Episode Summary In this episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with PR legend and seven-time author Eric Yaverbaum , whose 40-year career spans political influence, viral campaigns, and boardroom strategy. From mentoring under Henry Kissinger to creating media firestorms from his Capitol Hill living room, Eric shares stories and insights about the power of public relations, crisis management, social responsibility, and intentional living. It’s part masterclass in influence, part blueprint for legacy—and all heart. Key Takeaways PR isn’t just defensive—it’s a cash-generating weapon when used intentionally from day one. Positive media exposure must tie to business results or it becomes the first thing cut. Viral campaigns don’t require massive teams —Eric created industry-shaking campaigns from his living room. Modern misinformation moves at warp speed ; if you don’t prepare before a crisis, it’s already too late. The most powerful stories are rooted in authenticity and hope , not perfection or polished branding. Intentionality and presence are the ultimate differentiators —in business, in branding, and in life. Featured Quote “Don’t miss a moment. You don’t get them back.” – Eric Yaverbaum TRANSCRIPT Eric Yaverbaum (00:00.206) Let's see what I got. Jeff Dudan (00:01.259) Yeah, but you know, we don't we don't we don't have to do all that but well, hey, it's again really nice to meet you really appreciate you being on incredible career. I've got a few places that I'm really interested to go. Is there anything that you'd like to cover today in particular? Eric Yaverbaum (00:18.478) I'd go wherever you want to go. I'll tell you a lot of good stories. I got a lot of good stories. Jeff Dudan (00:21.579) Okay, okay. Jeff Dudan (00:28.331) listening to him the last couple of days. Hey Jen, do we have that intro that Jack was wanting me to read? Yeah, no problem. Yes, sir. Eric Yaverbaum (00:34.382) Can you give me one minute before we start? Okay, I'll be back in one minute. Jeff Dudan (00:53.963) Don't worry about it. We'll just go it. Just go into it. Jeff Dudan (01:00.587) probably it. You think this is it? I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. And then you just changed the name. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:16.459) Yeah, man. Eric Yaverbaum (01:47.95) Okay, so what I'm told is I have exactly an hour. Jeff Dudan (01:52.779) Okay, all right. I'll try to get you out of five till how about that? Use the bathroom shotgun beer do whatever you're gonna do All right, I'm gonna read a quick intro here and then we'll get going and when All right, we'll just go Welcome everyone to on the home front with Jeff Duden Thanks for tuning in just a quick reminder before we get rolling if you enjoy the podcast take a second drop down to that Eric Yaverbaum (01:57.102) That'd be cool. Eric Yaverbaum (02:01.61) I'm going to go ahead and close the video. Eric Yaverbaum (02:07.47) Great. Jeff Dudan (02:21.771) comment or review section and leave us some feedback. And whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify, we want to hear from you and please like and subscribe. Today on the home front, we have a very special guest. We are here with Eric Javerbaum. Welcome Eric. Eric Yaverbaum (02:39.022) Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan. Jeff Dudan (02:41.803) Eric is, for those of you who don't know, seven times author over a million books sold in his secrets of successful CEOs. Also wrote a book with his daughter most recently, but has had a long career in PR, CNN, all of the major networks, and really has... really excited to hear some stories about some of the great PR wins and losses that you've been a part of over this time. But Eric, to get started, can you share a little bit about who you are and maybe a little bit about where you're from? How Eric Yaverbaum Learned PR from Henry Kissinger Eric Yaverbaum (03:26.03) Well, yeah, I'll tell you a funny story and then I'll tell you about who I am. As we were chatting before, we went on air here. When I was a kid, my first mentor, and I'm a big, big believer in mentors, everybody should, in your careers, get mentors, get people that you can learn from. My very first mentor was Henry Kissinger. And Kissinger told me that when he used to go before the White House press corps, he would walk out, and this is during Watergate, you got, Jeff Dudan (03:29.867) Alright. Jeff Dudan (03:46.667) Okay. Eric Yaverbaum (03:54.894) Press is going after a sitting president. This is in the early 70s. I mean, it's unheard of. The press did not go after a sitting president. Kissinger would go out before the White House press corps and say, does anybody have any questions for the answers I'm already giving? So when you asked, is there anything we want to talk about, the questions don't matter. I'm giving the same answers anyway. It won't make a difference. But I've literally taught that to Fortune 500 CEOs for 40 years now. how to conduct themselves in interviews so that they can get out messages that they want to get out and you know i'm i'm not so proud of the fact that i think that's what modern -day politics is we never seem to get answers to the questions that were actually asking but that is the subtle art of public relations is how do you use a tool of getting media exposure to move a needle? to make you money, to enhance your brand, to help your reputation. And for 40 plus years, and you mentioned some of the shows, I've been on national television for my whole career. I'm written about newspapers and magazines. I practice what I preach. As far as my career goes, when I was a kid, I ran a traditional PR agency for about 20 years. Sold it to Wall Street. thought, my gosh, all my dreams have come true. I have a lot of money. I just sold my company to Wall Street. I would say it was the most miserable year and a half of my life. A big, big life lesson there. Be careful what you wish for. It's not about money. It's not what it's about. You gotta love what you do. You love what you do. You'll never work a day in your life. First 20 years, I worked my backside off to sell my place, or I would say in retrospect, sell my soul. to Wall Street. I stayed there for about 15 months. I walked in the middle of a three -year earn -out. I just couldn't do it. And I worked on the transition team between the Bush and the Obama administration, which was supposed to be brief. And I ended up staying around the first year of Obama's presidency in the White House while I was starting the agency that I run now. The agency that I run now is very, very different than a traditional PR agency. I grew up in Eric Yaverbaum (06:15.79) both inside my industry and outside. My books didn't hurt. You mentioned Leadership Secrets. That book is now actually sold three million copies if you include digital. And I got a reputation inside the C -suite, which, when I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was be in a boardroom. All I ever wanted to do was let me sit in the room with the CEO who makes the decisions. But I was just, I was a PR guy. We all get our hair gel in New York in the same place. We all talk a really good game. How do you do that? How do you get in the room with the chairman? And that was always my objective to get in the room with the decision maker. And that's what I do now. I do it for startups, which I take great pride in, startups that turn into billion dollar businesses. I do it in philanthropy. I do it in sports. I'm in the room with the decision makers. And... You know, I did that on purpose. That's the thing about, you know, having goals and objectives and an actual plan to do it is I'm in the room with the decision maker because I feel like I can convince decision makers if I am in the same room with them. Intentionality is a superpower. And if you have a goal and you can accomplish that goal on purpose, you'd be amazed at what can happen. So, you know, in my career, I've run agencies now for 40 years. This is the one that I run now is my second. I've had this one for 17 years. And, you know, during the entire course of my career, I am working on my eighth book right now. And, you know, I did a brief stint at the White House. So I've done a few things. Jeff Dudan (07:59.947) You talk about being in the boardroom. PR is oftentimes not in the initial cocktail for entrepreneurs. They're getting their business started. They're thinking about direct response marketing. PR is defensive in a crisis, but are you saying that it needs to be offensive? And from day one. Why Public Relations Should Be Offensive, Not Just Crisis Control Eric Yaverbaum (08:21.55) yeah, don't miss the offensive part. You know, it's ironic because when I started my career, we were involved with a lot of infomercial companies. And these infomercial companies, direct response companies, we were doing their PR. And I would watch the art of direct response. They go on television, they buy, you know, they make ads, they buy time, they literally measure how many widgets do they sell from their ad. what time works better, which is the 60 or 90 second spot work better, is long form, an hour or a half hour, is that better? You can literally measure it. And I always thought to myself, we don't do that in PR. There's no measurement. My clients want me to get impressed. They want to be in newspapers and magazines. They want to be on television and radio shows, but we don't measure. To me, the art of PR is all about, cash registers. And one of the things that I found out when I was a kid was, you know, my first 20 years, I represented all the big, bad brands, you know, we represented Sony, we represented Progressive Insurance, Akiya Home Furnishings, H I mean, I can go on and on. With all of those, and by the way, loved them all, learned from all of them. What I learned was companies, And by the way, this includes startups, because I was involved with a lot of startups at the time too, including like one in particular that got bought by Google. They weren't like insignificant. That agencies like mine got hired and were expected to get press. That's the bare minimum. That's what we're paid to do. In reality, if a company is not fiscally healthy, first thing they cut is PR. So first thing that gets cut. Jeff Dudan (10:13.003) That's right. Eric Yaverbaum (10:15.342) So I became very interested in, and one of the reasons I wanted to be in the chairman's office, one of the reasons I wanted to sit on boards is I became very interested in what's the relationship between positive media exposure and the cash register? And how do I build a bridge from media exposure over the cash register? Because I do know that if I get my clients a lot of press and They monetize that press, they'll keep me forever. And I would say my average client is around for about 15 years, give or take. I mean, I have clients on my raw. I have two clients, they've been with me for 40 years. They don't, I mean, obviously, I mean, I feel like family with them now, but they keep, at least in the beginning, because I know how to make people money from the art of public relations. When I was a kid, What I was known for was crisis, as you mentioned. I got paid really well to handle crises and put out fires. And I put out a lot of fires that you never read about because I did my job. But I don't do that anymore. I'm not interested into putting out fires. I'm entrepreneurial. I always have been. It's what I discovered when I sold my soul to Wall Street is what... Jeff Dudan (11:20.107) Haha. Eric Yaverbaum (11:36.046) I like rubbing two sticks together and making forest fires. And I like using the art that I practice, the discipline of PR, to rub those two sticks together and make businesses billion dollar companies, which I have a long storied history of. And so yes, PR should be, and by the way, PR, of all the things that you're gonna do in marketing is the least expensive. I mean, not if you need to hire agencies like mine, but you can actually do it yourself. And if you can get press exposure that generates interest, that translates over to a cash register, it's magical what it could do. And I've pontificated this very theory for over 40 years. And when I was a kid in the 80s, I would tell this to everybody and everybody would say, you know, big shot, what do you ever do? And nothing. Who do you know? Nobody. I still don't believe you need to know anybody to get on their shows. So my partner and I, in my first agency, when we were small, we were working out of our living room. That's how we started. We said, what can we do to demonstrate? Statement is one thing, demonstration is a whole other thing. What can we do to demonstrate literally our philosophies? How do we use media exposure to generate interest in our little agency that's five people working out of the living room in my... my house, my brownstone on Capitol Hill in DC, how do we generate interest in what we do? How do we use media exposure to do that? So we looked at the landscape of the world, which is ever so interesting, not always in a positive way. And we said, what story can we predict with a reasonable degree of certainty, you're gonna have a long shelf life. And what story could we look at and say, The 1985 Baseball Strike: How Eric Went Viral From His Living Room We kind of know how it's going to be, the coverage is going to play itself out. In 1985, there was a pending Major League Baseball strike. And in the good old days, the way labor disputes got covered in professional sports was rich players, wealthier owners, and the fans. So the story is what the players want, what the owners want, and then they find some guy in the street who is going to complain about, legitimately so. Eric Yaverbaum (14:02.318) why I can't take my family to a baseball game. I can't buy, if I'm going to get a hot dog and a soda and, you know, French fries for my whole family and buy, you know, four tickets, like that's almost out of my price range. And I got to hear about players who are wealthy and owners who are wealthier argue about money. I'm just trying to go to a game a year and get hot dogs from my kids. It's the same. It was, it was always the same. So in 85, Jeff Dudan (14:22.475) Right. Eric Yaverbaum (14:31.662) We formed a National Citizens Action Group to protest the pending Major League Baseball strike. And the premise of the organization was, you know, everybody had, you know, labor unions, everybody has the, do what you want. Everybody's got their right. But we were forming a National Citizens Action Group for the fans, so that the fans would have a voice. And our message was, it's okay, you want to strike? Go ahead. For every game you strike, we're gonna strike. And we asked people to send us a letter that that's it. That's all the fans had to do, just send us a letter. And we got tens of thousands of letters. We used to dump them on Peter Yubarov's doorstep. He was the commissioner at the time, daily. And CNN would come into my living room on Capitol Hill just to see how many bags of mail we got every day. And when the strike started, we called Yubarov's office and they were like, cute kids. Nobody was taking our call. When we started dropping off bags of mail on their doorstep, the people who were honoring, kind of honor our boycott, they started to take us a little bit more seriously. When that strike started in 85, they invited my partner and I into the negotiations. We sat, I'm 24 years old, I'm sitting in Major League Baseball's negotiations to end a labor dispute. Way over my head. All I know is, Jeff Dudan (15:57.643) That is absolutely fantastic. Eric Yaverbaum (16:00.014) I don't want to, after day one of those negotiations, we go out to a river of press who wants to hear what's the fan's opinion, the fans that were in the room. What's your opinion of what was discussed? There's another room, it's the players room. Yes, yes, yes. Jeff Dudan (16:14.507) Okay, you were the proxy for the fans, basically. Okay, you were representing the broader fan base. Got it. Eric Yaverbaum (16:23.854) Yes. So, I mean, the coverage that we got was extraordinary. And, you know, in the good old days, and, you know, some of these names your viewers may or may not know, but, you know, I was on, I mean, I was on everything. Ted Koppel asked me the same question that Larry King asked me. It's the same way that Time Magazine covered what we did. Everybody said, why? Why are you doing this? And my answer was, This is what I do for a living. I get my clients on television, radio, talk shows. I get my clients in newspapers and magazines. I'm just using the same avenues as I would to promote any of my clients to promote this cause that I feel so strongly about. When the strike started, I had three clients. When the strike ended, I had 11 from all the exposure that we generated. That was exposure where I got to do something good. It drove people over to my cash register, which was a service business, and I was on the map. as a 24 year old, I was able to use the art of public relations and press exposure to make my business better. And that's to me is what PR should be all about. Not always defending yourself, not always correcting yourself, not always dealing with the press when you don't wanna be in the spotlight because you said something wrong, which is the way I think most people look at PR. If you're a startup, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're looking to raise money, Jeff Dudan (17:38.059) Right. Eric Yaverbaum (17:52.59) If you're a small business, it's the great equalizer. The kind of press that I got with five people working out of my living room on Capitol Hill in DC rivaled what any Fortune 500 was getting in any given day. Why? Why is that? Why could I get that kind of exposure, which is the same kind of exposure that my clients ended up paying for me to get for them? Because you can't. and you can use that exposure to build your business. Jeff Dudan (18:26.283) Have your fundamentals changed with the rise of social media and the ability to more quickly understand the reach and the impact of the campaigns that you launch? PR’s Evolution: Social Media, Speed, and the New Rules of Crisis Eric Yaverbaum (18:41.134) As my kids would say, hell yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, when I started in this business, you know, I'm a kid and, you know, Cronkite was just going off the air at the time. And, you know, at the end of CBS Evening News, when he ended the news, he would say, and that's the way it is, and it was. And it was godsend. That's not the case anymore. And, you know, if... Just to give like a crisis example if we had a crisis in you know in the 80s Well, I'll give you one night I did I do from multinational without you know naming names or talking about the crisis But I get a phone call on Friday. boy You're not gonna believe what happened over here in this part of the world today by Monday. It's gonna hit the US Today I have a second and I don't have a weekend to prepare at one second which Jeff Dudan (19:37.003) That's right. Eric Yaverbaum (19:37.358) really means, which I learned from Elizabeth Dole, who said to me, the worst time to prepare is while the tide is rising. If you don't have a crisis plan in place right now, you're all ready. You can lose your entire business in an internet second. Warp speed, that's how fast information travels. And that's how fast misinformation travels. And that entire landscape is different. And here's the thing about that is that everybody who, you know, I call it information dissemination now, it's still, I mean, I'm still called a PR guy. We're still a PR agency. It's surround sound information dissemination. How do you get your news? How do you make your decisions? And, you know, your unique algorithm is telling you what you already want to hear anyway on any social medium. So don't be expecting to hear two sides of the story. You literally, you know, when you come to a fork in the road, as Yogi Bear once famously remarked, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Digitally, when you come to a fork in the road, you're being pulled in the direction you're already inclined to go anyway. It's that easy to keep going down that road without evaluating facts in the way that you might have, you know, 10 years ago. You don't do that anymore. So, you know, your Facebook algorithm, your Google algorithm, it's pulling you in the direction you're predisposed to going, and we're all doing that, which rears its ugly head in politics, just as one example. I mean, there's no middle anymore. There's no... Intellectual friction used to be a great thing. You get two smart people in a room who don't agree. Intellectual friction gets you a better decision. There's none of that anymore. Everybody goes one of two ways. And I'm just talking about politics. Jeff Dudan (21:31.979) Yeah, the same situation, the same facts, a political issue, and you're gonna get pulled into your echo chamber deeper because they're gonna spin it in the way. Sometimes I like to watch, when I'm traveling, I like to watch the BBC network to see what their view is of the things that are happening in the United States or even Australian news. By the way, Australia is absolutely fascinated with the news cycle in American politics. Navigating Political Echo Chambers and Misinformation Eric Yaverbaum (22:01.006) Yep. Jeff Dudan (22:01.067) because you know we catch a cold and you know we get sick the whole world catches a cold and they know us in some cases more about our politics than our citizens do here but it's it's are you still active in politics or do you work in that arena anymore okay i was gonna say well because there's plenty to do there but it's Eric Yaverbaum (22:17.518) I couldn't run far enough away from politics. If I tried, I mean, I was a, after I left the White House, I was a political pundit for almost a decade. I was the only person, at least that I know of, I've yet to hear anybody say, no, you weren't, there was this other person. I was, I did three hours a week for Fox and I did two hours a week for MSNBC. I did both, I mean, talk about two polarizing networks. I did them both. Jeff Dudan (22:46.123) Right. Eric Yaverbaum (22:47.502) in the same week, every week, for almost a decade, spun through two presidential election cycles. Me personally was not beloved at Fox, semi -worshipped at MSNBC, only because, again, telling people what they want to hear. What I found interesting for myself about both networks was, It was always a debate with me. It didn't matter which network I was on. Again, I'm dating myself a little bit because that's not the case anymore. So I could go onto a network where I wasn't popular with the viewers, which was very clear if I walked out the front door. But I had the opportunity to have those debates on air. And one of the things I found fascinating about, and this is all about information, I debated the health care bill ad nauseam for, I don't know, a year and a half. And I was debating it on national television for months and months and months and months. And I said to myself, I never actually even read that bill. I wonder, everybody that I'm debating with, because we're all going about the virtues of it or how terrible it is, but none of us read it because nobody ever reads bills. So I decided to read it. And I used to take this big, it was 1 ,100 pages. I used to take it on air with me on both networks. And it was all marked up almost like a textbook was. I'm thinking of my little sticky notes sticking out the side so I could flip to a page and say, well, this isn't what it says on page 921. That's what we do here. We debate misinformation. And we were doing that then too. I mean, I started an organization back in that period of time called ReadTheBill .org, where I tried to get Congress people and senators to read the bill, commit to reading the actual bill that they were voting on. And, you know, again, hundreds of thousands of, and people, because we're all voting based on these, you know, what our perception is of that. Hundreds of thousands of voters signed the pledge. Zero Congress people or senators did, because they don't read the bill. Jeff Dudan (25:05.035) Well, they don't have time. You can't possibly read 1 ,100 pages and... Eric Yaverbaum (25:09.038) Well, you can't read it when you're getting it at two o 'clock in the morning, the morning before a vote. And that's the way that we're set up. Something's wrong with that. Jeff Dudan (25:12.811) Yeah, right. 100%. 100%. You know, I've heard people say there's no such thing as bad PR. Obviously, when you look at some of the massive mistakes that people have made that maybe have cost them billion dollars lately around shoes and things like that. But oftentimes you see people get in the news over something negative and then a year later, they've got their own talk show. You know, how... Eric Yaverbaum (25:40.494) Yeah, well, you know, I mean, if getting your own talk show is your goal, I mean, personally, you know. Jeff Dudan (25:44.811) Well, true. Yeah, that's that's punishment in and of itself. But, you know, it's it's you know, at some point, you know, once you have reach and people know who you are. And I mean, we're just creatures of habit. I mean, we're interested to see what's going on with Britney Spears right now. I mean, there's you know, Britney Spears has been one PR matter after another for the last 15 or 20 years. But yet, you know, people continue to follow and, you know, like what she's doing and all that kind of stuff. What kind of opportunities are there for companies to take some chances to, you know, push the envelope a little bit, but yet not put, you know, who they are and their customer base at risk? Eric Yaverbaum (26:35.63) Well, that's really, that's up to each individual company and each individual person. I mean, I would say I'm kind of out there on my opinions. My opinion is they are what I think. I'd rather just say what I think than say what I'm supposed to say. I mean, I can, I can be politically correct all day long, but that's not me. it, it, my agency, we are who we are. Jeff Dudan (26:49.831) Right? Yeah. Jeff Dudan (26:57.803) That's no fun. Eric Yaverbaum (27:04.142) I'm really proud of that particular factoid. And with emphasis on factoid, I don't ask anybody to be anything but what they are. I would much rather know who you are in real life than who you pretend to be in front of the camera, you know, all the time. And I think corporate America gets in trouble a lot for that because they, you know, they're trying to sell stuff. So they're going to lose half their customers. Jeff Dudan (27:16.043) Mm. Authentic Branding: Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say Eric Yaverbaum (27:31.982) on any given day based on what they say, what are your values? What do you actually stand for? And the people who don't want to buy your product because of that, to me, I say, fine, that's okay. Let people buy your products for who you are transparently and genuinely. I just think that's so much better. You're gonna get yourself in trouble. I can say right or I can say left in this interview. By the way, no matter what I say, ever, somebody's going to disagree. And in my case, sometimes a lot of people. And for people, my entire career, I've been dealing with that. I mean, if I say the wrong thing on national television, my social media gets flooded with really awful things. In the old days, I would watch what people would say about me. It didn't, but didn't make it to air. I'd see the stuff coming in, what the viewers were saying, but it didn't make the air. And, you know, and I can feel it some days. And, you know, I live in New York City. I go out at night. I can feel it. Somebody sees me on television one day. They got a definite opinion one way or the other. I can't be anything but myself. That's just who I'm going to be. And, you know, I look. I told you 10 minutes ago, I couldn't get far enough from politics if I tried. After spending most of my career involved in politics, in some way, shape or form, it's just, it's toxic. I don't want to be involved. Personally, I'd rather do stuff that makes the world a better place. Right now, at this particular stage of my career where I've never had so much fun in my life, I'm talking about life and I'm talking about my... professionally the first 50 years are the hardest after that man if you learn some stuff if you let life teach you it's a great you'll learn great stuff every day and it's not always because you know counting money is easy losing it's painful What do you learn from the challenging situations? I believe there's silver linings and every one of them you tell me what was the worst day your life? Eric Yaverbaum (29:51.534) I will tell you why it was the best. That's the day that changed you. Everything's a matter of perception in your entire life. Yours, and anybody who's listening to this, your all damn life, is in between your ears. It's how you think. Whatever you are thinking is literally how you are living. That's your life. So if I say my life's great, and believe it in my own head, guess what? Life Lessons from Getting Knocked Down (Literally and Metaphorically) Jeff Dudan (30:07.115) Yeah. Eric Yaverbaum (30:19.63) Things are great. Everything's a matter of perception. And I am in that business for a living. And people always say, I was just talking about on a show earlier today, Eric, I'll be an optimist. I learned how to be optimistic when I was a kid. I literally taught myself how to be optimistic. Learned optimism, the first book that I read that started to frame a different way of looking at things. Jeff Dudan (30:24.459) It - Eric Yaverbaum (30:46.126) And is the glass half full or is the glass half empty? Which one are you? Who cares? Just fill up the glass again. That's actually an option. Nobody throws that into the equation. It's actually possible. It doesn't make a difference if the glass is half empty or half full. You literally have the opportunity and the option any given day. Fill it up again. Start all over. Get up. It's like as a kid. Jeff Dudan (30:55.339) You Jeff Dudan (31:11.627) Yeah. Eric Yaverbaum (31:16.493) I'm a big believer in team sports. I played basketball, it's a point card. I wasn't the best player on the court. I directed the offense. I've been directing the offense my entire career. I was also a boxer, a really lousy one. I got knocked down a lot. I didn't do a lot of knocking down. But one of the things I always did when I got knocked down, I got back up. Everybody would say, yeah, stay down. It's like, eh, I don't think so. I'm gonna keep trying. But all metaphors for life, for your career. personally, professionally, all of, we all get the same 86 ,400 seconds a day. You got them, I got them. Same ones. Equal. What do you want to do with them? I'm going to just take them. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get every one of them. That's all because I can. I got that choice. So do you. So does everybody listening. What do you want to do with them? Because, you know, we're all going to the same place in the end anyway. All of us. Same again. And the thing about it is, you know what you want to do today? You want to have lunch or you want to have dinner. You want to like sleep in a bed tonight. You want to have, depending on what climate you're in, you want to have an air, you know, air conditioning or heat. We all want the same stuff. I'm hungry at dinnertime. I want to eat. You hungry at dinnertime? You want to eat. There's not that, I mean, you know, money pollutes to me. Jeff Dudan (32:44.075) It does. Eric Yaverbaum (32:44.142) I mean, it's definitely, I've had a great career. I'm not gonna apologize for being successful, after I never have. And I made this all on my own. I did this all on purpose. And yes, I can pay my bills, so I don't have to worry about that part. But the stuff that's priceless, go ahead and fall in love. Or if you want, if you're really wealthy, just buy that, because you can't. get sick and you'll realize what matters. The day that you get sick, everything changes in your life. All you want is good health. The day you lose somebody, all you want is them back. Everything that matters is not for sale. Jeff Dudan (33:32.107) Yeah, I a little trick that I've recently adopted when I find myself not wanting to do something or you know something that I just you know not interested in doing or is upsetting me. I just changed the meaning of it. I was in New York this weekend. My daughter lives on in the Upper East Side and she's teaching. She used to go to school at NYU and she's teaching yoga and I did yoga once before and I. almost had a stroke. Like it was tough for me. I'm not a yoga guy, but you know, she wanted, she wanted us to go. There was nobody else signed up for her class and you know, and I'm just, I just said, you know what? I want to do this because she wants to show me how she does this particular aspect of her life. And, and dude, I wouldn't have the best class with the best attitude. And it was so simple to do. Eric Yaverbaum (34:05.069) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (34:23.243) We just get out of our own way and again, change the view, sit in awareness for a minute. What's the universe trying to teach you? And if you, you know, take it, be open to that, because at the end of the day, like you said, man, it all comes to a screeching abrupt halt for every single one of us one day. And then you're going to look back and say, man, I wasted a lot of time being petty. Eric Yaverbaum (34:44.942) Yeah, you, that's why I said the first 50 years are the hardest. I learned all this in the first 50 years. I've been having the greatest life ever since. You know, the trappings have changed. Things are different. I learned what was priceless and what, you know, what wasn't priceless. But, you know, I also, you know, everybody, you know how many obstacles you're going to face in your life? You know how many obstacles you're going to have just today? Jeff Dudan (34:48.907) Yeah. Yeah, right. Eric Yaverbaum (35:14.382) Obstacles are actually the path. They're not obstacles. We all have them. Nobody's life is, you know, like Facebook makes it out to be. I am not happy 24 -7. But what I am 24 -7, every wake, I'm getting this moment. You know what I'm doing right now? I'm talking to you. Nothing else. I'm talking to you. It's interesting to me. We have an interesting conversation. It's engaging. I hope something that one of us said is contagious. I hope... some smile of a reaction makes somebody else smile. I hope somebody else says, gosh, that's an interesting, or learns one thing. I hope that would be really cool. I mean, what a way to live that is. I mean, I'm an exercise, on the cover of my next book, they have a fitness fanatic. You know, I exercise every single solitary day. I don't, I exercise because it makes me feel good. And I hope that other, Jeff Dudan (36:03.979) Okay. Why Hope is the Most Underrated Brand in the World Eric Yaverbaum (36:12.014) I don't, you know, I'm not obsessed with the way that I look. I am obsessed with the way that I feel. You know what endorphins, by the way, they're free too. All you gotta do is exercise. You want them? Can't buy them either. Go ahead, get some endorphins tomorrow morning. You can't buy them. You will not believe how it changes your perspective of a day. That's from just exercising, a commitment. to exercise that I hold myself accountable for and I use social media for that. And this is a big difference about social media. I use social, one particular platform, Instagram. On Instagram, I use Instagram to keep myself accountable. I'm not getting used by it. That's the big difference between so many people and social media. We're the product on social media, and we're free by the way. We should be using social media, we should not be being used by it. And everybody's life isn't a vacation, everybody's life isn't that meal that you're looking at a snapshot of. Everybody's life is not happy all the time. It sure looks that way on social media. And I worry a lot about the youth and kids who are growing up digitally, born digitally. How do they look at the world? Go outside and climb a tree. Watch a sunset just once or twice or every day if you want, you should. And be in the moment, live presently. I mean, I pontificate about all this stuff every single place that I go. And it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. I'm very happy. I was with a client the other day and I said, you know what? What we should be doing is promoting hope. That's what we should be doing. And... the client says, well, why? I said, Hope doesn't have an agency. I want to adopt Hope as my client. They don't have to pay me. I'd love to spread a little bit of that. And any brand who does that, people with positive attitudes, it's magnetic. Eric Yaverbaum (38:33.774) I don't attract an audience by being doom and gloom. I attract an audience because I'm a hopeful guy. And I really, there was Fred Rogers when he gave congressional testimony in 69. They were trying to raise money for PBS. PBS was like, they were literally shooting in the basement with a camera and they had a show and they had no money. And Fred, Mr. Rogers goes before Congress and he's trying to raise money. and nobody knows who he is. And he basically said that in times of trouble, look for the helpers. If you see the helpers, you'll know there's hope. And that particular congressional testimony ended up raising all of the money that launched PBS. I mean, Congress was just awed by what this guy had to say. It's true. And you know, we just, you know, We all recently went through a pandemic. Forget about all the other things that we go through every single solitary day. We went through a pandemic. All we need, we saw helpers. If we saw helpers, we were hopeful. If we were hopeful, we got through the pandemic. And the irony of it all is, was everything that you ever worried about, you know, all of it, anything you worried about, it already happened. So now what are you gonna worry about? Stop worrying so much. Live life. Enjoy the moment. Jeff Dudan (40:03.499) You wrote a book with your daughter and some of the other appearances that you've made. It seems like family was a priority and important to you. Absolutely, what? Eric Yaverbaum (40:12.558) Priceless again. I mean, there's not, I mean, for any parent who might be watching, there's nothing you'll ever do. I mean, it doesn't go to the, go to the rock and go to the moon. You can do, there's nothing you will do that's greater than raising children, nothing. Jeff Dudan (40:34.603) Yeah, yeah, 100%. Are there PR campaigns that you've admired over the years that maybe you wish you were a part of or somebody did a really great job on something that you could point out? Eric Yaverbaum (40:48.91) I think that PR campaigns that changed the course of history fascinate me. It's the greatest honor of my career. I mean, like the Kissinger story that I started with, I have so many stories. I feel a little Forrest Gump -esque. I'm always present for these historical directional shifts. I am so... To me, I don't care. I don't know what anybody else thinks besides my mom who thinks the same, but it's so cool to me that I've been inside of history when it's making a left turn or a right turn that I get to be participatory in. It's so cool to me that there's, I mean, forget about the books that I've written and will continue to write. I feel like I have a lot that I could teach people. The books that include me. that talk about me, that reference me. It's so cool, not that I'm in the books, it's just that my role and involvement in influencing perception and the way that people thought about things. And you know, look, when I was younger and you know, no disrespect to Domino's pizzas, and one example, they were my first national county, I sold pizza. Selling pizza didn't change the world. Walk a Mile in My Shoes, which was a campaign that I did for caregivers, got legislation, increased funding for stem cell research, passed, pissed off George Bush at the time, which I thought, wow, that's so cool. Bush is pissed at me. How cool. Meanwhile, I ended up on the transition team years later. That, to be involved in that, it doesn't matter what I get paid. That's priceless to be able to do things like that. to be able to influence the direction of a large group of people to change history just a little bit in a different direction. When I was a kid, and I didn't happenstance upon Kissinger, my uncle was very involved with Nixon, was friends with everybody in the administration. That's how I met Kissinger. When PR Changes History: Campaigns That Mattered Eric Yaverbaum (43:09.102) He smuggled weapons to Israel for the Six Day War. There's a book called The Pledge. They wrote all about him because he got caught. He got caught. He had to go before Congress. Congress ended up letting him off. But I thought, my uncle Abe, he was involved in a historical, like, how cool, how can I do that? Because I don't have the money to smuggle weapons anywhere. All I have is the gift of getting people to listen to me. People will listen when I talk. It's appealing to people to listen to a perspective. Like when we opened, we helped to open, I don't know whether you had the opportunity to go there while you were in Manhattan, but my agency was involved in something called Summit, which is in one Vanderbilt. One Vanderbilt opened. It's the building connected to Grand Central. It is the most expensive per square foot commercial real estate in Manhattan. And on the 92nd, 93rd, and 94th floor, they have an extraordinary immersive, I don't know how to describe it other than a central park in the sky. You'll never see Manhattan like you'll see it. A very famous artist named Kenzo, Kenzo Digital designed the entire space. When you talk about being present, you can't help yourself when you're inside of that space. When we were opening that, I looked at it as an inflection point for New York City that was hurting. I mean, if you lived here during the pandemic, you know, there were some strange times and nobody could wait for the, I mean, the fact there's traffic again, that there's crowds in restaurants again, that we can all go out to play, that we're not all stuck inside of our, you know, homes, you know, for, I don't know, depending on how long you were cautious for years, the world reopened. How great is that? I'm so happy to see traffic again. One Vanderbilt to me was an inflection point, a tipping point for what was going to, where was New York going? New York was hurting. New York's been hurting before. It's a resilient zip code. That's what I love so much about it. And a few other things like the Yankees and the Knicks. And the pizza. Jeff Dudan (45:26.795) And the pizza. Eric Yaverbaum (45:30.19) That's right, and the pizza. But to me, it was an inflection point in a pandemic. It was an inflection point where, I mean, it actually opened the second year of the pandemic. The building's filled to capacity. The most expensive per square foot real estate doesn't make sense. Why is that? That building was the most helpful project going on in Manhattan, opened during a pandemic. To me, was an inflection point for the next direction for New York City. And that's what they said about it. And New York City is coming back. like we always do. What an honor to have been associated with that project. Jeff Dudan (46:02.827) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (46:08.491) As you look out in the world today, are there some issues or trends that you are interested in bringing your special skills and making an impact on that would perhaps be part of your legacy? The Future of Media: AI, Creativity, and Legacy Thinking Eric Yaverbaum (46:22.286) Yeah, I'm, you know, it's, you know, I always say Google me, you'll read a lot of great stuff. I don't know anyone who's gonna do that, again, besides my mom. But it's, I wanna be wherever, you know, tomorrow is. I am an idiot, still to this day. I was an idiot when I was a kid in the room. I'm an idiot, you know, all these years later in the room. Because I'm always before the fact. I'm always before it happens. I mean, it's not any great mystery that artificial intelligence is going to be changing the world. Nobody's going to be shocked to hear that statement. The thing about artificial intelligence is, again, just like social media, which I was all, I had social media magazines before social media was. Nobody, I had a Facebook magazine, I had a LinkedIn magazine, I had a Google magazine, and a Twitter magazine. Nobody had them. Nobody thought what I thought about. I knew social media was going to change the way that we all socialized and communicated. And I flipped those magazines and under two, we had 14 million subscribers, just like that, two years. Business in two years, in and out, which is something that I've been doing my entire career. When I said we're being used by social media and we should be using it, I say the same thing about artificial intelligence and that's where we're at right now. Whether you love artificial intelligence, whether you hate artificial intelligence, whether you fear artificial intelligence, whether you embrace artificial intelligence, use it. Use it to do something good because you can. And you know, the fact that technology is developing is not a surprise. It's not new for any of us. There's nobody alive today that won't say, yes, technology is evolving. The rate at which it's evolving. It's warp speed now. The intelligence is feeding upon itself. It's getting faster and faster and faster and faster. How do you use that? Embrace it and figure out a way to use it. And you know, I'm fascinated with artificial intelligence and all of the uses that we don't even know about yet and we'll know about tomorrow. Now, no one's going to say I'm an idiot for saying that. But I definitely want to... Eric Yaverbaum (48:45.774) I want to play there. That's where I want to be right now. Jeff Dudan (48:48.843) AI really shortens the time for people to do coding and all kind of the technical process management, the stuff that people went to school for for a long time to learn how to do. And now it really plays back into the hands of the smart creatives because it's more about the question and it's more about being able to connect the dots across different technologies and different groups and different thoughts and ideas. So people that have the creative thinking and they learn to adopt these tools are really going to be able to accelerate what they do. It's how Google built their, if you read how Google works, I mean, they just hired smart creatives at every position because they really were, they wanted people to be able to see around corners, to ask questions that hadn't been answered before, hadn't been asked before. And I mean, I, the, you know, for me having to go to a programmer now, you know, it would take me three or four or five days to get something done. And now we can whip it up in an hour and get something to look at. It's, it's like a juice, man. It's like steroids for creatives. Eric Yaverbaum (49:51.309) Well, yeah, as it should be. It's fun. It's exciting. It's exhilarating. It's not to be feared. I mean, I'm a writer. I write every day. Is AI going to replace me? Is AI going to be writing my books in the future? Is AI going to be writing my articles? Because most writers, like more writers than not, that's what they're worried about. I'm the opposite. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Like, I can do my research in five minutes. Jeff Dudan (49:54.795) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:59.531) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (50:06.731) now. Jeff Dudan (50:19.403) Yeah. Eric Yaverbaum (50:19.598) I don't need three people to do it and wait three weeks for it. I can do it in five minutes. It's not right in my books, but it can do research for me. Cool. I mean, everything about it, it's just, it's the wild, wild west. I wish I was around during the wild, wild west. I don't know why anybody wouldn't. That's what we're with AI. It's just like we were with social media 20 years ago. That stuff is fun. You gotta embrace it though. Jeff Dudan (50:23.019) That's right. Jeff Dudan (50:48.491) Yeah, the only problem was you only lived to 35, but you know it was Eric Yaverbaum (50:52.462) That's true, that's true. That's why I exercise every day. I'm all about the long game. I want to stick around for as long as I possibly can. Living is too much fun. Breathing is underrated. Jeff Dudan (50:59.907) Yeah. Awesome. Well, Eric, we're up against the clock here. This has been amazing. Really appreciate you coming on. It's been an honor to have you on and share with us today. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Eric Yaverbaum (51:21.486) Don't miss a moment. You don't get them back. Jeff Dudan (51:23.339) yeah. Awesome. Beautifully said, Eric Javerbaum has been here with Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Eric, thanks for being on. Eric Yaverbaum (51:35.63) Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honor. Thank you. You too. Jeff Dudan (51:38.027) All right, take care, sir. Yep, yep. Let's just let that upload for a second.
