didn't wanna go into an office, all the stuff was, the work was interesting to him, but the setting wasn't necessarily interesting to him until he put himself in a place that was uniquely special, that served his identity, then he didn't really blossom, grow and develop. Mo Massaquoi (57:27.254) Hehehe Jeff Dudan (57:46.499) do his best work. So, I mean, people need to find their tribe, and they need to find their tribe and they need to find their purpose and they need to find their passion. Mo Massaquoi (57:56.522) I agree with everything. I've seen it in my own life with the joy and expression of football and then going into a corporate environment, wearing a suit and tie, you're like, ah, this isn't really me. And then now I'm more aligned than what I want. Jeff Dudan (58:10.02) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (58:15.414) But I think, you know, some of that is on the business as well, where they sell something that's not realistic for the candidate. And they get a candidate that comes in and there's just a misalignment. So the more you can be clear on the front end to help the right, because you don't want everybody. And that's not a knock on everything. But it's, OK, I don't want to play in the cold or I don't want to work outside. Sports is probably not your thing, you know. Jeff Dudan (58:42.743) Yeah, you don't want to work on Sundays. Well, the NFL's out for you. Mo Massaquoi (58:45.983) Yeah, I like that. that the NFL is out for you. You know, it's a, it's, it's this alignment of, you know, hey, you know, there's certain industries that we were with a group and the guy said that they literally say in the job description, expect to work above and beyond for certain things there. They're more of the private equity type mindset. And you look at that and you say, okay, we can ask these people to change that. Or we can understand that they're, they're like actually defining what you're getting into, which you should be thankful for because now you get a chance to make the decision. I'm going to sign up for this because I'm wired in this way or I should probably go somewhere else. And that clarity on the front end is so important just to help get the right talent in, that the talent that's actually going to thrive and put in the work because it's not always sunshine and rainbows. You know there's challenges that people face, there's hard work to be done, there's a lot of competition and so you want the team that you suit up with to be ready to attack that. Jeff Dudan (59:45.467) Is there a particular method or a tool that's a go-to for you that really turns the lights on to management team and their organization where they go like, wow, you know, this was so simple but it was just right here in front of us and we were just too busy or not paying attention enough to see it? Mo Massaquoi (01:00:05.066) You know what's interesting? It is the listening is what a lot of people don't do. It is the spotlighting what is said that is actually very beneficial to the complete group. And it's not always like someone says, stop, I'm not to say something profound. It just gets lost in conversation. And so the tool ironically is literally paying attention to what the group wants and understanding who inside the group already has that answer. Jeff Dudan (01:00:11.781) Hmm. Mo Massaquoi (01:00:34.822) And if you can find an answer from within, what happens is it already lives in the knowledge of the organization. It already resonates with the individual because they know who said it, who has a first-hand experience on it, who they can go to when they need this insight. And so the more I can actually not come up with solutions, the more beneficial it is, the more it can already live in the organization. I was with a bank in New York and there was a process that one of the leaders was trying to figure out and they're like, this thing is really thorny for me. You know, I can't figure it out. And another person was like, you know, we did this thing over here and our group has been thriving in it. And they just did, once again, they just didn't know. And so here's the thing that is already solved for in the organization. It just hasn't been communicated and spread throughout the organization. That is, that is the tool. And the more you can do that, the more you get easy wins. the more you get momentum, the more you get more engagement because everybody feels like they have a stake in improving the system. That is a thing that as common and simple as that is, people don't make time for it because they're always putting out fire, they're always putting out whatever the top of priority is, they're always responding to email, that they have personal challenges, they have home, you know, life, you know, things that are taking place. The ability to slow down and just listen Mo Massaquoi (01:01:59.942) It's super valuable and it just doesn't happen for whatever reason. Jeff Dudan (01:02:03.511) Yeah, I'm stretching my mind to think about an example where a company has systematized listening. I will tell you the closest example that I'm coming up with is Ray Dalio and his radical transparency methods where, you know, fact check, here's fact check this people, but I'll tell the story the best I understand it. So he has a huge... Mo Massaquoi (01:02:21.248) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:02:32.759) He'll be in a meeting and it'll be all different levels of people. And then they've got this huge wall that basically has everybody on it. And so if you say something in the meeting, everybody has the ability to like rate you live in the meeting, whether they like your point and they don't like your point. So as the meeting's going on, there's, you know, 35 people that are basically thumbs up in you or thumbs down in you in the meeting from a sentiment perspective. So you're getting a live representation on this board. to say whether people think you have a good idea or a bad idea. And then the interesting thing about it is it takes all the positional power away because you can have a first year analyst that doesn't like something that Ray Dalio said, and he basically thumbs downing it. And so, you know, the best ideas are like live bubbling up to the top. Now, you know, he's a pretty smart guy and has a lot of resources to do stuff like that. But, um, you know, that's a, that's a way where they, you know, there's They've taken, they've stripped away positional power, influence, the whole, I'm going to support my boss because he's my boss and he's looking out for me type thing. Like those are the types of things that, you know, that I'm, they happen in every company. And I think that's why I have such an affinity for small business and small business growth is that, you know, the bureaucracy of large organizations is absolutely unavoidable and that's the way that you play the game and that's the way it needs to be, but it's really not. performance in its purest sense. You know, a scrum of people getting together, everybody knows their role, there's only one football, and everybody's got a different job to do, and if we all do it on the same play, every play's a touchdown, but it doesn't happen that way because we got other people that have something to say about it. And you know, that's just, but it's pure, man. It's pure when you're scrumming up a business like that. And then the complexity comes in when the people come in. And the more people you have, the more complex and the more silos and the more uh, that, uh, things like fake work, miscommunication, uh, clicks and all of that stuff, uh, starts to manifest. Mo Massaquoi (01:04:42.086) Yeah, but if you were to ask most people, what are your top priorities for this week? Or any given such set time period? Not like, I gotta respond to this email. What are the big things that you're actually trying to accomplish? That in itself is, you would think that you would know what you're fundamentally trying to accomplish, but that doesn't happen. And if you cascade that throughout the whole team, you have... Jeff Dudan (01:04:49.484) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:05:05.42) Right. Mo Massaquoi (01:05:09.934) 10 people working on 30 different things. How does this happen? And everybody's trying to defend the territory for why they're working on the particular thing and how important it is and how it moves to needle. When actually like all of that takes away from whatever the highest priority items are for the organization. And so the more we allow the system to reward. Jeff Dudan (01:05:12.603) That's right. Mo Massaquoi (01:05:35.086) loosely connected individual efforts, the more you get that bureaucracy. Cause now everybody has a say so, but the more we can channel it back into. On first down, we're all running this play. Like it is. And if you contribute to, if I'm a receiver and I'm supposed to block. And I go out for a pass play, like no matter how open I got, I did not do the thing that was in the best interest of the team and the organization. And you have a lot of that that's taking place in organizations where individuals just aren't doing things that are pushing the business for it. There's no way to measure it. There's no way to hold it accountable. The more we can kind of like streamline that, put some parameters on that while giving autonomy of how people do the things that contribute to the system. I think you start to clean up a lot of that. But right now it's just, you know, it's the wild west. It's, it's chaos for chaos sake versus organizing all of it. or organized it to a degree that makes sense. That's a question that I ask a lot is, okay, what are y'all trying to accomplish? Name the top three things that you're trying to accomplish right now. And you go out and you, once again, you hear however many people at the table, there's probably gonna be multiple, multiple versions of different things. It's like, well. y'all can't work cohesively together because you're not working as a team. You're working as a bunch of individual contributors that all kind of share the same banner, but you're not, this is freestyle basketball. Jeff Dudan (01:07:03.607) Yeah, a better team will beat you every time. Every time. Mo Massaquoi (01:07:07.262) Every time we, I'll tell you a funny story. We're at Georgia and we're playing rec. We're in our rec center. So you have all these football players and we're going out there. We're most athletic people on campus. Maybe second to the gymnast were the most athletic people on campus. Then maybe the football players. Jeff Dudan (01:07:19.289) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:07:27.564) Thanks. Mo Massaquoi (01:07:30.666) But we're out there and we're playing, you know, pick up basketball with the regular student body. And we would have games that we would lose. Not because we weren't better athletes, it's because you'd have these kids that were on the same high school team and they were running real plays and they were running screens and they were doing all these things. And all we wanted to do is leak out and go like dunk the basketball. And we'd lose the game. And so yeah, you get this one highlight. Jeff Dudan (01:07:37.464) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:07:51.332) Yeah. Mo Massaquoi (01:07:55.35) But then you gotta wait two more games your turn to go back and play because you just lost. And so you forget the main reason why you're there is to win and play as long as you can versus having this one-off highlight or doing this