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Brief Summary In this episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Ilana Golan , a trailblazing former Israeli Air Force commander, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and the visionary behind Leap Academy . Together, they unpack Ilana’s extraordinary journey—from selling pens as a child and instructing F-16 pilots, to being betrayed by a co-founder and building one of America’s fastest-growing career transformation companies. Ilana shares lessons in resilience, reinvention, and how personal branding and clarity are the keys to future-proofing your career in today’s ever-changing landscape. Key Takeaways Reinvention Starts with Clarity : Most people feel stuck not because they lack ability, but because they lack direction. Ilana’s method starts with gaining clarity on values, strengths, and desires. Your Career is an Experiment : Ilana reframes career progression as a series of small experiments, not permanent decisions. This mindset reduces fear and accelerates growth. Leap Academy Was Born from a Crisis : After being kicked out of her startup by a co-founder, Ilana hit rock bottom—then promised to create a roadmap to help others navigate similar transitions. Personal Branding is Non-Negotiable : Whether you're an entrepreneur or climbing the corporate ladder, building a digital presence is essential to becoming visible, credible, and referable. The Hidden Job Market Is Real : Most executive roles are filled through networks, not job boards. Building your brand and relationships makes you top-of-mind when opportunities arise. Portfolio Careers Are the Future : Diversified income streams—consulting, board seats, advisory roles—are key to stability and freedom in the modern career landscape. Featured Quote “It’s not about what we make—it’s about what we make possible.” – Ilana Golan TRANSCRIPT From IDF Commander to Career Coach: Meet Ilana Golan Jeff Dudan (00:03.712) Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden and you are on the home front and I have a very special guest today. I can't tell you how old of friends we are. It's at least three hours. We have today with us Ileana Golan. Ileana broke barriers as a commander in the IDF in the Air Force. Ilana Golan (00:15.8) you Jeff Dudan (00:27.742) training F -16 fighter pilot. She's an engineer. She's an entrepreneur. She's a Silicon Valley investor, and I do believe an insider. And today is the CEO of Leap Academy, which is one of the fastest growing award winning businesses for helping people transition their careers. Ileana, how did I do? Ilana Golan (00:45.779) wow, you did fantastic. Thank you, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (00:48.32) Well, I mean, you wrote the story. I just had to read it. It is so great to have you on. I'm so excited to have you on. And we're very similar in the work that we do, which is really helping people transition from whatever their current state is, is it their current state or is it their current constraints and giving them tools and tactics and opportunities to build a better life for those people they care about. I would love to start because you have such a rich history. Ilana Golan (00:51.507) Ha Selling Pens at Age 5: Ilana’s First Taste of Entrepreneurship Jeff Dudan (01:16.93) Can you tell us a little bit about how you grew up? Ilana Golan (01:20.158) I love that, Jeff. And yes, we share so much of the same things. We just want to see people become the best version of themselves, which is so incredible. But I will take you back in time. And as a kid, guess, I think I was always I was actually a shy kid. So if I'm being really honest, I was very shy. I had huge bunny teeth, you know, like I was just like. Jeff Dudan (01:25.142) Yes. Ilana Golan (01:47.886) I was very, you know, it took me time to get out of my shell a little bit. But I did have a little bit of that entrepreneurial thing in me, I think from a very early age, at age probably about four or five. My parents weren't at home, which I still don't know why at age four or five they weren't at home. But I decided to take a bunch of their stuff and put a big box in front of the house and sell them. Jeff Dudan (02:15.298) you had a moving sail, but you weren't moving. Ilana Golan (02:17.71) Hey, we were not moving. So my parents came back. They were like, what just happened to all our pens, all our stuff? Where did it go? And I looked at them and showed them how much money I made. And it was obviously very little, but I was very proud. So there was a little bit of that, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (02:35.468) Well, you had a very low cost basis in your inventory. Ilana Golan (02:38.478) Exactly. Yeah. And there wasn't really a lot to sell because I mean, we came from, you know, I mean, we were never poor by any standards, but we grew up basic, you know, there was like one toy, one thing that you do, you go to school. So it was very basic, but I had everything I needed. Jeff Dudan (02:59.66) That's outstanding. And then you went to university in Israel. Ilana Golan (03:04.172) Yes. So before the university, I went to the military. So we do have a compulsory military in Israel. I stumbled upon one of the best roles a person can get. I think there was some luck in there for sure. And I became an F -16 flight instructor or flight instructor. And we were basically teaching because women actually had a pretty glass ceiling there in terms of not being able to be real combat pilots and commanders in my squad. We essentially had this barrier. So the only possibility for me to eventually go into is to train pilots. And that was an incredible experience, incredible school. Being able to learn how to talk to people that have twice your age, or dozens of times your experience. is a very humbling but very, you know, educating experience. Jeff Dudan (04:05.526) fundamentally the training that you must have had, and this was prior to university, must have set you up for disciplines and regiments and guidelines and approaches and ways of thinking. How did your time in the military lead you to become an engineering student? Becoming an F-16 Flight Instructor in a Male-Dominated Role Ilana Golan (04:26.212) it's such a great question. mean, first of all, it teaches you to touch things that are bigger than anything that you've done before, right? And I think that's a very humbling experience. You're literally in the military, you're thrown in the water and you hope that you're actually gonna swim. And like you said, it comes with very basic training. You're kind of slammed into it. And at that point you need to suddenly, you know, I suddenly realized that my mission in life is to train these pilots to defend my country and come home safe. And I'm doing this all through technology. So even though I, till I think age 18, I actually fell in love with being in medical school and being a doctor, that was kind of my dream. In the military, it all flipped and I fell in love with technology and what we can actually make possible with technology. And that's what kind of took me into engineering. Jeff Dudan (05:24.77) I heard a statistic that engineers are represent 40 % of the world's billionaires. I have a I have a so you're you're probably one of them. But, you know, I have a getting on the way and I have my youngest is an engineering student material science and he just loves solving problems. He loves creating processes, putting his hands on things almost. Ilana Golan (05:36.398) Getting there. Jeff Dudan (05:52.438) You know, he's built businesses when he was in high school. He had a pressure washing business called Two Bros and a Hose. And they would make a lot of money on a weekend pressure washing. But as soon as he stopped buying equipment and figuring out how the truck work and the pumps worked and all of that, he lost interest in it. Because for him, was about creating the process and the technology and the ability to do it. so you're an engineering student. Ilana Golan (06:03.586) Well. Ilana Golan (06:10.19) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (06:21.876) And did you have any inkling how entrepreneurial you were at that time? Ilana Golan (06:28.324) absolutely not. And I think entrepreneurship wasn't even a thing, at least not when I grew up. It wasn't, the word didn't exist for sure. And, you know, I don't think it was really a thing. I think we were just trying to tap into what this computer thing is. I'm dating myself here a little bit. But first of all, I think you're right. Like engineering school teaches you to take a big problem and break it down to smaller chunks that you can actually like start chewing on. And I think that's a really interesting thing because that's what you need to do in entrepreneurship or anything, even in corporate, right? You take this big vision and now the question is, and again, you can decide to get overwhelmed, which we sometimes do too, or you can actually chunk it down and say, okay, there's a bite -sized piece to this and I can start doing this. The interesting thing is because of my military, I got, again, kind of lucky because I did become the first to ever become a commander in that squad. So I did kind of break that barrier and that created a little bit of a wave in Israel. So people kind of knew me and that, you know, that helped a little bit. So when I started studying engineering, actually in the very first semester, Intel came and snatched me. So I always laugh that they probably stole me so that somebody else will not steal me, but I don't care why, but I barely knew any coding and I was already an Intel. So there was a little advantage there. But I think again, there was this pattern of taking a big vision, a big thing, and how to even get started because at the end of the day, you're talking to a machine and you need to give bite sizes to the machine. And if you can't give a bite size to the machine, it will not understand. So I think it really started this entrepreneur. It wasn't an entrepreneur, I can't even say that, but it started and I understood that my... love coding. but where I get really, really good is that combination of actually being client -facing or human -facing with that understanding of business. And that became kind of that zone of genius. And I think then my question became, where can I find more of that? Where can I do more of that? Not just the coding piece, but also understanding the whole vision of what's possible. From Engineering Student to Intel: Climbing the Tech Ladder Jeff Dudan (08:48.14) So as you were a commander, that the, and you got some recognition for that. Did you, was that the first time that you maybe were up in front of people or maybe getting awards or, you know, just really being recognized as somebody that, you know, can break down barriers, has done something that other people haven't done before. Like what kind of impact was that on your confidence as you went forward? Because you're, Your journey just is just full of bold, confident type steps, just one after another. Did you really gain that first sense of, hey, I can take on a challenge and win it from your time there? Ilana Golan (09:32.94) I think so. So I think I touched leadership probably as kind of head of school somewhere around senior year. So that was my first leadership touch. But when I got into the military, think this is where suddenly I realized, first of all, I realized that I was very determined to prove to everyone that we can do this. So even though they put women and they're guarding them so they won't go beyond enemy lines. And there were all these reasoning, but we can get really, really good at this. And that was a very determined to at least try to prove it. And so I think that when you, you know, suddenly they opened the door and I became the first commander, I think it just created this, you know what, you can actually dream big and sometimes it will actually make it happen. And I think there was something really beautiful about it. And I'm sure. It's motivated me in a whole different level in the future. I don't, I'm an only child. I see. Jeff Dudan (10:34.466) Do you have brothers or sisters? You don't? Okay. Well, there you go. Now, did Intel bring you to the United States? Ilana Golan (10:43.572) No, so that's also another funny story. I love traveling and that's been in my blood. And I traveled after the military before I got into Intel, I traveled alone, which I think was also something that usually women don't do alone. It was basically all over Thailand, India, Nepal. And I think even just traveling alone teaches you so much about unpredictable challenges and, you know, like dealing with things on your own. Suddenly you're sick. What happens? Like there's like things that you need to deal with that are not easy. So I had to deal with all these things. I think it also really boiled me, know, and prepared me for what's coming. And I think it teaches you independence. So in Intel, after about five years there, I realized that I actually want to travel the world. That's when I met my 2B husband and we decided to go hiking and biking around the world for about nine months. And actually the last area was where we're landing in the US. I originally was born in Utah. So even though I moved to Israel really early on, but I was born in Utah. So I was lucky enough to actually be able to find a job here pretty quick. was an Israeli startup and that would started my startup journey, I guess. Jeff Dudan (12:16.288) I'd like to talk a little bit about that startup because I think and I've been involved in one where it was a it was a Swedish company and they were rolling out a product in the United States and it was amazing to me to see how tone deaf they were about the US market thinking that their product as it was in Sweden was going to just be adopted in the US and it needed so much refinement and it needed the complete rebuild and it just It didn't contemplate market conditions. Does any of that resonate with your startup? Startup Wake-Up Call: When Market Fit Misses the Mark Ilana Golan (12:51.854) was laughing out loud because there was like tick the box, tick the box, tick the box. Yes. So first of all, yes, it was actually funny because on behalf of Intel, I actually acquired a Swedish company and we morphed it and became an Intel product. But when I came to the US, I think it shocked me. Again, I'll say two things. The first startup that I was in was already a kind of more established. And so I think I, and I was, think too much down the layers to really notice. The second startup was basically I was founding the company here in the U .S. And it was interesting because I met them in Israel. It sounded like. This is a moneymaker. All you need to do is come and collect the cash. So I came and the cash was not coming because it was completely not what we needed for this market. It's something that looked really good 5 ,000 miles away, but completely not relevant for this market. And it was a complete revamp. And I'll say another thing, Jeff, I think it's also very hard. to explain what we're seeing on this side of the world where they have this massive certainty that what they built is the best thing since sliced bread. But they're sitting 5 ,000 miles away dreaming about all this cash that is coming in and you're looking and they're like, I'm meeting Cisco, I'm leaning HB, I'm leaning on, they're not gonna buy this. So either we morph this damn thing or we have a problem. And that was like a really interesting realization about market fit, about Jeff Dudan (14:04.438) Right. Ilana Golan (14:24.418) how to communicate. I I learned so much from that Jeff. Jeff Dudan (14:29.186) Can you share at all what the product was or if not the product itself, what segment it was in? Ilana Golan (14:34.806) Yeah, yeah. So it was basically big automation. And the idea was basically, if you think of, I don't know, like a T -Mobile, right? It needs to make a phone call from New Jersey all the way to California, right? Like, how do you automate a million phone calls and make sure that they come on time? Or, you know, like something along these lines, like, if there's like a... a Superball, how do you make sure the ad will actually come to everybody at the same time because you don't want people to see the ads in different moments and to see the Superball in different moments. So how do you validate all these big systems? It was a fascinating product, but initially it was kind of more of a lab, it was kind of more very tight verification things that just didn't... didn't pan out, like it wasn't what people needed here. And I think there's also just different, you know, people here have certain staffing and, you know, they rather bring somebody in -house to code and not lean on a third party, the IP is not there. So there were all these assumptions of the behavior of the client, which we needed to completely change. Jeff Dudan (15:48.396) Yeah, we sure do fall in love with our own products, don't we? Ilana Golan (15:51.4) but that's a beautiful part about founders, right? Like we have to fall in love, but we also need to listen, which is an interesting balance. Jeff Dudan (15:55.767) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (15:59.042) Yeah, yeah, it starts as a love story and then it turns into, like any relationship, needs communication both ways. Ilana Golan (16:09.376) Yeah, and I think that's also taught me to communicate because I think, you know, if you come from, know better and it becomes a head -to -head conversation, it's really, really hard. When you come and basically sit on their side of the table, but and say, look, this is what I'm seeing. Here's the things you want, you we can, and you bring the proof, you explain. For them, it's an emotional thing, right? You're actually bashing their baby. Jeff Dudan (16:35.072) Right. Ilana Golan (16:35.83) You know, once you understand some of these little things about communication, I think you know how to move people's minds a lot better, which is also a big trait that I feel like I needed to learn. But it was golden. It was really golden. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (16:52.684) You had another stop or two and at some point you were focusing on investing in tech startups. Ilana Golan (16:59.872) Yeah, not yet, but if you want a little bit drama in the show, I can tell a little bit of drama. Because before, quite before that, so here's the thing, was in this company that I was in, I was already kind of climbing up the ladder, already vice president, so really kind of, I ticked a lot of boxes. Jeff Dudan (17:07.424) Yeah, I'd love to hear it. Betrayed by a Co-Founder: The Lowest Point of Ilana’s Career Ilana Golan (17:23.906) But I had no life. Like I was flying all the time. Every single week I'm in a different place. All red eyes, always, you know, saving cash. The biggest thing was how many red eyes can I do without taking a shower once? I mean, it was really disgusting. But at the end of the day, you know, at some point I was like, you know what, maybe this is not driving me anymore. Like I've been there for five years. Like I feel there's more to me. What can I do to get better? And at that point, a friend of mine, actually somebody I knew for like 20 years came to me and said, hey, Lana, let's start a company together. And I got so excited, Jeff. Like, it was just like, my God, this is going to be a dream. So we worked on this company day and night. was, you know, and at that point we also raised some capital and even that went really fast. So I have to admit because our founder story made sense that we pushed this really far. there was like kind of the Silicon Valley dream, right? $800 ,000, they were evaluating our little baby at 5 million almost. And I remember looking at this document and I'm like, my God, like, how did I get this lucky? And so at that point, I parted ways from my vice president role. You I wanted to make sure everybody understands that I'm not running away because I founded this site. So I wanted to make sure, you know, everybody's set. And I moved to this new baby, but within exactly 24 hours, my co -founder decided to take the money, throw me out of the business and I was left with nothing. So no job, no salary, no company, no investment. And I think the worst part, Jeff, is that the ego was down the drain. It was totally crashed. And it was suddenly I realized that I gave for the last 20 years, everything to the company that I was with, but I never built myself. I was inevitably, I got complete nobody outside. And I think that was a huge, really hard realization. And for somebody really driven, I think we always know what's next. Like we always know like everything is scripted in my life. Like I always knew kind of what's coming. And suddenly there was this... Ilana Golan (19:32.738) big void. Like I wasn't even sure if I'm looking for a job or looking for to start a business or I'm looking at co -founder, I'm looking for events. honestly, Jeff, at that point I was like, where am I even heading? And that was my... Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm to start a similar company and I'm going to show him or whatever. Like, you know, because at that point you're just like, I was at the bottom of my barrel, Jeff. I was so... Jeff Dudan (19:45.132) Did you say revenge? Right. So doing is doing. Yeah. Ilana Golan (20:00.846) It was a really hard moment. And I think the hardest thing is that I told everybody. So I felt like my ego was down the drain. what do I tell to people now? Like that I'm a nobody and I don't know where I'm going. And like it just threw me off. I knew I could always go back to that company that I was vice president, but there was a reason why I left in the first place. So the question is, what do do now? And that was a really, really hard, I mean, we can talk about it, but that was a spiraling for about a good time. Eventually, I did start a tech startup. It was acquired and that's how I became an investor. But it was not without a lot of drama. Jeff Dudan (20:39.49) Yeah, I'm interested if you go back to that point in time, a 20 year career, very successful, highly sought after, probably got calls from recruiters every single day to come and do this or to do that. You decide on an opportunity, you take that leap. It doesn't work out. And at that point, it was probably a good opportunity to do some soul searching about your beliefs and your values and your fundamentals. Is there anything that you could share that you very intentionally changed about the way that you thought? Ilana Golan (21:16.302) It's a great question because I think some of these questions took me a long time to even come with the question because I think sometimes you're so down yourself that it's you're not even coming up with the right questions in your head. So for me, if I'm being really honest, Jeff, my main question is how the hell did I become such a failure? It's amazing how fast we forget 20 years of success and we go right into How did this become my life? Like how, and it's, it impacted my sleep, it impacted how I wake up, it impacted my relationship with my husband, it impacted, I was snappy at my kids. I'm never snappy at my kids. I mean, I was just, you know, and it was amazing, Jeff, what's hardest about it as a mom, like I was finally having, I had all the time in the world to spend with them. It was the first time in forever that I wasn't flying every other week. And I wasn't present. I was grouchy. I was annoying. Like I was a fraction of who I could be. to a long story short, think first of all, I realized how hard this was. And at that point, I probably Googled every little like, how do you find your passion? Why do you find your next career direction? Like I Googled everything possible, checked every TED Talk. But it was either very motivational, like, who, who, you can do it. And I'm like, I know I can do it. I'm like so motivated, but I just don't know what and how. Or it was done by people that didn't really inspire me without hurting anybody, you know, listening. But really it just wasn't, you know, if I already looked at kind of my career trajectory, I knew there was a lot more, but I need to be inspired by somebody that has done some big things. And at that point, I promised myself that if I ever figure this out, Jeff, I gonna... tell the world how because that was a really hard moment. So I don't know if I had really good questions. The questions came later. So I think once I realized that slowly I got myself back on, you know, and started leaping again and again, suddenly the questions came back and I said, how were, how was I never intentional strategic about my career? Why did I never, you know, really go into the driver's seat? Ilana Golan (23:31.444) Why did I never build my personal brand? Because that's so fundamental. All these questions suddenly came back, but it was only once I recovered. was really, really hard to... When you're inside the jar, it's hard to read your own label. And I could not read anything. Jeff Dudan (23:47.808) Hmm. So many great businesses are created by personal experience and oftentimes personal crisis, a problem that somebody has that you can't believe that it hasn't been solved before. How did that experience lead you ultimately to create Leap Academy? Creating Leap Academy: Helping Professionals Leap into Their Potential Ilana Golan (24:06.334) I mean, that was exactly where I promised myself. know, I mean, I and the truth is, Jeff, initially, I thought maybe I just going to create this little thing, you know, we're just going to make it like on the side. Twenty thousand dollars the first year. You know, I just going to maybe there's just not enough people that going to run into this problem. But I was really curious if I was the only. crazy person that ran into this or is this really common? Because I felt like this should be really common in today's world. And I was wondering about it. the first year we made not 20K, but a quarter of a million and we skyrocketed from there. And now you're right, we're one of the fastest growing companies in America and I'm... And again, for me, it's not the numbers, it's the numbers of lives that we can save. It's the level of coaches that I can bring on. It's the level of support and branding and community that we can create for each other to open each other's doors and to create this hidden market. And that's what I'm proud of. But it all came from that point of, know, from that low moment in my life when I really lost everything. And I think You know, to somebody listening, if they're running into this similar situation, I'll just say to you, like, seriously, like, sometimes this is exactly the muscle you need to go through right now in order to create the best version of yourself. So if you are going through a really tough moment, if you are lost, this could be very well the muscle that you need to build in order to create a different tomorrow. But I will also say, You know, I one of the lessons that I got from there is to stop going through this alone, Jeff. So I went and grinded through this. And right now, I probably have like six coaches on different things. We talked about one of them, you know what saying? Like, I have somebody helping me with a podcast. I have people helping me with LinkedIn and Instagram. I have people helping me with the business. have people, you know, it's like I am done going through this alone, Jeff. It's always takes you, you know, You always gonna Ilana Golan (26:14.38) have a ceiling, you know, like I am now such a big believer in finding the people that have walked the walk and take them there. Like you, Jeff, if I need a franchise, I am calling Mr. Jeff. Like, seriously, like, why would you even try to figure this out all on your own? Like you always gonna, it's never gonna work out. Jeff Dudan (26:36.822) The collaboration is a catalyst. It's a catalyst to an outcome. It's a catalyst to a win -win situation. you could say, well, this is a vendor situation or whatever. ultimately, finding the right who's, and Dan Sullivan with Strategic Coach, I don't know if you've been in Coach, but nothing new without a who. And it's finding the right people because it's too It's too expensive in terms of time to figure everything out from the beginning. Ilana Golan (27:14.542) I'll take it even further, Jeff. I will say the biggest cost in your life is the money you're not making, period. It's not just the time, it's the money that you're not making. What if I started Leap Academy five years ago or 10 years ago? We would be a billion dollar company now. So there is also a cost to not taking action and that cost is really, really, really high. So I would just say that. Jeff Dudan (27:20.268) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (27:40.355) What is the impact that you aspire to make with Leap Academy? Disrupting Professional Education for Driven Leaders Ilana Golan (27:45.514) Oof. So I will answer it in two phases. I mean, in the general sense, I just want to take driven people that know that there's more to them. They might be feeling stuck. They might be feeling that there's more to their life, but they just don't know what. And first of all, we want to figure out what that is. And then we really want to help them get there. Right. And to get there, we might also lean on partners to get there faster, right? But at that point, maybe it is up the corporate ladder. Maybe it is to find a new job. Maybe it is to start a new business. But no matter what, you need the clarity, you need a better story, you need to broaden your network, you need to build a reputation. Like there's all these engineered processes that if you just follow, it's actually not that hard, but you just need to follow the sequence. And if you have that together with, you know, the network and the mindset coaching and the branding coaching and all of that, it really helps. But I'll say, you know, beyond that, Jeff, I truly believe and the way I look at this, I think the education system did not catch up to what's needed in the future of work. And whatever you're learning at age 20, 22, even an MBA is just irrelevant. It's more theoretical versus what actually takes you, meets you where you are and takes you higher. So we are the big vision is Leap Academy will disrupt professional education. We want to completely change what education, professional education looks like. And if I'm being really honest, I think eventually this should be taught in colleges in high school. Like I don't think that needs to be only taught to the elite. Like I think every single person needs to know how to find their next career. What's right for them, how to lean on their zone of genius, what's transferable. It's just basic learning. At some point, I want every single person to know it. That's the big vision. Jeff Dudan (29:40.972) Similar to a university, people have to enroll. Well, first of all, they have to apply. And you don't take everybody. And then if they are accepted to Leap Academy, what types of things do they need to commit to? Ilana Golan (29:55.806) it's a great question. mean, so we are, you we do want to make sure that every single person can actually get massive results. And that's the reason why we might decline someone. It's not because we don't wear mean or anything like this. Like we do want very specific standards that people are really committed to their success. They really want to push more. They really want to create more of their life. They understand that there's no magic wand. There's no get rich quick. But they truly are hungry to create a better tomorrow, whether it's impact or financial or influence or reputation, legacy, thought leadership, freedom, whatever it is for them. But they really are driven to create a better tomorrow for themselves. And that is really, really important, Jeff. So once they come in, we kind of decide like what kind of program is right for them. There's some basic one that we believe almost everybody should go through. We have Millionaire's Club, have Presidential Club for kind of top C suites, etc. So we do have a big variety of rules, of programs. But at the end of the day, the one thing that is a pattern for everybody is they're all driven, they all want something incredible for themselves. And they all want to create some mark on the universe or on their self or on their families and to become the best version that they can be. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (31:16.354) Do you call them leapers? Okay. I wasn't sure. was hoping that, I was hoping it wasn't leper. But so if I'm a leaper and I come in, is it incumbent upon me to tell you where I want to go? Or is it your assessments that helps craft a future path for these people? Ilana Golan (31:18.272) We do call them leapers and they call themselves leapers and it's really fun because I know Ilana Golan (31:36.342) No. Ilana Golan (31:43.918) No, we do it together for sure, Jeff. So I think about, I would say 75 or 80 % of the people that join and we're talking about, you know, almost a thousand a year have no clue what they want to do next. And that's their biggest thing. And without that clarity, everything is a waste of time. They can pay a lot of money to a resume writer, but guess what? That resume writer will not be able Jeff Dudan (31:59.076) Mm Ilana Golan (32:08.28) to create a good resume if they don't know where they're going, right? So with us, we just create this holistic experience that they understand where they're going, they understand what their story, what kind of things they're gonna need to emphasize, then we take care of all the branding, we take care of the network, you know, like all of this needs to be aligned because only then you create incredible results for yourself. you know, so for me, it's really about, you know, understanding your must -haves, understanding your zone of genius, really understanding going to make you shine where and again it's about not just getting the paycheck but the life that you want with that paycheck and how you create all of it incredible so yeah it's a combination. Jeff Dudan (32:49.762) Yeah. So it's like coaching plus plus plus plus. So it's coaching plus enablement coaching plus. Okay. And like, all right, well, if, this is true, that you believe that you want to excel four levels into your, you know, fortune 100 company, here are the things that you, that these people typically have. It might not have dawned on you to have a personal brand. It might not have dawned on you to have this training or these connections or to be parts of these networks. Ilana Golan (33:15.574) Exactly. Jeff Dudan (33:19.586) And it might be too that you're helping them because if they do these things, they can and they don't have the opportunity to leap in their own organization, they can leap to another organization and be recruited there because now they're more recruitable, they're more employable for the higher role. So it might be that they have to leave the current company and move to another one. Or sometimes, which I read on the website is sometimes people leap into a business for themselves. Ilana Golan (33:36.491) Exactly. From Director to CEO: A Real-Life Leap Story Ilana Golan (33:48.662) Right. Yeah. So you said it really beautifully. So I'll give you an example because I think it's easier to speak with examples. So we had a leaper or somebody that came, director, lost their job. And again, in their mind, I'm just looking for another director role, right? So that is kind of where their headspace is. Now, again, for some people, it's the right thing to just go as fast as possible, find the lowest hanging fruit. I mean, in his case, it was very clear that he wants to try to maximize the potential and he can breathe a little bit. He can take a little bit of time. I mean, not forever, but he can take a little bit of time to get this right. with him, it was very clear that if he could just build something and add a little bit of things, he can actually build some really amazing executive presence. So with him, actually, we went very strategic. to how the best to build that executive presence, a lot of it to some mentorship and startup accelerators, some advisories, some board seats. Like it can be a lot of different things that people don't necessarily think about it as a personal branding, but for him specifically, it was the right approach. And he actually landed a chief business officer. So from director that was laid off to a chief business officer in a startup, and now he was promoted to be the CEO. So. That is the kind of leaps that are possible, but only if you really get them right. And again, not that we commit that every director will become a CEO, but you know what I, but there's like ways to do this. It's like playing chess, but most people never realize it. And nobody teaches you the rules of this chess game, but it's incredible once you actually master it. The other two things that I will say is when you get this right, first of all, It's not only that you're going to be happier, but you're also going to be more appreciated. You're going to be paid more. You're going to create more of the life that you want. It creates incredible safety net because if God forbid something happens to this work, now your brand stand on its own. You're not as like me attached to this title or the one job that you had. But the other thing that we're seeing is a trend that we're seeing the last few years is to create a portfolio career. Ilana Golan (36:03.436) So no matter if you're in a corporation or you have your business, if you can actually strategize a portfolio of income streams that will actually ripple effects, it create this ripple, it can actually create like a really interesting snowball for your reputation, for your wealth, for your impact. And that's been a really, really interesting thing that we work a lot with clients. So again, the idea is just to get this incredible life for them. And it's exciting to see it. Jeff Dudan (36:34.74) Risk is something that if people are gonna take on risk, they might need just a little bit more certainty in another area of their life. So they might say, I'm concerned about taking this leap because it's gonna leave me with questionable income for six months. Maybe I'm finding a position that's got lots of options, but it's a startup and they're not gonna be able to pay me as well. I have a certain lifestyle. By the way, bankers have told me this over and over again. People's lifestyle is the last thing that they will change before they go bankrupt. Like they will give up so many things that are appreciable, creative assets, you know, just to maintain their country club membership and the four cars that they have sitting in the drive, and they can only drive one at a time. like people have a heart, like lifestyles are very dangerous because man, they never go backwards. The intent is, you know, Because we all seek progress and negative progress is one of the greatest dissatisfactors in life. And if you have to downsize and you're willing, you know, very few people actually have the courage to downsize that. So creating another income stream through a board seat, creating some long even some equity inside of that or some long term gain, creating some diversification probably would help people, you know, incorporate maybe a riskier decision, even starting a business, buying a franchise, whatever it is into that. Ilana Golan (37:52.13) Right. Jeff Dudan (38:03.106) That's one observation. And then the other thing that I wanted to ask you is, are companies actively coming in and recruiting your leapers? do you have... I mean, it's like, okay, I mean, it would only make sense because you're having so much success and you have so many people that are enrolled in the program that immediately for me, it tells me that this person is willing to invest in themselves. They're up to something and going somewhere. And because they haven't been kicked out of the program, they're actually following through on right. And the next question is going to be, what do have to do to get kicked out? so but I imagine that if you know, it's like it's like a training camp. People are going in there and they're going to work hard. And as they're working on themselves, that's that's if I'm an employer that really needs top notch people, tech, whatever it is, I'm to come to you and say, who do you have? Ilana Golan (38:39.359) Right. Ilana Golan (39:02.178) yeah, for sure. So I'll say a few things, Jeff. And I think first of all, you're spot on. I do believe leaping will become a habit. So if we're looking at the pace of change right now, people will change every year or two. Now, it could be that they're in the same company, but they'll still change responsibility, the tech that they're working with, the tool that they're working with, the functions. They're still going to have to adapt new things all the time. It's never been the case. Jeff Dudan (39:10.849) Mm -hmm. Ilana Golan (39:30.412) So we're to see people and now is this whole like plateau of opportunities to make income these days. There's just so much out there. So I do believe that we're going to see and we already seeing the trend, but I think we're going to see people leaping every year too. So it is coming at a pace that is really mind blowing. And I think it just becomes a skill that every single person will need to learn again and again and apply again and again. So you're absolutely right. If somebody is not driven, by definition, they will fall off. I don't believe that there is any more stuck in the world. I think if you think that you're stuck, we're actually losing relevance at a pace we've never seen before with this pace of change. So if you're putting it all together, the people by definition need to be really, really, really driven. They want to, they need to not only level the playing field and catch up with where, you know, the pace of change is, now they need to rise above the noise. And that's not simple. So I do need people that are driven. I need people. I always love that there's no traffic jam in the extra mile. I need the people that will be in the extra mile that will rise above the noise, that will roll up the sleeves. And when they are, it's incredible. Yes, I want to hire all of them. but we are seeing an incredible ecosystem. First of all, with companies that are coming in and looking for, but also our leapers are everywhere. So we just had somebody that landed a VP in PayPal. The first thing he said is like, have, you know, I need to hire two senior directors to my team. You know, I mean, it's an incredible hidden market. So where is he going to look? First of all, he's going to look at, you know, his friends and, you know, our network. And only if he doesn't, now we can start looking outside. But that is the, you know, one of the first places they're going to look for. So it's an incredible thing. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:21.538) One of the first steps is, from what I understand, focusing on their vision and being crystal clear about their life. So first thing is clarity, right? Like, okay, if you as an example, 20 years in your career, you're moving forward through a compensation structure, you're continuing to, you know, your roles and your accountability continues to go up. Ilana Golan (41:34.114) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:51.304) as your skills and your your capabilities improve and all of that. But it doesn't sound like you had a clear vision for how it was going to end. Is that fair? Ilana Golan (42:02.398) I don't know how to explain the clear vision is, you know, if somebody would even paint a vision of what my life looks like, I would never believe it, Jeff. It's that bad. You know, like the gap between where I was and where my life is right now is not even something that I can say in words. It's incredible. Jeff Dudan (42:15.137) Right. Ilana Golan (42:26.434) So no, that was not my vision. so you're absolutely right. think, you know, the clarity is the first piece. I mean, it's really taking into account your must -haves. First of all, what's really important for you? I mean, sometimes it's finance. Like you just need to make the cash, right? That's like the most important element. And sometimes it's because you need the money. Sometimes it's give you confidence. I needed to make more than my husband. It really doesn't matter what the reasoning is. But sometimes it's cash, right? Sometimes it's growth, like you want to learn something new, you want to flourish, you want to change a function, you want to change an industry, you want reputation, maybe even fame. And that's okay. That's growth. Sometimes it's impact. I want to feel like I move the needle. Sometimes it's balance for health, for kids, for whatever it is. And the interesting thing is no job will really give you all four. If you think you have a job that gives you all four, don't ever leave, right? But no job will give you a four. But if you look at your life, you'll see that you're roaming between two of them every year or two or every few years. Again, it used to be a little longer for each one and now it's shorter. And if you're to look a little bit, you'll see that it's morphing. And even if in the same role, maybe you started with, know, I want financial stability, but I'm learning like crazy. So it sits on this growth area and now you're getting used to it. So it starts moving to the balance and maybe a little more impact, you know, so it's kind of changes. even within the same role. So the very first thing is to understand what do I even want? What's important for me right now? And it's going to change every year or two. So you don't even need to look so far out, right? The other thing is the zone of genius. Like where do you really shine? And that's a really important piece of it. Gay Hendrix has an incredible book about it. the bottom line is, and we use a lot of techniques, but also some questions and things to really understand. But the most important thing, then you put it all together. And I think the big thing that changed in my life is when I realized that I can look at a career as an experiment because it's such a short change. I can start looking at it as an experiment, not as a career decision. And that lifts a big weight off your shoulders. And I actually brought this from actually startups, right? Because after my exit, I did... Ilana Golan (44:43.554) find myself kind of mentoring in Google, Startup Accelerators, and Singularity University, and speaking in Carnegie Mellon, and a bunch of others. And it's really interesting because for some reason for startups, you know that you're going to have to experiment to find the market fit, but we somehow don't morph it into the world of careers. But it makes so much sense, especially now. So now we're helping our clients and these leapers to do some small experiments to kind of feel Is this really where I want to go? And if you do, great, we go all in. And it's a great way to just make it as a habit and to do it again and again in life. Because I think right now, if I want to join a board, I can join it. If I want to start a podcast, I post on a podcast. It suddenly becomes this thing. Great, what do I need to do? Start a podcast, get clarity what I want to do, story how I do it. How do I bond my network out of build reputation? Boom, next. It just becomes this thing that you do again and again. Jeff Dudan (45:41.94) After you had your exit and then you started being invited to speak a lot more, was that when you really started building and focusing on your personal brand? Ilana Golan (45:46.061) Leap. Ilana Golan (45:51.746) Yeah, that was the, so, well, I'll take you back in time when I initially thought I might raise capital for that startup. It was a tech startup that I started and it wasn't a massive success, but it was good enough to take me a little forward. But when I started that, I started at some point, I was debating if I wanna raise capital. And when I was actually looking and talking to investors, it was, actually really interesting because I could see specific investors that already raised capital in the first one when I was kicked out, but now it frightened them. And so I was meeting them again and again and again. And after about three, four times, because again, they want to meet me, but they're not really putting the cash, right? And at some point I just said, look, tell me flat out what's missing for you. And at some point they just said, look, right before you came in, we actually really like you. We like the company. We like your vision. Right before you came in, we Googled your name. We looked you up on LinkedIn. You have about 400 connections on LinkedIn. There's nothing in Google. Like we don't even know if these stories exist. Jeff Dudan (47:07.724) wow. OK. So basically, just the sanity check. I'm going to put you in the Google and see what pops up. Ilana Golan (47:09.388) And at that point... Yeah. There was nothing, Jeff. I was basically working a thousand percent for somebody else's success. Like I did not put even five percent of on my own, on reputation, on anything. My Facebook was my two and a half friends and my LinkedIn was a few other friends. That's all. Jeff Dudan (47:17.726) Wow. Jeff Dudan (47:37.388) Got it, got it. So. Jeff Dudan (47:44.832) Let's talk about, and it's all right, our camera just overheated a little bit. we're going to be recording. We got a secondary camera set up, and then we'll edit this little piece out. And then we got you, and then we got a second camera set up here, and we'll cut it in from this angle. So with the Ilana Golan (47:48.564) Okay, that's what I thought. Okay. Ilana Golan (47:57.506) No, it's Ilana Golan (48:04.854) Okay, no worries. Let me know if you want to stop for a second and reset it or something. Jeff Dudan (48:08.296) No, no, I was on a great I was on a great path here. And this is a great this is incredible. So really, really great. I'm just now I got to figure out where I was heading with that. Ilana Golan (48:11.585) Okay, sorry. Ilana Golan (48:17.966) So I, you know, like just no reputation whatsoever. I was a complete nobody. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:21.75) Yeah. Yes. This is a question. You ready? Okay. All right. And by the way, that's the camera that overheated that you just bought. So you got to be, when you plug it into the computer, the bandwidth is so high that if you go too long, we have a little fan sometimes we put on it. Okay. So here's the question. If I'm looking to leap. Ilana Golan (48:33.579) shit. Ilana Golan (48:39.48) you Ilana Golan (48:43.565) No, no. Jeff Dudan (48:50.494) inside of an organization or to an employment position in another organization, why is it important for me to build a personal brand? Why Everyone Needs a Personal Brand—Even in Corporate Ilana Golan (49:01.454) such a great question, Jeff. I'll say a few things. So first of all, almost everything today is happening, especially mid to late stage career. It's all happening in what I call the hidden market. The chance of actually somebody mid to late stage career landing something from a job board is so minuscule. It's not even worth the effort. So what happens, the hidden market is basically who thinks about you when you're not in the room, right? So essentially, we all have a brand and that's where people sometimes are mistaken. We all have a brand and the brand is what people think about you when you're not in the room. You might not be building it. So that means that they probably not thinking about you in the right context, but you all have a brand. the problem there is that, you know, in the other hand, you is the easiest way to control the narrative, which is so, so strong. So if you do want to be seen as a leader, as an executive, as somebody that really knows AI, big data, whatever it is that you want to be known for, it's the best way to control the narrative. But if you don't use it, then you're absolutely out of losing it. So, you know, the thing is that employers today, first of all, they're going to first ask, hey, who do you know that can come in as whatever, director, VP, senior manager, whatever it is. So they first going to go to the network, to people they know, to their employees. And that's where they're going to try to find someone. So first of all, people need to think about you in the right context. That's where repetition is. You have to be top of mind. So even if you posted one time six months ago, you're not top of mind for anybody. Everybody's moving 6 ,000 miles an hour today. So if you're not top of mind, they will not remember. So if you look at all of these things, you actually make it super hard for people to bring opportunities your way. Now, I'll take it even further. If you do have that reputation, this is where it becomes gold because now you come from more of a position of power to every conversation. You're more confident. They can see that confidence. Now you can negotiate your worth. You can negotiate better titles, better terms. They're going to appreciate you more when you come in. They're going to, you know, like recognize you better. it's everybody wins, but it's so fundamental. Ilana Golan (51:24.27) I mean, whether we like it or not, 2007, we all became a media company. If we're not using it, we lost. And again, I didn't lose it for a decade, but now it's time. Jeff Dudan (51:34.018) Well, it's so true because, and it's really just this simple concept of social proof. And in our process, we manage everything up to including making sure we have the same wait staff at our dinners that we have where we host candidates to come in and that they know us and we know them and the people that are driving the transportation to and from the airport are people that we use all the time and they'll engage with them and say this, and it's just making sure that that, that, you know, from every point possible that, you know, we're, we are people that are, that are known, that are liked, that are trusted. You know, and you do that through your social media, you do it through things like this. You do it through, you know, other people that are already in the academy or in our system, you know, providing testimonials or engagement or whatever it is. But it's basically, you know, people are testing to see Is it, you know, am I okay to engage with this person? And if, if, know, where the internet is today, if you don't show up anywhere for anything, then that's probably a huge red flag. Because like, where did you even, where did you even come from? You know, but, but if you, but it's true, though, you know, I've Googled people that I was going to be meeting with. And it's like, man, I can't find anything on this person. Like, what are, what have they been doing? Ilana Golan (52:47.202) Right? Absolutely. Jeff Dudan (53:00.49) or not doing not a not a not an article, not a post, not a, you know, you know, announcement about a position or anything like that. So, you know, very relevant. And I think I think great, a great realization for people that, you know, it's a blind spot. People are like, you know, I'm just I'm building, I'm building my reputation through my work. And but, you know, it doesn't you're making it you're putting too much work on the people that you want to influence. I mean, and even if you have a big online presence, right, you can't assume that the people that you want to influence are going to land on the piece of content that they need to see. it's really, now part of it is if you have so much stuff out there, you don't know what they're going to land on. So you really have to make sure that you're finding a way to put the right stuff on the right people at the right time so that they can. Ilana Golan (53:30.592) soy. Jeff Dudan (53:56.768) be informed why they should engage with you. Ilana Golan (54:01.166) that is so, so, so true, Jeff. Like I can't tell you how many times we, you know, I've seen people that I wanted to introduce them or to help them. you know, I mean, this is, I can't introduce you. You just either wrote me a hundred paragraphs of something that is irrelevant or, you know, or you, you didn't put the links. didn't put that. I mean, this is, I can't be the person doing the work. You need to make it the work. You do the work for us if you want the introduction. And the other thing is, yes, make it easy on people. Like I can't stress it enough because the big thing is also, you known for what you want to be known for? Right. And that's also when you reinvent yourself, you will find yourself known for the wrong things. Because again, at some point I was known for the cloud data center business person that invests. And now I want to be known for a leap Academy. Right. So there's also a shift. But if you do this right, Jeff Dudan (54:40.054) Yeah. Ilana Golan (54:57.292) And you're very strategic, very intentional with every move you make. It will actually happen a lot faster than anybody realizes. But I think just most people don't realize how and just don't take the action. Jeff Dudan (55:09.93) I think it's well known that every business owner, every small business owner needs to be a media personality in the face of their business, but it's a little counterintuitive that people that are leaping within corporate America need to consider that as well. Ilana Golan (55:25.088) Right. And I think in today's world, it's inevitable. You have to. It's not a nice to have anymore. It's a must have. Jeff Dudan (55:25.942) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (55:32.638) Absolutely. You have career transition coaches. I took a spin through the website and is Kelly Doyle working with you? I think. Ilana Golan (55:43.439) yeah, Heather Doyle. Yes. Jeff Dudan (55:47.07) Heather, OK. You know what? Then that's not the person that I knew because I there was actually a very, very successful coach here in Charlotte. So career transition coaches, what is their role in your organization and are they the front lines with your clients? Ilana Golan (55:50.935) Okay. Ilana Golan (56:03.874) Well, if you ask about Heather, I will say though one thing, first of all, she was, don't know if you know, IPEC, that's like the main coaching school for all the coaches. And she was actually the chief operating officer for all of IPEC. And she came to work for me because she believes so much in what we're doing. So first of all, she's incredible. But I will say, first of all, it was really important for me to bring only people who have walked the walk. And because one of the biggest issues that I've had before is that, again, the people that I was looking at didn't inspire me. So we have people that ran a 600 -person department themselves and decided to be a coach. We have somebody that was a top results coach for Tony Robbins. have, you know, like, so it was really, really important for me that every single person have walked the walk in a very substantial way. And again, their big role is, you know, to look if there's some, there's usually some weight that is holding people back. They might not realize it and they might think, I'm missing the strategies, I'm missing the strategies. So that's what happened to me, Jeff. When I wanted to start LEAP, the fear was numbing. I'm not going to lie. And even though I did some pretty daring things in my life, suddenly being known for this was scary because what if it doesn't work? And what if I make a mistake? And what if people don't like it? And what if I fail? And I always laugh that at some point I set and binge -watched Grayson after me for hours and watched Netflix because the fear was numbing. And I kept thinking, I don't have the strategies, I don't have the strategy, but the truth is, Jeff, the strategy was really simple. I just need to write one post. Hi, friends, this is what I decided to do now. So the strategy was really simple, but the fear was numbing. And what we realized is that really, really good Mindset coaches, performance coaches can really help you find the things that are holding you back and push you forward. And on top of this, we have branding coaches and executive coaches and entrepreneurship coaches, etc. So we do have a really broad spectrum. So it's just incredible. Jeff Dudan (58:13.868) Yeah, great talent on the website. I went through the bios and you've got just the right person, just the right who for just the right what. And it's very, very comprehensive offering there. so if I, what's the application process? Cause I'll be signing up for to be a leaper. don't, I don't know where I'm going to leap to, but I just, I want to go somewhere with you guys. So what, what is the application process? Ilana Golan (58:21.677) Yeah. Ilana Golan (58:31.775) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ilana Golan (58:37.55) you So there is a website and basically you just look at a short 30 minute training if you want. If not, we just book a call with you. But usually people want to just check to see if they, you know, they match with it. So they go to a free training and if that resonates, they book, you know, short career strategy call with us. We understand that the team will understand exactly where they are now, exactly where they want to go. And if we can help, we strategize exactly how and we explain how this works. And if we can't help, we send them to one of our loving partners. But in your case, Jeff, I think we're going to do some really fun partnership here. So I am very much looking forward to it. Jeff Dudan (59:25.782) Yeah, I'm excited. I can see at least one strong collaboration that we can do. Actually two that I'd like to speak with you about. Ilana, what questions, is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven't? And is there anything that typically comes up with candidates on a call that you think they should know? Ilana Golan (59:50.166) No, I will just say to everybody, every single person that is listening, if you're contemplating whether you're the best version of yourself, if you're debating, if there's more to you, if you think that if you stay exactly where you are within a decade or two, you're going to have massive regret. The only thing that I will say is, first of all, it takes one phone call to even just assess this, right? Like, let's understand. It's a free conversation. will give you clarity no matter what. But to me, you know, at the end of the day, it's just amazing what's possible. And one of my favorite slogans is, it's not about what we make, it's about what we make possible. And I'm just so excited about what we're making possible, but also every single human can make possible in the world for themselves and just live an incredible life because that's what it's about. Jeff Dudan (01:00:45.162) Okay, where can people reach out and get in touch with you or Leap Academy? Ilana Golan (01:00:51.668) Ilana at LeapAcademy .com. Yeah, mean, just send an email. My team will take care of you and just looking forward to changing more lives. Jeff Dudan (01:00:55.083) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:01:03.296) Yep, and I'm sure that if you go to the Google that you and Leap Academy will pop up because I did that. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Ilana Golan (01:01:21.952) I think one of them is what I just shared, but I will say everything is possible. And there is a new possible right now that if you just going to open your eyes and you're to know how, you can absolutely change the second part of your life. And any single person that is driven should be in that driver's seat, should be intentional, should be strategic. And the sky's the limit today. Jeff Dudan (01:01:47.01) Perfectly said, we'll end on that. Thank you so much for being on today. Ilana Golan (01:01:51.445) Jeff, you are amazing. Thank you for a beautiful show as always. Jeff Dudan (01:01:55.714) It's been so much fun. It's been an honor and a pleasure and I'm so excited for all the people that you're helping. All right, well, this is Jeff Duden and we have been with Ilana Golan and we have been on the home front. Thank you for listening. Jeff Dudan (01:02:13.802) Okay.
Brief Summary In this powerhouse episode of Unemployable, Jeff Dudan sits down with Tommy Mello—founder of A1 Garage Door Service and Home Service Freedom—to unpack his journey from painting garage doors to building a $600M service empire. Tommy shares real, raw stories of grit, leadership, systems, mentorship, and the mindset shifts that unlocked exponential growth. It’s a masterclass in scaling, branding, recruiting, and dreaming bigger than big. This episode is for entrepreneurs who are tired of thinking small and ready to build legacy. Key Takeaways Dream 10X bigger than you think you can —then reverse-engineer the plan to get there. Hire experts and listen to them : Mentors like Al Levi and Dan Antonelli changed everything. Systemize first, then scale : Playbooks, scorecards, and SOPs enabled explosive growth. Pay for performance, celebrate wins : Culture and accountability go hand-in-hand. Invest in personal growth to lead better : Mindset, health, and self-belief compound business results. Give back and stay humble : Tommy shares openly, invites people in, and leads with legacy. Featured Quote “The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding.” — Tommy Mello TRANSCRIPT Who is Tommy Mello? From Painting Garage Doors to Building a Service Empire Tommy Mello (00:00.174) Should be good. Jeff Dudan (00:01.294) Okay, all right, sounds good to me. And we do like the hero's journey, you know? Okay, cool. So we, you know, the podcast is obviously for entrepreneurs. We do the hero's journey. So anything that you're comfortable to share about. Tommy Mello (00:05.302) I got an hour and a half actually, hour and a half. Jeff Dudan (00:18.974) you know, early days, your early business, your early partnerships, stuff like that would be great just to kind of set the tone. And then, man, we'll, so I'll just ask you at the beginning kind of who is Tommy Mello, and you can take that wherever you want to, but, and then we'll just go wherever we go with it. I never seem to have a problem figuring out what to talk about, but I got some, definitely got some things that I'd like to dig into while we're on it. So, sound good? All right, man. Three. Tommy Mello (00:42.37) Cool. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, let's do it. Jeff Dudan (00:47.57) two one. Welcome everybody. We are on the home front with Jeff Duden and today we have the super entrepreneur and business builder Tommy Mello. Welcome Tommy. Tommy Mello (00:58.162) Hey, pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jeff Dudan (01:00.518) Yeah, excited. I've known you for a few years. I was on your podcast maybe three or four years ago, then got a chance to break some bread with you a few weeks out in Phoenix on your home court. And just, again, just amazed at what's happened for you over the last three, four, five years and excited to share that with all of the people on the home front today. If you don't mind, I'd like to just hear a little bit about You know, how you grew up, anything you care to share. Who is Tommy Mello? Tommy Mello (01:34.374) Yeah, I know it's a great question and I like this question. I'm from Detroit. I was born and raised until I was 16. Mom and dad got a divorce when I was seven years old. Father went through a lot of stuff but was still there for me. My mom worked three jobs, really lower to middle income, figured out a way to make it work. She and I were born on the same day, March 4th. She's 1954. I'm 83 kind of 41. But I learned to work at a very early age. You know, I was mowing lawn shoveling snow started washing dishes when I was 12. I learned if you wanted something you got to work for it. And so I moved to Phoenix when I was 16 finished up high school started a landscaping business. I was busing tables. I mean, what I figured out really quickly was when I wasn't working, I wasn't making money. And I've always heard wealth is actually when you actually make money when you sleep so Started to figure that out early on and I knew I wanted to be my own boss. So Started a landscape company did water conservation analysis That went really good. I was able to kind of have this kind of a Blue ocean strategy that I could save people a lot of money in water and it was a big deal at the time here in Phoenix, so able to convert a lot of deals. I was bringing in about 30 grand a month, which early 20s, that was a lot of money on top of bartending. I was flipping pole flexes. I was flipping cars, I was flipping houses. I was, you name it. And one of my roommates said, do you know how to paint? And I said, I know how to paint, but what are we talking about? He goes, can you paint garage doors? I'm managing a company. And I go, garage door company? Yeah. I can paint Rogers how much he's like 100 bucks a door, but you got to you got to buy the paint. So I went to Home Depot and I found this thing it's called Glidden Speed Co. and it cost 12 bucks a gallon at the time. This is 2005. And he said you could probably paint two or three doors a day. So I hired this old man. I remember the guy was in his it wasn't that old but you know in his late 60s. And he taught me how to fan it on and spray we use his sprayer I paid him a few hundred bucks a door he taught me on three doors. Tommy Mello (04:00.138) And I walk into Home Depot, I buy a... What the heck is it called? It was a Max 5 painter. It was about a $500 machine at the time. And I got to the point where I could paint 10 doors on Saturday, 10 doors on Sunday. I go meet these technicians and they hand me the samples. I called every company I could find in the yellow book. And I became their painter of choice. And I said, guys... Why don't I just do the color match of the house? It'll actually help you. You could upsell it, charge the customer 400 bucks, give me 100 of it. And so they all did it. And I'd meet these technicians and this is when Phoenix was blowing up. And they're like, yeah, I'm making 100 grand a year. And I'm like, man, maybe this is something I need to look into. So my other roommate and I started a business, didn't know what we were doing, made every mistake in the book. I mean, I got in the Yellow Book pages. That's why we named it A1 Garage Door Service. Jeff Dudan (04:40.563) Right. Jeff Dudan (04:55.488) Yeah. Tommy Mello (04:58.39) 2010 I got my mama stepdad to move out help me with the business broke up with a partner Still best friends with him. Just things weren't going I felt like I was working more than he was he was smoking a lot of weed at the time and 2014 I found a really good right hand I found my integrator 2017 I got on the service time to start a podcast 2018. I met out levy the seven power contractor who was been my best consultant. He helped me set up manual standard operating procedures and org chart, come up with a really operational excellence and really started grinding these last few years and we took some chips out the table last year. Ended up getting just under 600 million and I rolled half of that back into the business. So the goal is in two years should be a billionaire. But I'll tell you this, I'm humble. I'm still super hungry. Very modest. I never I don't drive a Lamborghini. I don't flaunt the money. I never try to be conceited about what I have because in a lot of ways I was lucky. The multiples were through the roof. I had an amazing team. I wouldn't have been able to do it with all the great people, but that's who I am today. Jeff Dudan (06:11.986) You know, a lot of people say that, Tommy, and what an incredible story. You know, a lot of people say that about the people, but my experience with you is that you live it. You just mentioned Al Levy, and if you go into your book Elevate, you give props after the key chapters to people in your company that I assume either own those areas of the business or they contributed to helping you create excellence in that business, recruiting, marketing systems, culture, leadership. And you know, that's rare, right? Because usually, you know, a lot of people like to take credit for all of it. And you know, you clearly pay homage to the people that help get you there. So you had a partnership and you know, you had the courage to end it. You know, a lot of people stay in toxic relationships, both in personal and in business situations. What was it that made you end that relationship with certainty? Why were you so clear about it? Tommy Mello (07:18.506) Well, one day he went out of town and I handled all the phone calls. Usually he was on phones and I'd go do the work. And we tripled our booking rate when he was gone for a week. I mean, I fought for every job. I did not miss a call. You know, they say CSR is the best of the best, book 90%. I booked every frickin' call. Like, my life depended on it. Like, someone was gonna die if I didn't book it. And that's how I started the business. I was hungry. And I mean, I went to war. Jeff Dudan (07:36.808) Right. Jeff Dudan (07:42.858) Yeah. Tommy Mello (07:48.158) I mean, I'd make sure I got a five-star review. Before reviews were even a thing, I was getting videos with an old-fashioned camp, you know, that you put the memory stick in before we had phones like this. I was just super like... I had other companies training me. I'd pay them to train me on stuff I didn't know how to do that we'd say no to, so I learned how to do it. And it was like he was my best friend, my roommate, and my business partner. Jeff Dudan (07:57.31) Right. Tommy Mello (08:15.722) It was almost like a marriage except we were not doing anything. It was just good friends. And you know, it was really it was probably one of the hardest points in my life to kind of there's been a few times in my life that I had to really find the inner part of me because I'm not good at this stuff, man. I'm very like I don't fire people. I'm very loyal. But this time I just knew I had to make a change. And so my mom I called her up and I said I'm going to need help. because I don't really have anybody I could trust. That I needed inventory, payroll help. I'm marketing sales and motivation. I'm not good at payroll. I don't like inventory. I had to do that stuff for a while and I hated it. I hated it. So my mom and stepdad moved out and they helped me build a business. I paid my stepdad 65 grand a year. Paid my mom 15 bucks an hour. And my mom made great money. She was a realtor. She figured out ways to make money, but they did it because they loved me. Jeff Dudan (08:48.832) Yeah. Tommy Mello (09:14.682) And you know, they're millionaires now they're retired, but it was tough, man. I'll tell you, I had a really, I remember the day I went up to him and it said, listen, we've got some debt on the business. I want to continue to be your best friend. I'm going to either give you the business, you take the debt or I'll take it. And he thought about it and he says, I want to move to Montana with, to be with family. So, uh, yeah, that's how that went. Jeff Dudan (09:34.536) Right. Jeff Dudan (09:39.167) Yeah. Yeah, I had the same situation. So I started with four partners. I ended up buying 100% of the business in 2004. But it was that third buyout, or the second buyout, the guy before the last one, was my roommate from college. We started the painting business together. We cut our teeth in the hurricane business together. And then we found these other two guys to start this business with. But it was to that point. It was like, we couldn't get to a number. And finally, and I thought I was bringing the value to the business similar to you. I think I was leading the business, our office was growing, we were really doing all the thought leadership and all of that and I just basically said, look, I mean the goal, you know, my thinking was they didn't, I didn't think they would think they could do it without me but I knew I could do it without them. So I basically, I said, look, you're either gonna take, you're gonna, I'm gonna write a number and you're gonna pay it or I'm gonna pay you but that's the number. And. you know, thank goodness he took it. Cause I ended up buying the last guy out and then, you know, growing the business. So, at some point you're on your own now, you're moving forward and then, you know, you're a sales and marketing guy and you're probably outselling. your ability to produce and then all of a sudden, you know, the business is growing and, or you correct me if I'm wrong, but then you have this hundred million dollar brainstorm where you basically say, you know, and I'm not gonna put words in your mouth, but oftentimes I see people at these inflection points and they're like, they're so tired of the stress, they're so tired of like what's not working right, that they basically just take all of their self-limiting beliefs and they say, screw that. Jeff Dudan (11:29.07) I'm not, you know, we're just going to go for it. We're going to, we're going to create a vision that's so big that everybody's dream can fit inside of it and then I'm going to make it happen and I'm going to take these people with me because you said it, man, like you spend your entire life going through life, trying to find those few people that you can actually trust and When you find those people and you can get alignment with them inside of your business and you can get clarity inside of it and it's your vision and it's big enough, that's when big gains can happen. And you've 100X, a thousand X to your business in a very short period of time. And that only happens when you have people that believe in you and that trust your leadership. So you tell us about that $100 million brainstorm, like what led to it? and what it looked like when it happened. The $100M Whiteboard: Tommy’s Big Vision and Reverse Engineering Success Tommy Mello (12:21.418) Yeah, one other comment that when I did sell, I sent Gabe, my old partner, it's nothing much I sent him 250. I gifted him 250 grand. I didn't need to do it. But I just, I wanted to make sure when he saw our success that we were nothing when he went away, by the way, we had a little bit of debt. We owed the yellow book. The business was not doing much. So, um, so, you know, I realized when I leave, he walked in, we were doing 17 million, I think. And he said, man, you're a firefighter. You're one of the best firefighters I've ever met. He goes, you know everything about this business. He goes, but you're the only one that knows it. He goes, you got every answer to every question and you are capable of doing anything. But he goes, you don't empower your people. He goes, you're the problem solver. He goes, Tommy, if I work with you, you're not going to have any problems. You're going to get bored. and you're going to grow and you're going to grow so fast that you're going to have more problems and we're going to get it organized again and then you're going to grow again and you're going to empower get the right people on the bus as Jim Collins would say and the systems actually pick the people so people say the people are the most important thing but the systems are who pick the people so one day i'm in my office and i whiteboard i take this big whiteboard and i wrote 100 million on the top right corner and i pulled out my calculator i said let's just say does um no i wrote i'm trying to think that i start with 100 million i think i wrote 100 million and i said if i could get each guy to do 500 grand a year and this is five years ago or maybe even a little more i said we would need 2 000 technicians so i wrote 2 000 technicians next to 100 million and i said where are we at today we were at like 60 and i said okay so what are we going to need We're going to need full-time recruiters. And I put down a list of the... So I wrote a line all the way down of where we were today. And I know this is hard to see, but I wrote a line backwards all the way to the beginning, the left corner. And I said, here's where we're starting from. What needs to happen in year one? What does it look like in year two? What does it look like in year three, year four? Let's get there in five years. So I wrote down everything and I called up, three of my managers walked in and they looked at the number at the top right and they kind of laughed. They're like... Tommy Mello (14:48.118) What have you been smoking? $100 million in the garage door industry? And I explained it to them and they walked out of there going, we're gonna do $100 million. They bought into my dream. They figured, I'm a math guy. I write down equations and formulas. I live with a calculator. I usually carry a TI-83 with me. And so we just, we had a very concrete plan and we just executed. And you know, like I said, most of home service is all about capacity planning. You need