thing. And business is kind of the same way where everybody's trying to do their own thing a lot of times versus what's in the best interest of the system and then the system actually rewarding that. to making sure you promote people the right way, you compensate people the right way, that you recognize people the right way. All the things that keep people engaged and not feel that they're taking advantage of. Jeff Dudan (01:08:30.307) Yeah. During your consulting career, one of the things that's really changed a lot in the workforce is remote work. What have you observed about remote work in terms of its impact in organizational health, the ability to build community and teams inside of companies? Has there been anything that you have encountered that is noteworthy here? Mo Massaquoi (01:09:01.134) This is a big one. I think it depends. Can work get done from anywhere? Yes. Most people are remote in some capacity anyway, whether you're working on site from a client or you're in Biz Dev and you're running around. Work can be done from everywhere. Now, how are you understanding what people are doing? It's challenging. how people are connected, not just through the work, but just the things that make culture rich, like how do I actually know you as a person versus we get on this call, we talk about our business, and then we drop off this call and I'll see you again until we need to do that. And then I got another. Zoom meeting exactly when this ends. And so I'm not even comprehending what we just talked about. The deterioration of that is real. On the flip side, from the employee standpoint, especially if you're young in your career, how you actually learn through osmosis, how you get visibility into the work that you're doing, because no one can see it when you're by yourself. Jeff Dudan (01:09:54.789) Right. Mo Massaquoi (01:10:09.47) And so I think you have to ask, what do you want on both sides? As an organization, if you think that your culture is suffering, put the work aside. If you think your culture is suffering, which doesn't allow you to do the work at a high level, then you have to address it. And if you're a young person and you want all the things that a career may afford you, whether that's promotion, growth, compensation, and you're not being recognized right now, then you have to ask yourself. Am I actually doing the best thing for my own trajectory, being at home, or should I go back to the office? And so these two sides have to really figure out how to identify work, what is good work, what are people actually doing, and on the flip side, is working from home going to give me the opportunities that I want in my career? Those are big questions that are different from each organization, different from seniority. I don't actually know how to answer it. Ha ha ha. Jeff Dudan (01:11:07.679) Yeah, I'm not sure either. I, you know, I'm an older guy, so I'm used to just going into the office and being engaged with people. And I know that the, so what do you do in a crisis? When you're in a crisis situation in a business, what do you do? You call everybody in and you sit around in one room and you're like, okay, we've got a crisis. We need to solve it. and you go into solve mode and you stay really, really tight with everybody who's involved in solving that problem until it gets done. So if that's true, then, you know, maybe our best work, our highest pressure work gets done when we're, when we're together, when we're in a group. Uh, the only time that I prefer to work remote is, uh, when I have a project where I can't be interrupted. which or I don't want to be interrupted. I've got to get something out. It's a piece of deep work, annual shareholders report message. I want to write, you know, okay, well, this is going to be five pages. It's going to have to be very thoughtful. I just, I want to go to my studio above my garage and I want to sit out there and, you know, just turn the phone off and, and focus on this and that. But if I'm looking to be engaged with, now I will say, we have a very, very effective franchise development team that's scattered all over the country. But if you put something in Teams, the people are on it. So they're not in the same room, but they're in the same app. And they're clicking things back and forth. So they're all focused on the exact same goal. And they're highly, highly engaged and highly accountable. And if somebody doesn't get back to you on that channel relatively quickly, something's odd about it. But it's not an exact science. It's not. You know, what's the answer? When somebody comes in and they're looking for a job and they say, I want to work from home for three days, well, okay, but like why? Is it because, like, is it, it's, you know, you don't even know the people that work here yet. You don't even know what you can possibly get from having proximity to the executives. And, you know, what the, you know, what you might be able to get out of it, it's just maybe the answer is, well, you bought a dog during COVID, so you need to be home for your dog. You don't want to pay. Jeff Dudan (01:13:24.495) you know, the extra three days of dog sitting or whatever it is. Mo Massaquoi (01:13:28.75) The thing that I do find interesting though is now that we are on the other side of COVID and people have experienced work from home and we, it is what it is, whether you think work goes up or down, redefining what the office is supposed to offer is also challenging because I've gone in offices. Jeff Dudan (01:13:50.558) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (01:13:53.366) with commercial real estate individuals where they're in the space of leasing office and people are in the bullpen. People are not collaborating. People are behind their desks. People are still taking Zoom calls with people that are in region. And so it's a very confusing thing when you're in office and the things that people say that are supposed to happen in office aren't happening. Where is the developmental time? Jeff Dudan (01:14:11.034) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:14:20.143) That's fair. Mo Massaquoi (01:14:20.182) being carved out, where is the collaboration? And so it's, everyone's trying to figure out what to make of it and what it's supposed to be still hasn't been defined for companies and how it actually lives hasn't been defined because it's, if I'm on Zooms all day, they'll say, well, I can do that from home. If I'm not gonna interact with my colleagues anyway, maybe just for lunch, or if I'm here and... my manager or leader is traveling all the time and I don't see them. And so I'm not getting that development anyway. And so it's a case by case situation depending on the organization and what the talent and leaders want to get out of it, which that's why I struggle sometimes where you see these statistics of, return to office is definitely this, work from home is definitely this. And it's like, it depends. Jeff Dudan (01:14:54.575) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:15:16.523) Yeah, I like to give great people freedom to be great. And I like to run an adult workplace and I don't want to manage people by the back of their heads being at their desk. Cause it doesn't matter. They might, they could be, they could be being unproductive sitting right there across the room. So it's, it's really more about work and delivering the right, your quote, right. Delivering the right work. And I think that, you know, I mean, if, if people are thinking about the business, Mo Massaquoi (01:15:19.773) Uh huh. I know. Jeff Dudan (01:15:44.151) because they like the business and they're engaged with the business. It doesn't matter if they're driving somewhere because when they get to wherever they get to, they're gonna log in and make the play that needs to be made to move the business forward. So now I just think habitually, I do notice generationally that people that are more advanced in their careers tend to want that, tend to have that habit of coming into the office and sitting in the office and being available. And then I think some of the younger generation is, you know, wants more flexibility and they're more adept with, you know, they pick up apps and tools and, you know, they're used to looking at screens and all of that where, and, you know, it's kind of the generation in which they grew up. So they're like, well, I mean, I'm plugged into this Instagram friend group. I'm plugged into my high school buddies on this app. I'm plugged in over here. You know, it doesn't matter, you know, just the fact that you wanna come in my office and look at me to talk to me is ridiculous. So, but it's, yeah, so, okay. Well, it will interesting. I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a, a strong opinion. I just, I know what, I know what outcomes and results are. And you know them when you're getting them and you know, when people make plays and people don't make plays. And so, interesting. Jeff Dudan (01:17:05.259) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:17:09.335) Is there anything else for business owners that you would care to share that you've learned? Any big lessons that you walked out of an engagement with a client and just said, this is something that everybody needs to know, this is something that everybody could use? Mo Massaquoi (01:17:34.03) I think the interesting thing is there's a lot of times we don't have the answers. And as simple as that is, you know, 2024 interest rates, you know, what are we going to do with staff? What is the industry going to do? AI? This, that, like, there's a lot of people that don't have the answers. And rather than projecting that you have the answers or not letting anyone in. Jeff Dudan (01:17:39.459) Mm. Mo Massaquoi (01:18:04.598) to get the best answers, I think is something that a lot of leaders struggle with because they're in the leadership position and a lot of times the old leadership frameworks and models say that the leader is supposed to have the vision and lead the way and really taking the ability to step back and understand I may not be the best person for this and having that Mo Massaquoi (01:18:34.59) the creating the environment where the best answers and the best solutions can come, regardless if that's from you, that's from your team, but creating that environment is probably the best thing that I've learned. Because once again, usually if you've hired right, insights are somewhere within the system. And it's the leader's job to just find where it is within their system. Not to always come up with it, not to always dictate it. Jeff Dudan (01:18:53.673) Mm-hmm. Mo Massaquoi (01:19:02.082) but to create the environment where you can find the best solutions. And that requires you to be vulnerable, that requires you to ask questions, that requires you to create the environment where an individual can come to you and ask questions or can come to you with solutions. And it's not to say that anything that comes at you is gonna be 100%, but at least creating that fertile soil so that you get to the right answer if you don't start with the right answer. Jeff Dudan (01:19:27.151) right. Mo Massaquoi (01:19:27.61) is probably the biggest thing that I continue to see as I do the work. Jeff Dudan (01:19:34.47) Yeah. Nice. Mo Fluke, if you look into the future, and is there an area of your practice that you are particularly interested in growing, or is there something that you're not doing now that you really aspire to make part of your life? Mo Massaquoi (01:19:54.58) To