enough technicians and enough leads. And I'm really good at getting leads. And I shifted during COVID my thinking. I thought, how do I get new customers? How do I get new clients? How do I get new customers? How do I get new clients? And then I said, how do I get better people, my internal clients? How do I get A plus players that'll do a million dollars a year in revenue that'll get five star reviews and recruit for me and pick up shifts and not steal and stay organized. And when the shift changed and it took place, everything changed for me. And I started loving my people way more. And I started smiling more and I started enjoying Mondays more. Cause I worked around people that were hand-picked. They were fun, they tell a great story. They look you in the eye when they talk. And that's how we're building the companies. We're so focused on the people. And it's the systems that help get the people. So many people say, I can't even get a good guy to just fill out an application. I'm like, yeah, you think you're gonna find everybody on Indeed and ZipRecruiter? Yeah, that's the unemployment. Jeff Dudan (16:12.934) Now, they're working for somebody. Tommy Mello (16:15.03) That's the unemployment line coming to you there. Jeff Dudan (16:16.946) Yeah, that's right. Yeah. From Leads to Leaders: How Shifting Focus to People Changed Everything Tommy Mello (16:19.123) So that's kind of when it all changed. Jeff Dudan (16:21.79) Yeah, 3% of people are unemployed right now, and those are the people answering your ads. Like, you gotta tap people on the shoulder, you gotta get their attention. Some's gotta snap their head around, and they need to see something that they can get into that serves a need or feeds a desire that they've got. But, you know, generally people wanna be part of something. Like, as long as people know where they stand, they're usually okay. It's when they come in and it's different than what they expected. That's when people get upset. So as long as you can give people a realistic and clear picture as to what's going to happen and then you can deliver on that. You can get some people, you can get loyalty. And that's fantastic. Tommy Mello (17:08.886) Well, what I will tell you about that is you ever see somebody like you watch a movie and the detectives in New York and somebody is retiring and they have the cake and they go out beer and they party they go do karaoke. I said, why don't we do this when they decided to work here. And so throw a celebration that they are willing to gamble their entire family and take a big chance to come work for you. Jeff Dudan (17:22.834) Sure. Tommy Mello (17:36.874) This is their life. You spend more time working than you do with family than you do sleeping than anything. So we got a red carpet. We do a champagne toast. We I read a handwritten letter to the family. We we celebrate them coming. We don't just say here, you're going to follow this guy for the next two weeks. Here's your manual. Go have fun. We actually want to get involved, get to know them, meet their families. You know, I'm not I'm not I'll never be 100 percent happy. I'm always going to be working on getting one percent better. But I'll tell you I do get excited to meet these new people and get to know them a little bit. And I don't, you know, now there's going to be, after the next three months, there's going to be almost a thousand people here. I wish I had a relationship like I used to have, but, and that's why we hire managers to do the same thing that looked and genuinely care about people and want to see them win. I mean, we just got back from Pinnacle Trip in Mexico. We took 61 people with us. Such a great time. And my meeting this morning, I said, listen. Guys, we work 260 days a year. Let's say we average three jobs. Multiply that by your average ticket. You need to have $1,670 to make Pinnacle next year. At three jobs, you could run four and we could pull that number down, or you could run two, you could move that number up. Or you could pick up a shift on a six day. There's no reason none of you could do this. All you got to do is ask. I got ride-alongs. We got Rilla Voice. We've got come back to Phoenix and train. We've got extra training. We've got the market acceleration technician training. Every one of you deserve this. When you look in the mirror and you don't say you want it bad enough, when you say I'm not worth it, I don't deserve it. You shouldn't work for A1. Go work for my competitors. But if you work here, you deserve it. You are welcomed. You're allowed to make money. And some people say, well, I don't sell things people don't need. I go, that's bullshit. I sell things people don't need all the time. I sell things people want. Nobody needs a Mustang. Nobody needs a Rolex. Nobody needs a water filtration system. They wanted it. So we offer things people might want, like the MyQ on the phone so you could open and close your garage. No one needs to open and close their garage from their phone, but they want it. And so I remove excuses. That's what I'm really good at. And I say, what are your dreams? What are your goals? And then I say, that's not big enough dream. I don't want you to own a house. I want you to buy a house every year. Jeff Dudan (19:50.526) Right. Tommy Mello (20:03.326) I don't want you to go to Disney World. I want you to go first class and cut all the lines. I want you to take a month off each year and enjoy your family. So let's remind you of what your dreams are and let's take those down to KPIs and let me give you a reason. I'm not gonna put you on a performance improvement plan, man, because you told me what you wanted. You looked me dead in the eye and you said you wanted this more than life. So let's freak it. Let me help you get to what you want and what you deserve. Jeff Dudan (20:27.018) Yeah, yeah, fantastic. That's awesome. Who was Al Levy? How can people find an Al Levy to walk into their life? Was he a business coach, a business consultant, a friend? How did you find him? The Power of Mentorship: Al Levi, Manuals, and the 7-Power Contractor System Tommy Mello (20:41.646) So Al was a huge consultant. He was number four on my podcast, the home service expert. And I don't know why he found a liking to me. And I was confused at the time, just a hard worker. Maybe I don't know what it was. And he said, Hey, Tommy, I guess he was probably 64. He just turned 70 or 64 at the time. And he said, Jeff Dudan (20:55.346) Maybe it's the energy. Could be the energy. Tommy Mello (21:08.958) Why don't we go out to lunch? I live in Scottsdale So we go to lunch. I hand him my book the home service Millionaire he looks at her and he says this is garbage. We need to rewrite it And uh, he says would you mind if I came and did a shop tour? So he comes into my shop And he goes, can you show me your manuals and I give him this old dusty book of nothing And he goes why are all these calendars on the wall? Haven't you guys ever heard of google calendar? or Outlook and he tripped over a cord and then he said, I could have stole your whole warehouse with your own forklift. There was nobody in there. And then he said, would you consider working with me? I said, I'd love to work with you. And over the course of the next two years, I gave him 350 grand. By the way, I didn't have the money at the time. I was good at making money just to know how to keep it. So he got me the right financial help too, his friend Alan Roar and Gal, her sister. So they came in and helped me and Alan and I sat in a room with two of my best guys. Adam and Brian and we built the manuals one by one And he did ride-alongs with my guys and said every one of your guys do springs differently I'm gonna show you how to get them to all do it the same way He goes you got 25 different trucks because we need to make one truck And one van And he goes you're gonna spend a lot of time building this tommy and i'd walk in there with a new idea every day And he said stop No ideas till we build the fundamentals turn off your damn cell phone Put it in that bucket. We had a bucket we put our cell phones into. And we just worked. We figured out, can you have facial hair or not? What's our tattoo policy? What happens if your truck breaks down? The manuals were 75 pages each. It gave you how to play the game and the KPIs are how to win. And he was super influential. He said, he's trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies. He retired after me. He said, you're my best student. He goes, you're gonna take this to a whole new level that no one else is gonna be able to keep up with. And if you go to 7pow He does the manuals for people. It's like seven, eight, $10,000. The way I built the business, he gives it all away. He automated the sequence, but Al, without Al, he just turned 70, I would not be where I'm at. He is not only a mentor, but he's like a second dad to me. And I love my dad more than anything, but Al's took me under his wing, protected me. One day he walks in and he took a picture and it was of my van and it was black and white. Branding That Converts: How Dan Antonelli Helped Elevate A1’s Identity Tommy Mello (23:34.898) And he goes, Tommy, tell me what you do from this picture. Like if you would just look at it. And I'm like, ah, it's not very good. Is it? And I had a lot of pride in my raps. He goes, there's this guy, Dan Antonelli it's called kick charge. He did ghetto. He goes, you should probably talk to him. And so I talked to Dan and Dan was like, yeah, that'll be like 25 grand. And at the time I thought that was a lot of money. We were at 40 million at that point. Tommy Mello (24:04.982) Dan ripped me apart and I said, all right, I'm just gonna do a leap of faith. I'm gonna trust you. And we built the character of me on the van. And I had no idea. Like I saw it, I said, Dan, I want it to be like an old school feeling. Like kind of like the Wells Fargo. Like I want it to just the trustworthy feeling that when you pull up, I want it to be vibrant, bright. And I want it to look like no other competitors. And he built the perfect brand. And I didn't have Angie's List on the side. I didn't put everything, springs, rollers, cables, bearings. He just said, no, we're going to put your brand on it. It's going to not be affected by anything else. You don't even need a phone number on it. He goes, it's, people will know who you are. And when I got the brand done, trusting Al Levy and Dan Antonelli, my prices went through the roof. I started charging more because people expected a premium company to show up. I started recruiting way better. Because now my website looked like my billboard, looked like my Val Pak. Everything was my signature strip on my email now had, I had all the color codes right. And my stickers, everything. And you know, then we got the whole building done by Dan Antonelli and the training center. And these are the little things that I coach people on that like I went through the hard knocks. If I knew this stuff when 2007, when I started, I'd be like $10 billion right now. It's like you get... the structure set up, you get the right branding done. Donald Miller wrote the story brand and like your brand has to tell a story. And so Al was just, I mean, he's helped me over and over and over. And I know when I call him, he'll have the answer. He doesn't listen much, he'll just tell me. And I talk a lot, but I'm very silent with him. I just, he does the talking. Jeff Dudan (25:33.599) Right. Jeff Dudan (25:53.866) So you learned, fortunately, at a relatively young age, and you're still a young man for where you are, of course. And you learned the value of listening to experts and getting in the right room and putting the right people around you. You wouldn't be where you are without Al today, or you might get there, but it might have taken longer. What other areas have you found where you've been able to put yourself to get in these rooms and around the kind of people that have made a difference for you? Tommy Mello (26:24.706) That's what I'm the best at. I mean, if I had to have one skill, I was taught everybody this morning, my dad and my grandpa would go three hours in the wrong direction before they asked for help. They were men of men. They didn't need help. They weren't going to ask for help. They could take apart anything and put it back together and fix it. And when I watched them, I decided I'm not going to be like that. I'm going to be the first one. If I feel like I'm at all in the wrong direction, I'm asking for help. So the first thing I did is I looked. I studied so much, I've read thousands of books. I've got over 1,200 on Audible. And I said, who's the most successful industry in home service? And the way I figured that out is who has the most private jets, and it's HVAC. So I found the biggest HVAC companies around the country, right, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, usually they do the three. And I humbly asked them, I said, I'm a big fan of yours, I read your book, I'd like to come in. Jeff Dudan (27:10.991) Okay. Tommy Mello (27:23.114) I'll fly out there. I want to be a fly on the wall. I'll buy you guys lunch. But I was very humble about it. I didn't say I know everything. I'm going to be a billionaire. You know, a lot of people now are like, oh, I just said, hey, I'm just a guy doing garage chores. I'm in Phoenix. I love who you are. I look up to you. I'd love for you. And I don't want to take a lot of your time. We just kind of want to be a fly on the wall. If I could talk to some people, that'd be great. And Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, Leland Smith, Keegan Hodges. These guys don't let me into their home. And they answered every question. They'd let me meet every single person on their team. I could spend time with the CMO, the CFO. And I extracted all this knowledge and I'd fill up a spiral notebook. The difference is with me versus a lot of people is I put it into effect the day I got home. As I actually implemented it because knowledge without implementation is nothing. So. I went and I just said, this is what we're going to do. We're going to apply this stuff. And people thought I was crazy because they're like, great, what shop did you go to now? What book did you read now? And I've kind of had to tame the pace of how much I do stuff. But that's all I did is ask very humbly. And my favorite three letters in the dictionary are ASK in that order. Just got to ask. Jeff Dudan (28:38.698) Have you taken advantage of some of these networks, YPL, Vistage, Genius, these types of things? Networks That Pay Off: Genius, Nextar, Home Service Freedom, and Paying It Forward Tommy Mello (28:45.718) I'm in the Genius Network. I just joined that because Joe Polish is probably one of the best connectors in the planet. I'm in his 100K group. I'm not in YPO. I was in Young Entrepreneurial Council for a long time. That helped me get into Forbes. Now I'm a regular contributor for Ink Magazine. I write an article every week for them. And that builds domain authority, by the way. I've got the highest. website ranking out of any home service company. I can't find anybody even close to me other than 1-800-GOT-JUNK and River Pools, which is Marcus Sheridan that is really good at SEO. So yeah, I think there's a lot of value to be added into those groups. I've traveled to Nextar. They let me come into their home. They let me see everything. I stayed at Julian's house, who's now the CEO. And I started my own thing called Home Service Freedom. We've got a couple hundred members. It'll be a couple thousand here in the next two years because the formula works. Everything that I'm talking about works. Everybody that I've coached in the garage industry has tripled within their first year. Performance pay, branding correctly, recruiting the right people. And my buddy Jody started a company called Rapid Hire. And I hired him and he taught me how to recruit. And we use social media to recruit. Rapid hire is something I think everybody should look at because without them and they're the they're the salt of the earth. I Will say this I? Don't have any enemies There are so many people in this industry home service and home improvement that hate each other. I talked to everybody I don't ever I've when I shake your hand. I come through with it I don't have to look over my shoulder ever and I'm friends with everybody and they all they'll all give me help and I help everybody. If someone wants to come in and learn, I just invite them in. And I have no, people are like, why don't you hold anything back? And I'm like, because I got nothing to lose. I'm already, by the time three months comes, this is gonna be a different company. I'm here to help. And if I can help people grow and change their families and change their communities and change the way we do things in the home service industry, the blue collar industry, I'm giving back that people have given to me. Tommy Mello (31:01.666) for the last decade. This is the least I can do to pay it forward. And that's why all these other guys helped me because they got help. They all had a mentor that helped them. Some of them, several mentors. And that's what we do when we're successful. We pay it forward. Jeff Dudan (31:13.554) You know, people will give you $10 for every dollar you can take from them. I believe that. I've been in business with people and you know, they're transactional people and they're take, and they just burn relationships as they go around. And, you know, ultimately they, you know, I guess they never run out of people, but they never get big. I mean, people wrapped up inside of themselves make very small packages. And We do the same thing. So we run these Meet the Team days and where we bring in candidates and we'll have 15 to 25 candidates in twice a month. And nice size events and all of that, but more often than not, I'll have two or three emerging brands in the back of the room. People I've met at the conference, somebody that saw me speak, somebody that just reached out. And I'll say, hey, if you're an emerging brand and you're trying to grow your franchise, the best thing that you can do is come here. come to our meet the team day, see how we do it. Because at the end of the day, if they don't do it well, and they cast dispersions on our industry because they're not doing it the right way, then that reflects poorly on everybody. We get regulated, all that kind of stuff. So we're interested in expanding the reach and relevance of the sector. And that means people doing it responsibly and people doing it well. And I've got, I mean, I've been involved with 30 or 40 different brands. in some capacity or another consulting, advising, investing or whatever it is. But man, there's probably been a hundred brands that have been through here over the last 15 years. And you never know. Like, and by the way, something always comes back. Some of these people actually have one guy that's a president of two of our brands that built a brand with his family, 113 locations in the state sales space, sold it, went to work there two years. And then he came back and he said, hey, I'm done with this contract. I want to. I want to come to work with you. So you never know what's going to come back, but like paying it forward, it's, you know, and if nothing ever comes back, look, maybe that was our contribution to the universe. Because, you know, the... Tommy Mello (33:16.782) I never give in the thought of, you know, I'm not the godfather. One day I'm going to call you. You know, I never have that expectation. You know, Dan Martell was sitting next to me in this very room. And he said something to me. He said, and it really stands out as, and it's not quite on the thing we were talking about, but he said, you know, Tommy, I charged for my time. He actually is one of my coaches. And he wrote the book, buy back, buy back your time. Jeff Dudan (33:23.128) Yeah, exactly. Tommy Mello (33:45.738) And he said, it's amazing to me how many people I've talked to over the last five years. He built SAS Academy, very successful guy. And he said, it's amazing how many people you give them your price and they, they try to haggle with you. And you know, he goes, I'm really, I'm not cheap. And he told me his price. I wired him the money the same day. And it was lots of hundreds of thousands for one hour a month for one year. And He said, I buy how I want to be bought from. He goes, I attract the top clients ever because I pay full price. I don't haggle. I just, and one day I called him up and I said, you know what really bothers me is I've got plumbers that would do stuff for me at a great price. And I've got people that take care of my houses and my investments and they don't call me. And he goes, what are we talking here? I'm like, well, just yesterday I could have saved 10 grand. He goes, who cares? 10 grand is a rounding error. He goes, that's nothing. He goes, I understand how you were 10 years ago. That's a big deal. He goes, think of percentages instead of dollars at the size you are now. Number one. Number two is he goes, just remember and I start now I buy whole like I've learned this in the last year. I buy differently. Like Bree wants a nice purse. I mean, we just went looked at one the other day. It's 36 grand that I didn't do but you know, I'm like Jeff Dudan (35:14.717) Everybody has their limits. Tommy Mello (35:15.058) I buy how I want to be bought from. And it's amazing what the world does to you. It's amazing how, like, some people go to a seminar and they're afraid to spend $1,000. And yet, you know, then they go, how do you attract customers that spend 30, 40 grand? I'm like, because I put it out there. I attract it, I put it out. Whether it's karma or it's divine intervention, it's Jesus. I just, I have this ability because I attract people. and clients that want to do business with us, they call three companies. I had a guy call me two days ago, Justin Tatum. He goes, the other company was 6,000. We were 16,000. And I said, well, so what happened? He goes, they went with us. That's not, that's a $10,000 gap. But we built value. We told them how the process is gonna work. We showed them the difference. We have different materials. We have trademark parts. And a lot of people, that's the kind of people I attract. Those are my clientele. And I think that's an interesting story because so many people, they won't spend money on manuals. They won't hire the right consultant. They want everything for a deal. They'll end up getting a fractional piece of crap somebody and it'll never happen for them because they're looking to cut corners everywhere and get a deal. Then they wonder why all their clients want deals from them. Jeff Dudan (36:32.426) That's right. Yeah, if you know your, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Tools, Tech, and CRMs: Building an Unbeatable Home Service Tech Stack Tommy Mello (36:34.222) It's crazy how that works. Jeff Dudan (36:39.678) I want to talk a little bit about tools and you know, underneath everything that we've talked about today is a tool. You've got pay for performance, you've got recruiting tools, you've got systems, you've got all of these things. Like when did you start to really create your own toolkit? Because like when you go to these different groups or you go to these different people, man, it's like they've created this system, they've created this process. More often than not, Really, really simple, easy to understand, easy to implement, easy to execute. It's just a matter of people actually following through with it and getting the right toolkit. Um, you know, I'm interested to know your thoughts on, uh, you know, the tools that you build and how you share those with people and how you use those, you know, to create, uh, to create the outcomes that you're looking for. Tommy Mello (37:33.386) Yeah, well, when I got on the service day, and I'll tell you, it's a pretty cool story. After my exploration with HVAC, I was on my fifth CRM. My first one was called Paper. My second one was called Excel. And then I got on several other CRMs. And I was looking to go to Salesforce to build my own custom. I was going to build a Frankenstein and API webhooks and build this. Monstrosity and it was gonna be very expensive and I looked at this demo and this thing's called service Titan And I'm like man. I need this So I call it to the sales rep and he's like, okay great. You're big enough. I could onboard you and So I'm onboarding and then he goes what's your email? I say teamello at a one garage comm And he goes a one garage. That's a weird name for an a track plumbing company. I go no I do garage tours He goes all dude. We don't We can't help you. And then I was like, I was Obsessed with getting on this software. So I called the next sales rep I tried to get my way in I tried to try to even fool being an hvac company to get onto it And no, no Finally, i'm like i'm gonna do a hell mary. I linked in to aura madessi and the founder And I sent this email that this linked in to him and he calls me back and he goes Hey, man, I got your message Jeff Dudan (38:43.779) Right. Yeah. Tommy Mello (39:01.534) He goes, I'm sorry, you got to understand we're really focused. We're trying to take over HVAC plumbing electrical. We're really trying to stay in our own lane here. And I said, Ara, you can go out there and get 100 more HVAC companies. They're not going to be as big as my garage door company. I will get hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of garage door companies on your software. Don't bet on 100 people, just bet on one, bet on me. And he goes, dude, you're crazy. He goes, I'm telling you, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. It took him a couple of days. He said, I'm sending out 10 product specialists. I only sent out one to companies. You're getting 10. We're going to if anybody's going to make a work, it's going to be useful. Let's give it a shot. And that was when they went into and then I got them their first painter, their first roof, their first company, their first. And, you know, I never I never was big into attribution with him about getting credit because he sends out money all the time. And the company's grown to three thousand people. And its valuation is. Well over 12 billion now. And people always ask, do you own service site? And I'm like, hell no, I wish I did. I don't have any equity in it, none. But that was the first time I realized the technology was so important. And now we use Rilla Voice. Now we use Sherp for automations and it's solving so many problems. Now we use Power BI. So I've got AI, I've got the business intelligence tools and I've got the automations. And here's the deal. And I'm very friendly with all my competition. I've got garage door freedom. I'm friends with all these other home service companies This is i'm saying this in the nicest way, but I don't think anybody has a chance I don't think You know Ray croc said when your enemies are drowning stick a hose in their mouth and I don't try to do that but I believe that I believe we could be a monopoly I believe there's probably going to be some type of rule that they're going to have to break us up here the next five years because We're playing at a whole new level. I always got an open ear. People are always calling me with a new technology, a new system, and I'm open to it. And we implement quicker. And we just, we make it simple. Like you said, keep it simple, Simon. And I'm having a lot of fun, man. Every day, I'm just more energy, more pumped up. I mean, I feel like this is my first day at work. I don't feel like I'm going, I like Mondays. I'm not going to work. Because everything I hate doing, I've hired people that love doing those things. And I get to be me. Tommy Mello (41:29.438) I get to go into my office and do everything I love. I mean, shoot, it's Thursday today. I'm sitting here on a podcast. I love this stuff. Jeff Dudan (41:37.482) Yeah. When did you start doing events? Why Tommy Built a 25,000 Sq Ft Retreat in Idaho for Team and Legacy Tommy Mello (41:44.435) Um, my own events probably four years ago we wanted something in the garage door space and uh, so we called it vertical track and all of a sudden it was made for the garage industry and all of a sudden i'm like hey who are you he's like oh i'm a plumber then i met an hr guy then i'm s pest control then i met a painter and i'm like this is for garage doors are like we know well we like your podcast we like your content we just we bought a ticket and i wasn't like vetting them then i was like you can come if you want and it just grew into something bigger Jeff Dudan (42:10.134) Sure. Tommy Mello (42:11.966) And then now we have home service freedom. But I started going to a lot of events, and then people started saying, hey, would you mind speaking? I remember the first event I spoke at. It was Send Out Cards, Cody Bateman. And it was in Salt Lake City. And he goes, would you speak? I got like a thousand people. And I'm like, yeah, I'll speak. And he met me and he's like, dude, you'd kill it on stage. He goes, I've just, he goes, I've never seen you speak. And in my head, I'm going, I've never spoke. and a thousand people way to like lose my virginity of the speaking world. So he they told me they're like it's 45 minutes whatever you do don't effing go over and whatever you do don't go under. And so I'm in the hotel room and I'm practicing. Yeah. And I'm like I'm practicing and I'm like and I got notes written all over my arm and I'm sweating. I mean I'm wearing this light blue shirt. Jeff Dudan (42:55.446) You gotta land it right on the dot. Jeff Dudan (43:00.747) Thank you. Tommy Mello (43:07.314) And I walk out and it was like a heat lamp and I'm like, all right. And I just started and I told stories. That's all I did is tell stories on stage and I ended perfectly. And Cody comes up, puts his arm around me and he's like, dude, you could come back every year. You just blew everybody out of the water. And I mean, now I just get up there because it's like a muscle, you grow it. And now it's like, I don't care if there's 10,000 people. I'm gonna bring the heat. As long as it's my subject matter. Jeff Dudan (43:17.354) Yeah. Tommy Mello (43:37.15) And I love it. I was on stage on Tuesday and a couple people, Josh from Parker and Sons, Josh Kelly, he walks up to me, he's like, I've seen you speak so many times. He's like, that was the best you've ever done by far. He's like, but here's the difference. You made us laugh. You made us cry. You were so passionate. You were all over. You would make everybody feel like they were the only one in the room. And you had fun. Jeff Dudan (43:37.354) That's right. Tommy Mello (44:06.738) And he goes, that takes talent. And he goes, great job. And it was the best compliment I've ever received on talking and a speech. And it was like, I never do a keynote, the same thing. I really try to taper it to the audience I'm talking to. But I really have learned to enjoy it. Jeff Dudan (44:24.534) The stories, as long as you stay inside of the stories, man, it always seems to go well. It just, you know, like talk to what you know, give them your strengths, share your experience. I was just doing an interview for Liberty University right before we got in here. And she asked me this question. I was like, Oh, these would be some good questions to ask Tommy, but you know, they were a little academic and whatever. But her question was, you know, tell me about your, you know, tell me about the challenges or you know, some of the, you know, kind of this broad softball. you know, type thing. And, uh, you know, I thought about it for a good bit. And I said, you know, my, my thing is, is never ask for advice, never give advice, just share experiences. And you know, if somebody's telling you something that they've never done, man, the chance of them being wrong. is high or if I'm giving you like my opinion on something that I've never done, man, you probably shouldn't listen to it. So, you know, stories like I've got, you know, I got 35 years with the stories and home services, man. It's we've screwed everything up. We've gotten shot at. I mean, it's like, you know, going through disasters for 30 years and all of that. I mean, so but, you know, sharing experiences with people, it's like even just thinking about it, man. It makes me light up. And, you know, I've You know, done more speaking lately and, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's something that I've really, you know, doing, like you said, doing this podcast, getting to go out and speak, man, it's, it's my favorite stuff to do. And I also think it brings a lot of value to people. Tommy Mello (45:55.754) It's great. My dad always used to say because he's like, man, if I went back to high school, he goes, I did good in high school. I asked every girl out and he goes, if a girl said no, I was persistent. And he always said, if I knew now, if I knew then what I know now, and I used to hate him, I was like, tell me what you know. I can still use it. And I now I'm like, metaphorically, I've got all these bruises and scars. I remember when that happened. I remember when that happened. I remember, oh, don't do that. Performance pay, spend more time on the process of making sure Jeff Dudan (46:14.119) That's right. Tommy Mello (46:25.634) There's three reasons why a system fails. No, no system, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. And most of the time it's the third one, the system's not being followed. The performance pay, me and Adam used to sit down, pick up a six pack of beer and come up with a new performance pay. And man, we'd have to change it every three months. We didn't plan on this. We didn't know this. So now I'm really good at it. And, uh, it's like, you can't take away experience. You know, these guys come out of an Ivy league school. They think they know how to run a company. They do not have the skill set of the experience that we have. And I speak to blue collar people. I can't sit in a boardroom and talk graphs and hypotheticals. I'm good at what I do. I know my place. I know what I'm good at, and that's where I stay. And I know there's people that are brilliant, that are smarter than me. They're better at a lot of things, but I've got a lot of experience. I've been through it. I lived in an apartment for four years. We owned the complex, but it was 900 square feet. People are like, why do you live in such a small place when you own seven other houses? I'm gonna go on to be close to my technicians. And they all stayed there. And we lived in this tiny apartment. I drove a 2012 salvage Titan, salvage title Titan, a Nissan Titan. And they said, why do you drive this? I said, till every single technician installed as a new truck, I'm not gonna own a new truck. And that's the deal. It's like I had delayed gratification. I was disciplined and I stayed consistent. And, you know, and I listen. My grandma said she I was her favorite grandson. My grandpa said I was his favorite grandson Because I listened to their stories and I sat there even it was the same story for the 12th time I'd still laugh. I still listened to it. I had ultra respect for my elders And we'd walk my grandpa and I would walk around and I hear eight stories were the same But I'd always hear a new one and I just learned to listen instead of just here and I think that I'm more excited about what I'm gonna learn here in the next few years than what I'm gonna teach. And when you teach, you learn your stuff better, you become more of an expert at it. Jeff Dudan (48:22.918) Yeah, yeah, I was watching this Netflix documentary on Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend, and it was pretty cool because it had three seasons of life for him. It had his bodybuilding career, you know, and by the way, like, who had the camera when he was 14 years old in Austria, because there was a hell of a lot of footage of this guy. He loved the camera, like he loved the camera, like way back then, because there was tons of pictures and videos. So then it went all the way up through, you know, then being Mr. Olympian all those times and just a great career. And then, oh, by the way, he was trying to break into acting, but he was doing real estate. So he was a big real estate investor. He ended up with multifamily office buildings, all that kind of stuff. He had an office and he was doing all that. So like he, he had his bodybuilding money. He had his real estate now. Then he went in and then he crushed and him and Stallone are going back and forth for like who's the best leading man in action films. And he had just this huge box, you know, over billions and billions of dollars at the box office. And then politics. So he's had three lives within a life, three lives that any one person would kill to have. You have an amazing life right now. I think I know what's next for you. You're 41 years old. It's pretty clear in what you've said here and also what you've said when we've talked offline that you've got, this is just the beginning for A1 and the other things that you're affiliated with. Do you have aspirations after that to do anything else or have you thought that far about it? Tommy Mello (49:55.602) Well, one of the things I've been working on with Dan Martell is he says you're 75 years old. I want you to think Back to year 41 now What did you do with your life? He said what did you do and I want you to be super descriptive family religion community business So we started working on this And he says if you're buying a plane, I want to know what color it is I want to know that what the seats look like. I want you where did you visit in italy? Who are you with? I want to see what your daily life looks like throughout every year. When do kids happen if that's in your DNA for the future? So I've been working on this. And the one thing I really admire Elon Musk, because he's trying to change, whether it's satellites and bringing third world countries internet or going to space and going to Mars or even Tesla running non-fuel. just the things he's doing is just amazing. And you know, there's Tommy Mello (51:03.094) 2 billion stars in our galaxy and 4 trillion galaxies in the known universe. And that just blows my mind. And that stuff is something that just fascinates me. I don't think I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna like be in NASA or probably be, you know, join SpaceX, but that kind of stuff is politics. I'll probably be a big, I'll get behind big. I just see that is just, it's a dirty game. and people change and they got to kind of conform and I'm not I don't conform well and politics I'd probably be great in but I probably got too many stuff in the closet that would get exploited. So politics is probably out I'll get behind some big people but I just love the idea of space and that you know that's a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about and just we're building a nice house and I know expanding our house and people are like why did you do that? Jeff Dudan (51:45.348) Yeah. Tommy Mello (52:01.797) I'm like Tommy Mello (52:08.682) And I really mean that from the bottom of my heart. I had my dad's 70th birthday. Every one of his brothers and sisters, a family of 12 kids were there. We have so much fun. And before at the apartments, it was like, I wasn't able to do that. And now it's like, how do you build experiences? Because those are what I'm gonna remember. I won't remember the day I worked the 12 hour day and burning the midnight oil. I'll remember all these experiences. And that's what I'm doing in Idaho. And every one of the people that... Jeff Dudan (52:27.754) Yeah. Tommy Mello (52:36.95) that I work with my coworkers, they're allowed to come. People say, don't let anybody see your house. They built the house. So they're allowed to bring their families. They can go swimming, they can spend the night. They're gonna be allowed to come to the Idaho. It's not like, oh, no one could see how much money you've made. They know how much money, they know what we do. We have an open book policy. They know if we hit our goal each month, they know how much we made. We don't hide anything. They know everything. Every single person knows that. I mean, every person that I work with, all my coworkers know where we're at. Jeff Dudan (53:09.274) What's going on in Idaho? What's it look like? Did you buy a ranch? Tommy Mello (53:11.554) So Sandpoint, Idaho. So I'm building, it's a big house on the lake. It's called Ponderay Lake. It's in Sandpoint. And me and Bray went everywhere. We went to Flathead Lake. We went to Lake Minnetonka. I know every lake in Michigan, cause I'm from there. I went to a couple of lakes in Milwaukee. I went to a lake in Texas. And then we go to visit a buddy. His name's Travis Ringy. We went to Sandpoint, Idaho and I fell in love with this lake. He's got a speedboat. And he goes, Hey, by the way, that's the mountain you go skiing on. It's a beautiful mountain that just got bought by winter park. And he goes, you got every snow sport you could think of here. You've got every summer sport you could think of the towns amazing. And so I go to this, he goes, that's called springy point. And he goes, I think the guy that owns bottle bond, the big bar, the most successful bar, I go, yeah, I used to work for less. I go, let's stop by there. So Les walks out and he goes, oh my God, Tommy. And we're talking and he goes, you know, that property next door, five acres is one of the most beautiful properties. And I ended up buying that five acres and we're putting this house and it's like, it's pretty sweet, man. It's I'll send you some renderings, but it's like a dream house and it's just a place that I just want to get away. I could go fishing. There's Gaza. which is a Jack Nicklaus course. It's a country club most expensive in North America. And I'm joining that. I'm not big into snowboarding or skiing. I know how to snowboard. I'm not very good, but gonna get into this stuff and just, I go all in. If I'm having fun, I'm having 100%. If I'm working, I'm 100%. I got this cool poem that's outside of my office that kind of says I mix work with pleasure as well. And I don't know. I don't know exactly how it's going to go. But I mean, right now I moved my builder up to Idaho. I bought another house to move him into. And with the footings are in, the framers are starting in two weeks. And it's, you know, it's twenty five thousand square feet. It'll hold about sixteen couples. And it's. It's a dream. You go hunting up there. The people are nice. I'll have a golden tee bowling alley, golf simulator, all the good stuff. So it's I'm really looking forward to it and building memories there. Jeff Dudan (55:31.942) Are you going to what's about 18 months to build something like that? Tommy Mello (55:37.186) So the expected date was 2026. I started on it late last year. So it was like almost a three year build, but he thinks he's got it down. He thinks it'll be done by the end of next year, but it's two houses with a sky bridge. This summer. Jeff Dudan (55:54.778) Oh, that's going to be sweet, man. Congratulations. That's a dream. Well. Tommy Mello (55:57.27) Thank you. I really, I'm looking forward to it. You know, I always invest in things that go up in value, you know That's one of the things about me if I buy a car I know it'll go up in value like I got the DeLorean and 81 DeLorean there There's only five thousand left and it's done like back to the future. I bought these rocks. They were $60,000 What is the rock called? What? amethyst and My cousin sources the rocks and he's like you could sell each of these for a hundred grand And so like, and these are like the whole peaceful, Vortech type stuff. So like, you know, I definitely, I'm splurging a little bit, but by the time I get done with the house, it'll have so much equity. The house in Paradise Valley, so much equity that I'm adding to it. So very calculated with this stuff, but enjoy it. You only live once. You can't take it away from it. You can take it to the humanity that will last for the time of life. Jeff Dudan (57:00.234) Yeah, man. You know, building, there's, you know, in my book, Discernment, I talk about this balance sheet and, you know, the relationship between creation and consumption. And, you know, I'm happiest when I'm creating. And it doesn't matter what it is, man. It could be a poem. It could be a business. It could be building a house. It could be buying something or putting something together. And then, look, part of it's consumption, right? You got to enjoy the fruits of your labor. You got to, you got to, you know, there has to be some manifestation of. all the hard work that you put into that makes it worth it. But at the end of the day, you know, I bought the I got a big house here on the lake and all of that. But it's just it's just another house until I put people in it. And until I have people over, until we're doing something with it, then it's honestly you know what it is for me. It's I'm on the end of a couch. There's a refrigerator, there's a bathroom, there's, you know, like, I mean, it's just like, that's all it is for me until, until we're doing something with it. So anytime that you can make a good economic investment and also make an investment in enriching your life and relationships, man, it's, it is awesome. Fantastic. Tommy Mello (58:09.89) That's all I thought is I'm like, man, there's a lot of people that come into Phoenix. And I've met a lot of people and I'm like, why don't you just stay with me? I mean, next time you're in town, you stay over. And that's the coolest thing ever is whether it's a podcast. Tommy Mello (58:33.098) You can hang out. I've got the golden tea, three golden teas, big buck hunter, cruising the world. And I'm putting a lot of putting a train to the house because like, man. Jeff Dudan (58:53.368) It does. Tommy Mello (59:11.123) Oh, I probably kicked the wire. Jeff Dudan (59:13.472) Oh, you're back. Tommy Mello (59:15.148) Oh. So. Jeff Dudan (59:16.422) You think we lost that? Jeff Dudan (59:23.698) Well, I don't know what you just said in the last 30 seconds, but man, if you could say it again, I'd love it. We'll cut it. We'll edit it. Tommy Mello (59:30.278) Yeah, so what was I talking about? What? Sorry. We good? Jeff Dudan (59:34.93) I don't know, but it looked good. Tommy Mello (59:41.726) Yeah, okay. Yeah. So, so, in my, so in my game room, when people come over, I got three golden teas, big buck hunter. I've got two card tables. I play a lot of Euker. I play cribbage. You name a game. I can play any game. Sometimes we play golf, literally the card game. We played left, right center the other day, big money game at the house. And we've got crews in the world and putting a shooting range. I got the bowling alley going in. I got the lazy river. And I know this sounds pretentious. People are listening to me right now going, oh, poor Tommy. Jesus. This is not what I'm trying to do because I've ate Campbell's soup for weeks. I lived in a small apartment. I've started from nothing. I know what nothing was given. I just want people to know no one paid for my college. I ended up getting a master's degree, which means nothing in the field I'm in today. But I always say I started from the bottom. Now I'm here. as a funny joke when I go on stage because if you've seen what we've been through, it's true hard work and a lot of discipline and it's late gratification. And the coolest thing in the world is I'm willing to share it all. I'm not this guy that's like, look at me. I don't drive a Ferrari around and it's trying to get a bunch of people. Most of those guys are living in a small apartment and they're leasing a Ferrari anyway. I think it's good to stay humble. Jeff Dudan (01:01:08.298) People that speak abundantly and then by virtue of that or think abundantly and then by virtue of that have success, appreciate experiences. And more often, you know, and I try to explain that to my wife. She's like, because sometimes if I go out, you know, and with somebody like you or other people in my circle that are like that, they'll be like, stay at the house. Right? And my wife thinks it's weird. They're like, why do people go somewhere and then stay at their house? I'm like, well, that's just cause what we do. I don't know why it is what we do, but it seems as you know, the higher up that I've got in these business circles and these groups, you know, it's almost like, hey, just, you know, stay at the house and you don't want to waste any time. Why put somebody in a hotel? You've got all these extra bedrooms anyway. You just stay in the house so you can take it because time is short, right? So if somebody goes through the energy to come out to town and visit with you and you're talking about something that's good for everybody, then you want to have as much time together as possible. So, I mean, I bet, I bet you are going to have a conga line of cool people visiting you in Idaho, hanging out there. There's going to be incredible stories made, uh, memories, stories, and, and probably, uh, great businesses and great ideas that are spawned out of it. Tommy Mello (01:02:05.857) love that. Tommy Mello (01:02:22.002) I'm just going to have to get a little disclosure statement because I'm going to have all the snowmobiles and all the dangerous stuff and the guns. And like, I'm a little nervous about that because me and Bree just got me this $80,000 side by side. It's amazing. And the first day out, we flipped it, which is the right thing to do with a K&M. And Jeff Dudan (01:02:29.258) Oh yeah, yeah people will die but... Jeff Dudan (01:02:43.957) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:02:47.873) Yeah, you got to do it. Why you got to get it? Get a break it in. Tommy Mello (01:02:51.398) I broke it in pretty good. And I'm like, you know, me and her were fine. We were, we were seatbelted in and everything, but I'm always worried about like, man, this, these things are dangerous. They're high performance. They go very, very fast. These things go a hundred miles an hour. Snowmobiles are dangerous, man. You gotta like, I've never respected high powered machinery more than I do now. Jeff Dudan (01:03:07.615) Oh yeah. Tommy Mello (01:03:14.698) You know, the story is when I first got onto that lake, Travis took us out on the speedboat. We're going 110 miles an hour and he's standing up and he's slowing down for logs in the lake. And this guy comes whizzing by us and he goes, that's my buddy. And his buddy, we get to this island, he throws us a beer. And Travis, we see him whizz off and Travis calls me up. Few weeks later, he says, yeah, I sold the boat. And he didn't really see anything else. The next summer. I go out there, we're looking at this, the new property. And he goes, by the way, that guy, he flipped that day, six people died. And I was like, well, why didn't you tell me? But he's like, I didn't want to tell you that he was a friend. And it was, that's why I sold the boat. And you got to be very, you got to respect that stuff. You never know. That's one other thing that we said this morning is, you know, call the people you love, because tomorrow's not promised. You never know. You just, you never know when your day is. Jeff Dudan (01:04:11.85) Yeah, yeah, 100%. Tommy, this has been great. Excited to have you on. Is there anything else about Elevate that, you know, what is the one thing? that if somebody's sitting there and they're a million dollar operator, they've had their business for 10 years, they keep hitting that glass ceiling. They got, they got self-limiting beliefs. They don't, they don't believe it's for them. And they just, you know, they've gone up to a million and a half, and then it seems like everything falls apart. And then they shake back down to 900,000, because you've seen it over and over again, and you know, they just, they put themselves back into the size of business and the size of team that they're comfortable with. Like if you could, if you could whisper in their ear right now and tell them one thing. that could you know shake them free what would it be? Breaking the $1M Ceiling: Advice for Business Owners Stuck at Plateau Tommy Mello (01:05:02.794) It'd be dream bigger. You know, I'm not, there's no doubt in my mind this is gonna be a $15 billion business within six years. Have a plan to get there. Another thing I would tell you, I've been hanging out with Andy Elliot a lot, is you're a billboard. If you look in the mirror, you're not happy. You know, some people, they get very depressed because they focus on what they don't have. They focus on things they can't control. They focus on things that are in the past. You look in the mirror and you're not happy, then get up and frickin' work out. Then eat right next time instead of drinking that 12-pack. Start to look better, start to feel better, start to get the sleep you need, and believe that you're worth more. And make a bigger plan. Whatever your goal is, 3X that. It's not good enough. If you're at a million now, don't beat five million. Go for 20 million. Dream bigger. You're worth it. Look in the mirror and believe you're worth something. When you walk in a room, if you don't think you're the baddest-ass dude that ever walked in that room, then you got a problem. Jeff Dudan (01:05:37.376) Yeah. Tommy Mello (01:06:00.194) Fix it. You can fix it. If you don't think you're worth it, you're not. If you think you are, you are. You got to decide right now if you are or not. And I believe I'm worth every penny. I believe I'm going straight to the top and no one's going to stop me. You're going to either have to kill me because I'm going to fight trying. And here's the deal. I'm not stopping. There's no end in sight. So I hope everybody feels the same way because if you don't think you're anything, you don't think and another thing is be where your feet are when you're at home, be at home. Turn your cell phone off. When you're at work, be at work. Don't be thinking about what's going on at home. Go all in on everything you do, and you'll start winning. Jeff Dudan (01:06:35.91) Awesome, awesome. Tommy, if people wanted to get in touch with you or people wanted to consume more of your content, where would you direct them today? Tommy Mello (01:06:47.778) So Tommy mellow.com there's no W in my name so Tommy mellow.com you can find me on official Tommy mellow everything Instagram tick tock Twitter Jeff Dudan (01:06:55.654) Yeah, nothing mellow about you, sir. Tommy Mello (01:06:59.494) Now, and I got a newsletter and I just happened to open it. I don't normally advertise this, but you get three free months. It's a pretty cool newsletter. There's no ads in it. I write it myself. It's well put together. It's tommymello.com forward slash news. And if anybody wants to come out here, I host a lot of people. I don't charge anything. You want to see our shop, you want to understand performance pay, see our training center, see what we do here. It's tommymello.com forward slash forward slash shop and Come do a shop tour coming out. I'm an open book. I love to host people I think it's it helps my team out. We stay very organized I get to put them under the spotlight and show off what they built and it means a lots of them and it helps us keep things tidy and clean because you never know who's coming in next and Love to have anybody out and I put a lot of content out there If you want to see more, sometimes I'm goofy, sometimes I'm serious, I have a lot of fun. Some people like me, some people don't. I don't really care what the haters say because I've never seen a hater doing better than me. Ha ha ha. Jeff Dudan (01:08:06.998) I love it. Love it. All right. Last question. Similar to the to the previous one. But like if you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life, what would that be? Are we just going to go with the dream bigger? One Sentence That Changes Everything: The Work You Avoid is the Work You Need Tommy Mello (01:08:25.134) The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. Jeff Dudan (01:08:31.294) Wow. Tommy Mello (01:08:33.75) That's what I would tell somebody. I would tell them, definitely dream bigger, stay focused, wear blinders, racehorses wear blinders for a reason. You know, as an entrepreneur, we're 1% of the population, the best of us, we're hunters, other people are farmers. And what I would tell you is, we've got a lot of ideas, but we don't implement a lot. Stay focused, stay focused. One of my buddies, I wrote this down in my book, The Home Service Millionaire. I said, I like to have my eggs in a lot of baskets. He goes, Tommy, what if you put all your eggs into one basket? Imagine how quick it would fill up. Then you could put eggs in different baskets. And I think wearing blinders, staying focused, focus on the one thing. Gary Keller wrote a great book. Have it in your shower. Have it when you're getting ready. Have it in your car. Have it on the back of your phone. Focus on those goals. Put it all in on the one thing and watch what happens. Don't get distractions. Don't get your ADD. Don't listen to your buddy that bought a bar or flipped a house or whatever. Stay invested in the one thing paying you off. So many people divest. They say, now I started making money. I'm going to go move into this big house. I'm going to buy a third car. I'm going to buy a vacation home. Focus on the one thing. Stay disciplined. Have a little bit of delayed gratification and watch it compound. Jeff Dudan (01:09:51.102) awesome. This has been Tommy Mello on the home front with Jeff Duden. Tommy, thanks for being on so much. This has been incredible. Tommy Mello (01:09:58.626) Jeff, you're the man. I'm gonna come out and visit soon. Anytime you're in Phoenix, come stay with me. Jeff Dudan (01:10:04.126) You got it. Likewise, invitation right back at you. All right, and everybody out there, thank you for listening.
Brief Summary In this dynamic and fun episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with social media phenom Sophie Jamison—better known as Sophie Lightning. From posting Nerf content in her college bedroom to being crowned the world’s first Chief TikTok Officer by Hasbro, Sophie shares the behind-the-scenes journey that landed her on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She breaks down how brands can actually win on TikTok, the science behind virality, and how to create content that converts without selling your soul. If you’re serious about TikTok, this episode is a masterclass in Gen Z media strategy. Key Takeaways TikTok's algorithm prioritizes relevance over followers , making it the most powerful discovery engine for brands right now. Content should be creative, authentic, and enjoyable for the creator —otherwise burnout (and low engagement) will follow. Trends are useful, but only if they fit the brand . Don't force your product into every viral moment. First 3 seconds matter most —your hook should clearly frame what the viewer will get from the video. AI is changing the game —from analyzing retention to generating smarter copy, creators who don’t embrace AI will fall behind. Micro-influencers deserve to be paid fairly , not just compensated in product or commission. Featured Quote “Stay true to who you are—and never do it quietly.” TRANSCRIPT From TikTok to Forbes: How Sophie Jamison Became Nerf's Chief TikTok Officer Jeff Dudan (00:03.438) Welcome everybody to the home front. is Jeff Duden and we are here today with Sophie Jamison. Sophie Jamison is a TikTok sensation from way back now. She started in 2019 posting two videos a day. By the end of 2020, she had gained 2 million followers and then Nerf hired her as their first ever chief TikTok officer. She had success in that role. She was also the chief TikTok officer at a kitchenware brand made by Gather. And today she has her own creative agency. We're excited to learn what she's doing there. Welcome to the home front, Sophie Jamison. Sophie Jamison (00:41.418) Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Jeff Dudan (00:44.076) Yeah, it's been great. And I've really enjoyed going through all of your content and listening to your interviews and very excited today about what we can learn because people like me struggle to understand what we're doing wrong on TikTok and why we're not instantly viral. mean, me watching a football game and eating Cheetos seems to be interesting, but apparently not to the masses. anyway, Sophie, would you share a little bit, maybe some highlights of your journey? Sophie Jamison (01:13.462) Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. I mean, you covered it super well too in the intro. So I started posting on TikTok back in 2019 because of the COVID pandemic. So came home from college. That was my only aspiration at the time was getting to this dream school and then got sent home to be online anyway. Picked up the camera, know, picked up the iPhone camera and was like, instead of consuming content, I'd love to just try to make it. If you scroll back, those videos were horrible. probably even less interesting than just watching a football game and eating some snacks. But it was that two videos a day, sometimes three, sometimes four, and just really testing and seeing what would work and perfecting the craft as much as possible. It was a lot of YouTube tutorials, a lot of learning, and a lot of deleting those videos once I finally kind of figured it out. Jeff Dudan (02:00.359) Any unboxing videos? Sophie Jamison (02:04.194) back in the day, yep. Nerf blasters, of course. So all the content was about Nerf blasters. I had them lying around. It was something I loved. I love the preparation right there. That's the end series. Jeff Dudan (02:06.446) What did you unbox? Jeff Dudan (02:17.474) Yeah, I walked out of my office for this podcast and I got smacked in the side of head with this today. Is it? How does it work? Sophie Jamison (02:24.726) I think that's the brand new award. Pretty new blaster, yeah, end series. Yep, you pull it back, pull the trigger. One dart at a time. Jeff Dudan (02:35.527) jeez. That's it's got a lot of pop. Sophie Jamison (02:39.19) They've come a long way. Jeff Dudan (02:41.422) Got a lot going. yeah. Dual. All right. Sorry, Anyway, off we go. So you're doing all that. You're doing all the kinds of videos that I watched my 20, now 20 year old watch over the years, unboxing videos, product videos, just all of that kind of stuff. So you're all into it. And by the way, you were playing soccer at the time, no? Sophie Jamison (02:43.498) And that, I mean, that's on the weaker category too of things. Sophie Jamison (03:08.81) Yeah, so I had just gotten a blood diagnosis of von Willebrand, so it's a blood clotting disorder, so I couldn't play contact sports anymore. And I'm not even gonna lie, I was a very good goalkeeper, so that was a challenging time for me. that's another reason why I picked up the Nerf blasters, can't paintball or airsoft, but those are just quite not powerful enough to leave a bruise, so they were the perfect solution. Jeff Dudan (03:32.514) Got it. Awesome, awesome. And Nerf did a, they ran an ad for somebody, for a chief TikTok officer, which was probably the first of its type. And it came across your screen and how did you react to that? Sophie Jamison (03:48.382) It was, it was the world's first, yep. Sophie Jamison (03:54.774) I'll never forget that I got a I got an email from my PR rep at nerf and was like we're doing this and then it was like what I imagine it's like getting drafted to the NFL or something just Constant ringing on the phone if people calling me and being like nerf just put this out you have to apply you have to do this my Optometrist called me my like old eighth grade school teacher like people I didn't even know had my number were sending me this and saying you need to apply I was like I've already applied like we're good I got it covered. Don't worry. then yeah, applied by making TikTok, which was cool. And then had a formal interview and I'll never forget this either. They called me a couple hours later and they're like, can we FaceTime you? We just have to ask you a question. Like we forgot to ask during the interview, but it was actually to tell me that I got the job and they screen recorded that video, which I'm still like, please delete that wherever it is. Cause I just started crying on the spot. Cause I was that excited. Jeff Dudan (04:48.408) That's fantastic. So how old were you at the time? Sophie Jamison (04:53.91) 19. Jeff Dudan (04:55.338) Okay, and you go into corporate and you're dealing with who? Who's in the room? Sophie Jamison (04:59.946) Yeah, so it's the whole marketing team all the way up to the chief marketing officer. I'm working directly with like kind of an associate marketer head of social type position. Jeff Dudan (05:12.248) Okay, and they're staring at you saying, Jameson makes the magic, basically. Sophie Jamison (05:17.974) It was pretty, it was actually pretty chill at first. It was, you know, we love what you're doing, keep doing it and do it for our channel. But then after, so it was a temp three month position and after the three months, they extended it to be like a year long contract. And that's when there was definitely a lot more pressure. This is no longer just like a press grad that we have the Teef TikTok officer. It's, you know, really go and excel in this position, find influencers, work with them. Copyright, plan out the calendars. So the level of responsibility really increased after those three months. Jeff Dudan (05:50.446) Did that position become more of a regular staple inside of consumer -facing brands after that? Sophie Jamison (05:59.068) Yeah, without that title, you know, without the press grabbing title, absolutely that type of position is now pretty commonplace. Jeff Dudan (06:05.984) Okay, and you did a similar position at Kitchen Made. Sophie Jamison (06:09.29) Yeah, Made By Gather, so they have Drew Barrymore's Beautiful By Drew Walmart collection. it was quite different from our Floster's Air Fryers. It was a good time though. Jeff Dudan (06:21.592) So content on TikTok, very raw, very real, under produced type content did well. Obviously it all started with people just dancing and all of that. How has the platform evolved and how have more commercial focused businesses been able to take advantage of it? Sophie Jamison (06:34.078) lip -syncing, yep. Why Every Brand Will Need a TikTok Strategy in 2024 Sophie Jamison (06:47.476) Yeah, I mean, it's it's a completely different app than, when it started. And, it is definitely becoming incredibly useful on marketing teams. I always say that you're missing out. It's going to become table stakes. If you're not on TikTok, it's, it's equal to not being on Instagram. which has become, I feel like almost every brand at least has an Instagram presence. So that front of it, the ability to just reach this incredibly large, untapped group of possible consumers and people who are engaging with your content. is nothing that we've seen on a different platform. Just that one video really can reach these exceptionally high view counts. And the algorithm is just really, really intelligent when it comes to placing the correct content on the right feeds. It's really special. And it's also really changed how brands show up in a lot of ways. They do get to be that more real, less produced. a bit more cynical, silly type of content where we feel a little bit more humanized and connect with the brand on a different level, which I think is so important and is just going to become continually more prevalent. see it on ex formerly known as Twitter right now. A lot of being as, you know, trying to be as relatable as possible and that's just going to continue to grow. Jeff Dudan (08:04.247) In terms of audience size versus Instagram and X and other platforms, where does TikTok rank right now? Sophie Jamison (08:12.18) Yeah, I mean, it's right up there, right? They're all super similar. It's more, in my opinion, the amount of content that's being consumed on the app, the amount of time spent on it, which is higher than these other platforms. And then, of course, that algorithm, like the ability to send content more towards people. Because typically, you're not even seeing the people that you follow as content, whereas Instagram, that's primarily what's showing up on your page. You're seeing completely new people and completely new content. Jeff Dudan (08:38.051) Mm. Sophie Jamison (08:41.17) every single time you swipe pretty much. just the limit of discovery is non -existent. Jeff Dudan (08:49.24) What do you mean by towards people? Sophie Jamison (08:52.436) Where do they use it? Jeff Dudan (08:54.656) So you said the ability to send content towards people on TikTok is different. And I haven't heard that before. Usually you're trying to attract people to watch your stuff. Maybe you're doing some paid to try to serve it up to people. And I don't know if that's what you mean on TikTok or is it something different? Sophie Jamison (09:01.749) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (09:13.525) Yeah, I mean, I just always think about it different. You you can go and you're going to make a video that you're trying to get served to certain people. But there's also this wild card factor where the algorithm knows, like at some point in that video, if it's a skit, maybe they've never ever interacted with the product. But if they consume skit content regularly, it's still getting sent to them. So that's that's kind of what I meant. Jeff Dudan (09:32.512) Okay. Got it, got it. And then rules around what makes great content. If I had a company today or a small business, what would the template look like for me? How often would you tell me to post? How would you tell me to make it? What types of things would we want to post around? Give me some guidelines. How to Win on TikTok: Posting Frequency, Hook Theory, and Analytics Sophie Jamison (10:00.682) I love that question. So for TikTok, I would do three to five posts a week, the more the merrier, but there's this expectation right now of that two a day, which unless you really can support it and every time you're putting out a video, it's quality. If you're just putting it out to hit a certain number, that's a terrible strategy. So really prioritizing quality over quantity, but still hitting, you know, that three to five versus one to two a week. The first three seconds of your video are the most important. That's pretty true to all social, but especially on TikTok. Jeff Dudan (10:21.399) Mmm. Sophie Jamison (10:29.878) They are already scrolling by the time you start talking or by the time your video begins. So you have to basically get them to stop what they're doing and remain on the content. That's how quickly people are scrolling through. that initial hook is incredibly important. Learning from every single video, it's going to differ for each brands. The audience that's viewing that content is different for every single piece of content. So looking at the analytics at five seconds in, we lost 70 % of viewership. What did I do? Did I look away from the camera? Did I pose a question and they didn't respond well to the question? Did the frame cut and we're in a new environment and they didn't like the environment? So it's learning as much as you possibly can from each video and then engaging with that community. would say, know, reply to as many comments as possible. Listen to what they're saying. If they suggest a video, that's not bad. That's not like stealing from them. Give them credit and make that video if a lot of people are asking for it. Like some of my most successful content has been completely from the fans. Here's what we want to see. Here's our favorite content. Like, please post this more and really listening and using that. and then trends are another one. I see a lot of brands, that's their entire social strategy. Please don't do that. You cannot force a trend into every single product that you have. It's just not going to work. I like to do one trend bi -weekly, but it's super rough. It depends on what's going on and if it relates. you're, if you're really trying too hard, people will know that's, that's my biggest piece of advice. Don't try too hard to be relatable. Don't try too hard to be trendy because people are going to call you out. So just be authentic and real. And yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:07.222) Okay, so I want to, I had hooks and trends as categories of things that I wanted to talk about. So we talked about hooks. do have some, maybe let's go back to that. First three seconds of a video. So on this podcast, something that we watch very closely is, you know, initial duration. How long do people listen before they start dropping off? Now we understand that the shorts are important because I might just be running out for lunch and I've got, Seven minutes to get to where I'm going to launch. So I'm to look for a piece of content to consume in the car That's going to be a short. I'm not going to load up an hour and 11 minute podcast I mean we have hour and 46 minute podcast. So, you know those have their purpose But whatever we put out there that we expect people to try to listen all the way through or fit into some sort of a gap Like we understand like it needs to be good right away if I log if I if I pull up a piece of content on YouTube or Instagram or anything. And if it's if it doesn't immediately grab me, then I'm I'm going away from it. And now you do have the ability in the title to create some sort of FOMO like, this is what I'll give. If something has a good hook in the title, I'll give it a little bit more time to get to get to it if I want to do that. But like, so how long is the average tick tock? Like, what's what's the length of a tick tock? Sophie Jamison (13:23.264) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sophie Jamison (13:31.638) 20 to 30 seconds is really what the majority are. Jeff Dudan (13:35.886) Okay, so you got 20 or 30 seconds. The first three seconds has to get them to invest in the last 30 seconds of it. And to your point, there's all kinds of reasons that people lose interest in a piece of content. so in terms of those hooks, like you gave us a couple of great examples, people looking away from the camera, what are some other things that need to happen, absolutely need to happen in that first? Sophie Jamison (13:42.272) Mm Jeff Dudan (14:06.114) three seconds. are your goals for that first three to five seconds? Sophie Jamison (14:09.718) Yeah, great question. So it's framing up what those next 30 seconds are gonna entail. Most importantly, it's here's what I can expect. So whether that's through the title or through the opening conversation, copy sometimes too can be really helpful on that. If they're getting bored, maybe you can grab another couple seconds for them to read your caption and then it will re -engage them into the video. So just really framing what's about to happen and then getting to the point as quickly as possible. Jeff Dudan (14:15.117) Okay. Jeff Dudan (14:30.199) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (14:35.658) You can use, you know, there's tips and tricks. Fast transitions are always great, like cutting between, but sometimes that's just not the type of audience that you want to reach. you know, we're working, if you're, you know, targeting older generations, typically that's less actually have a reason for them to stay. Whereas a younger generation, they really want to see those fast cuts. So it's so much more about storytelling, original content. If it's something that I've already seen somebody do a million times, there's no reason for me to watch it again. I've already seen a bunch of brands do it. If I already know what's happening. So you have to give them something, whatever it may be entertainment, knowledge, information. There has to be something that they can scroll away and say, I gained this from that video. And it can be a laugh. It can be, it can be entertainment. I was thoroughly engaged for 30 seconds, or it can be a fun fact or a new product that they want to try your information, but making sure that you frame the video properly and then give them what you framed up is really important. Reach vs. Trust: Why Not Every Video Needs a Call to Action Jeff Dudan (15:12.502) Right. Jeff Dudan (15:34.69) Got it. are some, so I'm trying to think about this. I'm a, if I'm have a specific business goal, are some clips that you're going to put up, what do call them? Talks or ticks? Sophie Jamison (15:50.888) I, yeah, never. Jeff Dudan (15:51.082) Neither. just did I just did I just show you my age. So OK, some are going to be for reach. Right. This is entertaining. It's funny. You know, somebody smacked into a wall and the crazy thing happened and blah, blah, blah. like that's going to be something that people are going to share. They're going to watch probably more than once because it was really interesting and really cool. So there's just there's just like reach there. The other side of it is like, well, at what point do we get to product education? Sophie Jamison (15:56.406) That was great. Jeff Dudan (16:21.514) And how do we, like, okay, so what? These people showed me this really funny video, but like, what's the point to the business inside of that? So do you break it down into categories where you say, well, this one's gonna be for reach, this one's gonna be for engagement, this one's gonna be liked, shared, or whatever, and then here's one, or do you have to try to get it all in a single piece of content? Sophie Jamison (16:43.606) Yeah, that's a great question too. So I think the majority of the time for myself and this like that influencer marketing of incorporating product, that's what I got Forbes 30 under 34. So this is like my area where I love talking about this. So typically it's in the back of my mind, right? So you want to try to hit as many boxes as you can give people different reasons to remain on that video. But Jeff Dudan (16:58.124) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (17:07.614) A lot of times what will happen is we'll have an influencer who is already making content and then we want to seamlessly integrate a product and that product knowledge into the video to the point where people are commenting, I didn't even know this was an ad. This didn't even feel like an ad. So if we're trying to push something like Blink and Bio, you know, that's going to be a little bit of a different, we're going to have a call to action in there, but the video itself still needs to feel authentic to the channel and not like they were just paid to do it. Not like they kind of sold their soul in that situation. So Jeff Dudan (17:37.304) Sure. Sophie Jamison (17:37.394) It has to relate to the creator who's doing it as well. so for me, Nerf Blasters, I'm not going to go do leggings. know, that's the amount of legging requests I get is crazy. So I'm not going to do clothing really on my channel, but I'm going to do other Blaster brands, that type of thing. And then when you're doing it from a brand perspective, if I'm in -house creating that content, I'm definitely thinking, is this one for reach? Then we're going to definitely form it out a little bit differently. What are they gaining from this? But at the end of the day, it should be Jeff Dudan (17:51.138) Okay. Sophie Jamison (18:06.486) pretty similar and still follow those core beliefs. Jeff Dudan (18:10.328) So it's like reach, trust, education. Those would be some things, some boxes that you want to check on that. All right, well, okay. So let's play game here. We have a fencing brand called Top Rail Fence. And if I was gonna say that we're gonna really focus on that brand for TikTok, then I would have what? Fencing accidents. I would have people driving through fences. I would have people falling in holes. Sophie Jamison (18:18.911) Engagement, Jeff Dudan (18:39.418) I mean, what, you know, it would be, you know, here's the way to, here's the way to, you know, an interesting way to put in a fence pole or something like that. But, something has to be like, okay, that's pretty cool, but it's clearly going to be in and around fencing and it's going to be to try to grow that channel. And, and then once we have the channel growth, you can maybe, do you change the, the concentration of educational product focus stuff? Because now people have trust of that channel and they're going to give you a little bit more time. What's the strategy there to take a new brand that's not currently big on TikTok in any way and then say, all right, it's gonna be a six month, eight step market launches. Am I over the target here? Launching a Brand on TikTok: The Fencing Company Case Study Sophie Jamison (19:25.526) No, yeah, it's gonna be a sprint, not, yeah, you're gonna go for it. So to begin, you're gonna post as much content as you possibly can that's still remaining quality, but you're gonna try as many things as possible. So if it's a fence, we're gonna try skits, we're gonna try like ASMR, we're gonna try instructional videos, we're gonna put up those compilations of... Jeff Dudan (19:29.718) Okay. Jeff Dudan (19:45.91) What do mean by ASMR? Is that like combing the hair of the fence? okay. Sophie Jamison (19:49.878) Or like, you know, installing the fence. I'm sure that there's some nice like woodworking noises Or some type of like talk show style like between the fence with my neighbor play into those types of things Skits I always love to do like bring a sense of humor into it or like my fence is better than your fence that type of thing and then Jeff Dudan (20:01.652) okay. Jeff Dudan (20:07.576) Yeah. So there's a lot of creative. Like this is heavy, heavy creative. Sophie Jamison (20:15.12) Absolutely, that's how you're gonna stand out. The occasional trend sprinkled in there, the occasional, you know, pretty baseline, but then as creative as possible. Jeff Dudan (20:23.182) Okay, so let's go to trends. When I heard you talk about trends on another podcast, an example of a trend would be, and you said it's like, if you don't hit it in the first 24 hours, you might as well not do it. So there's some video or something people are doing that has nothing to do with your product and it's just going bananas. So sometimes what I'll see is there'll be a piece, I'll want to see something and... I'll keep seeing it, but I recognize it's on all these different people's channel. So I'm liking it, but I'm liking it on their channel. It wasn't their piece of content. Is that an example of a trend? Sophie Jamison (21:04.086) Yeah, yeah, essentially. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (21:04.79) or use of a trend? What practically walked me through how you use a trend? Sophie Jamison (21:14.676) Yeah, yeah, definitely. So that early -ness is super important, getting on top of it as quickly as possible. And sometimes it's predictive even. This is something that it's going to trend. And a lot of times it's either a trending audio or just something completely random. It's usually like this random person posting a TikTok and then all of sudden it does really well. That's how the whole very demure, very mindful trend came about. And then, so you see that instantly and then you bring it internally and you say, can I make this fit? into a brand and the very demure I think is a great example because that can be form fitted into almost any piece of content even with fences you could be like look at my beautiful blue fence very demure very mindful like that type of content so yeah Jeff Dudan (21:57.954) Got it, got it. Now are we targeted at people or are we targeted at the algorithm? Because the algorithm's gonna pick up on the trend and serve it more. Sophie Jamison (22:08.298) Both, both, absolutely great point. Yeah, so the algorithm's gonna serve it and then it's your job to keep them. And if it's a trend, like you're saying that one, we like to see how it fits. Probably gonna watch a couple of that same type of trend style, even if it's with different brands, even if it's the same kind of concept. Jeff Dudan (22:24.344) Got it, got it. This is, you know, it's not free because time, energy, and production and all this type of stuff, but it seems very cost effective. Talk to me about the use of dollars. You know, like is there a lot of boosting? Is the boosting something that is like, well, if you can get it organically, then that's always gonna be better? but you can maybe buy your way into play or how does that work on TikTok? Never Boost Bad Content: Why Paid Media Should Amplify Winners, Not Fill Gaps Sophie Jamison (22:55.286) Yeah, so I... This one grinds my gears sometimes. You can't force it. You really... You can't force it. I don't care how many times you throw something in people's face. If they don't want to watch it, they're not going to watch it. So I always say if it's performing above benchmark of the channel, then that's performing well organically in my opinion. Then we can talk about putting paid behind it because we know that once people see it, they're engaging with it and watching it. So if we have a video that has a 20 % engagement rate, I'm... Jeff Dudan (23:00.692) That's it. Jeff Dudan (23:08.097) Okay. Sophie Jamison (23:24.586) That's great. want to send that out to people. want to continue that conversation. But I'm not going to put out a video, even if I love it, right? Even if I love it, if it's not performing well, I'm not going to just throw money at it and kind of hope and pray for the best. A lot of times what that money is actually going towards is the user generated content or in -house content creators. So to come in and make that content or to repurpose it. And I also love, you know, influencer collaborations as well. So it's always a good combo, a little media mix, but Yeah, never boost something that just because you want to put out for a campaign. Like if we're doing a campaign for a product launch, I'm making five or six videos and then seeing which one performs best and then putting spend behind it. Jeff Dudan (24:06.606) Got it. That makes all the sense in the world. It's a little bit counterintuitive because if you're producing crap content, but you want it to do well, right? You're like, well, maybe if I show it to more people, they'll like it. But that's not the case. You're basically just putting it in people's face and they're saying, we still don't like this. And TikTok's like, yeah, thanks. Now we're annoyed and thanks for the nickel. When you engage with an influencer, Sophie Jamison (24:15.37) Mm -hmm. Sophie Jamison (24:26.518) And now we're annoyed. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (24:35.454) Are we paying these people like lump sums? Are we saying we'll do this together and then we're gonna boost it or some combination of lots of different or I guess it could even be some back end, right? If there's a product sale or something with it, there could be a rev share or something like that. Probably all those different ways. Sophie Jamison (24:52.16) Yeah, that's all over the place. So many different ways to activate an influencer, but I am incredibly passionate about respectable pay for influencers and understanding their value to the company. Especially, you know, coming from that side myself, I still work with brands on pretty large deals from my personal channel. So it's respecting those creators enough to pay them what they're worth upfront. Commission is great, but it should never just be commission. It should never just be product. They're actively working on something. Jeff Dudan (25:20.013) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (25:22.038) They know what they're doing, so trust them. I hate briefs. Please do not write an influencer a script ever. You are not them. Like you cannot do it as well as them. And always pay them at least even 50 bucks if they're a micro creator, but just give them something. Jeff Dudan (25:24.684) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (25:29.608) okay. Jeff Dudan (25:37.612) Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We, yeah, you know, we're, are here on the home front, you know, we're, we've had different sponsorship opportunities. We haven't taken them. We don't, we don't want to promote something that we don't use. You know, we have a real purpose for what we're doing. It's really to support our franchise owners, to create reach inside of that so that And there's a real race for technology in the home services space. So if I can get an owner, a founder of a really cool piece of technology onto the podcast, it helps us get that deal done with them. So there's that. Also national accounts. If there's people that can give all of our franchise owners some work and we need to work our way into that organization, we can generally get an introduction. But if you can get somebody on the podcast and we spend an hour together, It is the whole relationship just goes better and farther. And then, of course, just exposing as we're developing reach inside of this, then as we bring all of our brands forth and be able to start doing some of the things like you're talking about there, it just all, you know, but like we're very much in laying the foundation with trying to create credibility, know, like and trust and those types of things right now. But the other side of it is, is, you know, to your point, it's, you know, there's a Sophie Jamison (26:50.74) Yeah, absolutely. Jeff Dudan (27:00.728) There's a way to do this and there's a way to go right at it. So we're trying to figure out how to take the success that we've had here and evolve that. And each platform, fortunately or unfortunately, they're all at different life cycles. They all have different ways that you need to approach them, people are in ways to be successful on them. Sophie Jamison (27:09.77) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (27:24.212) Hey, I think that's fortunately. That's more fun. Way bigger of a puzzle to solve. Yeah, absolutely. Jeff Dudan (27:27.053) Do you? Yeah. So TikTok specifically, key numbers that you look at. know that we, you know, I know what our numbers are on YouTube and Instagram and all of that, but what are, other than view duration, what are some of the key things that you look at to evaluate a TikTok account? Did you evaluate our TikTok account before you came on? Okay. Well, it would have taken a long time, I tell you that. I mean, there's... Sophie Jamison (27:52.65) I did not, I should have, I could have brought a haul. Jeff Dudan (27:59.392) literally dozens of views on that channel. But what do you look at? Metrics That Matter: Engagement Rate, Shares, and Why Views Can Mislead Sophie Jamison (28:04.97) I've been in the trenches with social audits recently, so I should have jumped on yours. yeah. Looking at engagement rate first and foremost, that's the most important thing to me. Are they liking, sharing, and commenting on this video? Are they engaging with it or just passively consuming it and then scrolling? View, like the vanity metrics are always such a point of contention. The views and the follower count, they matter, absolutely. But they should not be the end all be all. Jeff Dudan (28:10.648) All right, well, know, send me a note. Let me know what you think. Jeff Dudan (28:29.528) Sure. Sophie Jamison (28:35.23) At the end of the day, also focusing on what makes the brand happy and what makes the person making the content happy. I always like to just point that out too. If you have a really like viral series, but it is kind of painting your brand in a bad light or something you don't enjoy doing if you're a creator, you don't have to just submit yourself to that. You can always find another solution and another piece of content that performs well. And also that view count, maybe it just got luckily picked up by the algorithm. It's getting sent out, but then if nobody's commenting on it, then it's really not. doing much for you. Follower count of course matters. That's people that are, you know, committed to seeing what else you're putting out and maybe learning more. That's going to be the people that you're going to have conversations with. They're going to be commenting on your posts. I also really like commenting in general and then looking at the likes of the comments. So sometimes, you know, I'll go leave a witty comment. There's this rapper. I am absolutely like every single post he has. has a bejeweled, that's the worst word possible, but he has a diamond like Nerf Blaster necklace. So those always get so many likes those comments if I go on a Sophie lightning and say like you stole my necklace or something like that. And then when those are getting 50 ,000 likes, that's also translating into follower count. So seeing, you know, engaging with other community members and seeing how those posts perform being witty in that angle. Shares are the most important metric for the TikTok algorithm. So if someone is sharing your posts to a friend, it's also a huge compliment. really think about what that really means. It means I enjoyed this so much that I want to share it with someone else. That's the highest praise I feel like you can get as a creator. So that's that's a fantastic metric to look at. yeah, just making sure that it's I just want to nail this into people. Make sure that it's content that you enjoy, too. That's like the most important metric. Don't post a video if you personally wouldn't watch it unless it's for completely we're talking an extreme brand example or something like that. But Jeff Dudan (30:03.755) Mm -hmm. Sophie Jamison (30:29.332) most of the time, like if it's not something you would consume, then people, who else is gonna consume it? Jeff Dudan (30:34.606) Yeah, we learned that lesson on the podcast. And I think there's a lot of AI tools out there. they say, create. Well, you see it, right? Hey, create 100 pieces of content a day using this AI tool. we had various, it weird kind of our feet underneath us on the podcast. We had various partners and outsources and things like that. And hey, look, we can edit the whole podcast and create a bunch of shorts using this AI tool. We would look at these things and it'd be like, Yeah, mean, they there's complete sentences, but it makes no sense. And we chose to go with a smaller number of releases, but things that we actually list curated ourselves that were interesting to us. And we're fortunate to have talent on the team to be able to do the editing and to and to create the clips. They're they're more under produced than they used to be. So they don't have all the bells and whistles and things going across them. But it's like this is an interesting So, it just, changed, you we started marching right up the hill when we focused on just quality over quantity inside of the podcast. now one thing we did learn too, and I'm interested in your thoughts on that is, and this took a while. I was actually in a marketing mastermind and everybody in there had had a podcast for a long time. And they said, you know, we gave up on new customer acquisition through the podcast because it's, you can't attribute it. Sophie Jamison (31:38.795) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (32:02.126) Really? So they say we're not using it for converting new people as customers, but it's very effective for convincing people. So not converting, but convincing. And you see things all the time on social media where, click in the link in the bio and get your free $97 offer to this, that, and the other thing. And I'm like, OK. That would be if I was interested in that. I would probably click there. is do you have an opinion on that? Are your more successful TikTok channels for like small consumer kitchen, Kitchen Aid, right? Small consumer purchases, I would assume. I don't know what the main products were in the Made by Gather line. I mean, yeah, air fryers like this thing. I don't know what this thing costs. I am holding up a Nerf gun, but $9 .99. OK, so like, know, it's more Sophie Jamison (32:47.122) Yeah, air fryers. Yeah. That's $9 .99. Jeff Dudan (33:00.354) to remind me that or to convince me that, I've got a kid's birthday coming up and I'm definitely just scribble, you now that I've seen people getting shot with Nerf guns in all different ways, I'm definitely gonna be buying eight Nerf guns for the party, right? I mean, I think that's it. Sophie Jamison (33:16.554) Yeah, yeah, and this is another constant battle in this area is, okay, but how many blasters did you sell? Like, this is great, but how many did you sell? And you have to realize that it's just a different purpose and it's a very important purpose as well. if somebody's in the aisle and they're actively about to purchase an air fryer, I want them to remember that video and say, I'm gonna purchase Drew Barrymore's air fryer because of that TikTok. That's not something you can... Jeff Dudan (33:26.518) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (33:35.128) Sure. Sophie Jamison (33:46.164) You could never measure that and that's what affects a lot of people's decisions, especially like a regular consumer in the aisle. They're going to remember that one TikTok video and know that this Nerf blaster Sophie Lightning approves of that's great. But chances are they're not ready to buy a Nerf blaster when they're scrolling on TikTok in their bed and they see that video. Jeff Dudan (34:06.444) Yeah, mean, like you can't you're not going to buy something you've never heard of. If you are going to buy something you never heard of, it's because you're in the aisle. There's two air fryers there and you have to pick one. So now you're going to read the box. You might you know, you might pull your phone out and go and look at reviews, which would be reasonable for somebody to do. But you're giving them home like the box is giving them homework to do right there, where if I recognize the one, you know, hey, man. If I'm looking for an indoor grill and I mean, and I see a George Foreman, I'm buying it. You know, I've always wanted one. I've just never had the opportunity to really have a need for one. But if I get an indoor grill, I'm getting a George Foreman grill. And for sure. Sophie Jamison (34:53.43) Yeah. You made a great point there because my generation, we're not looking at reviews. We're not going on Amazon in that aisle. We're going on TikTok and searching that product name. So if there's a video with 10 million views, even if it's completely silly, if it's using that product, then chances are, going to be like, this is the, this is the air fryer I should purchase. So just getting that awareness can then affect people's decisions later on. TikTok as a Search Engine: Why Gen Z Doesn’t Use Google Jeff Dudan (35:02.678) Really? Jeff Dudan (35:17.058) Wow. Who knew? All right, so I'm just letting that soak in. just letting. Sophie Jamison (35:24.374) On that note. I know, I know, it's crazy. I haven't googled something in a very long time. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:32.566) Really? It still works. All right, so let's move into obviously deep expertise inside of the platforms that we're talking about here. But you created Lightning Media, and Sophie Lightning was your channel. That was your online name. I read somewhere that it was a whole, that you got that nickname playing soccer. Sophie Jamison (35:56.8) Wow, deep research, yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:59.02) Yeah, deep research. I went to TikTok. Sophie Jamison (36:03.029) Yeah, yep, it was the chant Sophie lightning Jameson coming out on the field. Yeah Jeff Dudan (36:07.84) Really? How cool is that? Is there anything better than having your name called out over a loudspeaker at a sporting event? Sophie Jamison (36:14.742) I mean hitting two million followers was pretty nice too. Jeff Dudan (36:18.336) All right, well yeah, I guess that pays better. All right, well, but okay, so tell us a little bit about Lightning Media. Behind Lightning Media: Sophie’s Consulting Model for Brands That Want to Win Sophie Jamison (36:25.206) Yeah, definitely. So it's consulting first and foremost. So social audits, you you'll call me and you'll say, we have 10 TikToks on our posts. We don't have somebody here. We can't commit to hiring someone full time. We want to focus on all social. Tell us what we're doing wrong. Tell us what we're doing right. Help us do it. And my goal, it's almost counterintuitive, is to have them no longer need me in six to 12 months. Create such a well -run machine where they understand it. We're going to get them set up on some type of calendar. Jeff Dudan (36:49.431) Okay. Sophie Jamison (36:55.368) automatic posting, whatever they prefer. We're going to get a really nice group of UGC influencers who are going to sign for long -term contracts and basically create a content ecosystem where they don't even need someone internally creating it anymore. It's through the creators. Jeff Dudan (37:11.362) Wow, that's fantastic. then, so then the create, my question was going to be, and you kind of pre -answered it was, what about the creative? know, it's, if they have a creative in the building, you know, you're lucky, and you can't manage them. So they end up getting fired. right? I mean, because they're constantly, but like, you've gotta have them, especially today. So if you don't have a creative, Sophie Jamison (37:36.64) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (37:40.762) you know, mindset inside of the company. Maybe you've got some regular, you know, run of the mill type product and stuff like that. You can help people get it, get the right influencers that can be creating the content on their behalf. Sophie Jamison (37:53.512) Absolutely and doing that speed run trial of finding out what content so being as creative as possible while I'm there and then honing in on the one or two episodic pieces of content that perform well that I can then say here's the baseline now continue doing it Jeff Dudan (38:09.292) OK, awesome. Well, I'm interested in a content audit across our various brands. So we can deal with that offline if you have availability. And then what other kind of stuff? And is that the main focus of what you're doing right now? Are you staying pretty narrow in that niche? Or what's your vision for Lightning Media? Sophie Jamison (38:15.872) love to. Sophie Jamison (38:28.566) Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I had a really great answer for you. I have approached everything in life with a very open mind. So kind of just going in and seeing what exactly the brand really needs and then formfitting it to them versus just saying, here, pay me X amount of money and I'll make 12 posts and do a social audit and call it a day. So if we go in and they're crushing on TikTok, but they really need help on Instagram reels, bam. Or if they have a really good time, like, Jeff Dudan (38:53.965) Mm. Sophie Jamison (38:56.202) This is a perfect example of podcasts getting raw footage and they need someone to go in and cut those pieces and add captions and make it engaging. I'll go and do that. So it's everything from content creation to influencer to data analysts to paid media if need be. And then I've been doing also some strategic creative work for agencies. So coming up with influencer campaigns saying here's the product, here's the video, now go do it. Jeff Dudan (38:59.778) Right. Sophie Jamison (39:24.042) That has been some really, really fun work and great experience as well. Jeff Dudan (39:27.49) Fantastic. Do you have a sense of where the next big blue ocean is going to be in terms of social media, new platforms, or just new user opportunities on side of the existing platforms that exist today? Sophie Jamison (39:42.612) Yes, I don't think it exists yet. That's my firm answer is sometimes there'll be a sleeper app that will subtly take off, it's been out for a while. I don't think it's published yet. It's absolutely going to incorporate artificial intelligence. There's just no escaping that. Jeff Dudan (39:53.729) Okay. All right, what I'm thinking is that is you're promoting lightning .com, which is the next platform made by you. Is that what you're saying? Favorite Tools for TikTok Creators: CapCut, ChatGPT, and Scrolling With Intention Sophie Jamison (40:05.942) Maybe, maybe, we'll see. No, but yeah, artificial intelligence. If you are not learning up on that right now, you are going to be missing out. That's kind of just like TikTok in 2019. If you weren't figuring that out, you can still figure it out later, but it's so much better to just get in it early while it's still developing. And I use AI from everything, from make this copy sound better to... Jeff Dudan (40:10.529) All right. Jeff Dudan (40:16.237) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (40:32.15) Ooh, at five seconds, what should I say? And of course, taking it with a grain of salt, but it can be a really, really helpful asset. Also for social auditing too, it can go through your content and give you a, you have this weird thing where every 10 seconds into your video, you do a weird cut. Like you should stop doing that. And it's a type of pattern that I personally would have never picked up on. Jeff Dudan (40:51.938) Got it. Do you have some favorite platforms? I know you don't want to give away all of your tools in your toolkit, but do you have some that, two or three that people should really consider using if they're not right now? Sophie Jamison (40:57.93) I will. Sophie Jamison (41:03.958) Yeah, so if you're posting on TikTok, filming on your phone is perfect. And then using CapCut, CapCut is a great free editing app. You can get the premium trial, but they're actually integrated with TikTok. this is not proven, but it's pretty much proven that TikTok will prefer you or favor your content if you use CapCut to edit. So it's kind of a two for one deal because it's a great editing platform. But then also you're kind of getting a 1 % 2 % boost in the algorithm just for using it. Chat GPT of course is great. I'll always just throw a copy in there and say, please make this sound better. And then really just studying the platforms themselves. That's what I spent a lot of time doing is scrolling on TikTok, but try to be as intentional and conscious as possible while doing it. Jeff Dudan (41:37.751) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:48.62) Have you started using perplexity AI at all? Sophie Jamison (41:52.232) I've, yes, a little bit dabbled here. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:55.733) You've dabbled. Dabbled in it. I find it to be, I like it. I like it for certain purposes. If I was gonna say, give me 10 questions if I'm interviewing Sophie Jamieson, what would 10 questions be? It does good in areas like that, but yeah, we use chat. I'll come in and lay down. 30 or 35 minutes of nonsense and then we'll transcribe it and then we'll put it in chat and clean up. It won't catch everything that I think is important so we might have to go back and insert some concepts or some keywords or things like that. But then we can basically load that into a teleprompter and I can run that and it probably cuts it down to five to 10 minutes. But it's clean and it takes out all of my thinking and all of the. Sophie Jamison (42:28.533) Yes. Jeff Dudan (42:45.196) all of the nonsense and stuff like that. So we'll do that sometimes. Other times it's good just to, if it's tight, just go with it in its raw form or take cuts of it and go with those raw cuts of it there. you know, it's definitely a game because it's as, you know, again, you're trying to do things efficiently, but if you efficiently make garbage that nobody wants to hear or see, then you're just wasting your time. It's really an art. It's a... Sophie Jamison (42:57.003) Yeah. Sophie Jamison (43:11.702) Perfectly perfectly put yeah Jeff Dudan (43:14.766) It's a great mix of art and science. if you grew up, and my son is 20, he's an engineering student at Virginia Tech. He grew up in the YouTube, you know, it's, I'll tell you this story, man. He'd probably kill me for telling this. But that's what editing's for. you know, he's a YouTube nut. and he loved engineering and he loved he loves rockets and he loves airplanes and stuff. So when COVID hit, he bought flights, all the stuff to have a flight simulator on his computer, you know, so he would like he would literally be able to fly act like actually fly airplanes and take them off. there you go. OK, so he's he's interviewing with with a, you know, one of the big. Sophie Jamison (43:53.021) yep. Sophie Jamison (44:00.404) Yeah, there's one upstairs right now. I love it. Jeff Dudan (44:09.664) airline, he's for a deal, like one of the big airline companies, you know, and I'm not going to say which one it is, but it sounds like Boeing. It sounds like a spring, but I'm not going to say which one of this. So he's interviewed and they're like, he's like, and they said, well, you know, he asked, said, well, what's your biggest problem, you know, that you're trying to solve right now? And they said something, he said, well, yeah, that particular aircraft, the problem you're having, he goes, because it's a, it's a single fuselage. Sophie Jamison (44:22.768) I wonder Jeff Dudan (44:39.352) that's in one piece, and then you've got your carbon fiber wrap, and because of that, it's very difficult to get the ovens that you need inside of it, inside of the fuselage and all that, and also with the carbon fiber, it creates problems with the riveting. And the interviewer's like, that's exactly the problem we're having, and of course, he moved on to the next round because of that, and then he called and he said, if you ever complain about me watching YouTube videos again, then this, you know, because he, I mean, he just consumed everything about airplanes and everything about why they worked and how they worked and all that. And then he threw in, course, and by the way, I have over 400 hours logged on that airplane in my flight simulator so I could also fly it. Who else are you going to hire for that? Who else is going to get that internship? But people that grew up in that generation, Sophie Jamison (45:25.192) I love that. Sophie Jamison (45:28.998) Absolutely. Jeff Dudan (45:34.382) They have a real sense for what's good content and what they will just discard quickly So you got to have I mean if you're a company out there And you know you've been doing cabinets or you've been doing plumbing or you've been doing electrical for all this time I see those people trying to make this stuff You know and it looks like old people trying to make stuff. I mean, it's just they did it's just it's almost like it's just not right You know it's it's almost right, and it's a it's a good try but Sophie Jamison (45:53.887) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (46:03.296) It's just not, it just takes a lot of work to get it there, but I also think there's a real feel to it. Sophie Jamison (46:10.09) Yeah, you know. Like, you absolutely know that they're trying to do something that's maybe not comfortable for them. Jeff Dudan (46:12.395) Right. Jeff Dudan (46:16.61) Yeah. And I mean, I see the things that I watch two or three times and then I'll stop myself and I'll take, you know, I'm death scrolling like I shouldn't be. And then I'll look at it and I'll be like, okay, why did I watch that three times? Like, why did I wait? And it's like, because they put the words in here at this point, but they disappeared just so quick enough that I had to watch it again to read the second half of the thing. But there was something interesting, you know, there was a penguin falling down on the ice while I was doing that. Sophie Jamison (46:42.239) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (46:46.348) You know what? Well, actually, yeah, it's I signed up for the three stooges plan on Instagram and it's just people getting hit with, you know, pans and things. But so. Sophie Jamison (46:46.996) Your whole feed is just people falling, huh? Sophie Jamison (47:01.078) it's a reference I get maybe 5 % so. Jeff Dudan (47:04.398) Okay, well, sorry. Casey, like isn't that what we're talking about, Like just 95 % of my audience wouldn't get my three stooges real that I posted. And the 5 % that would are actually over on Facebook. so, all right. Well, Sophie, this has been a lot of fun. It's been actually a good, this has been fun. Is there? Sophie Jamison (47:11.709) Yes, absolutely. Sophie Jamison (47:32.149) Yeah has. Jeff Dudan (47:36.004) Is there anything else that you care to talk about or anything else that you'd like to let our audience know? Any advice, any final words? Final Advice: Don’t Burn Out—Have Fun or Hire Someone Who Will Sophie Jamison (47:44.224) Yeah, I think just at the end of the day, burnout is super prevalent in this industry, especially in that creative role. Whether you're the person making the content, you're just working on a marketing team. So I'm trying to nail this into you as hard as I possibly can, which is make content that you enjoy. At the end of the day, making content is a dream job in a lot of ways, and it should be fun. People can tell if you're not having fun in the video. So whether that's you need, you're the plumber and you need to hire somebody part -time to come make the content for you or you're a content creator and you need to take a step back and really focus on content that you enjoy. Just yeah, at the end of the day, make sure that it's true to you and it's true to your brand. If you're an influencer, really, really think about brand deals. That's the biggest piece of advice I wish I had had when I first got started. There are some very questionable brand deals I took at the beginning just because I was excited to be there. So to be really really intentional with everything that you do if you're a content creator for sure Jeff Dudan (48:42.124) Nice, great advice. Last question for you, a little more broad. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Jeff Dudan (48:55.852) or phrase. Sophie Jamison (48:57.248) I would probably just say, stay true to who you are and never do it quietly. That's how I've gotten successful and I know it's super broad, but nobody ever would have thought that random kid playing soccer was gonna play with Nerf blasters, which would then lead to the Forbes list and all these things and that's just by being myself, so. Jeff Dudan (49:17.454) think that's perfectly said. Thank you for being on. This has been Sophie Jamieson here with me, Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thank you for listening. Sophie Jamison (49:19.158) Thanks. Thank you. Sophie Jamison (49:29.248) Thank you!
Brief Summary In this fast-paced and hilarious episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Sebastian Jimenez—comedian turned tech founder—whose company Rilla Voice is transforming how home service businesses use data from face-to-face sales conversations. Sebastian shares his journey from stand-up stages to startup success, revealing how Rilla captures and analyzes millions of in-home conversations to coach salespeople, uncover behavioral insights, and unlock revenue growth. It’s a masterclass in humor, hustle, and how AI is reshaping the trades. Key Takeaways Rilla Voice transforms live sales conversations into searchable, coachable data using AI, giving companies “Moneyball” insights into sales performance. Top closers talk less —the best reps speak 45–65% of the time and ask 5x more open-ended questions than the average salesperson. Stand-up comedy taught Sebastian the secret to business success : relentless tolerance for failure and iteration. Starting lean taught discipline —Sebastian launched Rilla with just $10,000 and lived on $500/month in NYC while growing his first startup. AI coaching is replacing dashboards —Rilla’s new Rick.AI assistant gives sales managers personalized, voice-trained coaching recommendations. The trades are being revolutionized by smart software—from AI call centers to home-scanning HVAC tools—and Rilla is leading the charge. Featured Quote “The best founders aren’t the smartest, most creative, or even the hardest-working—they just have the highest tolerance for failure.” TRANSCRIPT From Clown to CEO: Meet Sebastian Jimenez, the Mind Behind Rilla Voice Jeff Dudan (00:03.808) Hey everybody, Jeff Duden on the home front and I am excited today to have Sebastian Jimenez on with us today. Welcome Sebastian. Sebastian Jimenez (00:12.354) Thank you for having me on, Jeff. I super excited to be here. Jeff Dudan (00:14.7) Yeah, Sebastian is the co -founder of Rilla Voice, one of the hottest, coolest startups in tech, one of the fastest growing companies in the world today. Company that I am super excited in because of the impact that he's made transcribing coaching. There's over 10 billion conversations that happen face to face out there with salespeople engaging with clients. And Sebastian has a vision that he's worked on and capitalized on to create incredible AI. coaching intelligence around all this. Super excited to unpack it with you. Welcome. Sebastian Jimenez (00:51.556) Thank you so much, man. Yeah. I like how you put it there. 10 billion face to face conversations out there that, that people are having with each other. And, yeah, we're going to talk about what we're doing here. But to, to, to me, that was like, kind of like all those conversations happening, nobody's capturing them. They're lost in the short -term memory of the salesperson or the service person who's having them. It's like a, like a lost civilization that was never put into the written record. And so all we're trying to do really, and I'll talk about what real is in a second, but, All we're trying to do is we're just trying to capture those conversations that are happening and make them searchable and indexable and make them useful for companies to make better decisions. So they can all be like Google and Amazon and making really smart decisions about their customers. Jeff Dudan (01:29.43) Where was the moment that you identified this opportunity? You had a startup going, it was something similar, and then you just had this aha moment. Tell us about that. Sebastian Jimenez (01:34.563) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:39.524) So for those of you who don't know what Rela is, Rela is the leading virtual run along software for outside sales and service, specifically the home improvement industry. So you think of people who sell windows siding, flooring doors, H5 plumbing, electrician, solar roofing, people who sell home improvement products and other outside sales and service people. they talk to people face to face, they record their conversations with the Rela app, and then we use AI to transcribe, analyze, and give them feedback to help them improve their sales and to help their... There are managers who will go virtual ride alongs that are 100 times faster, better, more productive. She asked me where the idea came from. So I've never had a job. always been, I always tell you right before this, my mom likes to call me perpetually unemployed. I've never had a job. I've only done startups. And before this, I used to do standup comedy. So when I graduated college, I just started my first startup and my first startup was a field marketing management software that would help companies like Heineken, Red Bull. Coca -Cola managed their field marketing campaigns. So for those of you who don't know what field marketing is, think of like the Red Bull kids with the uniforms. They go to college campuses and events and they give you Red Bull and they're like, woo, Red Bull. And that's like field marketing, right? Those are brand ambassadors. Our software was a very basic software that was used to manage brand ambassadors in the field. They could take pictures, submit the reports about how the event went. You could manage the brand ambassadors, pay them like an all -in -one field marketing management software. A lot of home service folks will understand this like something like ServiceSite where you could just basically run your entire business on ServiceSite. So this, that we were that for, for field marketing. And one day I was talking to the field marketing manager in Heineken and in her reports on our tool, it said that she, they weren't doing 50 events a week, face -to -face activations in college campuses, storefronts, and so on and so forth. selling seltzer and new products and stuff like that. then it said also that they talked to 100 people per event and she said, yes. And I said, that's 20 ,000 people a month that you guys are talking to every single month, 20 ,000. And then she said, yes, that's about average. And I said, how many markets are like you in Heineken? Because that was just one little tiny market. And she said about 200 nationwide. And I said, 200, that's 4 million people a month that you guys are talking to. How 4 Million Untapped Conversations Inspired a Data Revolution Sebastian Jimenez (04:01.412) if the math is correct. And she said, yeah, that's about right. Yeah, that's, that's about right. 4 million people. said, and then I realized that those 4 million conversations they were being had, people were talking about, would try the product. It was like doing in -store demos, like trying the product, saying what they think and leaving. And none of them were captured. And at the same time, I realized Hunnigan was spending like hundreds, like hundreds of millions of dollars every year on social media analytics on surveys, focus groups, market research to try to understand their consumers a little bit better. And from all those sources of data combined, from online sources, surveys, all these different data sources, they were getting like, you know, maybe like 500 ,000 points of interaction every month. So I said 500 ,000 points of interaction where consumers online, 4 million offline, that's eight times the amount of data, right? And it's much more relevant because there's no robot, you know, there's no bot, you know it's real data because it's a person talking to you face to face. It's a real conversation. And I said, what if we could go there and capture all these conversations and give Heineken eight times more data about their consumers that they don't have today? And then I thought, well, that's not just Heineken. 85 % of commerce in America happens offline. People think of Amazon, eBay, they're so big. But if you think about e -commerce, e -commerce is basically 10, 15 % of commerce, eBay, Amazon, all of what you buy online is only 15 % of commerce. Most commerce in America and around the world still happens face to face. You know, somebody going to a store, going to a restaurant. go into a home and talk into another human being face to face, right? I was like, okay, so that's not only Heineken, how many conversations does Coca -Cola have? And then I started thinking, why stop at field marketing? What about the, they have field salespeople that go into the restaurants and the stores to try to talk to the buyers there. Jeff Dudan (05:27.285) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (05:39.94) And then I thought, why stop at food and beverage? What about the people who sell windows, plumbing, siding doors, HVAC, electrician? What about the people who sell pharmaceutical devices, medical devices, right? What about the people selling retail stores? You walk into a retail store and then I started thinking about the whole universe, which is what you described. There's 12 million outside sales and service people in America, 10 billion conversations face to face every month. I thought if we could go out there and make all these 10 billion conversations part of the historical record, then maybe we could attempt to build something as magical as Google did. once back in the day where they made the internet indexable. if we could make the same thing happen for offline commerce to give the same power that Google has to understand customers to all businesses around the world? So, yeah. Jeff Dudan (06:19.105) Now, how old were you when you had this epiphany? Sebastian Jimenez (06:24.292) It was 2019 and I was born in 96, so 23. Yeah, or 22. Yeah, 23, 23, 23, yeah. Jeff Dudan (06:28.62) Nice. Okay. so, so you grew up in the D. So you grew up in the, you grew up in the DR and then you came over and you did a program at Yale in 2013. Then you went to school at NYU. how did that, like how, were you entrepreneurial, up until that point when you lived in the Dominican, and then when you, how did you decide to come to the United States? Sebastian Jimenez (06:43.308) Yeah. Yes. Sebastian Jimenez (06:56.108) Yeah, so I knew I wanted to, I learned how to speak English very early on. like I used to watch South Park and Jackass, like all the crappy American, we used to have like pirated American TV. And I learned like by watching the shows, reading the subtitles. So like, if you listen, my voice sounds very cartoonish. Dominicans do not sound like this. don't wanna, I'm like, this is not how we sound. This is a very. Jeff Dudan (07:04.62) That's... Jeff Dudan (07:21.27) So you're patterned after South Park, basically. All right. Sebastian Jimenez (07:23.712) Yes. Yeah. And if you meet me, will like, if you get to know me, you will see like, my God, that makes so much sense. guy's a potty mouth. so I learned how to speak English. I was always like very, I was always in the DR, we like, we look a lot to American culture. Like, there's a lot of there's a big diaspora of Dominicans here in New York City. Miami. So like America is like the end all be all. So we look up to and so I grew up like kind of like looking at just like being kind of all like very close to American culture. And so I always knew I wanted to come to to America and kind of make things happen here. I came to I came to college at NYU. And that was great. In hindsight, because NYU is a college that doesn't really have a campus. You're basically an 18 year old and they just throw you in New York City. That's basically what's happening. There's no camps. I remember when I was coming to, there was like the school tour and there was like a little girl in the front, like a freshman, like giving a tour and saying like, you know, this is like Washington Square Park. And then it's like, there comes a crack head just like screaming at the top of it. He's just like yelling and crazy stuff. And I'm like, is this part of the, because you're just like in the streets in New York. so, and yeah, he's just screaming and all these little kids are like, is this like a performance or like what's happening? and, and so like, yeah, it's just like what it is. And so, and so you're just in New York City. And, it forces you to kind of find your own way. Jeff Dudan (08:47.776) Yeah, that's that's the orientation right there. Welcome to New York. Yeah. Ha ha. no. No, no, that's a Tuesday. That's all that is. Sebastian Jimenez (09:11.148) NYU is not a really good school for people who want to have like the traditional college experience. Cause if you don't find your own way, you're going to get depressed and sad very quickly. And so what I started doing, Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, he has this great quote, which is you are who you are when you, you are who you were when you were growing up, when you were little. That's, that's, that's who you are. And he said, I was a designer because I always love painting and designing things. And that that's who I am. Cause that's who I was when I was growing up. And so I didn't think about that quote. And I said, well, I, Jeff Dudan (09:18.603) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (09:41.208) I am a clown, that's what I am. My nature is to be a clown because ever since I was little, I always loved making people laugh. I always loved laughing. I got really into stand -up comedy. I used to watch comedy all the time, like late night TV. I used to stay up late watching pirated versions of Conan O 'Brien and all these different things. So when I came to NYU, I was like, this is the city of stand -up comedy. It's the best city in the world to do stand -up. I started doing stand -up immediately when I was a freshman. And I was doing six shows a day, seven days a week doing stand -up comedy, stand -up comedy, stand -up comedy. And I fell in love with it. And I would say that the biggest thing that I learned from stand there's so many things. I never went to class in NYU. never, like, I just literally just would show up to take my tests so that I could get my visa at the end of the four years. And I would just like, I literally just showed up to class, never showed up to class. Why Stand-Up Comedy Is the Best Business School Cause it says in my degree, I got a degree in business. That's not true. My actual degree was in standup comedy, cause that's all I learned in college. And everything I learned about business today, I learned from standup comedy. And one of the biggest things I learned was how in order to do something truly great, insanely great, it's not enough to just have a great idea. That's not just like 1%. Like that's, that's not, that's like 1 % of the whole equation. it's also very necessary to fail many times over. Like, a thousand times over to get it right. That's really the secret sauce. I learned this in standup because in standup, it's one of the only art forms where you have to practice in front of a crowd. So like in music and painting and writing and poetry, can practice in your room and make sure that your music sounds good before you show it to people. In standup, you do not have this luxury. As soon as you have an idea, you write it down and immediately you try to go to an open mic and tell some strangers the joke to see if they laugh. And you don't know if they're gonna laugh. You have an idea. Jeff Dudan (11:06.806) That's right. Sebastian Jimenez (11:36.14) Even if you're funny, you don't know because the joke is not ready yet. It's like very half baked. And, but you do this and then you fail inevitably, many different times. And every time you fail, you listen to the failure. You're like, okay, the joke might've been great. There's some funny in there, but the setup was wrong. The punchline was wrong. I lost them at the end when I said the last word or the way I helped the mic. Let me try that. Let me try the same joke, but let me hold the mic there. And you're looking at all these little thousand little variables to actually make the joke, you know, work. Jeff Dudan (11:51.542) That's right. Sebastian Jimenez (12:04.964) And so the best comedians, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, they bombed like 50 % of the time because they're always trying out new material. And so as a stand -up comic, all I was trying to do was generate three new minutes of material every single week. And for that, you have to be constantly generating new jokes. And that is the secret sauce in like any, just really any art form, any creative endeavor, entrepreneurship to me, it's just like, I read the biographies of Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs. George Westinghouse, I read all these biographies of these insanely great entrepreneurs who defined history. And I said, what was it that made them special? And when you read their biographies, you see a common pattern. It's not that they were the smartest people. They were really smart, but they were not the smartest. They had smarter people around them. Like their IQ, their IQ was not the highest in the world, by the way. They were really smart, but not the smartest people. Was it that they were the most hardworking? They were really hardworking, but there was hardworking people all around them that work just as hard. So that's not it. Were they the most creative? Yes, they were very creative. They were not the most creative. They hired more creative people than they did. Was it the combination? No, because they had very hardworking, very intelligent and very creative people that were working around them that did all of these things higher than they ever did. And so what was the secret sauce that made them so special? The secret sauce is that they had an insane tolerance and appetite for failure like nobody else. That was it. They, Thomas Edison, classic example, 10 ,000 tries to get the light bulb to work. Somebody asked him, you, you fail 9999 times. He said, no, just make it out 9999 times to not get it to work. And then I found the one that did. Right. And, and when he talks about the 10 ,000 tries to get the light bulb, mind you, this is 10 years of him toiling in a lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, just literally just trying to get this light bulb to work for 10 years. Most people would have given up, but he kept failing and failing and failing and failing and failing and failing similar to Steve Jobs. The first iterations of Apple one and Apple two circuit board. it took them. many years, like, it was like, I don't know, was like almost 10 years to get the Macintosh out there. It was like between five and 10 years. Same with Walt Disney. You look at the first early animations. It's like these crappy little cartoons with Mickey Mouse and then you see color and then you see sound and then you see Snow White and it's like, and then he defines animation for the entire century. The biggest skill that I learned that you needed was that like this insane. The Secret Sauce of Innovation: Fail Fast, Learn Faster Sebastian Jimenez (14:26.148) tolerance and appetite for failure. If you can fail longer and more and faster than anybody else at a micro level, you're just going to learn so much faster and you're going to become unbeatable because you're going to learn every single thing of what not to do. So yeah. Jeff Dudan (14:39.294) Well, and that's it. was Elon Musk's philosophy. He says, we're going to Mars and we've got to launch a rocket ship every hour on the hour. So I need to start blowing them up every week. I mean, my son would show me he'd say, he said, hey, we got another launch. We look at it and the thing would explode. I'm like, were there people on there? He goes, no. And it kept every week. It's like, it's blowing up. And then, know, a couple of years later, he's you know, they're landing on a a robotic pad out in the ocean. And now they're going to be landing right on the launching pad. And it's just it's a testament to saying Sebastian Jimenez (14:48.696) Yes, SpaceX. Sebastian Jimenez (14:58.083) Yeah! Jeff Dudan (15:09.452) You know, it's you have to accelerate your failures Faster and faster and faster to get to where you want to go because there's always gonna be a breakdown before you have a breakthrough Now before we get off the subject my daughter goes to NYU. So I've been spending a lot of time in the city Yeah, it's great. And so favorite pizza Johnson Which one Okay, all right Sebastian Jimenez (15:24.617) that's so cool! Sebastian Jimenez (15:29.838) Favorite pizza, Prince Street pizza. And the Prince, Prince Street pizza. And then you don't have to think about it. Prince Street pizza. Which one's yours? Jeff Dudan (15:38.444) All right. OK. Not John. So she's got a new place right across from she lives on 95 Christopher Street there. And there's a new place right across there. I can't think of the name of it starts with an L right now. But we go to John's on Bleecker. That's good. There's one on Christopher's Luciano's Luci Luci's. Are you looking it up? You looking it up right now? Sebastian Jimenez (15:58.368) Okay. Yeah, she lives in the, I used to live there by the way. She's like in the West Village. It's a really nice place. Yeah. There's a really nice neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, well, all the musicians, all the artists live. She's the, the Jay Z has like a, that's a really nice place. Like the West Village and the school's right by. So yeah. Jeff Dudan (16:04.896) Yeah, it's not bad. We wanted her to be able to walk to school. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (16:19.916) Yeah, anytime she leaves, I move in and I just go walking around the city. Sebastian Jimenez (16:22.916) Yeah. At least she's you know, she's not in what the other side which is like, what's the alphabet city. That's where you need to get like a whole body armor and then like, make it to squand hard. So Jeff Dudan (16:32.416) Yeah. Yeah. Are you still living in the city? Sebastian Jimenez (16:40.056) I'm in Queens right now. So our company's in Long Island City, Queens, which is like right at the tip of Queens, like five minutes from Grand Central. yeah, cheaper rent. So yeah. Yeah, much nicer. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (16:43.382) Okay. Jeff Dudan (16:48.608) Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt. Yeah, awesome. Well, I tell you what, I caught one of your sets on YouTube. Great set. When's last time you did stand up? Sebastian Jimenez (17:01.324) Last time I did stand up, mean, I technically, if you like, I go to shows, I go to contractor shows a lot of the time. that's basically, this whole company is a ruse for me to continue to do stand up. That's what this company is. I basically travel to all these shows and I get to make contractors laugh. So if you count that last week, but when I did stand up proper, I was at a, I was like at a disinvestor dinner like a year ago and the investor said, well, Jeff Dudan (17:13.131) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (17:30.308) For tonight's entertainment, we actually have a comedian in the crowd. And so, and it was like a dinner with a bunch of founders, like 25 people and we were like, yeah, so Sebastian, come up and tell some jokes. And I'm like, this month. And then I just, no, my God. I know, but I did all my jokes and they started, cause I'm so out of pocket and they're used to like being all formal, like these techies and all these like tech nerds. Jeff Dudan (17:43.733) That's not the right room, man. It's not the right room. It's not the right room. You know when... Jeff Dudan (17:53.932) Yeah. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (17:56.996) And I just started saying all my crap and they were sort of bawling laughing. Because I was just doing my old jokes. I was like, I'm just going to do my 2016 jokes. I don't care, dude. Like, whatever. Jeff Dudan (18:06.784) Hey, you get what you get when you throw you up there. Yeah, I do the same thing. I do a ton of training. I do a ton of speaking. I've got all my stuff worked in there. But yeah, it's just like, it's an excuse for me to get in front of people. I get to do it two or three times a week. And it's just great. It's just great getting in front of people and being able to work through. course, when I do our training for our franchise group, I do like the first two hours and we have six brands. So we're doing a training almost every week. Sebastian Jimenez (18:09.878) Yeah, I don't dare! Sebastian Jimenez (18:23.506) I love it, Jeff Dudan (18:34.73) But you know, I've got my stuff worked in there. You know, you need to, you can't just talk to people for two hours and then not have fun. It needs to, needs to be. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (18:40.566) Yeah, yeah, you gotta have fun and keep attention. You gotta keep it. If you're gonna keep attention, you have to throw like a little bit of attention grabbing things in there, right? So. Jeff Dudan (18:47.67) Yeah, yeah, stories, things they don't expect, know, all that kind of stuff. So I've gotten in a little trouble in a couple of, I tried a couple of things in probably the wrong audience and I got in a little bit trouble. But you know, you gotta push up to. Sebastian Jimenez (18:51.469) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (19:01.06) All that's the best, dude. The worst time I bombed, the worst time I bombed, it was just, we can trade bombing stories. My brother asked me to do standup in Spanish for the first time. I'd never done standup in Spanish. I'd only done standup in English. And he said, like, come do standup. And I was like, okay, whatever. This guy basically invited like 500 people to his restaurant down in the DR. So I was down there for Christmas. And he said like, this like New York comedian, my brother who's like a New York comedian, kept calling me like a New York comedian. I'm like an NYU student who doesn't know anything. And, and he's like, my brother's in New York. He's going to be doing comedy today. And I go like, dude, how many people are coming? He's like, 500. I'm like, what do want me to do? And he goes like, I don't know. Do you do your thing? I'm like, I've never done it in Spain. He's like, you just translate. I'm like, it doesn't work like that. And he goes, and I go, how much time do you want me to do? And he goes, like an hour. And I'm like, an hour. Do want me to do an hour? Jeff Dudan (19:49.93) Now it does. Sebastian Jimenez (19:56.74) And it was so bad, man. Like the first 15 minutes, you know, you're bombing. There was a lady in the front row was going like this, like with like a rosary, like praying to God for forgiveness. And, and my dad was in the crowd and he was heckling me. He was like, boom, go back to school. You suck at this. And yeah, it was a fun time. Jeff Dudan (20:07.094) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:19.328) you What are your favorite clubs in New York? We go to the cellar almost every time I'm in. Sebastian Jimenez (20:26.692) The Cellar is the best club, I would say, probably in the world. It's like between that and the Lab Factory in California. The Cellar is great. didn't, I never, I was never, I did the Cellar like one time for like a comedy class on a Wednesday at 3 .30 PM. I didn't do like the, did it like when like, you know, the waiters are cleaning up, you know what I mean? Getting ready, you know? It's like, they did like a charity show for me to feel special. It's like a make a wish for stand -up comedy, you know? And then. Jeff Dudan (20:32.0) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:41.812) Okay, yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:53.749) You Sebastian Jimenez (20:55.684) I used to do The Stand, The Stand NYC, which is in Grand Mercy around that area, like 23rd, think it's The Stand. And then I used to do Broadway Comedy Club, I did a couple of times. And then I used to have this regular hosting gig at the Climb and Lounge on 7th Street. But I used to do like all the open mics all over like, know, West Village, East Village and so, yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:59.19) Okay. Jeff Dudan (21:18.86) Nice, nice. Hey, next time I'm up there, man, can we hang out? Sebastian Jimenez (21:23.012) Yes, dude. If you come here all the time. Yes, dude. Absolutely. Yeah, just let me know. Jeff Dudan (21:26.828) All right, all right, we'll do it. I can't wait. I can't wait. You know, I guess we gotta get to business at some point on this podcast. Sebastian Jimenez (21:33.962) Yes, yes, yes! Yes! Sorry, folks! Sorry, folks! We're just having fun here. We're just having fun. We just, yeah. Jeff Dudan (21:36.81) Not really. Yeah. Now, I well, look, but like this is the core of success, though, man. It's like how do people like this is an entrepreneurial podcast. Right. So like, like, you know, people, I think people are so serious, man. And the reason that comedians, I think are some of the they're some of the smartest people. You have to be sharp. You're always thinking about what things mean. I mean, it's like, you know, it's, think it's, I think it's pretty well documented that the best standups are really bright, brilliant type people. And if you can, you can be that creative in the moment, you can put concepts and thoughts together. Plus you're engaging people like, which is the whole, the whole thing. mean, great salespeople are great connectors. mean, we've got this, you know, we're in franchise sales, right? So Sebastian Jimenez (22:21.6) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (22:27.071) my god. Jeff Dudan (22:29.708) that we have franchise salespeople and really what it comes down to is like, can you connect with somebody in like 60 seconds? Like if they, if you can connect with somebody like right off the bat, disarm them and get that, get them in the pocket where, you know, they're enjoying the conversation. That's it. Everybody likes to have fun. Everybody likes to, you know, feel good, feel like they're getting something out of it. So, I mean, people that are selling through scripts or just, you know, and you see it, right? Because Sebastian Jimenez (22:36.088) Yes. Jeff Dudan (22:57.868) What you do is basically you made the invisible visible. There's 10 million invisible conversations going on, people selling at the kitchen table, and you have no idea as a company owner what in the world is getting said. The only thing you see, they go into the black hole of the house, they come out, and they either have an order or they don't. But then you know that this salespeople, every lead you give them, they bring you $1 ,000. This salesperson, every lead you give them, they bring you $4 ,000. Moneyball for Home Services: What the Best Salespeople Do Differently Sebastian Jimenez (23:02.723) Yes. Jeff Dudan (23:27.786) What's the difference? You couldn't tell until Rilla Voice was created and came onto the scene. And that's really the value in it. what are some of the best insights that you have seen that maybe you didn't expect as you start getting all of this data in from all of these hidden conversations? Sebastian Jimenez (23:39.001) Mm Sebastian Jimenez (23:46.456) Yeah, so like you said, one of the things that you mentioned, was for us, it wasn't the initial value of the product, but it was kind of like an unwitting byproduct of what we did is that we started collecting a lot of conversations. So we've analyzed millions and millions and millions of conversations being had between salespeople selling home improvement products and homeowners at the kitchen table and for the first time, can do this thing that we call Moneyball for Sales, is you, a money ball, which for anybody who wasn't, what's the movie is the movie with Brad Pitt. It's based on a book that basically tells a story of this guy was the manager of the Oakland A's team of baseball. brought the concept of using data science and analytics to playing baseball games. And instead of just relying on human intuition to make decisions, you rely on human intuition coupled with data, a big data analytics to understand what are the What are the inputs in the game that produce the outputs that we want? And so how can you, how can you maximize the chances of winning baseball games by using data? And so that concept was very powerful. It's used all over sports. When it comes to coaching, by the way, I hire a lot of D1 athletes from college. I like to talk to a lot of sports coaches. would be recently interviewed Nick Saban at a conference. I went to the 49er stadium, like recently to see, like, you know, I got the opportunity to go and, and I've met a lot of athletes. And so I'm always talking to athletes. And I'm always talking to sports coaches because I've noticed that the world of sports and like coaching in sports is way ahead of the world of coaching and sales and coaching anywhere else. the sports coaches are the most advanced coaches of all, right? But when you go into any other fast and they use technology and they use analytic and they use data science, right? To, coach their team. So I'm always trying to learn from, from the very cutting edge of coaching, which isn't sports. And so for this concept of data, Jeff Dudan (25:20.992) Hmm. Sebastian Jimenez (25:38.948) right in sports has been around. This is not a new concept. This has been around since 2001. Since this guy Billy Bean brought it to the Oakland A's team of baseball. And so this it's been around for like 25 years. And here we are talking about this big innovation and all this crap like the sports people are like, yeah, I'm excited. Of course, like anybody who does sports in college. One of my customer success reps, she was a D1 hockey player, they get tracked with this, you know, they have like this little sports bra. Jeff Dudan (25:55.851) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (26:06.83) that literally tracks your heart rate and how fast you're running and coaches use that data to actually make decisions. And so for the first time ever, we have an opportunity to do the same thing that Billy Bean did for the Oakland A's and what he did for all sports, which is use data science to make better decisions for sales. Because we can analyze the conversations. Not only we could see if it closed or not, we could see why. We could see what happened before that. Because we're getting a bird's eye view into what's happening in the home. One of the first things that we found, analyzed, at this point we had analyzed like 1 million conversations in the home. found, we wanted to understand what is it that makes the absolute top 1 % of top performers different than everybody else when it comes to selling in the home, right? So we looked at people who sell roofing, looked at people who sell windows siding, all home improvement products, and we segmented it by industry and we published all these reports now. We wanted to see what is it that makes them different than the average salesperson? So somebody who closes. You know, the top performers who are in Rilla right now, they're closing $10 million of annual revenue to their businesses, $13 million every year, $15 million. Like the top, very top of the one percent of the top performers, they're closing 10 to $15 million of annual revenue to their businesses. Think about that. Okay. These are people who are literally making seven figures in their own pocket every year, like who are multimillionaires just by doing sales. So we can understand what it is that they're doing differently as a group so that we can kind of mimic that. And one of the first things that we figured out, What is the difference between a $10 million closer and a $1 million closer or a $500 ,000 closer is that those $10 million closers, talk 50 % of the time. So if you look at the talk ratio between the customer and the sales rep, the top performers, they talk between 45 % of the time and 65 % of the time versus a homeowner who talks, it's basically like a 50 -50 split. And the average reps, the average salespeople, they talk between 75 and 85 % of the time. If you lower your talk ratio to that kind of 45 to 65 range, you're putting yourself along with the top performers. And it's what you're saying, Jeff. They have a conversation. They make people feel good. They listen. They understand people's pain points. understand their problems. They have a conversation. They don't go out there like the Shamuels guy and be like, but listen, Mrs. Homeowner, there's more. Wait a second. Wait another hour for me to tell you another thing. They listen. And so that was one of the first things that we found. It's like talk ratio. Jeff Dudan (28:19.474) Thank you. Sebastian Jimenez (28:29.42) lower your talk ratio, you're going to make more sales. Pretty simple. Jeff Dudan (28:33.344) Yeah, that's incredible insight. do you think are other areas of disruption that Rilla and other tools like it can drive, like call center? Or maybe even customer journey before the in -home sales happens? the things that happen up to the point where somebody gets to the front door, what do you see in those areas? And are those areas that you're looking to continue to disrupt as you get this data? Sebastian Jimenez (28:47.278) Mmm. Sebastian Jimenez (28:56.238) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (29:03.692) Yeah, so Rilla is moving. Rilla, you can think of Rilla's journey as starting from the moment that the sales rep talks to the customer and we want to help with that entire process after that sale. So that's really where we are. Like that's where our domain is and that's where, and that's what we want to keep growing. And there's so much that we need to build for Rilla. Like right now we built an analytics product that allows you to look at data. The next iteration of that with large language models, which we're building now is a, it's not an analytics product, it's an assistant product. And instead of having Analytics are very annoying for the human brain, especially for our customers. Our customers are salespeople and they're sales managers. Sales managers and salespeople, they're not math creatures. They're verbal people. Their linguistic IQ is insanely hot because they talk to each other. They talk for a living. They're always thinking about what to say and how to say it. And an analytics product is kind of annoying for a verbal user because it's easier to talk and get feedback by talking to somebody. So what we're doing is we're building Rilla. Jeff Dudan (29:37.344) Mm -hmm. AI Sales Coaching: Introducing Rick.AI, Your Virtual Ride-Along Partner Sebastian Jimenez (30:01.846) as a, as a, not as an analytics product, but as an AI product where you could just go in there and say, like, what are the top objections that my team got last week? What, I have a one -on -one meeting with, with, Jose tomorrow. What should I talk about with Jose tomorrow to help them? And then Rilla looks at all the data from all the conversations. It looks at your CRM, whatever it is that you're using. And it looks at Jose's close rates, his average tickets. looks, it looks at all the trends, with Jose. how he's doing compared to the team. looks at all his conversations and then it gives you like a little answer of like, hey, tomorrow you have a one -on -one meeting with those ways. Here's what he's doing really well. Here's what he's struggling with. And here's what you should probably show him to help him understand how to navigate the price objection. Cause that's what he's been struggling with the most recently. And it's just like chat GPT, but it's trained on your conversational data and your CRM data, not just on the general internet data. And so turning that to a language product instead of an analytics product. That's what we're working on. But there's like a bunch of other things that other people are working on as well. Jeff Dudan (31:01.204) Yeah, I've started using perplexity AI a good bit. And, you know, it seems to have a better feel for things like if I wanted to say, hey, I've got Sebastian Jimenez coming on my podcast today. What are the types of questions that I could ask him that he would be interested in answering or stuff like that? It'll give you I mean, it's pretty good. It's it's pretty good. Is. Yeah. Is is. Sebastian Jimenez (31:04.812) Yes. Yes. Sebastian Jimenez (31:17.11) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (31:21.806) Yeah, it's basically that it's exactly that it's like perplexity. It uses Google. It looks at information that's real time on Google. Rilla you ask Rilla. We call him Rick AI, our little AI assistant. His name's Rick in honor of Rick Grasso, who was the one of the famed sales coaches in home improvement, who was a friend of the company and he passed away recently. And so we wanted to kind of honor Rick there. So Rick is a coach, right? So So you ask Rick, like Rick, you know, what are the top objections that came up last week? Or I have exactly what you just said. And just like perplexity, instead of looking at Google, it looks at your conversations instead of looking at websites. So it's the same thing. And then you asked another question, which was, what other things am I seeing? before the sale, there's companies, I mean, there's company like Service Times came out with Dispatch Pro. There's another startup called Probook Dispatch, Probook and ServiceSign Dispatch Pro. What they're trying to do is automate the dispatch process, make it AI based instead of a human being. So the AI makes decisions in real time. You have people like Chirp. Chirp is automating a lot of your marketing and a lot of your follow -up with customers. So like, know, hey, we didn't close this sale, let's do a rehash program. There's like other technologies in the home. For HVAC, there's this technology, really, really cool technology called Conduit Tech. Jeff Dudan (32:21.42) That's right. Sebastian Jimenez (32:41.868) which allows HVAC contractors to do the manual J calculation with their phone. So it's basically uses LiDAR technology to measure everything in your home, how many windows, what's the size of the home, everything, so that you can kind of give a accurate temperature load calculation to your HVAC. So you can determine what is the proper size of the HVAC unit based on the temperature that the home actually needs. And so there's like so many technologies that are coming out here for the trades, which is very, very, very cool if you're a contractor getting into the home improvement industry. It's a really great time to be in the industry now because you have like all these companies that I mentioned. There's a Voka AI that's literally automating your call center. Voka, you could literally imagine like calling a contractor, you know, and you want to get some roofing inspection booked on your schedule. Instead of talking to a human being, you'll be talking to an AI agent that sounds exactly like a human being, acts like a human being. It'll be integrated with your with your scheduling systems so that it'll take care of all of it. It's automated call center, right? Which is kind of crazy to think about. And that's a home improvement native company. Like they're not building for, none of these companies I'm mentioning are building for the general use cases. They're building for home improvement contractors. Tyson, the co -founder of Aboka, he's from MIT. George from ProBook, he graduated from University of Pennsylvania. Shelby graduated from Stanford. You have all these insanely smart people. Young kids, like, you Jeff Dudan (33:45.962) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (33:57.067) Right. Sebastian Jimenez (34:10.102) all trying to come after the home improvement industry because it's such a special time to be in home improvement. So yeah. Jeff Dudan (34:17.184) When you have contractors that look to onboard Rilla, like who's a traditional customer? Like what's a customer size? And then what are, do people usually put their toe in it or do they go all in with it? Like what's your experience in onboarding contractors? What are they resistant to? And then ultimately, once you see them turn the corner, like what does that look like? Sebastian Jimenez (34:41.304) Yeah, so Rilla is a product that works the more data you have with it, right? Or the more data you have with it as a company, the better the product gets because you could, like all the analysis that we publish on the Rilla Labs, we have this podcast called the Rilla Labs, we're gonna have you probably there soon. In the real after always publishing these insights like like I told you like the talk ratio is an important metric open -ended questions top performers ask five times more open -ended questions than everybody else they ask 25 open -ended questions per hour Versus the average reps asked five open -ended questions per hour the top performers they talk at a talk speed that's about a hundred and eighty four words per minute so a little bit faster than the average even being like 1 .2, but not too fast because the TalkSpeed curve looks like this. It's like a bell curve. The faster you talk, you start getting gains in conversion rates and average tickets. But after you go outside of the 214 words per minute, it starts dropping down because you're talking too fast. Like I talk 220 words per minute. That's very fast. So in a sales conversation in the home, you don't want to do that. You want to stay between 180 and 200 words per minute, which is a little bit, just a little bit faster than the average human TalkSpeed, which Jeff Dudan (35:40.342) That's a lot of words. That's all. Sebastian Jimenez (35:52.164) So you think the average human talk speed is 160 words per minute. So you do 1 .2 X speed. Like you're listening to a podcast at 1 .2 X speed. That's the idea. So we have all these insights that are generalized, right? For the entire industry. And we are publishing them like every week now. And we're doing this, like we did a study on financing. We did a study on promotion. Like we always do these studies, but imagine if you didn't just have generalized data from the industry, imagine if you had your own people learning from the top performers in your team. understanding what they're doing specifically to your own sales process. That's what really lets you do. for us, for the product to not just work, but to be magical and for people to say like, this is the most amazing thing ever, which a lot of our customers do. You have to have a minimum of at least five salespeople in the same account, right? So that's why, for instance, we have a lot of franchise customers, part of being in a franchise, the value that you get is as a small franchise, you could be part of the umbrella account where you get to learn from the other franchises that are Can You Record In-Home Conversations? Navigating Privacy Laws Jeff Dudan (36:38.965) Okay. Sebastian Jimenez (36:50.404) in your network. that's one of the big benefits that we have with franchise companies is that they can put their franchises that are maybe like one -man shows or like two sales reps, but they can become part of an umbrella that has 100 or 200 people or 300 people, right? And then they all start sharing best practices from across the country. And so for us, the ideal contractor, you have at least five salespeople or service people in your team. So for home services, you can think of technicians. Five salespeople or technicians in the field talking. And so then you can grab a lot of good data. Think about it. Five people having two conversations a day in the first two weeks or in the first month, you're going to have 200 conversations that real is going to be looking at what's working, what's not working, helping your own salespeople will be getting personalized feedback from an AI coach in their pocket, telling them what they're doing right and wrong, comparing them to the top performers in their team. So you think about that, right? We work with a lot of the top contractors in the country, a of the private equity -backed contractors, a lot of the top franchises in the country. But we also work with companies that are about $5 million, $10 million in revenue. A lot of our customers are in that range of $5 to $10 million, which is usually about the minimum size that you need to get to five salespeople in your organization, about $5 to $10 million in revenue. Jeff Dudan (38:09.738) You had a short stint in private equity right out of school, and then you co -founded this business with two partners. What experience can you share about starting a company, starting it with partners, going out and getting funding? Because I think you raised some capital in the beginning. What was that journey like for you? And what experience can you share about that? Sebastian Jimenez (38:13.666) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (38:23.736) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (38:32.068) my God. yeah. I'll share. think this will be a helpful experience. So I started my first company, right? in 2018, when I graduated college, I had no money, which is broke. was a standup comedian during college. I didn't make any money, but I remember. It was like one time I was doing stand up in the park and a lady, very nice lady gave me $20 and I thought it was my comedy was good, but she thought I was a homeless person. just like put $20 in. So I didn't have any money. NYU gave me, I got into this accelerator, NYU had for NYU kids and I forced my way in there. They asked me like, what's your big, you know, what's your What's your secret sauce? And I was like, I'm a clown. I'm very funny, I'll tell you that. They're like, how does it help you with that? They're like, do you know how to code? I'm like, nope. I was like, but you should look at my companies, it's pretty good, And so I don't know why they let me in. They're not very good decision makers there. And so they let me into this accelerator and they gave me $10 ,000. And I remember making the math. To me, $10 ,000 was a lot of money. Jeff Dudan (39:38.028) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (39:51.46) because I think about it in pesos and $10 ,000 is like a lot of pesos in Dominican pesos. It's like one dollar for every, it's a lot of pesos too. And so was like, wow. And so in my head, I was like, I'm going to use this is it. need this. This is all I need to start, you know, in New York city, $10 ,000. Wow. What a lot of money. And I took $10 ,000 and I remember Jeff Dudan (39:56.852) It's billions and billions. Sebastian Jimenez (40:17.092) My plan was I'm going to make this $10 ,000 last me like a year and a half. So my goal was that I was going to spend $500 a month to live in New York City. And I did that. That's what I did. so my, had, at the previous company, I had two co -founders, they were still in school and I was like the only one working full time on it. And, the idea was like any money that we make, we're just going to use it for me to maintain myself. Cause you guys are still in college and I'm the only one doing this full time. And so, I lived in New York City with $500 a month. so the way I did that was I split, I split this like really crappy apartment with my girlfriend at the time. And we lived in like this base, you can only describe it as like a base, it's a basement that we lived in Williamsburg and there was like rats and there was like, it was like a very bad apartment, not like the West Village apartments. This is not enough. This is like right on top of the L train stations, subway, it was very bad. I paid $400 for rent, which in New York is very bad. And then I would eat dollar pizza and Nathan's hot dogs three times a day. And so that would come out to $90 a month, because it was $3 a day, 30 days in a month. So that was $490. then once a month, maybe I would treat myself to Chipotle if I could afford it. Jeff Dudan (41:24.342) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:41.929) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (41:42.564) And then it's allows my money and so I remember the first time I closed my I closed a $30 ,000 deal with my first company in November 2020 2018 and I almost started crying because to me it meant that It wasn't like well, it was it was increasing my monthly revenue from like 500 or my monthly you know, expense, I could spend not just $500, I could spend $2 ,500 because it was like $30 ,000 divided by 12. And it also meant in my because I'm an immigrant. And so being an immigrant in this country, you like when you graduate school, they give you a visa, you have three years, I knew I had three years to figure it out. And so when I made that first deal with the $30 ,000, I remember like crying in the streets, me like, my God, my God, because I was going to get it to me. It was like, if I figure that out, how to make money, was like, I was gonna be able to stay in America. And so, I was so happy. And so, and remember, it was like $2 ,500. That's like still below the minimum wage line. I was like, but to me, I was like, this is, because I was still used to spending $500 a month. So 2 ,500, I was like, five times like, why do I do it? I'm rich, like, I don't know what I'm doing with all this money, like $2 ,500. And so that was really important because Now, in real life, still like, you mentioned we're one of the, and we are, we're one of the fastest growing companies in the world today. And in history, like, if you look at our numbers, we went from like zero to $20 million of annual recurring revenue in our first two and a half years. That puts us ahead of Salesforce. Apple, in the first two years, we grew faster than Apple, Figma. Amazon, to give everybody perspective, went from zero to 15 million of annual revenue in the first few years. We went from zero to 11. Startup Life on $500 a Month: The Power of Scrappy Founders Jeff Dudan (43:20.638) Wow. Yep. Sebastian Jimenez (43:34.094) So in the first two years, we're like right between, we really are growing fast, but we're also one of the most capital efficient companies because we don't have that many employees. We've kept it pretty lean because we have this DNA of like literally squeezing the most juice out of all the money so that we can be, and it actually helps us grow faster. The fact that we're really lean, but I learned that back then. the purpose of the story is like, it's really, Like I remember, now I still think like, I can do that with just $10 ,000. You know what I mean? Like I could give myself the time. I could give myself a year and a half with $10 ,000, but you really remove a lot of the vanity of life, all the stuff that you think that you need. I mean, I didn't need anything because that was like a, like I was a dumb, like 22 year old. I'm like, and I think that was, that was really good that it's cause I was a comedian. Jeff Dudan (44:20.458) and you don't. Yep. Sebastian Jimenez (44:29.924) And as a comedian, like I said, stand up, if you're prepared to do what it takes, you just know that you're gonna be poor for 10 to 20 years. If you wanna be one of the best comedians of all time. Kevin Hart, he made no money for the first 10, 15 years. Bill Burr, Louis CK, they didn't make any money for the first 20 years of their, and then they got big, right? Because they were so unbelievably good. And so. Jeff Dudan (44:49.344) Well, Seinfeld said that if he had money, he couldn't have done it because it was too hard. Like if you have, like you probably just by all the success just killed your stand -up career. Sebastian Jimenez (44:55.16) Yeah. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (45:03.812) Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I it's exactly like to because stand up by the way, to me, way harder than this way harder than than than than doing this thing. Because like, like I look at my life now. I'm like 28 now just turned 28. I have a salary. I have a company. Like I'm the lowest paid person ever. Like, because I really don't know what the hell to do with money. I don't know what I I'm still living like, back in. I don't know what to do with money. And Jeff Dudan (45:11.223) yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (45:33.572) And so like, but I look at it as a stand up comic, I was prepared to be poor for 10 to 20 years. So to me, I'm like ahead of schedule and that's something that you need, right? Like you need a really long time horizon if you want to do things that are truly great, because it takes time. Again, it takes repeated failure and trial and error. there's no, even if you're the smartest person in the world, it is not possible to do something that's insanely great, whether it's art or business or science, it is not possible unless you devote yourself completely, entirely. Jeff Dudan (45:46.379) Mm. Sebastian Jimenez (46:03.086) for a long period of time and you're constantly failing and failing and failing and failing and failing for a long period of time. That's it. So I was prepared to do that for standup. And so now that I did this and I'm like, dude, I have a salary now? Like that's, to me I'm like way ahead of schedule. So the lesson there in the story is like, if you just are willing to go through the suffering and the pain of like, know, that. And as a young person, kind of have to because you have nothing else. You don't have experience. You don't know. You don't have no network. The only thing you have is that the willingness to do it, you know, and like, like, unsatiated hunger and ambition. That's all you have. So, so yeah, so I did that. And then the $30 ,000 turned into $100 ,000 for my first business. We, when we came up with the idea for Rilla, the three co -founders, we split, I took my money. Jeff Dudan (46:34.859) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (46:57.924) One of the co -founders came along with me to found Rilla. We split our money and so we brought some of our money to found Rilla. Rilla, started it with less than $100 ,000. It was very small amount of capital. And then we raised a little bit of money. Now we've raised a lot of money, but that came after we did all of my, like, we just raised enough capital that we thought we needed to survive to the next stage. And to experiment, never raised a lot. still haven't raised like, you see all these companies raising so much money, like at insane valuations. I do think that there is creativity and constraints and limitations and we practice that. we never like all the, like we have investors that literally break into our office to try to come and fund Rillem. If we don't need the money, we don't take the money. But the lesson there is like, you don't need that much to get started, right? Jeff Dudan (47:55.648) Right. Sebastian Jimenez (47:55.756) It's just, you just need somebody who has, who's just insane and obsessed, like willing to do it for enough time and continue to fail. It's not just hard work, right? It's not just hard work. It's like the ability. How did it sound? I said this to somebody the other day. It's like the, the, ability to have unrelenting confidence in the face of impending failure. That's what you need. need really hard, like you're failing and you need to remain confident even though you're failing every day and then nothing's working. That's it. You just do that for enough time and then you figure it out, I guess, but that's very hard. Jeff Dudan (48:37.484) Yeah, 100%. So when I started a company in the mid 90s that I ended up selling some 24 years and 11 months later, it was $2 .50 a week that I was able to negotiate for, but I had to be my rent and everything. So two whoppers, no cheese, no fries. At that point, it was $2 .10. So that was my main meal, $2 .10 every day. They got to know me at the drive -through and they'd hear me come, they'd be like, Sebastian Jimenez (48:56.823) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:05.388) Yeah, I get it. No fries, no drink. Okay. And they'd give me my two whoppers, right? And then when we started our second location, mean, there was four of us, they gave me $2 ,500 to go to a new city and start a whole new location, rent an office, build a production team, and 2 ,500 bucks. Like that's what I had to work with. And so I rented one room. Sebastian Jimenez (49:24.697) Yep. Jeff Dudan (49:31.922) inside of I went to a business park and there was somebody that had a conference room. We had something called a thermal fax. You'll never have to know what that is or deal with that. But it was like it was like thermal paper would come out of this. So but I had the fax machine. I had the conference room. This other guy was running this business in there. And then and then that's just that's just where we started. But yeah, we didn't we didn't raise any money. We didn't burn any money. And I think, you know, you can you can make bad decisions when you have too much money in a startup because Sebastian Jimenez (49:40.196) I don't even know what is funny. Sebastian Jimenez (49:55.384) NAH Sebastian Jimenez (50:00.067) Yes. Jeff Dudan (50:00.236) You start throwing these Hail Marys out there or you start, I mean, I'm looking at your office furnishings right now. You're in a closet somewhere. got to, okay. All right, well, I'm sure it's very, I know it's nice, but you got a $20 million recurring revenue business. It's a sizable, sizable business there, but yet you're not, Sebastian Jimenez (50:03.524) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (50:09.124) No, this is our podcast studio. Let me show everybody. This is our podcast studio. It's just being remodeled. You're remodeling it. Sebastian Jimenez (50:24.204) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (50:29.344) You're not just going out getting money for the sake of money because you're passionate about what you're doing. You're passionate about transformation. You have an opportunity to be, you are the number one in the space. Is there anybody following you right now? Sebastian Jimenez (50:32.654) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (50:44.654) There's a, so real is not the, are not the first or last company to attempt to do this concept of, you know, capturing face to face conversations, recording them and doing this concept that we call now the virtual ride along. There was companies that tried this before. and, like Microsoft once, tried this and they, and it didn't work. Microsoft's a very big company. Jeff Dudan (50:58.271) Okay. Sebastian Jimenez (51:09.7) I think because I've been doing this for a while now since like 2019, since we've been doing real life, I've kind of learned the history of this thing. The first ever company that I think of, it was a guy who had a startup in 2008 or 2009 that tried to do this for car dealerships back in the day. And, and, and it didn't go and it failed. There's people that have tried this for, for many different, many different markets, verticals, there's still people like that have tried it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't believe there is any other company other than Rilla that has figured out how to do it. Because it's and that's another lesson, which is it's not like people think like you think like Mark Zuckerberg, right? You see like how successful it was. And people sometimes think like, my god, I wish I came up with that idea. my god, I wish I came up with Amazon like back in the it's like, a lot of people did come up with it, by the way. It's not like nobody ever made any money with an idea, by the way, the only people who make money with ideas are Pat, our patent lawyers that come after your ass because there's nobody who makes money with an idea. People make money on, making the idea of the reality. And I learned that from standup that the idea for the joke is not what counts as the laughter and being able to get the repeated laughter every single time in that process. And that's not just the idea that's like Jeff Dudan (52:09.58) That's right. Sebastian Jimenez (52:31.064) You have great experiences. meet interesting people. You're hearing interesting things that gives you the ability to have great ideas. You go and try out those ideas and then you listen to the failure very intently. Why it didn't work this time. Why it didn't work that time. And that, that is the hardest part of the process is being able to make failure your teacher. Cause failure is the best teacher there is if you're willing to be a student and not shy away from it. And so Rilla is the only company so far with this concept that was able to figure out all like we figured out every possible way to not to to to make this fail. We failed on every single possible way that there was to fail this company. And we just kept going. Okay, that's all we did. Everybody else who has tried this has failed in one of the ways that we also failed, but they gave up. And so yeah, it's a this is a very annoying product to build. Very annoying company to build. There's like a lot of changes and habits that you have to generate from people. Jeff Dudan (53:16.394) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (53:21.738) Well. Sebastian Jimenez (53:29.636) You have to change the habits of sales managers. You have to change the habits of salespeople. You have to change the habits of consumers. You have to get over the icky factor of the recording. have to process in -person conversations with AI, which had never been done before. And the research on it is very low because nobody ever did that. So you have to solve the technology problems, the product problems, the market problems. There's a lot of problems that you have to figure out beyond the idea. The idea makes sense to so many people. The idea is so simple. you're analyzing your call center calls. Why don't you just analyze your salespeople, are, know, why don't you do the same thing? So yeah. Tech in the Trades: 10 New Startups Revolutionizing Home Services Jeff Dudan (54:05.75) Well, think about it. the timing matters too, because without AI, you don't get the reports that you get. like you brought the convergence of technologies sometimes. mean, gosh, what was it? Gosh, what was that? It was a great book, but it talked about the timing of things and the jobs wouldn't have been jobs. Gates wouldn't have been gates if they... Sebastian Jimenez (54:09.666) Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (54:28.466) that, that, the outliers. Yes, yes. Jeff Dudan (54:30.698) The Outliers book, right? They wouldn't have been them if they weren't born exactly at that time. Yeah, and there was just really smart people that saw the opportunity, took advantage of it. I've got kind of a nuanced question here. How do you get around privacy laws? You're basically recording in people's homes, standing there with them. There's different laws in different states. How does that work? Sebastian Jimenez (54:35.49) We're born in those two years. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (54:54.742) Yeah, so so the and that was the first question that by the way, that's one of the things that when people came up with the idea, they were like, it's not legal. Bye bye. And then they dropped it. So yeah, so I'll talk about the law. So so in the United States, you have two you have two types of states, you have one party consent states, and you have two party consent states are all party consent states. The law of the land is one party consent, which means that you can record a conversation. Jeff Dudan (55:02.7) Yeah Sebastian Jimenez (55:22.116) as long as you have the consent of one party to that conversation to record it. usually, and I think in every case, in all those old cases, and that usually means if you're part of the conversation, you can record it. So meaning if I'm having a conversation with you in a one party consent state like New York, I can record it because I'm consenting to it. doesn't matter what the other person says. So that's what that's, that's 38 out of the 50 states in America for the purposes of in -person conversations. There's some states that have different laws for call center and for in -person. And then there's 12 states like California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, Washington, Illinois, Montana, Connecticut, Delaware. They are all party consent states, which means you need the consent of all parties of the conversation to record it. So you can't just say, I can send to it, Ergo, can record it. You have to get the consent of the other person. So how do you do that in this scenario where you're talking to somebody in the home? In the call center, It's very easy. You just call in and the phone line says, everybody knows it's this call. It is called being recorded for quality training purposes. Everybody's heard that message. That's why they're doing that, because they want to comply with the law. And so how do you do it if you're talking to somebody in an in -person conversation? So the same thing in the call center. You just have to let the other person know, and then you do what's called implicit consent. Implicit consent is you let them know, and then they continue with the conversation. You don't have to get them to say verbally, yes, I consent. At least in the United States, you don't have to do that. And Europe, much different. In Germany, you literally have to get them to sign an agreement, you know, give you their social, it's very difficult to do with this in Germany. So sorry, Germany, we can't go to Germany anytime soon. So, but anyways, in the United States, you just have to do the same thing in the call center. Somebody calls in to book an appointment or you call them, right? And what does the line say? This call's being recorded. Instead of saying this call's being recorded, you say, hey, thank you for calling us. All of our calls and in -person appointments will be recorded for quality training purposes. Jeff Dudan (56:49.355) Okay. Jeff Dudan (56:58.955) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (57:17.208) You put that automated message there in your call center. Then what you do is you send the customer a reminder. If you're using something like service, Dyn or Hatch or Chirp to send somebody a reminder to, to, the appointment, like, Hey, so and so is on the way for the meeting. Just, just, you know, we're going to be recording that meeting for quality and training purposes. So you send a reminder via text or email ahead of the appointment. And then we also have a lot of customers, many customers who literally have their salespeople tell the homeowner, Hey, Jeff Dudan (57:18.87) Okay. Sebastian Jimenez (57:46.69) Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, how's it going today? Today I'm going to be doing, just to give you a sense of the agenda, I'm to be going out, taking a look at your roof, taking a look at your windows. I'm going to be doing a walk around the entire home, taking some pictures, seeing what I can find while I'm here. I'm going to be presenting these results for you. I'm going to be recording all of our interactions to make sure that I don't miss anything, the quality and training purposes, if that's okay with you. And after that, hopefully we can present some options, some prices, show you some financing, and that's our conversation today. Does that sound fair? Sounds fair. So they just include it in their little jingle at the beginning. You know what I mean? Yeah. Jeff Dudan (58:21.034) That's right. That's right. that's recorded. So there's proof of it. Now, if somebody, now you're in the middle of a sales conversation and then a third person walks in, somebody gets home, you gotta basically go through it again. Sebastian Jimenez (58:26.339) Yes. Sebastian Jimenez (58:32.78) Yes. Sebastian Jimenez (58:36.334) So that's where you get into the gray area, right? Because it's like the same thing applies if you're in a Zoom call, right? And you're talking to me over Zoom and I wasn't wearing these headphones. And let's say I'm in California and somebody walks by and you capture that person talking like you're talking to them. It's the same thing, right? So that's where you get into reasonable expectation of privacy, right? Which is, know, in California, which is a two party consent state, you know, technically it is a two party consent state, but. Jeff Dudan (58:50.633) Right. Sebastian Jimenez (59:04.424) There's also this thing called reasonable expectation of privacy. says the law only applies when there's reasonable expectation of privacy. So for instance, and reasonable expectation of privacy is defined as like a place where you cannot expect to be over heard, right? So if you go in, the contractor told that person, hey, we're recording and you're talking to them, right? And they're all aware that the conversation is taking place and it's being recorded. You have a third party who's not really, you know, comes in and everybody's aware. Then it's basically like the zoom call where you're just like, walking in the background, you were not part of that. You never got the memo, but you participated. Well, you could say there's no reasonable expectation of privacy there because there's a contractor in my home. They said that they were recording a conversation. They're clearly recording it. The other person knows everybody's aware. And then I just stepped in as a third party. So that's where you get into that. What, know, which is the same, the same kind of gray area that you get into your zoom calls. If somebody's walking in the back or the same kind of gray area area. If, you call the call center and the person, the thing says, Jeff Dudan (59:34.646) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:00:03.138) This call is being recorded for quality and training purposes. Well, what if the person put the phone down while you said that and they didn't hear it? You know what I mean? It's same as a company. You need to just follow all the best practices. Make sure that you're being transparent on your website. You can put it on your website also. If somebody's going to book online, make sure you put it on your website. Make sure you put it on your call center. Make sure you put it on your appointment reminder so there's a documented record that you're being compliant with this. Jeff Dudan (01:00:09.686) Right. Sebastian Jimenez (01:00:32.868) And then you also, I would recommend, know, you're in California. Absolutely. Tell your reps to say the homeowner. We have data on this. 99 .7 % of homeowners don't give a crap that you're doing the recording. They go like, the answer is like, of course. Yeah. So then you have that recording. You even have a tracker on Rilla. Then if the salesperson doesn't say it, you can just like. automatically delete the conversation because it's not it didn't capture that we call it a tracker so you can have all these little guidelines set in place as a contractor to make sure that you're being the most transparent as possible with your homeowners as long as you're doing that you shouldn't have any problems because you literally there's never an issue you're gonna be like well we said it here here here here here here we told you there we have the recording and then you know you see what I'm saying yeah Jeff Dudan (01:01:02.718) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:01:17.355) Right. Jeff Dudan (01:01:21.802) Yeah. yeah. Yeah, makes sense. And still, there'll be some attorney out of California that will challenge you. caught a. Yeah, I caught a caught a call center claim. was just ridiculous one time, but they were just out there harvesting for money and they had somebody as a plaintiff that said, well, you called me on my cell phone and it was, you know, from some state, but they were standing and their feet were in California at the time you talked to them and, you can't prove it. Sebastian Jimenez (01:01:28.709) There's always whatever. Yeah, yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:01:49.662) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:01:50.764) So, you know, we got held up for like $25 ,000. I mean, we were in the right, we had done everything right, but, you know, there's always people looking to make an issue of things. Sebastian Jimenez (01:01:59.169) Well... Well, but think about it that way. there's, mean, there's, mean, in home improvement, I heard this from a contractor the other day. If you spend, if you spend enough time in the home improvement industry, you're, you're going to get, you're going to get some claim. You're going to get some suit. You're going to get, it's going to happen because you're dealing with somebody's home. And I met this contractor out of Colorado. They had been recording all of their conversations, all of them with body camps, police body camps since 2014. Jeff Dudan (01:02:15.877) sure. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:02:31.51) Okay. This is not real. This is like before Rilla and I asked him, why did you do this? And here's why he did this. before this, he, his business was sued, right? By a customer claiming that they did some horrible work. you know what I mean? One of these, he said, she said situations and the claim was all bogus. was all crap. He had to fight the claim and spend a hundred thousand dollars, right. And lawyers. And he said, I'm never going to go through that again. And what did he say? I'm recording everything. He saw police started, I started wearing body cams. And so. you think about it from that perspective, it's like, okay, there's also the other perspective of all the risks that you have because you don't have the conversation recorded. You know what I mean? And the risk is that, and if you think about it for the homeowner, for the homeowner, by you recording the conversation, not only for your technicians and your salespeople, you're making them protected from anything that can go wrong in the conversation. Well, he said that you could do this, like, well, really? Did we say that? Let's play the tape. But for the homeowner. Jeff Dudan (01:03:07.436) 100%. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:03:29.354) Most of the interactions in a home improvement environment is a female homeowner with a male sales rep or technician. Those are most of the interactions. When you're recording that conversation with the female homeowner, that female homeowner feels so much more comfortable having that conversation with a strange man in her house. Because now she knows, this is a company. There's somebody like this. This is not just the, this is a, this is a whole train. Like this is all being supervised. I'm not alone here. And so, and, and, and, and you're also reducing the risk for the homeowner in that interaction. because you're protecting them, you're protecting the technician, the salesperson. And we've looked at the numbers. Rilla not only helps contractors increase their close rates and their average tickets, you also bring down your cancellation rates because salespeople are less likely to over promise because they know that it's right there on the record. And so the cancellation rates come down. So you're selling more at a higher average ticket and homeowners are also happier, right? So, you know what mean? So when you look at it from that perspective, like, yes, you you should make sure that you're following the laws and being compliant and making sure that you're telling everybody. And there's very simple ways to do it. You automate it in your call center, all these different things. And at the same time, you're also protecting your company, you're protecting the homeowner. That's kind how I think about it. The same thing as in the call center. Jeff Dudan (01:04:47.294) Awesome. Well, we kick off here at Homefront Brands first of next month with Rilla Voice. So we're very excited about it. We're deploying it at several different levels in our organization. So super excited about that. Two questions I have left for you, Sebastian. Is there a point that you can see that Rilla Voice becomes a size where you are no longer interested in running it? Sebastian Jimenez (01:04:52.374) Yes! Why Sebastian Isn’t Selling Rilla Voice (And Never Will) Sebastian Jimenez (01:05:11.245) No. Jeff Dudan (01:05:12.704) You're going all the way. Sebastian Jimenez (01:05:14.818) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can put me on the record. They'll have to, it's the love in it. Jeff Dudan (01:05:16.65) All right. Jeff Dudan (01:05:21.268) All right. Well, you get bored, you take money, you get boards, get money, get, you know, it gets complicated. Like when you get to the size you are, right, it gets complicated and there's other stakeholders involved in all that. But then you see the Zuckerbergs and the Bezos and all these people that have run their company for decades and done a great job doing it. Is that how you see yourself? Sebastian Jimenez (01:05:44.548) my God, yeah, to me, this is like so fun for me. And I don't do this, like again, I'm not motivated that much by money. I'm motivated more by the game of it all. just how fun it is. we call it, yeah, like this is most fun thing that like Tommy Mello, he like, Jeff Dudan (01:06:00.492) All the great ones are. All the great ones are. Sebastian Jimenez (01:06:10.508) very recently, like he now lives in a big house and all those things. And he's a great customer of ours. There was a time he was like a multi hundred millionaire and he was living in like a crappy apartment and his friends would be like, dude, what are you doing here? And he was like, I don't know. This is where I live. And it was like in the hood and stuff. And I'm very much in that mindset right now. I'm like, I don't, I don't care about money. investors have tried to buy a buy secondary for me. absolutely, I tell them what, what for? Like some of my friends, tell me like, dude, it's normal for founders to sell second. I'm like, dude, hell no. like screw that like what am I no I'm not gonna do that. What I'm like, what do need the money for? And they're like, they're like, I don't know, man, just you want to go on vacation. And I'm like, I hate vacations. No, no, no, not. There's like a law of inertia. Right now, for me, it's like any object that's stationary needs some force to start getting into movement and any object that's in movement, needs some force to to make a stationary, and man, I'm in movement right now. So the wheels are cranking. So I'm just gonna keep moving until, hopefully until I'm dead. yeah, like Steve Jobs, that guy kept doing it until he literally, literally the only thing that stopped him was death. Same with Walt Disney. I wanna just keep doing it. His life is too short, man. What the hell am I gonna do? Sitting in my ass with a bunch of money, whatever. Money's the easy part. The hard part is doing something magical. Jeff Dudan (01:07:33.739) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:07:37.482) Yeah, you you only need to count your money once because once you start counting it two or three times, it gets really unfulfilling and very bored. It's not about it's not about like it's now I've lived without it and I've lived with it and I will tell you I prefer with but. Yeah, less rats. I got less rats anyway. Sebastian Jimenez (01:07:45.698) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:07:52.688) Yeah, it makes things it makes things easier. I think about money as like an instrument. Yeah, it's like it's a I think about it as an instrument to do awesome things. You look at somebody like Elon like that. He's like a very special client person because he's like that at the very highest levels and he always goes all in he doesn't get this idea of like, let's put some chips off it. It's like always all in like, okay, I Jeff Dudan (01:08:03.837) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (01:08:17.676) No, he burned through his $100 million from PayPal. He just, he burned it. He burned it, like, in like 90, pushed it in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:08:22.05) Yes. Yes. And rock, blew it up. And with rockets. And so to me, money is an instrument to do awesome things, because there are certain things. And there are certain things that require really like a lot of up from capital investment. One of them is building rockets, the way. Some of it is science, like where you need a lot of research and funding and development. Some like you look at the companies that he's doing. Jeff Dudan (01:08:33.665) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:08:51.516) Those are those you need a lot of money like Neuralink, need SpaceX, you Tesla, the boring company. These are all very capital intensive companies. So I hope that I can be like that some someday where if if you know, when like if I'm ever cash liquid, like if I ever have a lot of cash liquid in the bank, I can kind of deploy it into something great for humanity. Because I actually think I Jeff Dudan (01:08:53.537) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:08:57.354) Yeah, heavy CapEx. Sebastian Jimenez (01:09:19.278) I remember, I think that is one of the purposes of human beings is to innovate. Remember watching this equation by Paul Romer, which explains why countries keep growing over time. innovation is like the only thing that has increasing marginal returns. Everything else in the world has diminishing marginal returns. People have diminishing marginal returns. Capital hasn't diminishing marginal returns, but innovation, the more innovation you produce, the more innovation it's likely. So that the iPhone comes out, the iPhone doesn't make. innovation diminishing and actually increases the speed of innovation, right? Because with the iPhone, you had companies like Uber that were possible, Instacart that were possible. You have companies like Instagram that were possible. Rilla becomes possible because of the iPhone, right? And so you see that the rate of innovation doesn't slow down over time. It actually keeps accelerating. And so to me, that is one of the core purposes of human beings on this planet as the only animal who can actually invent things at this scale that we can. And so the more you can do that, if I could just keep doing that dude until I'm dead. and inventing new things and using money to invent new things. That's a good life for me. So no, I don't want to stop doing this. And if somebody takes me out of this, I'm going to do something else. So I don't care. Jeff Dudan (01:10:22.06) Well, brother. Well brother, you are an animal. You are an absolute animal. I mean that in the best way possible. Last question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, somebody that might want to be an entrepreneur or do something, what would that be? Sebastian Jimenez (01:10:28.182) Yeah Sebastian Jimenez (01:10:41.006) Don't be afraid. Jeff Dudan (01:10:42.536) awesome. Drop the mic. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Perfectly said. Hey, none of this is fatal. None of it, right? Yeah. Awesome. Sebastian, this has been great. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our time together. I can't wait to meet you in person, and we're super excited to roll your technology out here on the home front. Sebastian Jimenez (01:10:44.674) Yeah. Sebastian Jimenez (01:10:54.52) Yeah, don't be afraid. Sebastian Jimenez (01:11:07.702) Welcome to the team, man. Welcome to the Relafamily. Let's do some ride -alongs together. Jeff Dudan (01:11:10.164) Yeah. All right, let's do it. This has been Sebastian Jimenez. I am Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thank you for listening.
Episode Summary In this powerful conversation, Jeff Dudan sits down with Brian Littlefield to explore his journey from Maine to building two of America’s fastest-growing brands: Jocko Fuel and Origin USA. Brian shares how his passion for martial arts, performance science, and American manufacturing fueled his rise from running a jiu-jitsu academy and supplement shop to scaling high-impact wellness and apparel brands with business icons like Jocko Willink. From the science behind anti-aging to launching in Walmart, this episode delivers both mindset and tactical gold for entrepreneurs, health seekers, and patriots alike. Key Takeaways From Basement to Boardroom : Brian’s early roots in health, martial arts, and personal transformation fueled his leap into the world of supplements and product development. Origin USA's Mission : Origin remains committed to American manufacturing, sourcing nearly all raw materials domestically. The brand expanded from gis and denim to hunting apparel and activewear. The Birth of Jocko Fuel : After connecting with Jocko Willink through mutual admiration, the brand was built around clean, efficacious products for high performers—with Jocko’s own supplement wish list as the blueprint. Innovation with Integrity : Jocko Fuel’s development process focuses on giving customers more of what they want and removing what they don’t. It’s about real function, not trends. Anti-Aging the Right Way : Time War, Jocko Fuel’s anti-aging product, includes unique ingredients like NAD3, PQQ, and spermidine, and is designed to activate biological rejuvenation processes like autophagy. Retail Expansion & Discipline : With distribution expanding to Walmart, Jocko Fuel is scaling impact while staying aligned with its founding values of accessibility, quality, and ownership. Entrepreneurship Mindset : Brian’s mantra is to embrace the sacrifice. Success requires conscious trade-offs, and entrepreneurs must make peace with the discomfort of imbalance. Featured Quote “Take the chance. You can probably always go back to whatever it is you were doing before—so what’s the risk?” – Brian Littlefield TRANSCRIPT Jeff Dudan (00:01.156) I try to do 50 minutes if you got it, Brian Littlefield (00:04.834) Well, we'll be pretty close. I have till four, so. Jeff Dudan (00:07.584) Okay, all right. Well, hey, just if you tell me when you need to be out, I'll land the plane right there. Anything you want to promote today other than the obvious? Brian Littlefield (00:16.163) Yeah, I mean just, you know, obvious the companies I'm affiliated with Jeff Dudan (00:21.38) Got it. All right. OK. Well, hey, we're recording. So I will jump right into it. And we'll just take it wherever it needs to go. But man, I really appreciate you coming Brian Littlefield (00:32.6) Yeah, thanks for having me on. From Small Town Maine to Martial Arts & Business Jeff Dudan (00:34.2) Yeah, right on. All right. Hey, everybody. This is Jeff Duden and we are on the home front with Brian Littlefield. He is the co -founder of Jocko Fuel with Jocko Willnick Energy Drinks plus other products coming out with clean and natural ingredients and also Origin, an American -made clothing manufacturer nestled in the woods deep in the woods of Maine. That's where they come from. And we have a lot to talk about today. Brian, welcome to the home front. Brian Littlefield (01:04.632) Thanks for having me on, Jeff. Looking forward to Jeff Dudan (01:06.564) Yeah, 100%. Hey, would you mind sharing a little bit about how you grew up? Just real quick, because you have a very interesting story, how you got to martial arts and eventually how you got into business just real Brian Littlefield (01:22.552) Yeah, well, I'll try and do it quickly. But yeah, I grew up in Maine, part of a pretty big family split between two different sides. I was the only one actually between my parents, the only child. My parents were both married once prior and both had big families. So five half brothers, two half sisters. Really, I was really close to three brothers on my mother's side. Because they were when I was younger they were older than me, but when I was younger they were still in the house, right? So You know growing up, you know, they were 10 I think 10 12 and 14 years older than me. So all boys so I went through it and It was fun. It was good Yeah, right exactly yeah, and you know, I had a very close first cousin who was Jeff Dudan (02:09.078) That's why you got into jiu -jitsu. Brian Littlefield (02:19.522) competitive athlete as well, professional in multiple sports and also was a professional fighter. So he had a lot of influence on me as well. So I played like regular athletics, I would say up until my freshman year. Then I kind of fell off, went away from it, went to college. I started becoming pretty out of shape in my probably junior, senior year of high school. It is, you know, it was exacerbated the first year I went to college freshman year eating, you know, dollar menu back then. And, you know, just really blew up and just kind of had an epiphany. Went on my own personal personal health and wellness journey. Really fell in love with the nutraceutical side of things like I've always I've always had a knack the sciences and also really a big appreciation for leverage all forms of different types of leverage and I loved the idea of applying these things to what you're doing they're not a replacement but I loved being able to apply them to what I was doing so which is also how I fell in love with jiu -jitsu because it's all about leverage and tactics so and not not as much strength and speed so I started training jujitsu in college as part of that health and wellness journey. It led me to, I was running a school, I was running a, I went back to school for business and you know, I read out of college, I started a small brick and mortar supplement store. So I was running this supplement store, I was running a jujitsu academy and you know, and that's how I got my start in business. Jeff Dudan (04:05.612) Awesome. And you evolved into a manufacturer. I think I heard you say one point that you recognize that in great product placement, by the way, in Maine, where you grew up in Maine, and there was all this manufacturing that was going on up there. And so you decided to make Giz originally with a company called Origin. How did you start that business? The Origin of Origin USA: Manufacturing Gis in the Woods Brian Littlefield (04:32.366) So I joined Origin, actually. I didn't create, yeah, I didn't create Origin. Origin was founded by Pete Roberts. Pete is my business partner in a few different businesses, one of my best friends. he founded Origin in 2011. He decided to start. Jeff Dudan (04:36.995) Got Brian Littlefield (04:54.414) manufacturing around 2012, really kind of manufacturing kicked off in 2013. And so, and when I say kicked off, I mean, was literally cutting down forest and sawing out, know, timbers and standing up a building and in the woods of Maine and a little town oddly enough called industry. And so in this little town of Industry Main, that's where Origin got its start. I joined, I first, it was in 2013 when Pete and I linked up, but it was in 2014 when I really jumped on board. And it was a total of five or six employees at the time. And we quickly, when I jumped on board with Origin, closed down my business, it was actually in Ohio, the supplement store in the academy that I was running. When that shut down and I moved back to Maine, I had been helping Pete with Origin from a distance for about two years. So was 2016 when I moved back to Maine where I grew up. And that's when things got pretty serious. You know, we... decided to, we did a couple things, scaled quickly, went from seven employees to 35 employees in 12 months and really went all in on the business, relocated from the little facility that we were in, an industry to downtown Farmington, Maine to a much larger facility at that time. And it's just quickly grown from there. When the companies got really big, Origin and Jaco Fuel, which Jaco Fuel also started around the same time that I moved back to Maine, being that that was my background, we kind of got into that space at the same time. Originally it was an Origin division and ultimately in 2017 when Jaco came on, it became Jaco Fuel. really rebranded it and really leaned into. Brian Littlefield (07:00.654) him and the vision he had for what he wanted to do with products and you know origin was on a rocket ship and Jocko fuel was on a rocket ship and in 2018 I transitioned Transitions exclusively over to Jocko fuel and so have been Helping just grow that thing as much as possible and having a really good time doing Jeff Dudan (07:24.982) Origin has a broad product line, tops, bottoms, jeans, boots. Are all the products sourced and made in America or has the supply chain become more diverse? Brian Littlefield (07:39.854) Yeah, we like to say everything is made in America and sourced in America. Now, there's a few exceptions. There's a term called berry, which is my understanding. And we like to say, think it's better than berry. And so on the origin side of things, there's like, I think it's less than 1 % of raw materials that come out from outside from from outside the US. It is truly like, you can follow the cotton farmer all the way to the factory in Maine or now North Carolina. So the company really expanded, ended up having three facilities in Maine, then it ended up going to North Carolina and we grew there. Jeff Dudan (08:29.582) Yeah, you got a hunting line coming out now, it looks like. So definitely a very kind of a man's brand wilderness type feel to it, look and feel. Brian Littlefield (08:39.212) Yeah, it's definitely male -centric for sure. It's a male -dominated brand, that's for sure. started Roots and Jiu Jitsu. It'll always have Roots and Jiu Jitsu. from there, it got into lifestyle and workwear, denim, blue jeans, core and heart of America. from there went into a number of other things, but yes, now into hunting and active wear, like workout type gear. Origin is doing a lot, yeah. Jeff Dudan (09:22.846) And I searched the website, couldn't find the skinny jeans, didn't pop Brian Littlefield (09:27.362) Yeah, yeah, no, you'll find some, I think they're called fighter fit. So they're not skinny, I wouldn't say they're skinny, I'd say they're slim. I'd say there's definitely no skinny jeans. Jeff Dudan (09:32.044) Okay, alright, well. Jeff Dudan (09:37.71) Okay. Jeff Dudan (09:42.338) No, I'm not going to look European jumping on the site there. All right. Well, cool. Well, look, so you got this great business going with your partner. And then how did it come to pass that you got connected to Jocko? Brian Littlefield (09:45.524) Yeah. Yeah, that's for Meeting Jocko Willink: From Podcast Fan to Business Partner Brian Littlefield (10:00.878) Yeah, like I said in 2000, late 2016, there was a woman by the name of Sarah Armstrong who is, know, amazing woman, a friend of ours now. And she was actually a listener and a friend of Jaco, but a listener of the podcast. And she got tired of hearing Jaco. talk about this little key company up in Maine when people would ask him, he convinced a lot of people, you know, to start jujitsu through spreading like what it was all about. And so they would always ask what kind of gear should I get? What kind of uniform should I get? And he would always say that, there's this little company up in Maine. If anybody ever talks to the guy, let him know, I'm trying to get ahold of them. I want to, I would like to partner with those guys. And so Finally, he ended up getting on the phone. He ended up getting on a long Zoom call with Pete. And I remember the phone call, listening to them talk to each other. was like talking in a mirror. It was pretty funny. There was a lot of alignment, ton of synergy. it was just a perfect match right out of the gate. Jeff Dudan (11:12.356) So he had a product or a product concept. He was already in market. You guys had marketing jobs. He had a growing business. It made sense to put the two together. I guess they're a partner and maybe some new ventures together. And there's a lot of interplay between the brands, especially if you go to both of the websites and stuff like that. So what was the concept for Jocko Fuel? Clean, healthy ingredients. But originally the taste you you you you didn't get the taste right out of the The Birth of Jocko Fuel: Clean, Natural, Purpose-Driven Brian Littlefield (11:49.164) Yeah, I mean, so what happened was, you know, Jaco had come on the origin side of things and he was super stoked to be part of this American manufacturing. But he also, you know, we, we, talked and. Cause when, when he realized we had a small nutrition thing going on, obviously it came up in conversation. He and I started to talk and he's a. As you can imagine, like he's just the ultimate high performer. So of course someone like himself, and as you listen to him talk about his past, like he's he's had good and bad experiences with with supplements, you know, as a former seal, like they would, of course, they would use, you know, supplements and energy drinks or whatever they needed to to perform. And so he had the ability to try all kinds of different ones, see what he liked and, you know, and see the ones he didn't like. And he had an idea of what he would do if he was to do his own. And so when we started talking, we had the same thoughts. Like we were very much aligned. It was like, let's keep it as natural as possible. Let's make it, you know, with, you know, no snake oil, just use. Shriden true ingredients that have great clinical literature that show efficacy and nothing, nothing in gray area stick to natural flavors and sweeteners. And at the time it was sweetener. We, you know, back in 2017, you really, if you were naturally sweetened, you had monk fruit and you had, you know, stevia. And so you pick one and you know, neither of us really cared for stevia that much. So we went with monk fruit and monk fruits and amazing sweetener. It's great. It has a ton of health benefits as well, which is very rare for a sweetener. And, as a sweetener, it actually has a ton of limitations. You know, it's, it's like 400 times sweeter than sugar, by weight, but it also just has a, has a threshold. And when you get past that threshold, it doesn't, it doesn't taste very good. So, you know, to match the sweetness of the general consumer, you know, often what we found is we were having to push it above that limit. And so for the first few years, we were really just kind of capped on Brian Littlefield (14:01.89) how sweet we could make the product versus what people needed. And so we were teetering on like using too much. and getting a weird taste or using too little and not being appealing enough to the masses. And so until other sweetener and flavor technology came out that allowed us to do it better naturally, we were kind of shackled to those limitations. And so we ran with it and we made changes as we could. And we've made many changes along the way. The Birth of Jocko Fuel: Clean, Natural, Purpose-Driven Jeff Dudan (14:32.61) You're continuing to roll out new products. think Mulk is a product that I've heard about coming out proteins and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about your product development process and maybe when you come to a go or a no -go decision on a product? Brian Littlefield (14:50.466) Yeah, that's a good question. So in the early days, was almost exclusively like Jaco wanted to make what he wanted to take. So he would say, Hey, I like, I really need a joint product. Like, you know, I've put my body through, you know, everything and I, you know, feel the wear and tear. Like let's build a joint support product. Okay, done, check. And then we would feed the needs of really in the design and what he wanted and then take it to the people. He obviously had this massive audience through the podcast and of course he said, well, we'll just make what I wanna take and if people wanna buy it, that's great. Obviously we quickly learned people would wanna buy it, but we truly made what he wanted. And Eventually that transitioned to, what would make sense for the brand? Because we've never been all about just jumping into categories that are just hot. Like we don't just, hey, there's a new, you know, when, for instance, when BCAAs, know, branched chain amino acids came back in a big way, we didn't jump on that train, we didn't jump on the collagen train, we didn't jump on a number of things. just because they were hot. We did what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. And that's been really nice. And so part of the evolution was me bringing to him the idea of, what do you think about doing this and doing it our way and putting a different spin on it? for me, the product development cycle, of like, I would really say the mindset is, A lot of companies, what they'll do is they'll go into, if they're even gonna try and innovate, right? There's a lot of companies that'll just launch a product that's just like copycat or a Me Too. But let's say they're gonna innovate. There's usually two sides to change. I guess that's the best way for me to explain it. And so there's the side of like, hey, we're gonna give people more of what they want. Or hey, we're gonna take out things Brian Littlefield (17:01.24) people don't want. they almost, companies almost never check both boxes. They almost never say, hey, we're going to give them what they want and take out the things they don't. And so anytime we go into a product, what we try to do is we try to do both of those. So with an energy drink, it's like, OK, we didn't just say, hey, we're going to give them caffeine, but we're going to take out the chemical preservatives of sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate that people try and avoid nowadays. We're not just going to take out the artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, ASK, and whatnot, and then put in a natural sweetener. So we didn't say, we're just going to exclude the things that they don't, which by the way, we could have done and been perfectly successful because people would have bought it just because they're like, I got an energy drink and I don't have to sacrifice my health. But what we said was, hey, we're going to also say, hey, we want to replace excessive caffeine with adding other nootropic ingredients. What we're going to do is we're going to add other compounds that can help caffeine actually work better. And so. We're looking at both sides of it. We're not just looking at it very linearly. And so that's a really defining factor for us when we're looking at bringing a new product to market. And it's, again, done very well for us. Jeff Dudan (18:21.198) What is a nutraceutical? Brian Littlefield (18:24.364) Yeah, for me, I like to use the term nutraceutical because supplement has such a negative connotation to so many people. It's really what it is. to me, there's a difference between, there's a, to me, nutraceutical is a step further. So a supplement is like, hey, I'm going to supplement, like, let's say you have vitamin D deficiency. You're going to supplement with vitamin D so you can replace that deficiency. That's awesome. With the nutraceutical, I look at it like, okay, there's other things. There's compounds, there's botanicals, there's things in nature that we can use as medicine. So if you're dealing with some sort of underlying issue, whether that be joint pain, whether that be memory loss, whether that Brian Littlefield (19:17.33) low testosterone, you know, a number of these things that you might encounter in living because right, you're basically getting attacked on all fronts all the time. Right. And so there's these nutraceuticals much like there are pharmaceuticals and these natural things in nature that we can take and we can extract and we can use to oftentimes turn on the body's natural biological mechanisms to improve that portion of their health. And so that to me is where the difference between just saying, I'm going to supplement with something and hey, I'm gonna use nature to heal. Time War: The Anti-Aging Supplement with Spermidine, PQQ & NAD3 Jeff Dudan (20:00.708) These products generally would be focused on recovery, restoration. What about anti -aging? Brian Littlefield (20:08.214) Yeah, that was Jeff Dudan (20:10.498) Or is that more peptides and things like Brian Littlefield (20:13.41) Well, we do have an anti aging product, actually. So yeah, so there's, yeah, it's, so there's a number of ways to, to target aging, right? And so a lot of people don't know this, but, you know, not to, to shoot ourselves in the foot, the, the one thing that people can do that's been clinically tested that has had a more profound effect Jeff Dudan (20:15.598) Okay. How does that work? Brian Littlefield (20:45.282) Biological aging markers. The Dunedin pace is really probably the gold standard of clocks they use to measure your biological age. There's a number that they've used over time and this Dunedin pace is probably the best. And so what they found is there's a number of nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and therapies that people have done like. Oxygen therapies, cold shock, heat shock, those types of things. A lot of them have had great effects. There's actually nothing that has had as profound of an effect as a reduction of caloric intake over time. So what we know is the thing that's actually gonna help increase lifespan is eating less calories over time. That's the thing that's gonna help the most. Now, to take it a step further, of course, you have things like peptides, You have other pharmaceutical drugs that are used to target different genetic actions. But the one thing that we found that we really leaned into was was the NAD side of things. So obviously we have NAD3. which NAD3 is actually a little bit different. So NAD itself isn't ultra bio available when you just consume it. So people take these precursors like NMN and NR, which both work. Literature seems to be more recently supporting the NR side of things. But we took a different approach, although I'm a big proponent of NR. We took a different approach and we ended up using a trademark, very expensive trademark ingredient. It's actually a compound of three ingredients. And what they found was like in this combination, in this ratio, it actually made your body create more NAD and you didn't have to use the precursor. so the anti -aging compa - the actual, there's multiple capsules in this packet that we have, it's called Time War. And so the anti -aging blend in there is NAD3. Brian Littlefield (22:55.218) and it's got two other ingredients. One is called PQQ and the other one is called spermidine and the trademark version is youth. And that one's really interesting because spermidine is, got its, you know, it's got its name because I believe the compound was originally found in sperm. And so of course, scientists have spermidine. And so I believe it's predominantly extracted through wheat germ now. And this spermidine, it doesn't take much. There's actually only three milligrams, which is considered a high dose. And so this spermidine, what it does is it, what would normally take, know, exercising or fasting to trigger, autophagy process in the body to read the thing about it is like kind of reading the body of dead or damaged cells This spermidine will do it by just ingesting it. So it'll actually turn on that body's mechanism. And so this Anti -aging blend is pretty powerful. And so that's one of the ways that we're targeting aging aside from Best thing to target aging is exercise. So what do we do support exercise? Jeff Dudan (24:11.14) Well, and you said caloric intake. you look at, I was listening to, I don't know who it was. Maybe Jordan Peterson was talking about the reduction over time in grip strength in males due to our diets increased, processed foods and things like that. And our grip strength is decreasing as our testosterone is decreasing and much at a much faster rate than women's grip strength is decreasing as a society. So look. Brian Littlefield (24:37.89) Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I would. Jeff Dudan (24:40.452) Don't take that as a fact because I heard that on the internet. But, mean, 100%. Brian Littlefield (24:44.909) I can tell you I agree. I understand the grip strength thing is is 100 % right? I didn't know the statistic around the men versus women, but it's probably correct. you know, we're surrounded by the really what it is is it's a sedentary lifestyle. It's ultra processed foods. I don't like saying processed foods because everything's processed, right? I mean, just like grinding like I had, I had a, you know, I'm a partner in a direct to consumer ranch to table beef company. And, you know, I had some of their burger for lunch. Technically it's processed, it's run through a grinder. But when you're talking about ultra processed foods, yeah, there's, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, what it is, is it either has a ton of preservatives, it has a ton of food additives, or it doesn't have a ton of nutritional value, or it's just so far from its origin source. Jeff Dudan (25:26.008) Yeah, like there's no food actually in Brian Littlefield (25:41.986) You know, there's a big, you know, there's a lot of disagreement on this subject. You know, people will say food is food and I won't get into all that, but in my opinion, sedentary lifestyle, the ultra processed foods, along with the endocrine disruptors that we have in our lifestyle, the phthalates, you know, being constantly, I mean, surrounded and wrapped in, which it's hard to get away from, you know, I'm drinking out of a plastic bottle. You know, so what I say is you just minimize that stuff like you're not gonna get away from it and in our current society Like we're not gonna go back to drinking out of glass only You know, I know some guys that sleep in only cotton boxers and cotton sheets and they won't sleep in polyester and I get it What I would say is limit limit it as much as you can but you're not gonna be able to get away from from all of Jeff Dudan (26:37.164) And the product that you were talking about is called Time Brian Littlefield (26:40.738) Time war, like war on time, yep. Jeff Dudan (26:42.052) Time war, war on time, awesome. So you're constantly innovating, you're coming up with great products, you obviously practice what you preach and you're very responsible in the way that you're bringing the stuff to market. What is the current distribution of the product line? Major retail locations, can you buy it online? Where are people buying this? National Distribution: Jocko Fuel Heads to Walmart Brian Littlefield (27:05.582) Yeah, so we still do a lot of sales through our website and Amazon, but our retail footprint is growing rapidly. know, we first launched into our first national retail partner was vitamin shop in 2020. We launched in February. you know, March hit and, and, know, things got crazy, but it was good. We were the fastest growing new brand. Excuse me. The fastest growing new brand of 2020. We. we're brand of the year last year, for vitamin shop. And this year they ran it by product and we were, you know, I think product of the year out of three out of five categories, I believe. So, you know, we've really had a great relationship with them, but it grew, you know, we really excelled in regional grocery. places like Hannaford brothers up in the Northeast, Meyer out in the mid. You know HEB down in Texas those regional grocery partners have been phenomenal for us, but We are launching into Walmart later this month. And so that'll be nationwide Walmart launch for a couple of our products. And that's the big one. That's the big next step. That's the big test. And it's always been our goal. It's always been Jaco's goal. He said it, I remember since day one. He said, what's the long -term plan? What's the goal for the company other than let's make great products and hopefully make a profit? From a business standpoint, it was. What do we want to do? And he said, I want to, like, I want these products to be accessible at someone's fingertips, like on the ready, like, you know, if they want to drive to the store and get them, then I want to make them. Brian Littlefield (28:55.182) Available and so this launch into Walmart will essentially do that with a couple of our products It's not the full product line because we have a lot of products, but a couple of our products will You know be nationwide in Walmart, which I believe covers I think it's 80 % of the United States as far as like shoppers So that's really checking the box for us and you know, we're just gonna keep going keep growing Jeff Dudan (29:21.124) Sergi from Google said that they spent 70 % of their time on their core business, 20 % in adjacencies, which are businesses that are related to the business, and then 10 % just out of the box innovation. As you look to the future, obviously, one plus one plus one, continue to add distribution, incremental adjustments to the product line, continue to bring great resources to people that are interested in health. What are, do you have, a mechanism in your team to get away and just think about what's possible and maybe what's missing from something that can just be a, you know, out of left field type thing for you guys. Brian Littlefield (30:04.79) Yeah. do we have a mechanism? Yeah, we do. I mean, we, do a number of off sites, with, with some really bright people, you know, one of our, you know, he's a partner of the brand now, but he started off as a board member, his name's Kip Foulkes. And so he's strategic advisor to my partner Pete as well. so Kip was the co -founder of Under Armour. And so having someone that started day one with, you know, Under Armour grew it to, you know, multi -billion dollars for, you know, had done every role imaginable through the organization as it, as it grew has just been insanely beneficial. And we have great investment partners. We just have such a great team. So I'd say there's no shortage of, outside of the box idea conversations. That's for sure. That's it is never vanilla. Work-Life Balance Is a Myth: Health Routines that Work Jeff Dudan (31:06.468) Brian, what do you do when you're not working, man? How do you keep the balance between fast growing, high profile business and then keeping yourself sane, keeping yourself balanced and making sure that you're feeding those aspects of your soul as well? Brian Littlefield (31:24.774) well, I would say, I think that it should be a, I would say this, like, it should be like a pursuit of balance. But if you're on a rocket ship like this, you're often not balanced. You're just, you're just not. And, and, you know, I have some people that, I have some friends in, in, business that you know, probably do a better job than me balancing that. And I have some that do, you know, I know for a fact do a worse job. For me, it just comes back to, you got to service the machine, you know, you can't let it break down. So it's okay to push it though, in my opinion, especially, I also know like, I'm not a spring chicken anymore, but at the same time, I probably feel a lot better right now than I will when I'm 60, 65, 70. So take advantage of the energy and the way I feel now and postpone a little bit of that freedom and satisfaction and just put it down now so I can reap the benefits later. So. I'd say I definitely still prioritize getting to the gym doing my, you know, particularly jujitsu, like I've been doing jujitsu for 15 years. I still make sure I get on the mats once a week. And, you know, and then, you know, I still, you know, when I find time, I'm doing the sauna. I don't do the cold plunge nearly as much as I used to. That's kind of, it's, it's, it's a, Jeff Dudan (33:13.582) Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you for that. I got a sauna and a cold plunge right next to it and the cold plunge is, it's lonely. Brian Littlefield (33:21.6) It gets neglected. Yeah. You know, I got really, I was really heavy in the cold, cold exposure thing. And I think it has a ton of benefits. What I actually found was I went through a period of about, I don't know, probably three months, four months where I did it like every single day in a row. And what I actually found was you grow just like anything, you grow a conditioning to it. And the cognitive benefits that I was getting from that stimuli kind of faded. And so what I found was like, and that's where I got the most benefit from it. Like as far as like cold shock proteins for longevity and stuff, I'm sure you're still, you're probably still getting those benefits even with conditioning, but. I was using it for like the cognitive benefit. Like I just felt so much more alert and on point after using it that when that started to fade, I was like, well, this doesn't make sense. So then I started using it kind of on an as needed basis. Let's say I was jet lagged or I had to go into a big meeting or something. It's like hitting that before something really important where you're going to perform like that's a hack. And when you have that conditioning built up, I noticed that the return was a little bit diminished. So Yeah, I kind of pulled back on that. But the sauna like I wish I got in the sauna every single day. I mean, we know the health benefits to that are profound. but yeah, I mean, trying to eat healthy, trying to eat clean, working out, trying to prioritize sleep. That's the hard one, right? You know, when you got a lot of shit to do. It's I'm thankful that I have, you know, I have a two year old daughter who is amazing. And thankfully, Jeff Dudan (34:51.022) Yeah. Yeah. Brian Littlefield (35:02.08) on the regular sleeps really, really well, you know, after some sleep training, but you know, there was a period of six months to a year that that was there that I didn't know what sleep was. you know, it was it's fun. A lot of fun. Entrepreneurial Advice: Embrace the Sacrifice Jeff Dudan (35:18.178) Congratulations on that. mean, with the cold tub, mean, our bodies adapt and contrast is key and body confusion helps and anything you do every day, man, we are adaptable and our bodies are just gonna adjust right to it. you gotta keep it like any relationship with yourself, like you gotta keep it fresh and you gotta keep changing it out. And congratulations on your daughter. What, you were an entrepreneur from an early age, what advice would you have to young people today that are just thinking about cracking into business? Brian Littlefield (35:53.548) I would say. Brian Littlefield (35:57.482) I mean, it's changed so much over the last few years too, when I've done more of these types of interviews or started working with other entrepreneurs, like my answer has changed. I would say the best piece of advice I could give currently, right now, snapshot of my mindset, because it changes, it evolves, the best piece would be, I think that you have to embrace the sacrifice. And so a lot of people will say, you know, the key to success is, you know, a great idea or timing or hard. We always hear like hard work. But for me, it's like, think of it as sacrifice. And when you can do that and you can be OK with it, you're you're you're going to be able to sleep better because it's not going to weigh on you as much. You understand it's a conscious decision. So if you're not. okay with it, it's gonna eat at you. And so you have to say, okay, I'm going to sacrifice this time with my family or my loved ones or doing something I'd rather be doing, whether that's hiking or maybe it's biking or maybe it's swimming or whatever it is. It's okay to sacrifice a little bit now for something more later. And it's... probably necessary, but the difference is I think with a lot of entrepreneurs is they understand they need to do the sacrifice, but they never get right with it. They don't understand, they don't really get comfortable with it and so it eats at them. And so that's one thing I'd say is just get comfortable with Jeff Dudan (37:32.516) Man, that's a great point. Back to the balance thing, balance is a fallacy. If you're going to do something great, then you're going to greatly for it. You don't have to do it your whole life. People that worked for jobs said it was the hardest but greatest 18 months that they survived there. We're at 120 hours a week cranking out those iPhones. But man, I got a little hack, and I don't think I heard it anywhere. just came up with it one morning, and it Change the meaning. So anytime that I find myself dissatisfied with something or upset or even going into negative self -talk or maybe I don't feel sorry for myself anymore. I think I've overcome that. just feeling like I would rather be doing something else even though I know this is what I need to be doing or when something goes bad, I just change the meaning of it. I'll be like, okay, what's the universe trying to teach me right here? What a great opportunity. that the size of an entrepreneur is directly related to the size of their problems. And if I didn't have five things that were just weighing down on me right now, then my business would probably not, would be small. so, you can pretty, I can snap myself around in half a second by just changing the meaning of something, which shows how programmable we are. And in a way, kind of how stupid we are, how malleable we are, how gullible we are. I can trick myself into almost anything. Brian Littlefield (39:01.292) like that. It's similar to I like it a lot. Actually, it's a mindset thing, right? mean, it's just that that's what it is. And my buddy JP did now he Jeff Dudan (39:09.209) Yeah. Brian Littlefield (39:16.536) He always says, like, I get to do this. So the moment that he gets tasked with something that he maybe wouldn't normally want to do, he says, cool, I get to do this. Because he lost, as a former SEAL himself, he lost team members. And he changes that mindset to, like, I could not have the opportunity to do anything. So what? I'm going to complain about. you having to do this paperwork. I'm going to complain about having to, you know, have this meeting with this person that I don't really want to meet with. It's like, no, I get to do this. So I like that. It's just, it's just a, it's a, really it's a maturity of mindset, right? So obviously you didn't have that always. And so I like that. That's cool. “I Get to Do This”: Reframing Mindset for Excellence Jeff Dudan (39:58.456) No, no. Think about when you're like three quarters the way through a workout and it's not too hard, but you're bored. And you're just like, okay, I wanna get through this. I got two more sets of this circuit to do. Yeah, I know I'm gonna get through it, but like my mind is already halfway through my day and I'm not focused on it. And because of I'm not really giving the effort and then just change the meaning to something. Hey, what an opportunity to do this and not waste this time. And next thing you your trainer or your workout partner is like, dude, what got into you? You just did twice as good as you did the last set. And it was just like, I just changed my mind and it just takes a second. well, awesome. Yeah, Brian, this has been great. I really appreciate you being on. Congratulations on all your success. Appreciate you bringing these great products to bear. And I really learned some things and the notes I took. But the benefit is I can go back and listen to this again. But about some of these compounds and stuff in your Time War product, because I think for me and so many of us out there, we're just looking to finish impeccably. We want to be our best self. We want to have energy. And there's so much noise out there about what do you need and what don't you need. So I'm definitely going to dig deeper into the product line here, order a couple of things, and I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah, I appreciate it. Last question, though, Brian, for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life today, what would that be? Brian Littlefield (41:33.454) Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Jeff Dudan (41:47.48) What's your go -to? What would you tell your daughter? Brian Littlefield (41:52.609) I'd say take the chance. Brian Littlefield (41:57.112) Yeah, what's it, mean, that's the, that would be it. Just take the chance. You can probably always go back to whatever it is you were doing before. So what's the risk, right? Just take the chance. Jeff Dudan (42:13.016) Yeah, most of the things we do as entrepreneurs aren't fatal. Brian Littlefield (42:17.816) Yeah. Yep. Jeff Dudan (42:18.871) Yeah. This has been Brian Littlefield with Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front. Thank you, Brian Littlefield (42:25.688) Thank Jeff Dudan (42:26.51) Yep. Hang on just a second.