be honest with you, there's a handful of things. There's strategic alignment in companies is an area that a goal is to make that more tech enabled so that as we wind projects down. things don't deteriorate, but to really have a way to continue to organize what is top of priority, organize how you get feedback from things that move the strategy forward, organize how you get visibility into what work is actually taking place. So that's a big 2024 goal. And really just to continue to do the work and be confident in it, being... further removed from accident, further removed from school, further removed from COVID. There's just a comfort and a freedom. There's not any imposter syndrome of being out in front of the work when you first start, especially when you kind of anchor from an athlete mentality and you're walking into these corporate boardrooms. You just realize that you come from different worlds, but now doing the work, people actually want that different perspective because if you... Jeff Dudan (01:20:45.688) right. Mo Massaquoi (01:21:11.534) are the same as them, then it's your commodity, you don't add any real value. And so those two things of just growing the business, adding tech to support things that clients have expressed interest in, will be the two goals for 2024. Jeff Dudan (01:21:27.795) Nice. What do you do when you're not working? Mo Massaquoi (01:21:31.614) I love all my family. I try to be very efficient and effective with my day so that I can always come home and do dinner so I can take my daughter to school, so I can be with my wife. Try to work out so I still feel like I'm in shape in case I gotta flip off one of my daughter's gymnastics bars or something like that. I don't hurt myself. And. Recently, I've gotten back into, you know, at the end of the night, just really winding down, whether that's watching TV or reading a book, but not always being on, just to feel recharged going into the next day. I do. I'm trying to get eight hours of sleep, probably 10 to 6, you know, ish somewhere in there. You know, maybe. Jeff Dudan (01:22:09.827) Yeah, you sleep well? Jeff Dudan (01:22:15.571) Oh, eight. Wow. Jeff Dudan (01:22:20.795) That's nice. Yeah. Enjoy it now, man. When you get older, I don't know what happens, but like those nights get really short. I was watching your videos this morning about 4.45. Man, I woke up, I'm like, what's on my calendar? Oh, I better brush up on Mo a little bit more. And... Mo Massaquoi (01:22:26.144) Hehehehe Mo Massaquoi (01:22:30.027) Yeah, it's not clean. Mo Massaquoi (01:22:42.411) Here's the thing, I crash. If I'm, because I'm in different industries, I'm in different thought processes, so my brain is going. And if I don't have a full tank of gas to start the day, I can feel it in my speech. I can feel it, like, you know, when you just can't find the word that you're looking for. And so I try not to ever present like that. So it's kind of my, my pre-game ritual to... Jeff Dudan (01:22:45.42) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:23:00.217) Oh yeah. Mo Massaquoi (01:23:06.998) be hydrated, be, you know, I got my big thing of water that I'm probably gonna fill out multiple times a day. It's almost like the same discipline of being an athlete, your body is the output. And so my mind, my body, I need all those things functioning at a high level to be able to attack the day. Jeff Dudan (01:23:24.779) Yeah, I mean, observationally, the best business athletes I've seen, man, they tend to have disciplines outside of work that where they're preparing and they're training, taking care of themselves, making sure that they're, you know, they're, they're at their best. Mo, this has been awesome. I really appreciate the time that we've spent together today on the home front. Uh, final question. If you could speak one sentence into somebody's life to make an impact, what might that be? Mo Massaquoi (01:23:32.59) Hmm. Mo Massaquoi (01:23:55.018) Ooh, that's a good one. Mo Massaquoi (01:24:05.27) You know, there's a quote that I always reference and I'll give context. I got a buddy who's in real estate and I remember when he was starting his business, he was raising money for it. And long story short, I basically asked him, are you nervous or are you scared? You know, it wasn't too far after 2008 when real estate got hit and he looked at me and he said, you know, the unknown opportunities excite me more than the future makes me nervous. And I, it just always jumps out to me. And so for the person that's scared, the person that's nervous, the person that feels that they have imposter syndrome, person that's worried about the future. Just go, like you have no idea how, how life is going to shake out for the better, if you just put your best foot forward and really adjust as, as needed along your journey, so that would be what I would, it's a sentence, it's a phrase, it's a quote. So I think that, I think that fits in a bucket. Jeff Dudan (01:25:04.039) I love it. Fantastic. I appreciate it very much. Mo Massaqua with Vessel. How can people get in touch with you? Mo Massaquoi (01:25:13.746) They can find me on LinkedIn. I'm one of the only ones. They may get to my dad, but he'll re-rattle to me. So Mohammed Massaquah, or they could go to The Vessel, my website, T-H- We'll be happy to connect with them and wish everybody the best of luck on their journeys as they continue to make impact. Jeff Dudan (01:25:37.423) Thank you, Mo, and thank you for being on the home front today. We appreciate your time. Mo Massaquoi (01:25:41.93) All right, pleasure to join you. Keep up the great work. Jeff Dudan (01:25:45.087) Absolutely will do and thanks everybody for listening out there. We'll catch you next time. This has been Jeff Duden on the home front