Brief Summary In this high-octane episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan welcomes Ryan Hanley—founder of Finding Peak, former CEO of Rogue Risk, content marketing expert, and bestselling author. Together, they explore what it takes to evolve from a struggling employee to a thriving entrepreneur, how to scale businesses beyond “escape velocity,” and why authentic content still wins in a noisy world. From AI and algorithms to culture and accountability, this is a masterclass in leadership, growth, and modern marketing. Key Takeaways From fired to founder : Hanley shares how getting fired from his father-in-law’s insurance agency sparked his journey into inbound marketing and entrepreneurship. Escape velocity in business : True growth happens when a business shifts from being founder-centric to scalable systems with strong culture. Civilized Savage mindset : His upcoming book explores how to balance discipline and compassion to win in business and life. Remote work culture must be accountable : Flexibility only works when there are clear expectations, metrics, and consistent feedback. Content is your 24/7 salesperson : Hanley reveals how to filter for ideal clients with evergreen content on platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn. Don't build on rented land : Email and text lists are your safest long-term content assets; social platforms can be taken away at any time. Loom videos for outbound : Personalized video emails can be a powerful way to cut through the noise and create leads—even without a polished content strategy. Featured Quote “A-players kick ass and then get back to their life because their life is what matters. They’re not here for time sheets—they’re here to win.” — Ryan Hanley TRANSCRIPT From Fired by Family to Founder: Ryan Hanley’s Entrepreneurial Origin Jeff Dudan (00:00.465) But I'll probably go back and re -record it a little better, but I usually try to hit it, see if I can get it. All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the home front. I have Ryan Hanley on here with us today, who is the CEO and founder of Finding Peak, an executive coaching and media company. Ryan recently exited from his last startup, Rogue Risk, a first of its kind digital commercial insurance agency. Ryan is a sought after keynote speaker. I've seen his stuff. Hanley (00:05.039) Perfect. Jeff Dudan (00:27.345) really, really good and also a bestselling author of content warfare and producer of a podcast, The Ryan Hanley Show. And we've got a new book coming out in 25. Welcome to the home front, Ryan Hanley. Hanley (00:39.758) Jeff, such a pleasure to be here, man. Excited to chat. Jeff Dudan (00:43.057) Yeah, awesome. So one of the things I do to prepare is go through people's book and this book, Content Warfare, is really, really good. It has a lot of good fundamentals in it. Now, when did you write this book? 2015. So I looked at that and I'm like, okay, this stuff is still relevant today. If I'm sitting in an office, I'm sitting in a cube, I've got a business that I want to grow, but you've got a new book coming out in 2025, which I think the working title is Civilized Savage. Hanley (01:11.598) Yes. Jeff Dudan (01:12.357) What's that going to be about? Is that going to be an extension of the material and content warfare? Or are we going a different direction? Hanley (01:16.986) No, it's a slightly different direction. Back in 2014, 2015, when I published 2015, wrote in 2014, guess, Content Warfare, that was basically sharing the blueprint that I used to revolutionize local independent insurance agencies. That came out of being a horrible traditional salesman. just... was awful. And at the time, I'm just a salesman working for an insurance agency, every little boy's dream, right to be in the insurance industry. And Jeff Dudan (01:51.171) I dreamed of, I had a State Farm jersey up on my wall growing up. Hanley (01:56.29) Yeah, exactly. So I was actually working for my ex father -in -law at the time. He was my father -in -law at the time, now ex, but and he fired me just year and half into working for him. He fires me. I did what any self -respecting young man would do. I got down on my knees and said, please do not make me go home to your little girl and tell her that you her dad just fired her husband. And he agreed to give me a six month extension. And I had to figure out how I was going to sell auto, home, business insurance products to people other than the traditional method. And what I did was I fell in love with and became fairly proficient at inbound and competent marketing. And then the success from that that I had, I parlayed into that book. So that's highly tactical. The only part that isn't relevant is the chapter on Google+. Obviously that doesn't exist anymore, but I'd say everything in there is completely relevant today. And I've used it over and over and over again in my, the businesses that came after. Civilized Savage is more a take on mindset and what I've found to be, and I have a co -author as well, what I've found to be the proper set of mindsets that we need in today's society to be successful. I think the pure, raging, aggressive, you know, mentality just... That doesn't integrate into society well. We can't operate today in that methodology, yet we need to embrace many of the aspects of what it meant to be, you know, how do we handle topics like aggression? How do we handle ambition? How do we handle drive, discipline, but integrate them into our lives in a way where we're not pushing people away from us? So, Civilized Savage should be out in 2025, early 2025, and it's essentially gonna be a blueprint to operating day to day for success. Civilized Savage: A Blueprint for Ambition with Balance Jeff Dudan (04:01.495) Interesting because I had under my bullet points under content assertiveness and you know, how assertive do you need to be to get somebody's attention? And then where is the line to where you fall back from being aggressive or even offensive in some places people develop people grow big audiences based on assertiveness and sometimes aggressiveness and sometimes outlandishness, right? It's a very Jordan Jordan Peterson type thing that says Men need to be dangerous, but then they need to be able to control it. And that's really the essence of it. People need to know that you will protect and you will do what you do, but then at the end of it too, you need to be wise and sage and thoughtful and diplomatic in a way. So interesting. So I find that civilized savage. Hanley (04:54.49) And it's funny that you referenced Jordan Peterson because actually that take, which I saw live from him, enormous Jordan Peterson fan, his book, 12 Rules for Life, changed the course of my life in 2017. I was struggling to marry these ideas. I'm probably a workaholic by nature, played sports throughout high school, college, a little bit after college. You know, I've always been that lean forward, push, drive. you know, win kind of person. And what I found is, that had success, you know, that got me early success in business. When you got through escape velocity and had to start to build real businesses, that didn't play down organizations, right? I don't think that there's very few exceptions, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, of that manic leader pounding tables, throwing chairs, yelling, you know, completely unreasonable. and inflexible, think, you what I started to understand was the idea of seasons of life and seasons of businesses. And early on in a business cycle, when you're first starting, you have to be an absolute lunatic. You have to be, you got to get the thing off the ground and you have to get it to escape velocity. And what I mean by escape velocity is that point in your business where it stops being about you and starts being about the business, right? Early on, it's... It's what can you do? How can you manage whatever tasks are necessary? Oftentimes we're wearing five, seven, ten different hats to get this thing off the ground. And then pushing through that to the point where now I can start to peel off layers of what I'm doing and bringing in other people that are smarter than me at accounting, smarter than me at sales, smarter than me at marketing, etc. HR and really starting to build a true sustainable business that's going to be resilient. Well, early days. manic, crazy, you kind of have to be right, you're putting in 16 hour days, but where people miss is they hit that moment of escape velocity, and they don't realize they're in a new season of their business in which they still need to be driven, ambitious, visionary, but now we have to start to integrate into that business in a way where people feel like they're heard, we can grab ideas from other individuals, and this plays into our family life as well. Hanley (07:16.89) What I found, really Jordan Peterson being the kickoff to this, was that in his book, 12 Rules for Life, it opened my eyes to the idea that I could be that, you know, and again, I'm a guy, so I'll talk in terms of guys, but this goes just 100 % applies to females as well. I can be that strong, out front male who has a big idea, who's pushing hard, who has expectations of their team, but still be... Escape Velocity: The Real Test of a Scalable Business I can still listen, can still have compassion, I can still be understanding, I can still bring other people into conversations and allow their ideas to be heard and be executed upon if they're the best ideas. And it wasn't till that point that I started to marry those two things together, this idea of the Civilized Savage came out where we are at one time strong, driven, ambitious. but also compassionate understanding and caring. And if you can marry those two together, that's how you build true resilience into your business. It's how you build resilience into your family, into your life, into your community. Jeff Dudan (08:20.721) Look, I really, really like this observation. We watch a lot of Elon Musk videos in our family. My son's an aspiring engineer, so anytime there's something going up and blowing up, man, it's on our YouTube screen at home, and that's what we're watching. And after one of the more recent launches, they showed the, they've got Elon on there, and well, first of all, he had done this interview with this kid who had been following him and videotaping him. And they're out at the rocket and they were talking about how they were going to use the propulsion gases or whatever. And he's like, well, we use the cold stuff for this and we use the hot stuff for that. And the kid makes an observation and he says, yeah, but you you could actually use the cold stuff for this. And Elon's like, yeah, but, and then he stopped and then he thought about it he goes, you know, that's actually a really good idea. And then the video, you know, nine months later was him saying, this is where we incorporated your idea into this rocket. And then you cut to their. mission control and the mission controls of NASA that we used to watch where these, you know, old guys with the dark rim glasses and the white shirts and the ties, right. And they're, they're getting excited because they just launched something and it worked. Man, you show the control room at SpaceX, it's kids and it's, it's the brightest engineers from all over the world that he could possibly find. And, you know, he says, and he, he, you know, he says, you know what I, you know, we're going to go back and we're going to make this decision as a team. You know, we're always going to collaborate. We're going to get everybody's feedback and we're going to get the best idea. So he truly has this Ray Dalio type idea of meritocracy and he'll sleep on the floor for a hundred hours straight and push everybody to their limits. And if you're not product, if you're not productive, like when he went into Twitter, 80 % of it, he goes, anybody that's not keeping the product going is gone. And then we're going to start to build back from there. So, so there's this super aggressiveness. Unreasonableness of goals, but yet this collaborativeness that says like, we're all going to go here together. The guy's just got a super knack for team building, vision creation and execution. Hanley (10:27.418) Well, it's two things that I think unfortunately have been lost in our society are the idea of setting expectations and holding people accountable to them and building a company based on pure meritocracy. No one likes that, right? The word of the day is equality. Well, I'm all for equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome is why you see all these major Fortune 500 companies dropping DEI. DEI at its core, Jeff Dudan (10:40.69) Mm. Yeah. Hanley (10:57.538) is an incredibly compassionate and empathetic idea. However, the way that it's practiced is not practiced inside a pure meritocracy. And one of the things that I've always found interesting is people who came up in sports tend to get this idea natively, right? When you're on a sports team, especially team related sports, you don't care what someone thinks, you don't care what they look like, you don't care how they act, you don't care what their hobbies are, where their families are, where they're from. You could give two craps. If they can play the game, Jeff Dudan (11:24.911) Yeah. Hanley (11:26.146) and execute and work inside the team as a unit, you want them there, right? You want to surround yourself with the best teammates that are going to get you to whatever goal you have. And that's just a native idea. But individuals who, or people who played individual sports or never engaged in team or group activities in that manner, they look at teams as, well, you're not properly represented. Well, it doesn't matter. I could have... seven people that look like this and one person that looks like this and this is the best team for what we need to get done and that could be reversed and those same demographics could be flopped and there's seven of these and one of these or whatever it looks like at the end what I what I respect about Elon and I listened I listened to his book I didn't read it I like to make that distinction because I hate when people say they read a book but they really listen to I listen to Walter Isaacson book about Elon and well this is obviously a guy who has to deal with some Asperger's is what he calls it. I don't think that's a proper term anymore, but whatever and different Ways related to other people he obviously has struggles with that but at end of the day he sets expectations he holds you accountable to them and if you have the merit to be in that room he's gonna put you in that room and listen to what you have to say and That's not an idea that mediocre average people want to allow in the world and the organizations that fight through maybe some negativity from the average. They're the ones that are succeeding today. Those are the ones that are having books written about them. Those are the ones whose companies are plowing through all these ceilings that we never even knew were possible. And it's why I believe that someday Elon's gonna do a software update to your Tesla and you're gonna able to hit a button and that thing's just gonna take you to the moon. Building a Culture of Meritocracy and Accountability Jeff Dudan (13:13.713) Yeah, 100%. And it's funny how as companies grow, and we're in it here. I mean, we've gone from like nine people 24 months ago to like 70 people and 200 franchise owners and 600 markets. mean, it's like our growth over the last 24 months has been crazy. And it's amazing how quickly sometimes the main thing stops being the main thing about the main thing. You know, it's about this and well, this person's doing this and this person's doing that. And I'm like, yeah, but like, we're not talking about the business goals now. Now we're talking about what makes people comfortable or maybe what people want to do or, you know, like what's the trade off on excellence that we're willing to have here because it's too hard or, know, what's good enough. And, you know, I, you know, you get, get a little worn down from it, but I'm telling you this, it is so refreshing to be able to focus on just the things that matter and to be kind of have a team of what I call business athletes. Look, you don't have to be an athlete athlete. There's business athletes out there that basically whatever you throw to them, they will dive, skin their knees and elbows to catch it and do whatever with it. it's funny, man, like you see it, we had some interns here over that we did a successful internship program. And it's like, wow, you know, we put an intern into this department and they raised the production of the other six people in there by X and, know, and it's just, it's really, it's all about the athletes. If you listen to Belichick or you listen like they they you know, they could get all drunk on reading their own press clippings about what a great coach they are But they always go back and say it's always about the athletes because they're the ones that are making the place I mean you could put people in the right position when I was coaching football You know our staff's goal was to not get in make sure that there was absolute clarity There was a simple game plan with which we knew the basic things we were trying to accomplish and then from a coaching perspective If we could manufacture one turnover Hanley (14:54.191) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (15:11.897) and one touchdown because of some strategy that we did, then we knew that all our players had to do was be even and we would win the game. But it's always about the players. But it's challenging today to create these environments where it's it's okay, well, I want to work remotely. Well, like if I'm a young person today, by the way. And I really want to, like in our company, we have incredible executives. We have brand presidents over our franchise brands that have built national companies over and over and over again. If I'm a young person and this is my first job, I want to be, I want to have access to those people on a daily basis from a mentoring perspective. How do they think? How do they get where they go? What are the opportunities? If I'm sitting at home three days a week, you know, yeah, I get to play with my dog. Right? Or it's maybe more, or I don't have this commute or whatever it is, but are you really getting the full experience? Are you giving yourself the opportunity and taking full advantage of the people that you get to rub shoulders with every day? Now remote work, like we have our, our, our franchise development sales team, super talented group. They're spread all over the country. They're constantly on teams and nothing goes 10 seconds. I mean, like that works and it works fine, but I will tell you they're all experienced people and they're, They're tools that do a very specific thing and they do it exceptionally well. So that works for them. But when you're trying to build a culture and you're trying to give young people an opportunity to find out what their area of brilliance is, what's their unique ability, and then to be able to pour resources into them to really develop them, it's hard to do when you don't see them. Hanley (16:56.442) I want to give you an example of how this works, especially with remote. So as you mentioned, I exited last November from a commercial insurance agency. So my experience in the world, yeah, I grew up in the insurance industry. And my most recent endeavor in that was starting my own digital commercial insurance agency. We were national. We wrote business in 43 states. We had people spread out throughout the country. And where we excelled was Jeff Dudan (17:08.081) Congratulations. Hanley (17:25.668) through bringing in single moms and moms at young kids. Because in the insurance industry, the dynamic nature of their schedules made them a liability to the traditional business, right? So they're often tossed out of organizations. These are high quality, incredibly intelligent, incredibly experienced individuals who are driven to get things done, yet because they can't work a standard nine to five, they get tossed out the door. So what I started doing was hiring these individuals Hiring High-Performing Moms: A Case Study in Smart Remote Teams Jeff Dudan (17:38.586) Right. Hanley (17:55.226) and bringing them in and saying, I don't care if at 11 o 'clock your kid's sick at school, you got to leave and go get your kid. If you got to pick your kid up from the bus at three and you need a half hour to go get, do what you have to do. I understand the dynamics. I'm a single dad. Like I get what you're going through. However, we, we're a metrics based organization. You have goals that you have to hit. You have things you have to get done. And if you don't get them done, that's a problem. So I think where most leaders go wrong, when they get involved with remote employees in particular, and I think this goes across the board. It doesn't sound like it happens in your organization at all, but I think for those listening, you can overcome any of these issues if you will properly set expectations for the people that you bring in upfront and then hold them accountable to those expectations. And that's the part no one wants to do, right? We can say, you know, we're driven and we're goal -focused and, you know, but you can say all these things. But if you then aren't regularly meeting with them, asking them what's going on, mean, simply just sending a text message or a Slack message or team's message randomly as a leader to one of your teammates and go, what's going on today? How you doing? Where's your head at? Just something, just check in with them, see what's going on and then look at their numbers, you know? And we would say, you you don't get to miss two months in a row. You get to have a bad month. We understand it. But if you have a bad month, let's sit down, figure out why it was a bad month. Jeff Dudan (19:14.832) Yeah. Hanley (19:20.706) see if there is any changes or adaptations we can make. Maybe Fridays are a terrible day for you, but you can work on Saturdays. Well, that's great, right? People are always looking to buy insurance, so we're working seven days a week anyways. Maybe we can adjust your schedule. Maybe you can pick up two four -hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday, and now you get Wednesdays free because Wednesday is a day that you need for your family or for your kids or just to get shit done, whatever, right? But you don't get to miss two months in a row because missing two months in a row means you're not doing Jeff Dudan (19:27.43) Yeah. Hanley (19:50.616) what you initially signed on to do when we brought you into this company. And if we're unable and unwilling to hold our people accountable, this is where the problem comes in. And so often we give lip service to accountability as leaders, yet we don't actually have the mechanisms in place. So one of the things that we implemented very early was a profitability scorecard for our sales representatives. And what that meant was I wanted them to see directly how the work they were doing, the time they were spending, the accounts they were bringing in, the revenue they were generating, minus the expenses associated with them and their salary, how that impacted the bottom line to our organization. So they would literally get a scorecard emailed to them at the beginning of the month from the following month to say, last month, you generated X in profit for our organization or you didn't generate any profit for our organization. This is what we had to pay you. Here's the expenses associated to you. And based on what you brought in, you as a salesperson actually cost us money to work here. That would be a miss. So what that did was create transparent, open, and honest conversations with our sales reps to say, you can't hide from this, right? Now, again, that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. You could have just had a bad month. Scorecards, Metrics, and Real-Time Feedback for Remote Teams Jeff Dudan (20:56.41) Right. Hanley (21:10.54) all the accounts that could have been small. You could have five huge deals in the pipeline that just for whatever reason got pushed to the next month. All those things are perfectly reasonable reasons for not hitting your numbers, but we need to have a regular and transparent conversation around your actual performance, its impact on our organization, and the reasons why you did well or the reasons why you're struggling. Jeff Dudan (21:35.341) One of the dots that I connected early on was that true A players want an adult workplace. They do not want to be micromanaged. If they have to go pick up their kid, I mean, they're going to work themselves to death to meet the goals and objectives or exceed the objectives of the organization. Because not because they, they, they, it's not because they care or don't care about what's in it for the company, but like that's just who they are. Like they just have this invisible hand that's pushing them to say, what can I do better? What's next? They always want to figure out the mousetrap. They want to hit their numbers. But then don't treat those people like children and say, well, you can't clock out until 4 o 'clock. Give them the flexibility to go pick up their kids. Talk to people. We teach people how to treat us. If you want people to be accountable and to Do the right thing when nobody's looking and to manage themselves so that you don't have to create all these silly systems around managing people Bring great ideas to the company have freedom of thought be able to offer ideas without the fear of you know reprisal or repercussions Maybe even take a little chance And if it doesn't work out they're not gonna you know They're not gonna get their hand slapped too hard because they were trying to do something within the guidelines of what's allowed to make a great play because great players make big plays and big games. And man, if you want great players, then you gotta give them the chance to make great plays. I love that kind of work environment. When you're running the call center, look, there's hours that need to be hit. There's calls that, there's metrics that need to be handled and things like that. But for most places, can create the feeling or the framework to have some freedom within it. the really good people... that I think we want to work with every day are going to be more attracted to that. Because if you can't compete, you can't pay people twice what the market is. Your benefits can be as good as the benefits can be. So where can you really compete for the A players? And I think it's in the culture and it's in the norms of the workplace. Hanley (23:45.23) Yeah, Nick Saban has a quote, extraordinary performers dislike working with average performers and average performers dislike working with extraordinary performers. So if you're looking at your team and you're like, geez, I got three great, great performers and then I got this one that's, you have to call the herd. Unfortunately, in reality, right? Underperformance means you don't get to work here. It just doesn't. Jeff Dudan (23:56.262) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (24:14.49) Right. Hanley (24:14.66) You know, I mean, for you, this just means it's not a great opportunity for you, right? If you're not hitting your numbers and you're not making the money that you should be making, then this might not be the right place for you. Additionally, the impact on the other individuals in our organization when they have to tolerate someone who is not putting in the work, who's not coming up with ideas, you know, we all know those individuals who show up at meetings and they have all the problems and none of the solutions, right? And everyone looks at them and it's like, great, you're awesome at seeing all the things that we all... already see, but how would you solve them? And they have no answer to that, right? Those kinds of conversations just drag a team down. And so in my, in my, I have an entrepreneur mastermind and whenever employee related issues come up, the very first question is an exercise that I think everyone should do if they're a leader of an organization. Just simply ask yourself, would you want to work for your company? Like honestly, would you want to work there? If you're, if you're the leader that's saying, you know, You don't get to punch out till four and they're done at 350 and that extra 10 minutes would mean the world to them because they can stop at the store real quick and pick up milk and eggs before they go home. But you're going to make them stay till four. Is that a place you want to work? Like is it? Are you really like a driven ambitious like, they can make one more call. I guess maybe. But like really could they? And is it more important that they make one more call or they have that peace of mind to know that they're going to be able to get the life things done? that they need to do before they get home, right? Because if they've gotten all their work done, they've made their calls and they're hitting their numbers and they're doing a good job and by all metrics, they're a quality player on your team. What do those 10 minutes mean to you? Honestly, as the leader, do you actually care that they're there for 10 more minutes or do you think that that's just what leaders do is hold people to the thing? It's like, no, you know what A players do? A players kick ass and then they get back to their life because their life is what's important. They're kicking ass. Jeff Dudan (26:07.206) Yeah. Hanley (26:10.116) so that they can live a life that they want to live. And if you're denying that to them because of some arbitrary time rule, then that's a cultural problem that you're creating. And they might not be voicing it to you, but I promise you they're having that conversation on the side. So really do an examination of your culture, of your code of conduct, of your communication, right? Like, would you want to work for your company? And that could go as far as how good are you at telling the story and are you repeating the story? Are you repeating the mission? Are you repeating the vision over and over and over to them? Because that gets people jacked up. I want to work places where I feel like amazing new shit is getting done that we're going to win awards and I can someday say I was part of that company that did that thing. That's where the that's where eight players want to be. And if you're not telling that story, if you're holding them to these arbitrary rules, if you're not living the life that you expect them to live, right? If you're checking out at 3 .30, but you're like, gotta stay till four, that's not being a leader. Being a leader does not mean you get all the benefit and these other people pick up the slack for you. Being a leader is you tell them they can leave at 3 .50 and you're there till five. Because as leaders, our job is to support the excellence of the people that work in our organization. It is not about us. And if that business is about us, that is not a place anybody wants to work. And that's why you're having cultural issues. Would You Work for You? Why Culture is a Competitive Edge Jeff Dudan (27:39.685) Yeah, I like that. job as leaders is to support the excellence of the people that are working in there. I was walking through the O 'Hare airport a couple of weeks ago, and this guy had this t -shirt on, and it said some comment of indifference. Like, it doesn't matter. I can't remember what the quote was, but it was like a philosopher quote. And then underneath it had a dash, and it said, mediocrities. And so now I want to do a series of t -shirts that says, hey, that's not my job. Hanley (27:58.808) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:08.677) mediocrities, like all the things that mediocre employees do. I want to create a group of t -shirts. HR said, no, I can't put these on people. I can't put them on people because, here I got, this is, can you wear this Friday after somebody's, know, clearly, you know, phones it in on something and then they have to wear a t -shirt? I don't think that'll work. But, you know, if anybody out there wants to run with it, go with it. Hanley (28:29.294) Yeah. We had a rule. I think you'll like this, dude. had a rule at at Roe Griske that and we shared this upfront with every person we hired. If you ever say, have a case on the Mondays, thank you know, thank God it's Friday, hump day, you are going to be fired. Because in the reason was not the reason was because if you If you like had a case of the Mondays, that means you didn't want to be there. If thank God it's Friday and you're just living for the weekend, that means you didn't want to be there. And maybe that's something we need to self reflect on as a company, but it means you're not a good fit. And I'm not saying we'd fire you immediately, it was like culturally inside our organization. It's like, no, if something's going on that you show up to work on Monday and you hate the idea of working here, we need to have a conversation because no one should ever feel like they have a case of the Mondays or, you know, Jeff Dudan (29:01.307) Right. Hanley (29:27.396) TGIF or whatever like that means you don't really want to be here and you don't enjoy what you're doing, which means you're culturally not a great fit for us. Also to your t -shirt story. I created these t -shirts just for myself and big bold letters right across the front. said the word discipline and then underneath it said fuck your motivation or fuck your mediocrity, right was what it said underneath it and I would wear them mostly as a reminder to myself, right? There's just a white t -shirt that I made on like one of the t -shirt shops. Jeff Dudan (29:50.127) Yeah. Yeah. Hanley (29:57.242) And I would wear them as a reminder to myself and my son who's 10, he wanted one. I was like, something wrong with me. I didn't think twice about it. I was like, awesome. He wants to discipline, whatever, right? So I get him one of the t -shirts and he's just wearing around the house and it's all, whatever. And then he wore it out of the house one day. And was like, everyone was like, that's completely inappropriate. And I was like, I'm bad dadding right now. That's probably bad dadding. But I love that he had like, that he like, Jeff Dudan (30:05.127) Mmm. Jeff Dudan (30:21.679) Yeah. Hanley (30:26.767) He saw that and he was like, yeah, no, don't want to be mediocre. He's like, let's go. But I probably missed as a dad there. Jeff Dudan (30:32.133) Yeah, well, how did it go with social services? Hanley (30:36.078) Yeah, exactly. Jeff Dudan (30:39.377) Awesome. Well, look, this has been kind of a white hot start to this conversation. And man, I don't want to go out of here without talking about content because content is a strength for you. for like, look, you're a speaker. You've been speaking for 15 years. I've watched some of your stuff. It's great. Very accomplished speaker. You know, you were an you were working that insurance job. You were sitting in a cubicle. I think you were in New York. possibly, and all of a sudden you're just, you know, you're, you're, you're up against it you're like, man, I gotta do something. I got to differentiate. So you started, I think blogging at the time and creating content. So, I mean, your whole book content warfare, a 2015 book fundamentally still relevant. You know, we've launched this podcast a little bit over a year ago. We've had great success with it, but man, our conversations about what makes quality content, you have a concept in your book about crap. free content. And I read that and I'm like crap free content. Like, yeah, that's what we've been talking about here for six months. Like that's that was an AI generated clip. It makes us look bad. It doesn't even make sense. It's sitting there like a turd in the punch bowl on our YouTube channel. Nobody's looking at it, but it just creates this this confusion about like, is this even if I'm looking, is this even somewhere I need to be? Do these people have anything to say or they just throw in crap up against the wall there? So Talk to me, let's talk in broad terms about content. I'm somebody and it doesn't matter, I work for somebody, I'm an individual contributor, I'm an agent, or I have a small business, and they're not doing content now, what is your advice or experience to share with them how they can start? Hanley (32:29.882) In 2024, if you're not creating content, people aren't going to know who you are and they're not going to do business with you. There's so much content out there from so many different companies that how we all start our journey with a product or a service is we go to their website or their social media, right? We check them out. Is this someone who thinks like me? Is this someone who relates to who I am? Is this product fit my lifestyle, do their value structures, do their disciplines, do their ideas, their standards, is it who I am, right? We purchase products as a way to showcase who we are. That's what we do. So that goes for boring, horrible services that everyone hates like insurance, all the way down to coffee companies and t -shirt companies, right? It's across the board. It doesn't matter what the product is. I wanna do business just like 100 years ago, just like 400 years ago when the insurance industry started. I wanna do business with someone who relates to me. And if I share with someone else why I do business with them, I feel confident that my value structure is mirrored in what they do. coming back to the idea of not creating crap content. Crap content is what you described. I feel like I have to get something out today. So I'm just gonna... You know, and I've tested all this stuff. So you guys know, if you look back through my history, in any social media channel, you'll see stuff that I think is really good. You'll see stuff that's terrible because I'm constantly testing what is, what relates to people and in the construct of what I believe always, but what relates to people, what do they grab onto? And how do I tell a story to the people I want to do business with that... engages them and draws them into me. Because the reason for creating content is it's a filtering mechanism. And this is something that I tried to push through content warfare over and over again, is that when we create content, what we're doing is filtering the entire pool of potential customers that we could have to the customers who we actually want to do business with. I tend to be a more, I mean, Crap-Free Content: Why AI Clips Kill Trust and What to Do Instead Hanley (34:47.652) I guess I'd be a moderate politically for most of my life today. I'm probably a right wing crazy per the current ecosystem. But I tend to be a more conservative, call it traditional value, original American constitution and declaration, ideals type of person. That tends to be where I come from. I don't want people to do business with me whose value structure is different. Not because I don't like them or that I think their value structure is wrong, but simply because they're not going to enjoy the way I do business, the way I talk, how I operate. They're not going to enjoy that. I'm not going to enjoy having them as a customer because there's going to be constant friction, right? The problem for so many companies, especially those who are not creating content today, is they still believe everyone is their customer. Everyone is not your customer, right? You have a specific type of person. And what I really believe today is we've moved, we should be moving beyond demographics and thinking about mindset. What is the mindset of the customer that you want, right? So how we differentiated ourselves in the insurance industry was that we didn't market on demographics. We didn't market on type of business or size of business or what geographical region they were in. Jeff Dudan (35:38.832) Mmm. Hanley (36:07.862) We wanted a certain mindset of customer. And by marketing to that mindset, people were already sold when they came to us. This is the core idea. And I talk about this in Content Warfare, this idea of being already sold, right? The reason we were able to grow so fast to the point where we were acquired within two years of founding the business was that customers who filled out a form or texted us or called us were already sold when they did so. They weren't calling to go, you know, who are you? What are you about? They already knew all that. We were just fulfilling an order. All they were doing was validating, does what I'm hearing on the phone match what I got online? Yes, done. I wanna purchase, you know, in my case, you know, workers comp or professional liability or general liability, whatever. That was the product we sold, right? So. Jeff Dudan (36:49.475) Right. Right. Hanley (37:06.614) I don't want to have to convince people to do business with me. That's a waste of time. If you're looking to scale your business, convincing people to do business with you is how you destroy scalability. Because now you're spending exponential amount of time, know, here's our product features and here's the benefit. All that shit should be online, told through a series of stories and case studies and examples. you know, you can use quotes, you can use... vignettes from the office and off collar or off the cuff moments and, you know, little ditties from the CEO or the CFO or the head of sales or your receptionist or whatever, right? You can use all these different formats to allow a customer to know exactly who you are, what you sell and what they're going to get. So then when they call you, all they're doing is validating that and you're just taking an order. Now, I know here's where people get here's where people push back on me about this usually. they go, well, you know, it's an ego thing. like, well, you know, we have this 10 step sales process and we're not order takers. Why don't you want to be an order taker? I don't understand that from an ego perspective. If my goal is to grow the business, why do I want to have to sell somebody? You know how much easier it is to have someone already be sold and just go, hey, man, I really want to buy workers comp from you or I really want 10, 100 t -shirt order. Jeff Dudan (38:25.616) Yeah. Hanley (38:34.442) Or I'd like to purchase a home. You know, I want you to be my real estate agent or whatever it is that you do. That is that conversation is so much different because now I can dig into what you're really trying to achieve versus trying to sell you and convince you on who I am. That conversation is how you cross sell more. You get more value per customer. Right. So we're thinking about. Right. So someone may come in with workers comp, but if I'm not having. Again, I'm speaking through my insurance example again, guys, I apologize. I know it is not relevant to everyone, but if someone's coming in for a particular product, that's their need. We solve that need for them. And yes, we're taking an order from them in that scenario. But because we're able to have a deeper conversation upfront, I now have, you know, a number of different ways in which I can pull them deeper into my business and pull out more value per customer. So our revenue per customer was incredibly high. because instead of selling one, two, or the industry average of three policies per customer, we were selling four, five, six, because we weren't spending all our time convincing them to do business with us. That trust had already been built. We were going deeper into what their actually needs were and able to solve those needs and be a true value provider. Jeff Dudan (39:49.957) There is so much inside of that and I agree with all of it. I've been working with a couple of marketing masterminds lately and there's this concept of building a vending machine, right? So, you know, there is a way to go into a certain customer set and to make invisible customers visible, meaning, you know, whatever the product is, you you can figure out what they'd be thinking about before. they go to buy the product. And these are not customers. When you place an online ad, it's like a slot machine. You're pulling it, and you're hoping that the ad you placed, somebody has the need today, and then they see the ad, and they say, I need that today, and they react to it. So that's a slot machine. So it might be 100, or maybe in your business, $500 a lead, or whatever it is, because you're throwing these ads out there, and you're hoping that somebody just lands on it. In the vending machine model, you're giving people a piece of content that says, you know, I'm not, I don't need to buy today, but I know that I'm going to buy, let's say I'm good. know that I'm going to be putting in a pool this fall. So, I, know that I need a fence to go around that pool. We have a fence franchise. So we might, have a download of a catalog that says this is the fence and gate catalog. And you download it today. You're not ready today, but they're going to be educating about it. You know, very cheaply. Now we put that into a big vending machine and we know that every month that some certain number of those people are going to fall from the little squirrely thing in the vending machine and fall down in there and they're going to be ready to connect. But once we know who they are and we've identified them to your point as a subset, now they get to consume the content. So we are the way we do use the word convincing, like our content, our podcast, These things are not for compelling people to buy, but once we know who they are, we can convince them that we are like them and they want to do business with us. And that's the content strategy, whether it's the podcast or whether it's, you know, the drip ads that we have or the drip content that we send to them. And, and you're right, everybody's not your customer. So in our vending machine model, you know, it's like, okay, well, we're going to, out of the a hundred thousand people in this town, you know, we're going to identify. Build a Vending Machine, Not a Slot Machine Jeff Dudan (42:17.199) the hundred couples that have gotten engaged this year that are gonna be looking for a wedding venue. They're not willing to buy today. They know they have to pick a date and all that, but we can put a piece of content in front of them that says they're gonna raise their hand, they're gonna jump into our vending machine, and now it's up to us to be able to convince them that we are the type of people they wanna do business with. Hanley (42:37.05) Well, I think from a content perspective, that's where you're doing the convincing. So you're right on it, right? What I wanted to try to remove, I don't want my sales rep convincing. I want my content convincing. So how we did that, our primary method for attracting business to rogue risk was through YouTube. So if anyone wants to see the work in progress, go to YouTube and look up the insurance channel, right? I don't manage the channel anymore since I sold the company. However, you'll find over 400 videos Jeff Dudan (42:42.0) Yes. Jeff Dudan (42:48.376) Exactly. That's right. Hanley (43:06.81) answering very basic questions about business insurance. What is workers comp? How does general liability work for a bakery? What's the best professional liability for an accountant, etc. Very basic questions. They're templated. know, and the template was super easy. And this allowed us to do, you know, I would wake up in the morning, I'd on a Monday, I'd record, you know, in the first two hours of the day, eight to 10 videos, then send them off to an editor, they'd all be pushed out and scheduled and What that did was it gave people the opportunity to learn everything they needed to know while also getting a feel for us as a company before they contacted us. Right. So now they, you know, we're not having a conversation about what workers comp is. They already know what it is. They watch the video, right. And so we got a lot of people workers comp was one of our specialties. That's why I keep bringing it up. And that what that allowed us again, what that allowed them to do is they were convinced that this was a product they needed, that we were the company they wanted to work with before they contacted us. That's what we're trying to do and what you just described. And I love the vending machine model. I think there's so many different ways in my content brain starts to spin up when you talk about what you're doing. You can do things like write a series of white papers that describe, you're using the fencing example, this type of fence or when this type of fence is appropriate or here's three common mistakes with a fiberglass fence or fiberglass fences versus wood fences, whatever, right? So you have a series of white papers or series of videos that then drop you into a drip campaign that tells you the founder's story. You know, here's three of our most successful case studies. Jeff Dudan (44:41.22) Right. Hanley (44:56.026) Here's a client testimonial, right? And then these are dripped out over a period, you know, knowing whatever your buying cycle is, say for fence, it might be 90 days, 120 days, maybe six months. I don't know. I've never been in the fence business. But whatever your buying cycle is, time that drip campaign out over that period of time, because you know, if the average person looking to purchase a fence purchases, you know, starts researching six months before they actually buy, well, capture them and set up a campaign that now They're getting these emails and they're just keep going, geez, you know, this fence company, how can you choose anyone else? Right? Like if you've read a white paper from them that explains and gives you a solution to the problem, you've now heard the founder story. You've seen three successful case study examples. You've heard a client testimonial video from people who've been successful. And you've sent out pricing guides. And maybe if they make it to the end of the drip campaign, you're like, hey, you've watched four of the six videos that we sent out over this drip campaign, here's a 10 % discount because we know if you've made it this far, you're the type of customer that we love to work with. How could they possibly choose to work with anyone else? You've given them everything that no one else gives them. You've literally made, you've taken all the potential objections they could have for working with you and you've taken them right off the table. They don't have another option. Jeff Dudan (46:13.275) That's right. Hanley (46:22.744) And from like a behavioral psychology standpoint, that person is so invested in you now, they literally can't even contemplate another option. Jeff Dudan (46:30.533) There are some buying decisions that I personally make, and when I'm making them, I think, man, I hope I can get these people out, or I hope I can get these people to do business with me. Ferrari's an extreme example, right, where you're not allowed to modify the car, or they'll come and take it back from you. You get in line for your Ferrari, and it might be years to get it, and if you get it, and if you screw with it, we'll actually show up. your driveway will take it and it's in the contract. So it's like the exclusive name. You're hoping you can get the Ferrari, but there's other things too. Like I'm hoping I can get this tree company out here because I know that they're the best and I know that they're going to whatever it is. yeah, a hundred percent there. Personalized Cold Outreach with Loom: The Killer Sales Strategy Hanley (47:11.78) Jeff, can I give you one more example for maybe the individuals who are out there going, know, just, I'm not good in front of camera or I don't like inbound marketing or I don't like creating content. There is another way to do this if you're more of that outbound person. And I found it to be, statistically for our business, it was a much more effective way of doing cold calling. We used cold video email. So what we would do, so say you're not a content creator, here's another way that you can start to get people to be already sold if you're uncomfortable or you need a step before you get there. What we would do is we would pull up a company that we wanted to work with website and we would use Loom. So, know, on screen would be their website and my face or the producer's face, the producers, what we call salesperson, the insurance industry would face would be in the bottom left hand corner in a little circle. And I would, and we would just do, you know, so we're on their, homepage, say they're a landscaping company, right? and I'd pull it up and I'd say, Jeff, my name's Ryan. I'm a specialist in the landscape industry. I have your website up and I was looking through it. I see that you have a couple trucks. I see that you work in the greater Albany area and there's a couple things on here that I just wanna make sure in your insurance program you have covered and ba -ba -bop, here's what those things are. If those haven't been addressed, I would love to have a conversation with you. You do not have to work with me. 10, 15 minutes, I'll be able to explain how you can fix this in your current insurance program. If you're up for a call, let me know, right? Bam. Now, you, one, if someone sees, the cool thing about Loom is, and I know I'm being hyper tactical, but I like to give people the out if they're not super into or uncomfortable with inbound. you, Loom puts a little thumbnail of the video in your email. So if you open an email and there's a video thumbnail with your website on it, You can't not click it. I mean, you can't not click. don't know if you've ever received these. do. you can't not click. You're like, this person was on my website. They obviously took a little time to personalize this to me, right? And if you can keep it relatively short and bang on good points, that person's going to watch it. And even if they don't choose to do business with you in that moment, you're in their brain. You did something for them that no one's ever done. You're providing value and giving them an out to say, you don't have to work with me. Hanley (49:30.65) 10, 15 minutes, I can explain to you how to fix this on your current program, whether you work with me or not, right? And then, and now you're getting, you're starting to break those barriers down, you're starting to get past those objections upfront, specialized and personalized to that particular individual. So that's another way to use content without having to engage in a full blown kind of content or inbound marketing campaign. Jeff Dudan (49:55.633) No, that's brilliant. just have an, do an owners only for 90 minutes every second Tuesday of the month in the evening where we get all of our franchise owners agnostic to brand. And we actually demonstrated how to use Loom to create SOPs for specific things in their business. And then to be able to outsource those things to like a VA or, you know, somebody else and basically to help them delegate things. First time business owners, right? And Loom is a great tool for it. I want to talk about this concept of Building building your content on your land or on rented land, right? So you go to these platforms, man I've got a friend who's got a head developed over a year like a massive Instagram following pretty aggressive guy very assertive and I guess he must have crossed some line somewhere and his account got is gone like it's it was it was emptied out one day and the next day you can't even find it so there's And there was a lot of value in that. mean, he was six to 10 million accounts. He was touching a month. He was really going well. But, you know, somebody taketh away. Right. So email lists are yours. I've heard many people say the most valuable thing that I have from my podcast or from my newsletter on LinkedIn is my email list. How do you think about building on other people's land like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, versus things that you can build on your land that will be yours forever. Hanley (51:25.784) Yeah, this is a really hard one because I do not think today if you're doing content and looking to do inbound, get inbound opportunities that you can avoid being on other people's property. And there are inherent risks to that, which is kind of just the nature of life, right? There's always risk to everything that we do. That being said, pulling people to an email list that you control. Now, again, here's the other thing too, like, Jeff Dudan (51:44.753) Sure. Hanley (51:52.602) during some of the nonsense with the zombie apocalypse of 2020, there were people on certain email platforms that had problems. So nothing is owned. Nothing. We don't own our website. Google can just downrank you and no one could ever find you. There are all kinds of ways that that can be taken away from us. However, I think two things in particular. If you can get people to a text list or WhatsApp list, put people on a text app or a WhatsApp list or get them to email and then just make sure you're periodically exporting that email and just have that in case something does happen. Now you own those contacts. Those are much more personalized communication methods, right? Instagram is amazing, but it's broadcast. I know there's DMs, but it's still broadcast. It's still owned by Metta. Same thing with all the other. mean, think about how many people who've built incredible YouTube channels have had those channels either downranked or just completely taken away from them or locked. I think we have to be careful and we have to understand the risks in what we're saying, what we're doing. And I hate that because I'm a huge free speech proponent. I do not like that this is part of our society today. How we just have to be smart. the reason that I said, hey, write some white papers, get people into an email drip campaign is if... Your text message inbox and your email inbox in that order are the two most effective ways of getting any single individual to take a single action. There's no better way to get someone to take a single action. You can advertise, you can post on any social media platform a thousand times. Doesn't matter. The most effective way of getting any individual to take a specific action is through either text message or email and everything we do should be driving people to those platforms and then giving them real value in those places so that when you want, when you launch a new product or you launch a new course or you have a, an exciting piece of content that's going viral that you want your entire audience to engage with, you have the ability to reach out to them and say, here's what I want you to do right now. And Hanley (54:11.318) if they're active and engaged in those things, they will take that action with a very high click through rate. Jeff Dudan (54:20.175) Ryan, this is awesome. Who are your clients that you work with today? I'm not exactly sure how you're time slicing with all the things that you've got going on because you're building companies, you're selling them, you're doing your speaking, you're obviously writing books. Who are people that work with you today and what do you do for them? Hanley (54:44.378) So I work with entrepreneurs between launch and escape velocity. So where I come into the equation and where I add value to entrepreneurs in particular or business owners, owners and entrepreneurs is when they are stuck or stagnated in growth. They've got the business off the ground. They're through that first season of just absolutely killing themselves. And they want to get to the point where they can now start scaling, where I help them get from stuck to scaling. Jeff Dudan (54:48.784) Okay. Hanley (55:10.01) I have a mastermind called F3. You can go to ryanhanley .com slash F3 if you want to apply. is a community of individuals who are trying to solve the problems that get them to scale. And I take the 20 years of experience that I have from everything. It's funny, dude, I got criticized one time by, I got a piece of feedback from someone one time. If I look into your history, Jeff Dudan (55:36.485) Hahaha. Hanley (55:39.45) You know, on your YouTube channel, I see these crappy videos that you did 15 years ago. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. Because so many people sculpt their image to be the best version of themselves right now, right? Like, if I wanted to, I could put this founder with an exit, you know, international keynote speaker, I could put this face on, which I do have those things in my, I do have those feathers in my cap. However, I've also been fired. I've also been a boots on the ground producer who was absolutely freaking terrible at hand to hand combat selling, right? Like I've had those experiences too. And what I try to bring to the entrepreneurs that I work with is reality, right? This, this shit is hard and you're going to mess up and you're going to fail and you can go into my history and you can see it. You can see all the places that I messed up and, but out of that also came my biggest successes. So, By taking that approach, I think I would like to believe what it does is create an environment for people to be open and honest and transparent about the things that are holding them back. And regardless if you ever work with me or not, find groups, find creators like you, Jeff, who are telling the real stories that got them to where they are, not the fancy, you know, dressed up. Instagram story that's got the flash and the moving letters that makes it look like your Maserati just happened in the last you know that some action you took six months ago because you're so brilliant is how you got your Maserati or whatever you're driving right like I Wanted I want find places with real people who are able to say you know what I? I got this great idea for a business and we got it off the ground But I suck at selling and I have no idea how to close people right like I've just lucked into the victories. We've had so far Jeff Dudan (57:13.989) Right. Hanley (57:32.826) but I know this product is good. Okay, we can solve that problem. I have this incredible story to tell. have no idea how to tell it and I know we're not getting enough business. Okay, let's figure out how to tell it because in those environments are where we really grow. So I try to cultivate that in mind, but whether you ever reach out to me or not, I highly recommend find creators and find groups of people that you can surround yourself with where you can feel safe and comfortable and being 100 % honest about your failings because that's how we figure out how to solve those problems. Jeff Dudan (58:04.069) Do you look across the platforms for content today? Which ones do you believe are dead, dying, or difficult to work with? And then where are the opportunities of the future? Where is some easier ground to gain on some new platforms? Do you have any sense of that? Hanley (58:25.626) I think it's incredibly difficult to grow today on Instagram unless you're going to be polarizing. take that into account. TikTok, you have to be silly and play to the platform. Again, not a problem. It's just a reality. I think for most business owners, entrepreneurs, driven executives, people who are trying to grow in their career, I think LinkedIn is an incredible opportunity, but you have to play to what LinkedIn wants. The hard part about LinkedIn is that Jeff Dudan (58:32.515) Right, I've seen that. Hanley (58:55.426) Right now they are looking for very specific forms of content and they will absolutely down throttle and kill the forms that don't work. So what that looks like is if you post vertical video and I've tested the hell out of this and you can go back and look at my feed, it doesn't do well. However, long form text only posts that tell a story, that share an experience, a case study, maybe a business teardown that's in your industry work incredibly well. I think YouTube is still a huge opportunity. takes a ton of work to build a YouTube audience, but people who follow you and consistently engage with your content on YouTube are going to be with you for a long time. think podcasting is a great place to be, although I think broad form podcasts are very difficult. Nicheing down, solving a specific problem or serializing a podcast, and by serializing I mean just create a show that's eight episodes. that takes someone through a journey to solve a single problem and just end it right there, right? You can do another one. There's no reason you can't have 10 podcasts. They could all just be serialized versions of some problem that you solve associated with your business. And then you can just share that playlist with somebody, right? So there's all these different ways that we can engage, but I think it starts with understanding who you're trying to reach and what form of content you're good at. and then matching that to the platform. The worst thing you can do today is try to be amazing on every single platform. It absolutely will not work. Where to Post in 2024: LinkedIn, YouTube, Newsletters, and What’s Dead Jeff Dudan (01:00:27.813) You said vertical video doesn't work on LinkedIn. What do you mean by that? Hanley (01:00:31.428) So if you, see a lot of people repurposing YouTube shorts, reels, TikToks into LinkedIn does not work. just, LinkedIn will absolutely down throttle that content. You might see an exception here or there, but for the vast majority of people, that's not gonna work. They're, they, I will say standard landscape format video that is maybe specific to an issue related to something that is appropriate for LinkedIn, that can work, but. Jeff Dudan (01:00:39.27) Got it. Hanley (01:01:00.182) What is working best today? You can see it from the biggest creators on the platform is long form text based content that tells a story, case study example, tear down, et cetera. Jeff Dudan (01:01:11.611) Yeah, that's what we're doing. And then we've also launched a newsletter on there. And we've got a lot of text in the front of it, a lot of thought type leadership. And then we are embedding certain videos into that, to try to pull people out and back to it. And then YouTube, man, I'll tell you, it's my son who's an engineering student at Virginia Tech. He grew up on YouTube. He's a YouTube native. He's not watched anything more than YouTube. The analytics available on that, they will tell you what you need to do. You can't game it. You can't cheat it. You put up bad content. They're not going to like it. They're going to penalize you for it. So you just, you actually just have to do the work and create good stuff. And it's a very honest platform. I've found that to be where if you create good stuff that people want to watch, like, share, comment on, and it's valuable, then like sky's the limit. Hanley (01:01:58.414) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:02:06.319) But if you try to, like you said, Bing, bang, boom, here's some shiny stuff. to like, it's just it doesn't do well there. You can't you can't game that. Hanley (01:02:15.704) Yeah, we've reached a point in, we'll call it social content. The consumers are becoming more sophisticated. The tricks and hacks and algorithm gimmick stuff, you might get a bump for a minute. It doesn't work long -form or long -term. Jeff Dudan (01:02:25.147) Sure. Jeff Dudan (01:02:32.805) Yeah. Well, bots giveth and bots taketh away. Hanley (01:02:36.706) Yeah, it's you nailed it, man. It's what does your audience want and can you deliver it to them and all the flash? mean, there's tons of examples on YouTube of individuals who have almost no flash and pizzazz and moving letters and motion graphics, but they solve a very specific problem for a very specific audience and people come and watch their content. And it's dialing in on value and spending relatively no time. on algorithm hacks and stuff like that. Obviously we have to know, like we talked about with LinkedIn, the format in which that platform wants to consume content. But once you know what that is, just add value and just look at your analytics, watch what happens, talk to your audience, ask for feedback, ask for comments. These are things that, you know, ask for people to subscribe. Here's a novel idea. Ask for people to buy your product. If you go, we go back, you talk about the channel that I created for my insurance business. which I've actually done twice by the way. Back in 2012 I did this for the first time and then I did it again. So this works 100%. I've twice had YouTube channels about insurance doing near 500 ,000 views a year about insurance. So just to be clear for everybody what the scale can be. Jeff Dudan (01:03:50.907) Right. Hanley (01:03:56.792) If you go to those videos, you will see that at the end of every video, I say the same exact thing. If this is the type of relationship that you would like to have with your insurance professional, we would love to work with you. There's a link or a button somewhere around this video that you can use to contact us. You can call us at insert number. You can email us here, whichever way you choose. We look forward to working with you because We so often when I see, especially small businesses or new businesses, when they create content, they forget to tell people what they want them to do. Right? You just watch this seven minute video about workers compensation insurance. And I'm not going to tell you that at the end, what I really want is for you to work with me. Like ask for what you want. If you want feedback, ask for it. If you want comments and thoughts on a topic, ask for it. If you want someone to click the link in the description to purchase the product that you discussed, ask for that. Call to Action: Just Tell Them What to Do Jeff Dudan (01:04:40.635) Right. Hanley (01:04:53.439) And if you do, you will start to see transactions happening. Jeff Dudan (01:04:59.365) Yeah. Your introduction to this type of strategy was when you went to your boss and you said, hey, we need to build a blog or we need to build some content strategies. They're like, no, Ryan, we just need work. We just need sales. Go back to your, just give me sales. I don't want to hear about all that stuff. So you took that as an opportunity to go create your own personal channels and start investing in these types of strategies to get more sales back to you. How would you advise somebody who's sitting inside of a company right now and they're like, okay, I'm good, I'm making ends meet, I'm upper middle of my sales team, I'm in this company. How would you advise people things that they could do to get started, to get unstuck, and maybe it could do something like you could pull them out of that company and you could have a great season of life like you're having with all the businesses that you've created. Hanley (01:05:55.578) So if you want to create for your own personal brand, associated or inside of a larger company, have that conversation with leadership, with whoever your boss is or leadership in general. It can cause a lot of friction if you just go off and go rogue and start doing this yourself. And the way that you have this conversation is I see an opportunity in the market to... Jeff Dudan (01:06:14.289) sure. Hanley (01:06:23.61) attack this certain type of person or business. And I think I have a unique voice and expertise to do so, and I would like to start creating content online. What I propose is that I do that in conjunction with this business where I brand all the videos that I work for you. I'll put the logo in every single one. I'll make sure there's a link back to the company and every single description, but I want to do it on my own personal channels so that I can grow it and have the flexibility to test different things, et cetera. Make it about them, right? So when you approach leadership, make it all about how this is going to help promote the business, how this is going to expand the brand, you know, be willing to work with the marketing team. And it there may be some inflexibility, there may be some some guidelines that you have to work in. But especially in the early days. Play play by the rules. Then once you start to have success, now you can start to come back to them and go, hey, I really want to X or I'd like to do a live event or I'd like to create an Instagram channel specific to the work that I'm doing so I can add value to these type of people and build an audience and draw them out as clients. But start small. start all about the company because if you just go in, you know, we need to start creating content and my personal brands that out there and up, but they will bucket that it will create friction and it won't work. So play the slow game, get your foot in the door, you know, get that first. Yes, I'm being able to create content for yourself. Okay. If they are completely and utterly against that, you are unhappy in your job and you feel like you can make more going out on your own. That's a decision you have to make. but understand that you then are operating without a safety net. And this, I'm just gonna start my own thing is wonderful and I love that idea and I love the energy behind it, but we have to be smart about that decision. Jeff Dudan (01:08:25.787) Well, it's very difficult to make money for the sake of making money just creating content. It's gotten very difficult to monetize ads, sponsorships, okay, but like the best use of content is when you already have a product that you are trying to sell. So you really gotta have something that you're promoting because you're just not make a lot of money. on these channels just because you're getting a bunch of views. It just doesn't happen like that anymore, from what I understand. Maybe it does in certain things, people going wildly viral, but ultimately there's got to be some way to monetize this. doing it, if you're going to do it authentically, then it's got to be something what you do every day. who are your customers? What problems do you solve? What are you the best in the world at? That's what you need to focus on. So. if you're gonna leave your company, you better find another one that can provide these services if you can't provide them yourself. Yeah, awesome. Ryan, this has been so great. I know that we're a little bit over time right now, but man, this has been so valuable. We jumped right in. I did wanna talk about you as a young child collecting recycled cans and all that, but you know, we'll leave that to another time because this thing has just been chock full of value for all the listeners. I would think that we're gonna have a great view duration on this. Hanley (01:09:31.386) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:09:42.311) So super excited and thank thank you for being on how can people get in touch with you? Hanley (01:09:45.316) Thank you. Yeah, so you can go to my website, ryanhanley .com. I'm on all the social medias which you can go to. Most active probably on Instagram in terms of just kind of daily use, but LinkedIn, you can check me out on YouTube and I have podcasts as well, The Ryan Hanley Show. So, you know, I'm all over the place. But probably best place to start is ryanhanley .com. Jeff Dudan (01:10:08.333) Awesome, fantastic. Last question, Ryan. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? All right, perfect. Can't improve on that. All right, mediocrities would not agree, but that is fine. Awesome. Ryan, thanks for being on. I am Jeff Duden. This has been Ryan Hanley, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Hanley (01:10:15.096) Screw it, let's do it. Hanley (01:10:28.354) My pleasure.
Brief Summary In this heartwarming and humorous episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Stephen Kellogg—singer-songwriter, author, stand-up comedian, and devoted father. They explore the joys and challenges of creativity, parenting, marriage, midlife hustle, and the search for meaning in a noisy world. With stories from the stage, the road, and the dinner table, Stephen shares the truths behind success, service, and staying grounded through it all. Key Takeaways Creative careers evolve : Stephen has made a 24-year living as a performing artist, now branching into comedy and speaking while continuing to tour and release music. Stand -up is storytelling : Kellogg uses humor to unpack the real-life chaos of parenting, marriage, and midlife—and finds healing through honesty. Service creates impact : From playing for the military to performing at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Stephen highlights the joy of doing meaningful work. Authenticity beats per fection : In a world of AI music and social media filters, Stephen defends the raw, flawed beauty of human connection. Coaching and parenting align : Jeff and Stephen compare notes on youth coaching, family leadership, and the legacy of showing up. Success is defined by legacy, not wealth : Both men agree that fulfillment comes from impact, not income. Featured Quote “You don’t have to be exceptional. You just have to take the best of what’s inside you and do what you can with it.” — Stephen Kellogg TRANSCRIPT From Songwriter to Stand-Up: The Many Faces of Stephen Kellogg Jeff Dudan (00:04.748) Welcome back to the home front everybody. This is Jeff Duden and I am here today with Stephen Kellogg, singer, songwriter, stand -up comedian and author. I'm very excited about the time we're gonna get to spend. Welcome Stephen. Stephen Kellogg (00:18.314) How are you, my friend? Jeff Dudan (00:19.798) I am so good, man. Thank you so much for jumping on. Big fan of the music, excited about your stand up and everything you're going on. And I have to tell you, I'm preparing for this. I got a copy of your book, which is Objects in the Mirror. And sometimes when you get books, you wonder if they sound like the author. And my sense of this book is like you wrote this. is very authentic to you. The stories are very real and I don't usually do this, but you know, I skimmed it pretty good. I probably read a quarter to a half of it getting ready for this. I'm going to go back and read it after we do the show. Stephen Kellogg (01:00.15) Great, I view that as high praise. I'll take it. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:02.42) Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah. So why don't you tell us a little bit, if you don't mind, about early life and maybe when you realized you were first a creative. Stephen Kellogg (01:16.562) Well, know, certainly it was always in my head, you know, when I with the family would have barbecues and things like that. And my uncles, were these pretty intimidating characters, would always sing at these pig roasts. And it was very it was pretty archaic. You know, there'd be like someone would like have pieces of a broomstick for drumsticks. And it was like it was down home music. But I remember feeling like, wow, this is a This is a great feeling. Now, I didn't realize that was something you could do and make a life of until quite a bit later. But I have an aunt and an uncle who are portrait painters, and they've worked together and they're now in their 70s. And they've done incredible work, had a lot of achievements, but are also not household names. And through them, I started to see, as I got to be a teenager, there is like something between starving artists and household name. It does exist in artist's life. And thank goodness I found that, because I don't think a lot of us know that that exists. So here I am now, it's been 24 years since I've had proper employment and I'm grateful for that. Jeff Dudan (02:40.44) So you've been able to make a living doing what you wanna do. You got a beautiful family, four kids. Why? Like you have four kids, why? Do you ever ask yourself why four? Stephen Kellogg (02:47.616) Thank you. Stephen Kellogg (02:51.574) On this exact day, Jeff, I'm kind of asking myself that very question. It's the end of a summer. I think it's changed a lot from when we were kids. Everybody kind of wakes up like, well, what are we doing today? How is the world going to roll itself out for me? my wife and I are, we're out of about our last nerve by the end of We're ready for everybody to go back to school. Jeff Dudan (03:18.53) Now, how old's your youngest now? Okay. Stephen Kellogg (03:20.47) She is 11. She's 11. So I got 11, 13, 16, and 19. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (03:27.71) You got all mean agers. That's what my grandfather used to call me. Stephen Kellogg (03:31.395) It feels that I've never heard that. It's a great one, man. It's well, you know, my oldest daughter has been kind of helping us steer the younger ones away from the screens. And she because she says, you don't want to be a screen ager, which I also thought was a useful. I thought that was a good one, too. Jeff Dudan (03:42.221) Yeah. Life on the Road and Playing for the Military Jeff Dudan (03:47.365) I like that. Yeah. Steven, specifically to your music, when did you first start performing professionally? And then you've toured 21 countries and you've been out on the road a lot. You've done a lot for the military. Talk a little bit about that phase of your life and the travel, the touring, and then maybe how you balance that out with family. Stephen Kellogg (04:03.114) Mmm. Stephen Kellogg (04:16.094) Yeah. Well, as a kid, you see, I'm seeing rock bands and I'm starting to think like, okay, I could have been any number of things, but music seemed to be the thing that was standing up the most and announcing itself at that, in high school and then college and after college. was like, I played places and made more money than I was making staining decks. So I thought, all right, let's Let's go with this, you know? And that's really where music came from. And then the thing is, if you're going to do that, you you got to, you got to get out on the road. Or maybe you don't nowadays, you know, there are other ways the world has changed since I was coming up, but that just seemed like what we had to do. And I wanted to be, I knew I wasn't going to be the most talented guy in any of the areas, especially singing or guitar songwriting. felt. better at, but I still knew that there were people much better than I am. So I just thought I'll outwork everybody. And I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this like, I'm not sure if I would advise this of anyone, but it has sort of, it did make up for a lot, but I just, I was always the guy that would say, all right, sure. I'll hit the road. And we started to see some progress in a number of cities, you know, where more and more people would come out. And what's interesting is there were a lot of cities where we didn't see progress and I still haven't, you know? I've played Lawrence, Kansas 17 times and there'll still be a hundred people if I go there. There'll probably never be more, hopefully never be less, but I mean, that's kind of, and I can't exactly tell you why that is or what that has to do with. I just knew, all right, I've got to go out and see, you know? And then that eventually led us to Europe and it, And we started feeling like, we got to try to give back in some areas. playing for the military was something that we thought none of us would have made, you know, decent soldiers, I don't think. And we just decided, regardless of any political thing, let's just go play overseas where people need to know that they're being thought of and appreciated. And so we have done a lot of that over the years. And next thing you know, we're Jeff Dudan (06:37.965) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (06:43.926) Next year we're gonna hit our 3000, my 3000th show. So we'll do something special for that. But that's a lot of shows, you know? Jeff Dudan (06:52.472) Yeah, so how much are you touring now versus the stand -up comedy that you're, it seems like you're moving towards, I've caught a couple of sets online, pretty good stuff, I'm really, I'm interested in that in particular. How are you balancing those two pursuits? Discovering Comedy and Balancing the Hustle Stephen Kellogg (07:11.55) I mean, when I, so I did stand up for the first time last May because my friend owns a comedy club and he kept coming to the concerts and he's like, dude, you're talking as much as you're playing. You gotta come do this. And I said, no, these people like, but I did it last May and it was awesome. I had so much fun. I went to my wife and said, all the guys you could have married. I'm like, for my next trick here, my next get rich quick scheme is I'm going to do some standup, but it's been really fun. Jeff Dudan (07:21.993) Hahaha Stephen Kellogg (07:41.974) and, I don't tour the way that I used to, but I'm still, you know, I'll do a hundred shows in a year and that feels like 275 used to feel. It still feels like a lot of time away from home. and I'm always chasing ways of balancing it like everybody else I know. I mean, I don't know. I know very few people who seem to have some kind of work life balance. It, it tilts too much. Jeff Dudan (07:55.149) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (08:09.61) this way and then you get home and you're happy to be home, but you realize the money dries up quick, you gotta get out and do it again. it's, you know, it is great work and I'm grateful for it, but it is work that we all do as creatives as well, you know? Jeff Dudan (08:27.404) Yeah, a real through line in your work is storytelling. Your lyrics are kind of sweet, actually. They're thoughtful. They tell stories. Stand up is, mean, you're telling stories with funny stories or whatever it is. so songwriting and storytelling seems to be real strength for you and the writing as well. Where do you get your material for all of these different things? What's your inspiration? Stephen Kellogg (09:03.894) It's just, just, I feel like Clark Griswold, nine days out of 10, Jeff, and I just started writing down just the stuff that drives me crazy, the stuff that I, the ways that I embarrass myself, you know, the awful things that I do or say, you know. Jeff Dudan (09:18.295) you Stephen Kellogg (09:29.394) I don't know that I can stop saying things that are clunky, but what you can do is sort of look at your wife or your friend or your manager or whoever, I'm sorry, that was uncalled for, I didn't mean it. You can own it, you can take responsibility, you can apologize and mean it. And then you can put it into the material, you know, because we're all doing this and when you say it out loud, it takes away some of the... Jeff Dudan (09:52.621) Yeah, that's right. Real Talk on Parenting, Marriage, and Midlife Chaos Stephen Kellogg (09:58.326) shame and embarrassment. mean, you know, I call my 11 year old, can you swear on here or what? don't want to. Okay. So I mean, I call this is a lot of people think that you're such a good dad. You love family. It's like you love kids. People say I love my kids. I don't love all kids. You know, I love my kids is who I love. And, and I am an okay dad and I'm a pretty good husband, you know, but Jeff Dudan (10:05.624) Sure, sure. Stephen Kellogg (10:26.356) I called my daughter, I called her a little shit in January. That's not the worst thing you could say, but when it comes out of your mouth, you're like, no matter, it doesn't matter that she was being one, it just like, it comes out and you're like, that's not good. Like we gotta figure that out, you know? And somehow, then obviously you go upstairs and you say, look, hun, dad's frustrated, shouldn't have said that. I don't think that, I was really frustrated, you know? And you just. Jeff Dudan (10:35.502) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (10:54.95) show them how to be a human. And then you take the argument out to where she's not there and you get to go share it with a bunch of parents who if they haven't said it, certainly wanted to. And you get to all have a laugh about it and go, hey, at least we're trying. And that to me is like, serves two purposes. Three, it heals you. It lets the audience, there's camaraderie and community in it. And hopefully it takes some of the stigma off making mistakes and failing. mean, it's like, you know, we're living in an age here where everything looks like it's pretty perfect. Even the reels on TikTok that are supposed to look like, look what happened to me. They look like they were edited by a professional filmmaker. Like everything has this look to it. And I like to keep it real, you know? Jeff Dudan (11:41.782) Right. Jeff Dudan (11:46.722) Yeah, so much of that set up. The best stuff is when you can tell it's authentic. And unfortunately, you know, the pain in our personal conversations turns into a great bit when you tell it to strangers at a conference or from a stage or wherever you're at. And then, you know, somebody riding their bike into a railing, it hurt them, but man, that's a good reel. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (12:04.862) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (12:12.322) It's funny though, you know? And if you can laugh at it, it's like, it just, it allows you to move on and heal from all this. Otherwise you just amass stuff that you feel bad about. And I mean, when I was leaving for my first standup set, my youngest said to me, she's like, all right, as I'm walking out the door, don't tell any jokes about me. And I'm like, they're all about you. Jeff Dudan (12:37.144) They're all about you. Stephen Kellogg (12:39.894) So much is about you, about marriage, about family, about working really hard. I think a lot of us are surprised by how hard we, like the coasting. I always envisioned that adults were on some kind of coasting situation. Like I thought 40s, I knew you had to like work hard at some point early on. I didn't realize I would be working this hard. I'm only 47, but. I didn't realize I'd be working hard right now and there's no real like end to this except the end. that is that I think is the crux of the midlife crisis is like, whoa, do I do I just do this for the rest of my time? And is there any way not to just do this grind like all the time? Like it is. And that's when you start to go like, OK, maybe I shouldn't hang out with like that. friend who's not really a good friend. Like maybe I need to get rid of them in my life because they're just taking up to I only have this much time, you know? And that's what I like. Like most folks my age, that's kind of where what I'm sorting out a lot of it on stage, either through the music, which is you. I forget the word you use. I mean, it is thoughtful. Hopefully it's not too sentimental. You know, it is. Jeff Dudan (13:48.206) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (14:06.226) I am a mush, but I try to put enough weight and teeth into things. Jeff Dudan (14:10.989) Yeah. Better to Be at the Bottom of the Right Ladder Jeff Dudan (14:14.658) Yeah, well, the song lyrics, they're very compelling. You know, I watched your Ted. And then, you know, then I come across this Ted talk where you do a Ted talk about job satisfaction, which, know, and I'm like, man, what, like who is like, there's so, there's such a, you know, you're finding all of these outlets for your creativity. And, you know, by the way, it's not easy to get on a Ted talk. Like you gotta be good. And it was really, really good. And then you wrapped it up with a song, which was. Stephen Kellogg (14:25.077) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (14:30.006) Who is this guy? Jeff Dudan (14:42.924) really really good I mean it was one of the better TED talks and it was it was about job satisfaction I wrote down the the man yeah no no why you're working it's better to be I want I talk about it's better to be at the bottom of a ladder that you want to climb than at the top of one that you don't is that is that right did I get that right what it Stephen Kellogg (14:46.07) Thank you. Stephen Kellogg (15:10.282) Yeah, it's better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than the top of one that you don't. So, I mean, and I say this in the TED talk, I did get that from The Office, the TV show The Office. The English version of The Office had that. And I thought that's brilliant, you know. And I've seen that in my own life when I was working selling advertising. Every day was so much work. Jeff Dudan (15:15.403) What does that mean? Jeff Dudan (15:23.842) That's right. Stephen Kellogg (15:37.654) right after college, I felt like a caged animal. It was very hard to be good at it. And the minute I started doing music and communicating and kind of just getting to say, hey, here's what I think. At that moment, I was playing in a three, four -hour sets in a steakhouse, and I was getting paid maybe $150 to do that work, but I felt really good. Jeff Dudan (15:57.932) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (16:06.578) even though that was not a glamorous gig or what I was aspiring to, I just thought, man, I would rather work like a dog at this one thing. You know, it's better to be at the bottom of something going, well, I've got one life here and I'm going to try to spend it playing music and sharing my point of view than the middle or the top of something that you're not compelled to do. That said, sometimes, you you're good. OK, you're good. Let me know if anything's funky with the Internet or whatever. OK, OK, OK. So, you know, that said, sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, you know, I'm trying to teach that to my kids right now. I think they're growing up with a real ability to get A's. Jeff Dudan (16:40.994) Yeah, nah, just keep going. It'll do that once in a while. Jeff Dudan (16:53.912) Right. Stephen Kellogg (17:01.812) But not always the common sense and resourcefulness that I think the next generation is going to need, know, not to throw them under the bus. But I came home one night and everybody said, thank goodness you're home. We're starving. And I was like, what do you, there's food here. And the, what did you eat? Like, and they're like, well, we didn't know what to do. I'm like, You guys are, you're gonna starve if you don't have the ability to let go. I'm hungry. There's cabinets full of food. There's a kitchen. Like you've got to be able to make food and be resourceful. And so sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, me included, you know? You just do what you have to do. And that's why the know why you're working was such an important part of that. You know, if you know that you're working to take care of someone you love, you can find a lot of energy and resourcefulness. Jeff Dudan (17:27.081) Hahaha Stephen Kellogg (17:53.974) But whenever you have the chance to climb a ladder worth climbing, something that actually compels you somewhere you want to get, I think you got to do that. It doesn't matter if you don't have to do it when you're 20. You can change careers in the middle of your life. That's been proven so much right now every day. You just got to do it. You just start. things have a way of working out when you're passionate about them, in my experience. Jeff Dudan (18:22.958) Yeah, 100%. There's a lot of different ways to make money if money's all you want. And you can work really, really hard. There's lots of jobs where you can make tons and tons of sales jobs and all this kind of stuff. the question is, is money really the outcome? Is it going to give you a great life, or do you want to live a great life regardless of the money? I mean, gave up a lot. I, you know, I coached, I gave away tens of millions of dollar a year business in favor of franchising a business because I wanted to be home. And I ended up coaching like 30 seasons of my kids sports. And you know, if you're, if you're going to coach and then, know, so then I'm building this franchise company, which is basically groups of like five to 10 people. Stephen Kellogg (19:08.351) Wow. Jeff Dudan (19:16.514) So they're like little sports teams. So I'm coaching the owners how to coach their teams. I'm coaching these little sports teams. It's lighting me up on both ends of it. I probably left some money on the table because what I didn't do, like what you said, when you tour around, like if you really want to get movement, you got to go out into the world and get it done. So if you, you know, you're, not going to grow your music. If you're not out there in front of people where people are connecting with you city after city and whatever. And it's the same thing in business. Like if you don't go out and. Stephen Kellogg (19:19.401) Right. Stephen Kellogg (19:36.203) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (19:46.464) and meet the people you need to meet and be where you need to be, then you're just, the opportunities are given to the people that are there. So it's definitely a balance and everybody's gotta decide, what are the real priorities in your life? What do you really care about? At the end of the day, if you look back and you die with X dollars or two X dollars, you're still dead and your body of work speaks for itself and nobody's really gonna care. Coaching Kids and Building Legacy Through Service Stephen Kellogg (20:12.405) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:15.68) about how much stuff you had, they're gonna remember like, you know, the impact that you made to the people closest to you. Stephen Kellogg (20:23.082) I agree. I mean, what's the legacy? You know, that's a big theme in a lot of what I do is what's the legacy going to be? And I've told my kids a few times, I don't know. I was like, don't bank on money. I'm giving you guys songs. I'm giving you guys good information. You know, like you might get some money. This may work out yet, but I mean, it is working out. but I say that sort of tongue in cheek, it's like, I, yeah, you know, just like something, here's something you can use, you know? So let me ask you, Jeff, when you were coaching, you coach, you say you coached 30, like 30 seasons altogether? Jeff Dudan (20:55.53) experiences. Jeff Dudan (21:03.277) Yes. Jeff Dudan (21:07.734) Yeah, so a little bit of soccer with my daughter and then basketball for her. Lots and lots of baseball with my two boys, lots and lots of football with my two boys, a little bit of basketball. I coached them up basically. They went to a little private school, so parents were allowed to coach in middle school. yeah, so I coached them. usually, I coached them kind of up to or up through middle school, at least the boys. Stephen Kellogg (21:28.031) Okay. Jeff Dudan (21:35.266) was I didn't know soccer very well. My daughter, she outgrew me. She still outgrows me. But yeah. Stephen Kellogg (21:41.174) What were your so what so because I coached just a little during the pandemic when I was finally home and they needed coaches. got the call and I I I'm like looking up the positions of soccer 10 minutes before the first that it was and I found you know I got it I live in the suburbs and everybody thinks their kids going to like get a scholarship so it's there's obnoxious parents behind you yelling things is very stressful I found it to be one of the most. Jeff Dudan (21:50.498) Hahaha Stephen Kellogg (22:09.802) Stressful things, also incredibly rewarding. And I always wanted to turn around and be like, why don't you volunteer or why don't you shut up? Like, I definitely didn't have a lot of patience for the parents yelling things on the sidelines and stuff. But what I'm curious about is what was your, what were some of your, like, what was your philosophy as a coach? What did you do with the kids? Jeff Dudan (22:33.528) Well, I can't believe you asked me that. So while we're here on the podcast, I wrote a book when I was done coaching my last season, I wrote a book to put my philosophy in it and it yeah. And it's yeah, it's called Hey Coach. So, you know, I had so my thing was I would I would, you know, I basically learned over time to make it, you know, the goal is is by the end of the season. Stephen Kellogg (22:43.2) Come on, that's great. Jeff Dudan (23:03.47) You want to turn the team over to the kids. want to give them autonomy. You want to give them ownership of it. And so that they can play fast, loose, happy, and for each other. So we would break the season down into thirds and the first third. Well, even before that, I would invite every parent to participate. So if we're doing a little football team and there's 18 or 20 kids on it, we would have one parent doing the timeouts, the clocks. One parent would do the special teams. One parent would do this. we'd have a little meeting before and we'd invite the parents to talk to them because everything that you'd everything that. Well, that no, that was like in no, that was like in Jeff a league or that was like in in peewee peewee football or whatever. But. Yeah, yeah, so it's like, but like because what all the stuff you try and do to get the kids to to believe that they're in the right position doing the right thing for the team gets undone in the car on the way home. Stephen Kellogg (23:37.878) That is some private school level involvement you got right there. I'm impressed. Stephen Kellogg (23:47.37) That's awesome and everybody came out and okay, sorry, yeah, go on. Jeff Dudan (24:02.638) So if you say, hey parents, you stay over there, I've got your kids, don't talk to them, no coaching from the sidelines, well then as soon as they get in the car, they're just gonna get their ears chewed off with all the things that the coach is doing wrong and why is Suzy playing this or why don't, there's only one football, So whatever it was, baseball, basketball, whatever, I would drill the fundamentals for like the first third of the season and really focus on like, getting them to do one thing really, really well whenever we got them in the right spots. You we'd sometimes lose a game early or stuff like that, but they would be very, very capable. And then in the middle portion of the season, we'd make sure that we got them all in the right spots. And then we'd start to put in the concepts of, you know, really a little bit more offensive philosophy, defensive philosophy, things like that. And the last third of the season, we would try to turn it over to them. So if you came and I had a bunch of 12 year old football players and you saw us warming up, would, it would look like a little college warmup because they're all warming themselves up where, you know, the linebackers are taking little drops and the DBs are warming up and the quarterbacks and receivers are throwing, just like you'd see like before a college game. If you look at the other little team of 12 year olds, you know, they're standing in a line, they're doing pushups to a whistle and you know, they're, they're, they're in a very, very regimented discipline type warmup thing. Stephen Kellogg (25:08.245) Mm -hmm. Stephen Kellogg (25:24.278) Push -ups to a whistle. Good lord. This is what you do in Pee -wee in your town? Wow. That's intense. Jeff Dudan (25:28.646) yeah. But the point is, like you would, I think that people underestimate, kids are just as smart as we are, they're just less experienced. And if you give them permission to think and you give them the account a bit, they really wanna learn, right? And then they've gotta, you always gotta do special little things to make sure that you break any of the clicks and you. you manage that. it was really, it was very much a system that me and some of these other parents developed over this, over these, you know, five or six years. And I'm telling you, say whatever you want, we were always in the championship at the end of the year. Like we'd never, you know, Stephen Kellogg (26:12.146) I'm sure you were, man. You sound like you're coaching a college team there. That's a lot. Jeff Dudan (26:18.56) Yeah, but they, and the thing is, is like, is like, you know, and then, you know, in the off season, the parents, you know, if they could request to be on a team, they'd always request to like be on our team because, because it was such a, it was such a good experience for the kids. And you got to remember, it's not about, it wasn't about like, our goal was that we would all be the best we could be on the last day of the season, whenever that was. It wasn't, we're going to win these games or we're going to do that. And then I had like seven. Stephen Kellogg (26:44.351) Right. Jeff Dudan (26:46.766) I had three little like tablets of principles, right? I had player rules, parent expectations and coaching commitments. So if you wanna be a coach, you just don't coach your kid, you have to coach them all. So I had five or seven little phrases and it was just, know, so was like this little playbook of maybe 10 pages and that was the whole system that we had and it really worked and it was one of the most real. Stephen Kellogg (27:13.31) You were very prepared, man. And they were lucky to have, they are lucky to have you. And that's so cool that you, that you did it, that you made a thing of it. You know, I think that's, I think that's great, man. I think it's great. I think, I think, the stuff I was coaching was definitely, it's just small town. had, we had second grade co, it was co -ed second grade girls through fourth grade. Jeff Dudan (27:41.261) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (27:41.59) and boys as well. So we had fourth grade boys playing with second grade girls in the middle of the pandemic. And I was... Jeff Dudan (27:49.326) Well, that's a younger age group. That's a little bit more show up. Give them popsicles. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (27:53.172) I mean, dude, I just wanted to give them like air and like, and we were one in nine. mean, but how would we be anything? All I cared about, I'm like, all right, I'm Seabiscuit out there. Like believe in yourself, guys. I never said I was, they just couldn't get anybody and they're like, will you do it? And I'm like, I'll show up. I'll show up and try. But they were lucky to have you, man. That's very cool. Jeff Dudan (28:06.456) Ha ha ha ha. Jeff Dudan (28:14.882) Well, just. Well, know, when you're in the younger, you know, that was kind of the, you know, the the the getting ready for middle school, you know, 12 year old type kid type thing. And but, know, at the younger ages, it was, you know, popsicles and stories and all of that, whatever was age appropriate. Right. And but the most important thing was that the kids had fun. They they learned something valuable and they wanted to come back. Like at the end of the day, like if If you coach in such a way where half the kids are upset or they're ashamed or they don't like the way, you know, they don't want to come back or they didn't get anything out of it. Then like, what's the point? Like there's no, you know, nobody's winning a gold medal in fifth grade. I mean, it's, you know, you have such an opportunity to, to pour into these young people and to do something meaningful and, and, and, know, you know, give them a great experience. And, and, know, I still see these kids. I mean, I coached, you know, hundreds and hundreds of kids over that time. as I'm walking around town or I'm somewhere, I'll hear, hey, you know, it's the best thing. Well, hey coach, dude. And now they're six foot two and I have no idea who they are. Right. And that's just, and that's just the girls. Stephen Kellogg (29:24.256) That's cool. Yeah, there's some kid. That's awesome, man. That's that's good for you. What a what leg. That's part. That's a huge part of your legacy. That's great. I don't I I don't I will have no such legacy as that, but I enjoyed it and I showed up and I endured the what's he doing at midfield? I'm like, damned if I know, man, but you're welcome to come take this job from me if you want it. Otherwise, shut up. Jeff Dudan (29:35.735) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:39.266) Ha! Jeff Dudan (29:48.183) midfield. Stephen Kellogg (29:54.486) But if they had been around you, you would have been like, come on in, be part of the team. And I think that's a better way to do it. And that's why you coach 30 seasons and I coach three. So there we go. Jeff Dudan (30:05.996) Well, know, showing up is half the battle and bless you for doing it. Another thing from the TED Talk, and it kind of plays into children, you said understand the positive effects of your work. And you talked about going to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and playing for these kids and. Music with a Mission: St. Jude, Military, and Giving Back Stephen Kellogg (30:10.836) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (30:24.558) Just as backdrop of that with my previous business that we sold in 2019, we were one of 65 national strategic partners with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. We did environmental services like duck cleaning and mold remediation. So anytime, we had 240 locations, anytime that a child either survived a protocol at St. Jude and Memphis or. any of the pediatric oncology hospitals that use the St. Jude protocols and they would have a child that would need to go home because they'd survived their treatment and they had a mold problem or an indoor air quality problem. Our franchise owners would go out and do those jobs for either free or at a reduced cost. It was a real big part of like who we were and what we did. And I really, you said that when you played at St. Jude and the people were smiling back at you, it meant it changed something in you. Stephen Kellogg (31:15.412) Hmm. It did. Well, I think that when I mentioned the military stuff before, know, that this thing starts to awaken in you. For me, it was in my late 20s of like, I'm not the center of the universe, you know. And so you're like, well, what you know, there's often a tendency to want to wait until things are set to kind of give back or do. something unless you've truly just grown up with service as a part of your daily diet, which is great if you can. So this kind of dawned on us and the band that I was working with and the team, I was like, we may never be you two. And so what can we do now, like today? What can we? I think people want to do more more in the world, but don't always you don't always know how you like. How do I help other humans other than just money? If you have money, that's that's a great one. And that's awesome. But but other than that, what can you do? You know, like and sometimes it's hard to connect to that. And so I had had this conversation with my then manager and he said, well, you're to be in Memphis. Why don't I reach out to the hospital and see if they want to have some music and I didn't realize it but at the time I think we were like the first group to ever go, we did like a prom for the kids. It didn't really matter what age you were and we did the prom and they got dressed up and we played songs and you know and talked to them and then to their families were kind of around too. And then we went back a few more times and just Jeff Dudan (32:52.988) Stephen Kellogg (33:12.63) You just start realizing, I mean, the amount of people we impacted that day might've been 40, 50, but it's just, you go, wow, I have to do that again because I feel like I definitely hadn't played a gig that month that felt more important, you know, that felt like it made more of a difference or a memory. Like these people will remember this experience that I got to be part of. So. Jeff Dudan (33:32.248) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (33:40.416) then you start craving it. And as a result, that's when we started really upping it and going to a lot more children's hospitals. And I tried to make it more a part of our fundraising that we do at the end of the year. you know, I mean, what we raise is tiny, you know, financially, but the thing I can do is go into these and be with the families and be with the kids. And I try to do that every year. And we would do a little bit of that, a little bit of the military, and it really helps us. It helped me more than I think I helped anybody else out there, but it really just, I just thought like, okay, I'm doing something that makes me feel like I'm doing something of value with my life, you know? Jeff Dudan (34:25.09) Yeah, we would attend Partner Summit in Memphis and tour the hospital, spend three days there, tour the hospital. it's just, it's inspiring and it changes you and it sets your perspective back probably to where it needs to be. So we're running, we get all self -involved, we're running through our lives. I gotta do this, I gotta do, you can't, you're doing all this stuff and then that just stops you in your tracks and it's like, this is a whole city here in Memphis that's been built to save these people's lives. When they started St. Jude, 80 % of the people didn't survive leukemia and now I think they have over 90%. Stephen Kellogg (34:45.247) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (35:12.427) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:12.632) survival rate and that's just they've flipped the scale on you know, childhood leukemia and so many other important things and Stephen Kellogg (35:22.174) And the thing they do where they share all their research, you know, which hospitals weren't doing because they wanted to be the one that found things and they just made it. Here's everything we know. Here's everything we got. this is a and and you're not going to have to pay. You're not going to have to worry about your bills while you're here. This is going to be funded. Obviously, not all hospitals can do that, but it's. Jeff Dudan (35:26.412) Yeah. yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:43.084) Right. Stephen Kellogg (35:50.004) when you're dealing with that kind of catastrophe, what a huge relief to not have that part of the thing breaking your heart as well. And those things I found to be extremely inspiring too of like, can have a huge organization and you can create win -wins. for people like we're gonna cure cancer and we're gonna help these parents and this business is gonna go. I think I'd like to see more giant businesses thinking that way of how can we do as much possible good for the world while we're out here doing our thing. Jeff Dudan (36:33.826) Yeah, it's kind of interesting. You see these situations where some situation of need goes viral and then there's a million dollars raised through apps or whatever it is like that. But on the other hand, I also feel that we're really a lot less connected. I think we're inside of these phones and we're inside of these apps and we're living in a fast world with our attention. There's never been more competition for our attention and getting people to physically do things anymore. seems, I don't know if it's easier or harder right now. It's a double edged sword. Stephen Kellogg (37:16.608) Feels hard, feels, I have nothing to compare it to, but it certainly seems that the sense of disconnection that people are having in the world is, and we're all kind of talking about it, like, why all this anxiety and this depression up and all this stuff like that? And it's like, obviously it's this, it's that we're not with people in the same way anymore. We're in the phone, like you said. Jeff Dudan (37:33.91) Right. Stephen Kellogg (37:45.3) four hours a day, that doesn't even make my eye, I don't even think about that when it says your screen average was four and a half hours last week. It's just a week, mean, four and a half hours just spent just doing whatever. I mean, how could you possibly feel connected to people with that? It's absurd. Jeff Dudan (38:01.826) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:06.35) Yeah, it's I tell you, I feel bad when I saw these memes going around, of course, online. And I was desk scrolling that said 18 minutes a day is 100 hours a year. And you could learn to play an instrument in 100 hours. You could write a book in 100 hours. could, you know, all here's all the things that you could do in 100 hours. And it's only 18 minutes a day. And then it's like, what did you waste 18 minutes a day? Do you know, did you waste? man, I waste. I waste, you know, half. I probably, you know, Stephen Kellogg (38:32.459) Wow. Jeff Dudan (38:36.3) I don't know, I don't waste half my day, you know, getting distracted. Stephen Kellogg (38:38.9) Yeah, that's a powerful metric. So, I mean, you know, I'm trying to teach the kids, I'm trying to model it, but it's it's it's not really happening. I mean, I'm still. And I think about that, too, because one of the talks that I get so in between the stand up and the rock and roll shows and stuff, I do do a bit of speaking. And I kind of one of the talks that I tend to give if I'm talking to a company is like. What does it mean to be successful? What is it really? How do we get a definition of success that really holds up, that moves beyond the obvious metrics of, you know, of the of money or accolades? You know, what else, you know? And You know, I think so much of it is I find myself living a life I would not trade places with anyone living or dead. And yet. I I struggle to feel successful. Why is that? That's the question I go back to. And you kind of look at it and go, all right, what what could success be if it's not that, you know, and trying to get a definition that that you can. use as your true north to keep you there when you've spent too much time death scrolling and filled your head with toxic crap, you know? Jeff Dudan (40:06.134) I think it shows you all the things that you're probably missing. used to be people would go to work, kids would go to school, you'd come home, there'd be chores to do, everybody eats together, extended family gets together on Sunday, has a meal. And people get together on Sunday, they have a meal and life was within a set of boundaries. You could watch the television and listen to the radio, but other than that, if you had an idea, you couldn't put it in some little instrument and realize that a million other people have already had that idea. You could pursue that idea or I wanna do this. There was nobody to tell you that you shouldn't do it. Stephen Kellogg (40:49.386) Right? Jeff Dudan (40:53.834) in terms of that it's already been done. I mean, it's a blessing and it's a curse. But I think to your point, mental health, the depression, anxiety, mean, ADD, OCD, all of these things are so much more prevalent. I think a lot of it has to do with our diet, actually, as well. Well, hey, man. Stephen Kellogg (41:11.818) Hmm. You look healthy as hell, man. While I'm looking at you, like I'm like, whoa, you're this guy can coach and he's healthy looking. Jeff Dudan (41:19.07) No, it's we got a filter and we put it over the camera. it's good. It's it's a it's a cut. We reflected off a carnival mirror. So it just kind of kind of does that. You I'm I'm five to four eighty. But well, awesome. So do any of your kids have musical talent? Are they well now? Wait, let me rephrase that. Stephen Kellogg (41:23.599) It looks good, man. I need some of that. I'm looking. Stephen Kellogg (41:33.418) You look good, I'm sure, I'm sure. Stephen Kellogg (41:44.906) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:47.31) You know if they're talented or not. any of your kids pursue music? Stephen Kellogg (41:51.95) they do a little bit, you know, I, I'm not, I don't push it on them. I, but they grew up around it, especially the, the, really all four of them do. And they've all been on stage with me. You know, I told them at a young age, like people pay for the tickets. So you can't just come out there cause you're cute. But if you want to sing, dance, play an instrument, if you can add to the show in any way, you're always welcome. I love to perform with you. Jeff Dudan (42:03.447) Okay. Jeff Dudan (42:21.254) that is so cool. Stephen Kellogg (42:22.202) And so two summers ago, we were out opening for Counting Crows for the summer and the oldest two joined me on the road and were singing part of the set with me. And then Counting Crows loved their singing so much, they invited them to sing with them too. And then we all put out a last summer together of all of us singing, which was, that's a dream come true for me. I'm singing with a band I grew up idolizing and then my... my two girls and we get to share that. And we'll do some more of that. Recently, my oldest has been playing a bit of piano in the band for a few songs too. they do it. I think it's there. I hear it. There does seem to be some reluctance on their part to. pursue it. I don't know if it's because they don't want to or if it's because they think that they need to be perfect at it before they've even started. And like every parent, I sort of go in there and try to figure that out with them. But I tread a little bit lightly because I don't want to I don't want them to I don't want to over pressure them. And I don't want to also ignore the fact that they're quite good at at singing and playing. And I mean, they're better than the average bear. And I'm like, you guys could kind of, you know. Jeff Dudan (43:35.138) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (43:41.846) It's like your kids probably could coach. They watched you coach for all those years. They're gonna learn something about how that goes. Jeff Dudan (43:47.789) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was time with them that you couldn't manufacture being in situations, being under stress with them, strategizing with them, them being hurt and driving them home in the car, stopping by the emergency, things happen. So like all of that time was just, it was just going through battle with them. And I can't think of another way. Stephen Kellogg (44:16.362) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:17.102) You know, we had Sean Merryman on this week. He was a linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and just a beast of a guy. he, you know, talking about players and he says, you know, yeah, even if we knew how bad this was going to be for our bodies and how many surgeries I've had and the risk of it all, goes, 95 % of us would do it again anyway. And it just because what you learn from performing. Stephen Kellogg (44:40.32) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:45.578) in any capacity, whether it's on stage with you. mean, there's stress in that, right? mean, get traveling there. What's it going to be like just getting into the hotel, you know, getting the band set up, going out, doing like the whole process is like it's on the job training for life. You can't, yeah, you can't, you can't. Stephen Kellogg (44:50.644) Yeah, sure. Stephen Kellogg (45:04.042) Yeah, it is. And it's this adrenaline thing, and you go through it, and it's like, people are having so much fun. It's really fun to have done it. And it's not unfun, but it is. But when you're doing it, it's focus. I'm sure it's the same for athletes. You're just trying to hit your marks, and you're trying to... Jeff Dudan (45:24.396) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (45:29.92) do the thing that you know you're capable of doing at the best possible, highest possible level. Same when I'm giving a talk or doing a standup set. You're just trying to land it. The fun part is kind of like when it's over and you're like, whew, I did it. That's like where the fun of it is. I think if nothing else, my hope for the girls is having done this will be that they know they can get up. What I say is, I say it's like having butterflies. There's benevolent butterflies that come into land on all over you and wake you up. You got this gift you got to go give and you're a little like, what are these things doing on me? Okay, I'm awake. You feel a little, I feel this nerves, but you're going to just, they're just making sure you're awake and alert and at your top game. Then you go out and you do the thing and you go, all right, we're good. And then you have the satisfaction and confidence of having done that, you know, and that's the, that's the reward. Jeff Dudan (46:25.678) Yeah, man, when I'm giving a talk and I know it's gone well, and now I'm down maybe to the last five or 10 minutes. It's like, that's the best. Is it that way? Is it that way when you're, when you're performing? Because you're like, this went well, they loved it. I've got my, you know, I've got my last two songs to go and I'm just going to cruise on through. is for me now. Right. Cause you, cause you've delivered, you've delivered on what they hired you for. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (46:32.788) Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Stephen Kellogg (46:40.788) Ugh. Stephen Kellogg (46:46.922) Yeah, that's the thrill. Yeah, totally. That's the absolute, the encore. You walk out, the people are on their feet and you're like, I'm relaxed for the first time all evening right now. And once in a blue moon, you just get there quicker. You get there right at the top. You just know, you're like, I got this thing's in my hands. I've had a few over the years where you just. Jeff Dudan (46:59.789) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (47:16.158) You know, I've had a few in the different mediums, but you just know you got it. And that's an incredible feeling. You do feel like you're you're soaring. But that's but but that's not every day. You know, that's unique when that happens. It's it's, know, that that last five minutes you talked about is very common. Thank God still doesn't mean that you're not a little bit amped up right before you're going to go do the thing again. You know, you know. Jeff Dudan (47:39.714) Yeah, no. Well, and that's the pleasure and the joy that you get from making the choice that you made to do what you do. you know, and it's meaningful. On the standup, do you have different kinds of nerves before you go out for standup than you do for performing musically? Stephen Kellogg (48:03.638) Yeah, I mean, I was so nervous before that first stand up set. I just, it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was, I just thought, why do I do that? Why am I doing this to myself? And I was, I was doing a set at a cigar bar comedy club. was like not some high stakes situation, but I was, it felt unreal. Then I went out, I did it. It went well. I just did 15 minutes that first time to strangers. Nobody I knew. Jeff Dudan (48:07.053) you Jeff Dudan (48:20.277) huh. Stephen Kellogg (48:33.046) went well. And I was like, okay, I think the nerves, there's two kinds of nerves, you get nerves that are sort of just amped up nerves. And those are good. Those wake you up, like I talking about, you do get nerves if you're not prepared, you know, that because and those, those are, that's information, that's like, you're anxious for a reason, you're not prepared enough, you know. And the trick with stand up is I don't have 20 plus years of Jeff Dudan (48:57.879) Right. Stephen Kellogg (49:02.682) I mean, music, if I had to, could just walk out into any situation. I can figure it out. You know, I mean, so you get those nerves and you're like, all right, I'm going to there's so much sense memory. Comedy. It's new to me. I mean, you're into this thing, so it's not like it's not like I live and breathe these beats on these bits and stuff. So I have to really. kind of propel myself into it and sometimes the nerves I have are just because I'm like damn I know what great looks like and I don't have the facility yet and that's scary. I haven't bombed I have had jokes bomb. And if it's just and having a joke bomb maybe this is just 47 at work, but it's kind of awesome. You're kind of like, this isn't going to kill me. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:39.852) Yeah. Have you bombed yet? Have you bombed yet? Jeff Dudan (49:47.531) Okay. Jeff Dudan (49:56.91) That's what I say, it's not fatal. Stephen Kellogg (49:58.122) You know? Yeah, it's not. mean, literally, it's really, really not. Because I've tangled it up in my music career a bit now, there is a little bit of fear that I'm playing fast and loose with our livelihood. But I have to say, I've also, you know, it hasn't, I started with, it's not like I started from nothing because of so many years of storytelling in between. You know, going for an hour, that's a little, that has the potential to be a bit scary. And I'm not gonna, I could easily, I could do an hour. It's not all organized to like where I wouldn't, I would need some notes at this point. by the time we shoot this thing, you know, I've gotta have it much more in the blood. But. Jeff Dudan (50:32.46) How much do you have right now? mean... Jeff Dudan (50:51.756) Where are you playing? Okay, so we're doing, we've got two comedy specials coming up. Fairfield, Connecticut on October 23rd. Where is that? Stephen Kellogg (50:59.764) That is, so that's Southern Connecticut about an hour outside the city. And it's at a beautiful old theater that I used to go to growing up, like to see movies and middle school and stuff. I'm, it feels like that one's sort of a homecoming reason I chose that one. I don't live there anymore, but I, but I, but I chose that one. and then we do two nights later, the park West in Chicago, which is a cool kind of. Jeff Dudan (51:14.411) Okay. Stephen Kellogg (51:26.838) It's got red booths and it's got a kind of Vegas -y feel. I could have and probably should have chose small comedy clubs to work in as a new comic, but this is like the crazy part of me that just said, well, I think I might like to do it in theaters. So now we're in these bigger things. I mean, I'm not saying I'm making all the right decisions, Jeff. I'm just making decisions, you know? Jeff Dudan (51:30.253) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (51:48.11) That's... Yeah, like, so what are you gonna shoot for? Are you gonna shoot for like 50 minutes? Stephen Kellogg (51:58.442) Yeah, I'll do an hour. You know, a lot of times where I have been doing most of my stand -up, I walk out and I kind of set people up at the beginning of the night and say, here's the game plan. I think a game plan goes a long way. Here's a game plan. I'm going to sing you a few songs. Then I'm going to do a stand -up set. Then I'll play a few more songs. So people kind of know what's coming and it kills some of the restless vibes. Now for these nights, because we have a film crew and we're taping it and there's, you know, that's... Jeff Dudan (52:00.256) Okay. Jeff Dudan (52:09.974) Yeah. Right. Jeff Dudan (52:18.858) Okay. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (52:25.258) we're pretty invested in that capturing that piece, we'll probably have the director go out and say, all right, here's what's happened instead of me. Here's what's happening. Kellogg's going to come out here, do an hour of comedy. And then I've told everybody that's bought a ticket. Then I will stand on stage for however long until they kick us out and play music and we'll raise a glass of champagne and celebrate that. But I have about an hour of material that I'm focused on. I've done all of it, but I've done it in usually in like a half hour chunk or a 40 minute chunk, you know, and so my hope is in telling people, hey, we're shooting an hour. They'll just relax into it and enjoy the experience of, you know, the different topics we're going to cover. And it's it's an outline. It's like a play, you know, in that sense. Jeff Dudan (53:00.94) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (53:16.238) Yeah, so I'll do like keynotes. I do different trainings. I mean, I've done a hundred minute keynote for a room of 400 people that I didn't know who they were. You know, they didn't know who I was. Yeah, and I got, know, and it's stuff that I've been doing for years. And so it's all kind of built on its stuff and it's businessy stuff. But I work in a good half a dozen jokes in there. And like, I think it's just for me, but it does break it up a little bit and they're not bad, but. Stephen Kellogg (53:27.338) That's a pretty good length for a keynote. That's a long one. That's, yeah. Stephen Kellogg (53:39.413) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (53:45.07) I don't know about you, like, so, you know, I aspire to do stand because I'm in front of people a lot, but I never get to just do a set. And, but I have a, I have like 297 bits in my phone of just observational things that I need to develop. And I think I could get an, I know I could get an hour, but here's the thing. A lot of the stuff that I got doesn't, doesn't go well with the CEO role. You know what I mean? It's like. Stephen Kellogg (54:11.67) Sure, sure. Jeff Dudan (54:12.182) It's like, don't know, like, I don't think I can really do it. You know, I mean, I don't think I could do some of it for sure. and I don't know that I'm so, so I don't know when it's going to happen for me, but Stephen Kellogg (54:23.93) You should, man, you should just go down to if you got a friend, you should just go to find somebody to give you 10 minutes and think about 10 of the three or four of the things you'd like to talk about. Because that was the thing that made me go, what's so fun and cathartic about this was also like you, have your CEOs you're talking to. I have this role that people where I'm kind of this like Jeff Dudan (54:27.448) Do an open mic. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (54:53.536) Harry Chapin, Dan Fogelberg. They know me as this nice songwriter guy. Some of the jokes I want to tell are a little, they're not dirty jokes, but they're they're not, you know, it's making fun of my kids and my marriage and my wife. And some of that stuff doesn't play as well when you're singing a sweet song. So getting to just go be in an environment where you don't have that expectation on you is incredibly fun. Jeff Dudan (54:59.5) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (55:08.685) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (55:13.516) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (55:23.234) and, and for me, those bits you said, you know exactly how many, yeah, you put them on note cards. You look at the ones that you think would be the funnest to talk about. And you talk about them. And sometimes what I realize is I'll try a bit and I realize, okay, I'm not articulating what I think is funny about this as well, you know, cause people aren't just, and that's when a joke actually pops. You're like, either, either this isn't as funny as I think, or I just haven't cracked it yet, you know? Jeff Dudan (55:42.627) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (55:51.97) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (55:52.822) And there's a lot of humor in that. Nine times out of 10 what happens though is if you don't quite have it yet, you get a laugh. You can just tell it's not as big as the laugh of the thing that you really conveyed really clearly. So I try to tape all the shows too and you listen back and it's painful but it's so productive and useful. Jeff Dudan (56:14.498) Yeah, yeah, that's, you gotta invest that time. It's... Jeff Dudan (56:21.834) I, the feedback from standup is, is pure and immediate. Like there's no, there's no lack of clarity around like whether you got it or not. And especially, you know, so if they, like, if I'm doing a keynote and it's in the franchising industry and I'll go to a room and there's a couple hundred people in there, I have some positional power. have some reputation. Like you really, it's not an independent audience. Like they're there. Stephen Kellogg (56:30.964) Yeah, totally. Jeff Dudan (56:51.062) because they want to hear what you've got to say about how you did what you did and how they can use that in doing what they do. So it's very much a, it's almost like a lecture, you know? And then what I try to do is try to make it fun with some clean, you know, some good clean humor along the way that they don't see coming. then it kind of breaks it up and it makes sure that everybody's, you know, reset and paying attention. And then you just, you go on with your next thing and. Stephen Kellogg (57:07.52) Totally. Stephen Kellogg (57:19.285) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (57:19.63) And I've developed this thing, I could almost do it in my sleep because I've probably done it 200 times, whether it be in a training for our own franchisees or whatever. But, you know, I really want to go and walk into somewhere and, you know, where you're just, they're just going to judge you based on the quality of your content and your delivery right there. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (57:39.712) what's in front of them. I envy what you're describing that you have with your business rap. And I appreciated before when you said, you're doing this and you're doing that. And that's been a great joy for me as an artist, but it's also been a little bit of a curse because I am, nothing's ever fully in there. I'm talking to CEOs and then I'm talking to a school and it's creative. Jeff Dudan (58:02.552) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (58:08.67) It's just, you're always, there's always something a little, and then you're writing a book and then you're doing a little standup and then it's a rock show with the band and it's a rock show solo. And so there is a sense inside me that I never quite get anything down entirely because I'm always jumping around. And a little part of me loves that, but I also crave that just having something that you just know. what's gonna happen with it. It's been, the last five years have been exciting and also just like I have craved that, you know, a little more of just knowing what I'm gonna be walking into and who the audience is gonna be, what it's gonna be, you know. Jeff Dudan (58:52.334) So Stephen, there something that you know that you will do in the future that you haven't done yet? Stephen Kellogg (59:04.192) That's a great question. I always have so many things on my plate, you know, that I wanted to be getting into. I've got three quarters of the way through a novel right now. And I think I never wanted to do that. But I think a fiction book might be might be the, you know, the next crazy thing to do that I haven't totally finished yet. Jeff Dudan (59:20.086) Okay, your fiction book. Stephen Kellogg (59:34.918) And right now, honestly, this special, ain't, I haven't done it yet, you know, but I believe that is gonna happen. I mean, it's on sale and we're going, but you haven't done it till you've done it. And that feels like a huge thing to have bit off. Jeff Dudan (59:49.378) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (59:54.156) Now, is that going to be recorded and played somewhere? Stephen Kellogg (59:57.332) Yeah, we're talking to a few partners about it, most of whom are eager to see what we get first before they, you know, and then we'll see what the distribution channels will be and how big a fish we can catch with all that. You know, if nothing else, we're in a world where you go, all right, YouTube, here we go, and it's out. So we know that we know it's not going to go unseen unless I really tank, which isn't going to happen. So. Jeff Dudan (01:00:15.82) Yeah, right. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (01:00:26.612) And if it does, we'll just take this part of this interview and then juxtapose it with me tanking and that will be funny. know, so yeah. Thanks exactly. Cut. Yeah, this is. Jeff Dudan (01:00:32.786) We'll cut, Jen, cut those in. We'll just cut Stephen Kellogg's worst jokes. Yes. Hey, I do have a question. I'm really interested in your answer to this. The future of music performance artists as it relates to things like AI and some of these technologies where Stephen Kellogg (01:00:40.404) what could go wrong and then it's bang, bang, boom, boom, monkeys on the screen, you know. AI, Authenticity, and the Future of Music Jeff Dudan (01:01:01.27) It's so easy now to replicate things. Voice enhancers, you can sing into your computer now and it can clean you up and you sound good. Are you seeing, are you feeling anything with all of this technology to making it easier or harder for you to do what you do? Stephen Kellogg (01:01:21.05) That's a great question and something I'm fascinated by right now. I think to answer, moving backwards, the part of your question, does it make it easier or harder? I think it very much depends on the type of artist you are. I think for a lot of younger artists right now who are more comfortable, who just grew up recording their own music, mean, Garage Band was like, the beginning for them and then it kind of turned into like, you know, getting comfortable with all this software and stuff. I think probably for them, it will be less of a journey. For me, I don't ever totally see myself embracing a lot of aspects of that, you know, and that a friend of mine about two months ago played me a song and it was his lyrics and he just plugged in you know, Americana, voice like Brandy Carlile, Petal Steel, and he put his lyrics in and it spit out a song that was so terrific, that was played so well, and it was being sung. And so when I played it for one of my friends, other friends, he said, who's the singer? And I said, the singer is no one. This isn't somebody that exists. This is the machine. And we both sat there for a minute, like trying to ponder the implications, not just in a, the kids are changing everything, but like, what does that mean if you can find something so pleasing out of the computer? And then I was in the studio last week making music and I did have the, I remembered that, part of the thrill of this is you make the music because this experience. Jeff Dudan (01:02:55.298) Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (01:03:16.817) Is your experience you do it. I had to slog it out. And that guitar is not perfect, but it is like I had to go through something to get that on there. And then the singing I had to go through and it's not perfect. And then leaning into that, leaning into the humanity of the music. Will there's will there still be a market for people that can that want to feel something more authentic? I love authenticity wherever I find it. You know, and the perfectness of that other song, probably I won't like as much as something that I can hear the. But eventually, will will that desire die off? It might like it might be enough. People grow up never hearing an out of tune note song. Is it just going to be like, why would I listen to it out of like, why would I ever want that? You know, and I'm told Spotify is like a lot of their jazz playlists and stuff now is just like Jeff Dudan (01:04:08.941) Right. Stephen Kellogg (01:04:17.534) AI, you know, it's not. Jeff Dudan (01:04:18.862) Why would why would they pay for it they can just create it for free? You know and that's like that's kind of what it comes down to right? It's like is the the consumer is gonna determine what you can get away with and You know, hey, maybe Millie Vanilli was just ahead of their time Stephen Kellogg (01:04:22.003) Right, so. Stephen Kellogg (01:04:37.384) It's true. mean, you know, I mean, the things that people got in trouble for were a lot less than what people are doing. I mean, you go to like a huge, I'll take my kids to a huge festival and the amount of times that there's some band or kid or somebody out on stage with just a mic and they hit the tracks and I'm like, this is karaoke. They're just karaoke into their tracks and they're charismatic and they've got good moves, but it's not. Jeff Dudan (01:04:43.15) That's right. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (01:05:06.354) It looks so incredibly easy to do and yet I look around and I'm like, well, everybody's okay with this. Everybody's having fun. Nobody has a problem with this. And this is selling and it's selling a lot more than I'm selling right now with my guitar. So I'm like, I can't deny that the marketplace is, it's driving it. It's cause for concern. You know, it's one of the reasons I'm exploring. author and speaker and I mean it's led me to a lot of other things. I'm not curling up in the fetal position going, what was me? They took music away from me. I'm a little sad about it. miss, my kids may never know what it's like to form a band and slog it out to get to, you know. But if there's not a demand for it, Jeff Dudan (01:05:54.501) Yeah, play that, play that. Yeah, play that like 10 ,000 hours to get, know, the Beatles to play together for all of these stories about bands. Hey, I watched the Nickelback documentary last night. I don't know where you stand on that. I think, you know, but I like Nickelback. I'll say it. I'm saying it right now. I don't care. Haters jump into the comments. I'm a Nickelback fan. Touring with Counting Crows and Jamming with Nickelback Stephen Kellogg (01:06:14.996) Well, you should. Stephen Kellogg (01:06:23.798) I am 100 % with you and I can't let you say that and not share this. So in 2018, my manager called and said, we got a call from Nickelback's management and they want you to come do this event. And I said, well, what is it? And she's like, well, I didn't know, I didn't call him. I'm like, who the fuck are we? Like call him back, what is this? So she called and I had written a song called Such Away early in my career that they really liked. Jeff Dudan (01:06:28.439) you Jeff Dudan (01:06:44.44) Hahaha Stephen Kellogg (01:06:51.186) and they had this event and they had a cancellation and they wanted me to fly up to Vancouver and play it with them. And I was like, great. So I went up, they played acoustic and they couldn't have been nicer people, which I haven't seen the documentary yet, but I am told it displays they're incredibly generous. They're kind, they're friendly. There's nothing wrong there. I mean, they're everybody you'd want to hang out with. Jeff Dudan (01:07:03.725) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:07:12.152) Great people. Yeah. No. Stephen Kellogg (01:07:17.652) And they're giving music to a lot of people that love it. it's like, you know, so, and to the point where they said, hey, Steven, we don't want you to feel like you're opening for us. So we're going to play first. We'll do our three songs and we'll introduce you and bring you out. I mean, so I went on and I'm like, I like to thank Nickelback for opening for me tonight. Like, I'm like, I'm like, this is unbelievable. You know, like I can't. So they really, and then when I, during COVID, when I was doing these virtual shows, you know, they, Jeff Dudan (01:07:35.861) Right. Stephen Kellogg (01:07:47.594) Trina and Ryan Peek came on my thing and they, I mean, they just couldn't be more generous. And so I, at that point was like, we gotta stop with the Nickelback jokes. is sort of unfair. It's just like we picked the nicest people in the world to pick on, you know? And anyway, yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:07:58.816) Jeff Dudan (01:08:05.614) It's completely unfair. don't know. I really don't know how it happened, but it's just people ganging on and they didn't deserve it. Now they did fine. 50 million albums. Stephen Kellogg (01:08:14.388) Yeah. Yeah. Stephen Kellogg (01:08:19.902) Listen, where we held that event was on a nice little island that I think they owned. I mean, they're laughing all the way to the bank, but nobody really deserves that at the end of the day. I'm glad there's a doc out there that kind of addresses it. I will definitely watch it and they're all great guys. Jeff Dudan (01:08:24.019) Yeah. Right. Jeff Dudan (01:08:36.738) Yeah, yeah, check that out. Well, very cool. Well, hey, this has been great. I really enjoyed this. It was as good or better than I expected. I'm just, it's such a pleasure to, you're such a, man, such a good, authentic father, artist, entertainer. So I'm just, it's an honor to get to spend this time with you. I've really enjoyed it. Stephen Kellogg (01:08:45.984) Me too. Good. Stephen Kellogg (01:09:02.186) Thank you, Jeff. Me too. Thank you for having me on the show. I definitely did not dress up. I'm going to do better next time we talk. I promise. I'm going to get better lighting and that filter. But no, I enjoyed your thoughts, and I really appreciate you having me on the show. Jeff Dudan (01:09:09.151) Jeff Dudan (01:09:18.518) Awesome. Last question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Stephen Kellogg (01:09:30.826) God. Stephen Kellogg (01:09:38.056) Okay, one sentence, man. That's big spontaneous question to have. Was this in the notes that I should have thought about? Jeff Dudan (01:09:46.558) No, no, just it's just our question. You know, something maybe you say to your kids when, you know, you know, any anything, anything you got or not or or nothing. Stephen Kellogg (01:09:55.634) No, mean, no, honestly, I mean, I this this is going to keep me up at night thinking about it. I'm going to need to follow it up. But I think I would say to somebody. Something to the effect of. You are. Enough man or woman, you know, you are you are. I know that we're. I know that life is hard. Even when it's good, it's challenging. But let's never forget that we're enough just being who we are. And you can build every day on that. I'm going to think more about this. But so much of what I want people to take away is like, you don't have to be exceptional. You just have to take the best of what's inside you and Final Wisdom: “You Are Enough” Jeff Dudan (01:10:41.632) I think it's perfect. Stephen Kellogg (01:10:53.898) Do what you can with it, you know. Jeff Dudan (01:10:56.11) Perfectly said. Do not miss Stephen Kellogg in Fairfield, Connecticut on October 23rd and at the Park West in Chicago on October 25th. Singing, guitar playing, and some awesome stand up. Stephen Kellogg, thanks for being on. Stephen Kellogg (01:10:58.144) Thanks, man. Stephen Kellogg (01:11:14.784) Thank you for having me, Jeff. Very nice. Jeff Dudan (01:11:16.558) Yeah, 100 % Stephen Kellogg, I am Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.
Brief Summary In this episode of The Home Front, Jeff Dudan welcomes five-time Olympian and Tour de France stage winner George Hincapie , one of America’s most accomplished and respected professional cyclists. From his humble beginnings in Queens, New York, to representing the U.S. on the international stage, George shares stories from inside the Peloton, his complex relationship with Lance Armstrong, and how he’s redefining the sport through business, family, and community. This is a conversation about resilience, redemption, and the enduring joy of the ride. Key Takeaways Early grit shaped his edge : George's competitive instincts were honed riding in Central Park against aggressive adult cyclists from around the world. It taught him situational awareness that helped him thrive in the European Peloton. Team dynamics matter : In elite cycling, even world-class riders adopt supporting roles. George embraced being the “loyal lieutenant” for Lance Armstrong, mastering positioning, protection, and sacrifice. Olympic regret, Tour de France legacy : Despite competing in five Olympics, George wishes he’d spent more time enjoying the experience. He was always on to the next race. On doping in cycling : George openly acknowledges the mistakes of the past, but emphasizes that cycling has now led the way in transparency, testing, and clean performance innovation. Riding with his son is the new podium : Now mentoring his national champion teenage son, George rides for joy and legacy, even as the next generation drops him on climbs. From bikes to business : George has reinvented himself with ventures like Hincapie Sportswear, Domestique Hotel in South Carolina, and the growing Gran Fondo cycling event series. Featured Quote “This is a pleasure. This is an honor. And I’m grateful to be able to do this… not taking it too serious at an early age is the secret to success.” — George Hincapie TRANSCRIPT Jeff Dudan (00:01.336) George, can you hear me? How you doing, man? Looking good today. Ryan (00:02.236) Yep, hear loud and clear. Good. How are you? thank you. I saw you for a second, but now I can't see anything. Jeff Dudan (00:10.422) Okay, so Ryan, they have Riverside open and other tabs. So before we start, they might need to make sure that all of those are shut down, because it will affect it. They've got it open in multiple tabs. I don't know if you could tell them that. They might need to shut everything down and come back in. Ryan (00:24.804) they said that a Riverside's open in multiple tabs and to shut. everything should be. Yeah. This is the only tab open now. It's it should be good now. Should be good. Yeah. Sure. Jeff Dudan (00:34.634) Mmm. You sure? Jeff Dudan (00:40.705) Okay. Ryan (00:42.524) Which is the HDMI. Jeff Dudan (00:44.11) 73, 88%. Okay, well we'll go with it, but if we get an issue, I was just reading some more. Can you see me now, George? Okay, awesome. Well, hey, thanks for being on, super excited. Yeah, yeah, how are you on time today? Ryan (00:52.443) I see you now. Yep. Ryan (00:57.26) Yeah, my pleasure. Ryan (01:02.2) pretty good. How much, how much are we looking for? Jeff Dudan (01:05.734) I don't know, we go from 20 minutes to two hours. It just depends on what people want to do. Ryan (01:10.078) yeah, mean 30, 40 minutes is fine. If that's okay with you, Jeff Dudan (01:14.606) Okay, that'd be great. yeah, yeah, that'd be great. 100%. I'm gonna do just a quick intro. We'll go back and record it again, but I'll just do just a little quick intro and then welcome you to the show and then we'll go from there. And I'm probably gonna start with going back to Queens with your family, know, growing up, if that's all right. All right, right on. Well, again, pleasure to meet you. Thanks for being on. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Ryan (01:22.909) Okay. Ryan (01:35.912) Yeah, for sure. From Queens to the Tour de France: George Hincapie’s Unlikely Start Jeff Dudan (01:43.662) Welcome everybody to the home front. This is Jeff Duden and I am excited today to have George Hincapie on with us. George is a Tour de France stage winner, a three time national road race champion and has represented the United States in five consecutive Olympic games from 1992 to 2008 and has really been a fixture in the cycling world since his teenage years way back in the day through today. Welcome George Hincapie. Ryan (02:13.362) Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. Happy to be on. Jeff Dudan (02:16.162) Yeah, I have to tell you, man, was familiar with you throughout your career, but I've spent the time preparing to talk to you today. Read your book, The Loyal Lieutenant, which has really been great, and just kind of consuming your content. So, fascinating story. You have done so much. Ryan (02:33.726) Thank you. Yeah, it's long, long road from growing up in Queens in New York to making it to the Tour de France and the Olympics. just it was, I feel blessed to have that life and never took it for granted. And still to this day, I love riding my bike, went for a bike ride before this show. So still very much part of my life. Jeff Dudan (02:53.67) Fantastic. So you grew up in Queens. Your dad was an immigrant from Columbia, I believe. And he worked for United Airlines, but he was also a cycler and he got you interested in cycling at a very young age. But you were living in Queens. How was that even possible? Were you riding in the park, Central Park? Ryan (03:12.702) Yeah, I mean, I grew up racing in Central Park and Prospect Park and a lot of people don't realize this, but even to this day, there's quite a big cycling culture in New York. mean, there's people from Europe, from South America, from all over the world that go to New York for different reasons, various reasons, but a lot of them bring their cycling passion with them and they have this. this really hardcore racing circuit on the weekends in Central Park. it didn't matter if you were a 12 year old kid, racing against these guys, they wanted to win no matter what. So for me, it was actually quite the experience growing up racing against, adults and people that had cycling in, in, in their sort of in their, in their childhood. And they, that's all they knew. So, I learned a lot growing up in New York city so much so that by the time I got to Europe racing, I, I never felt overwhelmed on my, man, I rode my bike in New York city. race against people from all over the world. is like what I grew up doing. So it wasn't a big deal. Jeff Dudan (04:12.044) Yeah, so my daughter goes to school in New York. I've been visiting her on the weekends. And what I've learned when we go to walk in Central Park is look both ways because people are flying. Ryan (04:20.048) Yeah. yeah, for sure. Well, yeah. Well, that's another thing that part of what makes a cyclist successful is like awareness inside the Peloton and in Europe, as you know, there's lots of small roads and a lot of things going on. that it really helps differentiate the best cyclists from an average cyclist is how aware they are inside of a Peloton and how quickly they can react to certain situations. And growing up riding my bike in Central park, as you said, you have to look around your head, it has to be on a swivel at all points. really helped my cycling abilities once I got to Europe. Jeff Dudan (04:54.156) Yeah. Your brother was a cycler also. And you had a sister. There's a cute story in the book about you jumping on her bike and taking off and that. your family really sacrificed so that you pursue the sport. Did you play any other sports growing up or were you just focused on cycling? Ryan (05:05.145) Yeah. Ryan (05:17.786) I just focused on cycling. played basketball in high school just with friends, you know, like the preschool league, but never, never as part of the team or anything like that. I just did it for fun. But cycling was pretty much all I did. Meeting Lance Armstrong at 15: Brotherhood and Rivalry on Two Wheels Jeff Dudan (05:32.718) Talk to us a little bit about when you first met Lance Armstrong, when I think you were 15 and maybe he was 17 years old. What was that like and was that a transformational opportunity for you to go out and really join that team and train? Ryan (05:51.582) Yeah. I mean, well, we were young. mean, like you said, I was 15. He was 17. He was from Austin, Texas. He was this sort of hot shot triathlete that, basically won every race he entered and then, decided to, try out cycling and went to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. And here I am, this New York kid that also had a reputation of winning pretty much everything I did. And, you know, at first it was like, there's a bit of competition going on, but we quickly became really close friends and I guess him being two, two years older than me, which sort of took on that role of like older brother, younger brother. And, you know, this, the story went on from there. We became professionals together and, and, well, he's turned pro and I think, 90 and I turned pro and 93 or 94. No, he turned pro 91. turned pro 94, or 92. Sorry. He turned pro after the Olympics in Barcelona and I turned pro 94 and we turned, we, I wrote for the same team. did team Motorola. And then obviously everybody knows the story. got sick and then we, he came back and wrote for us post service and one seven tour to France is, and a lot of drama afterwards as well. But it was a, it was quite a, quite a crazy story and really interesting to be part of it all. Jeff Dudan (07:07.394) When did you first get to travel internationally? Ryan (07:10.91) I started traveling internationally when I was 15 years old, going over Europe with the U S national team. I was lucky growing up because cycling is very expensive sport. and we didn't have much money growing up, but I had support early on from, teams in New York city, individuals in New York city that just love cycling and they just wanted to help promote, cycling in the United States and help young kids make it. And then the national team picked me up when I was 15, 16 years old as well. Jeff Dudan (07:20.673) Mm Ryan (07:39.678) getting me plane tickets to go to Europe and put me up while I was in Europe and getting me that experience that I needed and made the Olympic team when I was 18 years old and kind of never looked back. So I just had a, I was lucky in the sense that I got not only incredible support from my family, but also support from, you know, the national government bodies as well. Jeff Dudan (07:59.224) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (08:02.55) I was unaware that there's different roles inside of a cycling team and inside of a Peloton. And I'm interested to hear from you how the decisions are made about who does what, who's intended to win, and what the various support roles are. Maybe some of the strategy and planning around approaching a race to win it. Inside the Peloton: Team Roles, Strategy, and Energy Management Ryan (08:26.268) Yeah. I mean, like a race like the tour de France has eight riders. some of the riders are, are, are mountain climbers. They can go uphill really fast. Some of them are just really fast on the flats. some of them are just really good overall riders. Some are just good at positioning, like sort of the road captains. So you go into a race like the tour de France and our teams with, with Lance, for instance, we, we, we knew he was the guy that can do pretty much everything really well. And he was the guy that had the most, the best recovery skills. And we would back him and my role would be to kind of keep him out of trouble, to keep him in the front of the Peloton. you know, those little things is everything in cycling where it's always about everybody. you, once you get to the level of tour of France, everybody is so good. I mean, they're the best in the world. They're best in the world. And it's just the little differences that end up to ultimately make the difference at the end of the day. What does that mean? That means like saving energy throughout the day, like a six hour day, who can save the energy the most? Who's got the most teammates that will keep them out of the wind, keep them away from crashes, just be who's got the teammates that can read the race the best, keeping them away from riders that they think are dangerous. I mean, there's just a lot of little things that go on that are really important at the end of the day, because they all add up at the end of a six hour day. Jeff Dudan (09:47.15) Do all eight riders ride in each stage? Ryan (09:50.162) Yes, all eight riders ride on each stage and if you don't finish one day, you cannot start the next. Jeff Dudan (09:54.602) Okay, so you would not finish because of a crash generally? Injury? Ryan (09:57.936) A crash or illness or just can't hang on. too hard. mean, it's a brutally hard race and, yeah, some guys just, you know, after a week, they're just exhausted and they just can't continue. Jeff Dudan (10:03.959) Right. Jeff Dudan (10:09.354) And so then talk about the wind drafting. Is it a huge disadvantage to be in front versus being behind somebody? Ryan (10:18.046) it depends if it's a downhill, super twisty pouring rain, then being in the front might not be a bad idea because you can choose your lines. You're going downhill. So, you know, the drought, you're not expending as much energy, but if it's a flat road and the wind is right in your face, then certainly major disadvantage to be in the front because the guys behind you are saving 20 to 30 % of just being behind, behind you and you're kind of blocking the wind for them. So. Jeff Dudan (10:25.857) Okay. Ryan (10:45.074) It really depends on the situation, but generally speaking, yeah, it's a disadvantage to be at the front. Jeff Dudan (10:49.612) So strategy in finishing a race. I just saw, who was it? We had a woman cyclist just win the gold. She actually trained. She actually started riding. Yeah, she started riding six years ago in New York City. Ryan (10:57.596) Yeah. Kristen Faulkner. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty amazing story. I mean, she went to Harvard. She joined the venture capital world in New York city and just decided, you know what? This is not really for me. Started riding bikes in central park and won two gold medals in the Olympics. Pretty, pretty. And she's racing the Tour de France Femme right now going on right now, currently. Jeff Dudan (11:19.202) Yeah, that's incredible. But she finished all kind of alone. So when you're when you're finishing a race, is it you know who's going to break out? So let's say Lance is going to break out near the end. Is your job then to maybe get in front of some of the other riders to give him a little bit of an opportunity? like, how does that work at the finish? Because typically you see one person out front. Breaking Down Kristen Faulkner’s Olympic Gold Performance Ryan (11:40.35) Well, so let's back up. Kristen Faulkner winning the Olympics alone. Obviously she was out front, but she took it. She took advantage of a very difficult moment in the race. was coming up to the end of a very difficult race. I think there was maybe 10 miles to go and there's only four girls left, all of which are the best girls in the entire world. Three of them were the best girls in the world and she was relatively unknown compared to them. Jeff Dudan (11:47.075) Yeah. Ryan (12:08.486) So in this case, in this circumstance for her to get off the front and the, they perhaps hesitated for a second, give her a little gap, then she's on her own and it's three against one. But those three girls aren't going to really work together that well because they want to try to podium or try to win where she's got nothing to lose. Like she can go all out on herself. So in that situation, yes, that's an advantage because it's her against herself at that moment. Like, and she's going to go as hard as she can. She's not really. I'm worried about the tactics. Like one girl sitting on a wheel, one girl is going to sprint around her. She's like, I'm on my own. I have a gap. I have nothing to lose. And, and she did it. I mean, it was incredibly exciting race to watch. Jeff Dudan (12:46.304) It was, I saw the finish of it and she, know, the three that were following dropped behind and it seemed like they were just jockeying with each other to figure out who was going to break out. it's almost like they said, all right, she's going to get the gold. And then now we're competing for silver. So I found that to be strategically fascinating. Ryan (12:56.072) Correct, Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And also she was pulled into the race last minute. There was one girl that, fell down a couple of times in the time trial. And she was also doing the triathlon Olympics and said, you know what? I'm going to give you my spot. She wasn't even selected to do the road race, got pulled in last minute and ended up winning the gold. Incredible story. Jeff Dudan (13:09.059) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (13:22.114) You know, we're not going to go down the road of politics right now, like there's there's, you know, we're so much more aware and we've got so much more access to information through the Internet, through social media, all, you know, we're all pulled into these political echo chambers and stuff that we do. But man, when you sit back and you look at the Olympics and you've got the entire world basically putting athletes together, I think it's I think it's even more important now than maybe it ever has been just in terms of of. reminding us like there's a whole other world out there. There's other countries, there's other cultures. These are people just like us that are competing and doing their thing. I found it to be pretty refreshing actually. Maybe I'm just in that place right now in an election year, but I found it to be like very cool. The Olympic Spirit vs. Tour de France Glory: George’s Take Ryan (14:06.478) Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, that's what makes, that's what makes the Olympics so special is just bringing people from all over the world. And, know, when we were, when, when I was participating in the Olympics, obviously I was doing the tour de France beforehand, which in our sport is arguably maybe even bigger than the Olympics, just because it's more important for cycling. But still you get to the Olympics and you just see athletes from all over the world that Jeff Dudan (14:26.798) That's right. Ryan (14:31.218) have dedicated their lives to be at the, you know, the top of their game. And you just have that camaraderie with people and there's a matter of what, what, know, where they're from, the differences in culture. It's like, okay, we know, we all know we busted our asses as hard as possible and we sacrifice pretty much our whole life to be here. So there's just that mutual respect amongst, athletes from all over the world. And it's just, this there's, there's nothing like it. Once you get to the Olympics, that, that atmosphere. I tell a lot of people. that, you know, go to their first Olympics. It's like, Hey man, just stick around after your rent, stick around and try to have some fun and absorb that atmosphere because, there's really nothing like it. And it's super special. Jeff Dudan (15:10.124) That was my question. Did you lock it down there or did you embrace the experience and have a good time? Ryan (15:16.176) No, see, I, that's one of my biggest regrets. That's why I advise people like stay as long as you can. would say for like a day or two, then, you know, we were on the road back then all the time. So it was like, just, it was just another race and it like, okay, I'm at the Olympics is cool, but I haven't been home in like two months. I need to get home. but now looking back, you know, I wish I would have stayed a couple more days or really experience a bit more of the Olympics. Jeff Dudan (15:39.17) Yeah, yeah. You know, obviously you're always asked about performance enhancing drugs and the doping and cycling. I find it interesting that cycling was so singled out in terms of this. And then I was a college athlete. I was a college football player in the 80s and the 90s. mean, we're just walking around the locker room. You you could tell who was on stuff, who wasn't on stuff. A lot of people were. I just find it interesting that cycling really was so public and I really don't understand why. What's your view on that? Cycling’s Doping Era: Hincapie’s Honest Reflection and Redemption Ryan (16:16.166) Yeah. I, that's a great question. I don't know. Cause we all knew at the time it was unfortunately going on in cycling, obviously it was going on in cycling, but it was going on in a lot of other places as well. But like you just mentioned that, cycling kind of took the brunt of it and, became a world media story. don't know. It was because Lance was too big and he, his story was, was, was too incredible. I mean, even if If we were dope at the time, what he did was incredible. I mean, he got, I gave had a 50 % chance to live and, you know, decided to come back and try to win the biggest race in the world. And he did, he was a freak of an athlete. He still is. mean, the guy works out all the time. it was, was the best of the best at the time, but it was, it was, yeah, it was interesting to see how cycling got so singled out, not only because of how, how kind of prevalent and it was everywhere else, but also because everything that cycling has done since then, to clean it up. mean, we've, I will say we, cause I'm not really into in the sport as much anymore, but the protocols that site, the cycling body, government bodies has put in place have been, more strenuous than any other, a governing body. In fact, a lot of them follow the lead of what cycling has put together, independent testing. A lot of the teams decided to come out on their own and say, you know what? We prefer to have a clean team than to get results right now, just to prove that with science, tech technology and nutrition, we can sort of start mimicking the effects of doping. that, I believe that's what you're seeing today is the riders are going faster and faster. it's because the bikes are lighter, the bikes are faster. They're all going to altitude camps. They're all the training is so precise. Now the nutrition is so precise. There's no more guessing game. I'm like, wait, if I ride four hours. You know, should I just have like a pizza and this is like, no, you ride four hours. Like they eat to fuel down. They don't eat for pleasure. Like it's so scientific. and you're seeing it by how fast they're going. Jeff Dudan (18:17.196) Yeah, think steroids in a lot of ways are just a shortcut for people. my experience was is that there was people on the line or in the linebacker corps that maybe probably without steroids wouldn't have been anywhere near the field. But they were. think cycling is an endurance sport. It's a strength sport. are there hacks that are Jeff Dudan (18:44.5) legal that people use? mean, I don't know, oxygen or, you know, I know there's there's blood like people will sometimes what take blood out and run it through a and put, you know, put that stuff back in is are those types of things legal or even necessary? Or do you think just with the with the with the advanced training today and the nutrition and a look you can do everything like we know so much about the body now. Peptides, everything. Ryan (18:53.725) Yeah. Ryan (19:00.324) Ryan (19:08.478) Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say. I mean, there's, there's certainly hacks. There's certainly a lot of things that are still not legal, but altitude training, for instance, is definitely legal. mean, you can go up to Colorado or in Europe, go to certain, you know, Tenerife or anything over seven, 8 ,000 feet. And you go spend 10 days there for certain periods throughout the year. Then you're mimicking the effects of doping and these guys have got it so doled in. They'll know the exact effect that 10 days or two weeks at altitude has on their body nutrition, supplements, testing that they can do. They know exactly. I mean, look at all these longevity places. Now they know exactly like by blood tests, like, well, you're deficient in vitamin D. You don't absorb vitamin D. Even if you're in the sun all the time, just they're starting to figure out all these different things that you can naturally supplement or supplement through products that are legal that will make the body just. Jeff Dudan (19:52.045) Mm -hmm. Ryan (20:06.002) work pretty much ideally so there's certainly a lot of hacks out there I don't know them all but I know that there's a lot out there Jeff Dudan (20:13.688) What's your training regimen today? George’s Current Training Regimen: Fitness, Fun, and Family Rides Ryan (20:16.15) I, I, I work out in the gym, like three or four days a week. I bike three or four days a week and I play tennis two days a week. so I pretty much exercise every day. but I try to keep it fun. Nothing extreme. Like I don't do the five, six hour rise anymore. I try to, but you know, I work out anywhere from an hour to three hours a day. Jeff Dudan (20:23.949) Nice. Jeff Dudan (20:27.309) Great. Jeff Dudan (20:35.627) And you have a son now that's a cyclist. Ryan (20:37.63) Yeah. So that's why I still ride a lot. Cause I love riding with him. He's 16. He's national champion and, he can drop me on the climbs, but, know, I can still put it to him in some places and it's just really fun. There's nothing like, being a father and watching your son progress from when he was 10 years old to hating the bike, to, know, making them go out and ride and thinking he was a lazy kid. So now he's just like, he can ride away from me on Paris Mount anytime he wants. So it's just, it's been fun. And it's a, you know, it's been a real joy for me to watch him. Jeff Dudan (20:44.375) You Ryan (21:05.881) progress. in fact, I'm taking them to Spain on Friday, where he was born in drone of Spain. And we're to ride around there for five days. And I'm just really looking forward to that. Jeff Dudan (21:14.434) Yeah, I saw something in the book. I was skimming through the back part of it and he got sick when he was three weeks old. Was it a blood? Yeah, what? What was that about? Ryan (21:21.598) Yeah. Yeah. He had some weird virus in 2000. He was born in 2008. I had to go to tour de France a week later. So here he was like eight, nine days old. And, you know, he just got this huge, this really bad fever and this sort of kind of dicey hospital in Spain. Excuse me. So I had to call like friends that were doctors be like, Hey, can you guys come help? We don't know what's going to happen. The doctors were like, we don't, we don't know what he has, but his fever was just getting worse and worse. And I just remember having like a Jeff Dudan (21:39.191) Mmm. Ryan (21:51.41) breakdown, I got back from one of the stages, bawling, crying. And my directors and coaches were like, just go home and be with them. My wife and her mother were there and they're like, you're not coming home. You know, like, yeah, there's no way you're quitting the tour to France. We got this and yeah, he ended up obviously recovering and, yeah, he's, he's, he's national champion now. So it's been fun. Jeff Dudan (22:02.637) you Jeff Dudan (22:10.286) That's awesome. And then is he an Olympic hopeful and is he going to follow the same path or what is he thinking? Ryan (22:16.414) Yeah, I he's 16 right now. So, it'd be amazing if he made the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. fact, I've keep putting that in the back of his, in his mind that it's a possibility. the way he's progressing every, every few months, I mean, he just gets stronger and stronger. And, know, I see no reason why he, he doesn't have a big shot to make the Olympics in four years. Jeff Dudan (22:36.248) That's awesome. Where some of the favorite places that you've traveled to, or maybe some of the favorite courses that you've run? Ryan (22:43.794) I love going to France. mean, France has got some spectacular, mountains, lakes, oceans. love Southern France in between Nice and Monaco. I go, love my Roka for cycling. It's an Island off of, off of the coast of Spain. That's just incredible for cycling a million cyclists a year. Go there to ride bikes from all over the world. Girona, Spain, where I'm going on Friday has also become a, a hotspot for cycling. And I love here at Greenville, South Carolina, just down the road from you. in being in Charlotte. In fact, I lived in Charlotte for six years and moved down here because the riding is so good. I mean, we're close to the mountains. We don't have much traffic, although we're getting more and more traffic because a lot of people are starting to find that little hidden gem here in Greenville. But the riding here is truly world class as well. Jeff Dudan (23:30.648) How's that? Domastique? Is that the name of it? that, okay, and Travelers Rest, South Carolina. I went to the website, man, very cool. to, you look like you have a helipad there. You need, gotta have that. Ryan (23:34.364) Yep. Yeah, that's that's my hotel and travel address. Ryan (23:45.39) Yeah, we do. it gets you. doesn't get used all the time. It gets, I've seen it. I've seen it used once in a while, but, I've actually used it once. I took my wife there for our 17th anniversary in a helicopter, which I thought was kind of a cool surprise. but, yeah, it's just a great spot is, become quite the wedding venue, anniversary venue and a cycling venue too. have a fleet of bicycles. So people from all over the country can come and grab a bike and go on some of the roads that I trained on. Jeff Dudan (23:57.73) That works. That works. Domestique Hotel: A Cyclist’s Boutique Retreat in Travelers Rest Ryan (24:14.046) all the roads that I trained on for the Tour de France. And it's a really unique, cool, hip boutique hotel. And we have an event there in October, third weekend of October. We have the Hink Abbey Grand Fundo, which 3 ,000 cyclists will come out and ride some of my favorite routes. And that's our 12th, I think our 12th year or 13th year that we've been doing it. And it's become quite a great event for the community. Jeff Dudan (24:20.45) Yeah, how far? Jeff Dudan (24:39.063) How far out of Charlotte? Ryan (24:40.862) it's an hour and a half from Charlotte. Yep. Yep. Yep. Correct. Yep. Jeff Dudan (24:43.054) Yeah, OK, so you fly into Charlotte, drop down in an hour and a half, probably fly into Greenville, Spartanburg. If you want to make that extra little hop and it's probably what, 30 minutes out of there? Ryan (24:51.134) Yeah, 30 minutes from Greenville Airport. Jeff Dudan (24:53.302) Yep. And then and I looked at it online, man. Looks like you got a lot of how many rooms? Ryan (24:57.79) it's, small. only 13 rooms. We're, we're on 30 acres. So, you know, you could spread out. have a great pool. have a good gym and a great, great chef. So it's just a lot, a lot to do there. Jeff Dudan (25:10.572) Yeah, man. Looks like a great spot for a wedding. I've got a wedding coming up. Maybe I'm going to I'll recommend it to my daughter and her brand new fiance. All right. All right. We can we can work a deal right there. OK. You know, I know that you've got a great relationship with a lot of the people that you rode with, Lance Armstrong and many of the others I've seen you doing podcasts with them and that kind of stuff. I'm interested in the thought process. Ryan (25:13.864) Yeah. Ryan (25:17.2) Yes, she should come check it out. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Jeff Dudan (25:40.27) You're with a tight group of people. Basically, you're in the locker room, you're on the team together, and then all of a sudden, you've got federal people poking around and putting pressure on people. What was your thought process like? I can't imagine how difficult it was because you're doing what everybody else is doing. You're getting a 3 % or maybe a 5 % increase just to pull even with the other teams. from all over the world that you're doing and now you've got this pressure on you. What was that like and how difficult was that for you during that time to navigate? Ryan (26:22.286) it was probably one of, if not the most difficult period of my entire life. was just really hard. just kind of learned there. Well, partly because when this all came to, to, to the spotlight, so to speak, I had stopped dope in 10 years before that. And I had taken on a different role in the sport where I was like advocating that we need to all be clean. And if we're all clean, then nobody has to dope and the best are going to win anyway. So that was my role that I took for, you know, almost 10 years, seven, eight years leading up to the investigation. So by the time the investigation came, I was like, this is like an old story, but in most people's minds, it was like it was happening the day before. And I understood that just because, you know, of the, of the history that, that Lance had and the successes that he had, but it was super tough. And I took a, took a stance early on where was like, you know what? I'm going to just be really open with anybody in my circle. It was my family, my friends, my confidants, my advisors. I was like, yep, this shit happened. And, you know, unfortunately it happened. This is all true. It happened 10 years ago. And with the media, I was like, I'm here to focus on the race and I'm getting still a race in my bike. you know, just, had this sort of this bullshit response to the media that I was like, yeah, I'm not talking about it. I didn't deny it. So I was not going to, my, my stance was, I was not lying to the media and I was telling the truth to all of my, my people in my, in my close circle. So by the time it came out, it was like, Anybody I cared about already knew and they already understood that yes, this happened a long time ago and I was a huge part of the change of the sport. And I was proud to still be racing my bike and still be the best of the best. Like I was the best, helper for guys like Mark Cavendish who you saw broke, break their world. The record of the tour de France. I was still his teammate. Those guys who put the hands on the fire for me and they knew that I was not doping at the time and I was still one of the best of the best. so I was proud. Jeff Dudan (28:05.998) Right. Facing the Feds: How George Navigated the Post-Armstrong Fallout Ryan (28:17.138) that I was still in the sport and still doing what I was doing without doping. And that saved me a lot. Actually, that kind of helped me stay strong and go, you know what, the only thing I can do right now, even though I know this story is going to come out and I know I'm to get so much shit from people, so much hate is that I'm just going to keep racing my bike because I know that that's an old story. And I'm a clean athlete now and I'm as good as I ever was, if not even better. And I'm more of a impact to the teams that I'm racing for. So I need to take pride on that. And no matter what all the noise was outside of that, that was helpful. And just really rely on my family, close friends and confidence, like I mentioned, and that helped me get through that time. And it made me stronger. I feel like I can pretty much handle any situation that arises now because of that. Jeff Dudan (28:44.3) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:02.072) You know, it's interesting how our perspective changes over our lifetime and you know where I am at my age and you were, you know, I'm looking back on it I'm saying, you know what, across all sports, I'd prefer that they were clean because it'll keep our kids healthier. It'll, you know, and, you know, some people just aren't going to be able to compete and maybe that's just the way it needs to be because it's, you know, it's, In some sports, it's probably cheaper and easier for them to take performance enhancing drugs because they don't have access to the nutrition and the weight training and the trainers and things like that. So, you know, there's people that want so badly to compete. They want to be a professional athlete. And there's a lot of pressure and there's a lot of money involved too. There's money, there's ego. Sometimes it's just a college education. You know, just getting out of wherever they can get to. But at the end of the day, Ryan (29:44.157) Mm -hmm. Ryan (29:48.274) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:52.886) you know, some of these things are really bad for you long term. And, you know, so, so I really appreciate what you did and, you know, appreciate your role and kind of, you know, whatever it is and, and making all athletics cleaner and safer for our young people to participate in. Ryan (29:55.666) Yeah, for sure. Ryan (30:10.27) Yeah, no, it's been a wild ride. No doubt. I could say with confidence now that my son is 16, that he will not have to make the decisions that I had to make. And, the, envelope has been pushed so high with in terms of, like I mentioned earlier, training, nutrition, tracking your training is just, it's a completely different sport now. And, you know, they won't have to make the decisions that we did back in those days. Jeff Dudan (30:13.09) Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Jeff Dudan (30:36.396) Yeah. So you've got HinCappy Sportswear with your brother. Your brother's been your business partners. How is that business going? Is it still really good? Hincapie Sportswear and the Gran Fondo Series: Riding into the Future Ryan (30:47.87) Yeah, it's still going. We make clothing for teams and organizations and companies all over the country and rides as well. And, you know, we, we continue to try to grow the brand. We've been in the business for 20 years and, you know, we hope that we hope to continue in business. It's been a tough, tough business. It's a lot of companies out there making clothing, and we just hope that our story sort of differentiates what we do and our quality certainly does. so we're just going to keep plugging away and try to. try to get to the level that we want to be at. Jeff Dudan (31:18.828) Yeah, fantastic. Jeff Dudan (31:23.393) Okay. Jeff Dudan (31:27.096) George, is there anything else you feel like you want to cover today or promote? Ryan (31:30.896) No, I appreciate it. This has been fun, a lot of fun. Jeff Dudan (31:33.28) Okay, all right. Well, I'll just, I got a couple more questions and then I'll wrap it up. got a closing question that I like to ask. But yeah, we can roll with that. Yeah, we talked about the hotel, talked about the clothes and that kind of stuff. All right, I'm feeling pretty good. All right, well. Ryan (31:36.275) Yeah. Ryan (31:40.06) Okay. Jeff Dudan (31:55.406) So George's young people out there, like we said, trying to compete, what advice would you have for them in terms of focus? There's a movement in youth sports to say, hey, by the time you're 12 years old, you need to decide if you're a baseball, basketball, football player, or cycler, or whatever it is. And then there's another school of thought that says, don't specialize early. What is your thought on that? What in terms of giving kids a diversity of sports when they're younger versus, you like you did really focusing in early on the cycling. Ryan (32:39.102) I liked, I liked the diversity, even though I didn't do that, which is riding my bike with my son, for instance, he played soccer, he played tennis and then he biked as well. And then all of sudden, when he was ironically 12 years old, he kind of the chip sort of switched on him and he's like, I really like cycling. And, you know, he started doing it more and more on his own. And I think, I feel like the fact that it was a natural sort of choice for him to be like, I don't want to do tennis anymore. I don't want to do soccer. I want to just ride my bike, even though early on it was early decision. I mean, the The best cyclists in the world right now, Remco, Evan Paul, one of the best cyclists in the world, just won two Olympic gold medals. He played soccer to, he was like 18 years old and very, at a very, very high level and then decided that he wanted to be a cyclist. I don't think there is a set protocol on the age of when you need to decide. And I think it's, I think the best ones are the ones that the kids makes for themselves. And, as long as you're, you're having fun and, trying to not take it too serious at an early age, I think that's the secret to success is like. This is a pleasure. This is an honor and I'm grateful to be able to do this. I have support for my family and if they see it like that and there's not a ton of pressure, think that's a path to success. Jeff Dudan (33:50.648) What's on the horizon for you? Any interesting projects or goals that you've set for yourself? Ryan (33:57.818) my God said, I keep trying to grow in cabbie sportswear and it's getting harder and harder with all the competition, but we're going to keep plugging away and try to try to do what we can with the company and our events. We have a, our grand fund, which I mentioned are our cycling event in October, but we also have a series of events. We, our next one is in Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Walmart. And we have a two day event there, September 7th and eighth, and, trying to grow our events company as well and, get a couple of thousand people to each one has been a real. sort of joy to watch that, company grow. started it when I retired in 2012 as sort of a retirement party for me here in Greenville and a thousand people showed up. So we're like, well, why don't we have a this every year? And then from there, we started doing it. We do one in Merced, California, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, now Bentonville, and of course Greenville. it's kind of our series is growing and growing and we want to continue to promote that as well. Jeff Dudan (34:54.594) So these are cycling focused events where people come in from all over the place and then you have, do you have entertainment? What goes on there other than the race? Ryan (34:56.584) Correct, Yes. Yeah, we have, we have rest stops, throughout the ride where we have great local food and, and, and, and, drinks. of course, we have bands playing at our rest stops. And then, in the event here in, in Greenville, we have, we have, free food at the hotel and we have just like a real, like family friendly atmosphere with jumpy castles for kids. And it's just, It's a whole day event, not only for cyclists, but for their family members as well that do not ride. Jeff Dudan (35:31.842) Yeah, it's gotta be great. A lot of fun. And not bad for the hotel business either. Awesome. All right, George, last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Ryan (35:35.954) Yep, sure. Final Words of Wisdom: “Keep It Fun and Never Stop Believing” Ryan (35:45.532) Ooh, one sentence. You could have given me like a warning about this. I would say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say in anything you do, just keep it fun and, and, and never stop believing. Jeff Dudan (35:50.719) well, you take all the time you want. That's the value of editing. Jeff Dudan (36:03.062) Never stop believing. Keep it fun, never stop believing. Awesome. George, thank you so much for being on. Yep, has been, I am Jeff Duden. We have been with George Hincapie and we are on the home front. Thanks for listening out there. Ryan (36:08.252) All right. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it.
Brief Summary In this episode of On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan, NFL legend Shawne Merriman shares his powerful journey from knocking out opponents in high school to launching the Lights Out Extreme Fighting League and his own streaming platform. Drafted 12th overall in 2005 and earning Defensive Rookie of the Year, Merriman reflects on the lessons football taught him—discipline, adversity, and perseverance—and how those lessons drive his success in business. From locker room culture and tackling controversy to NIL, parenting, entrepreneurship, and martial arts, this episode is packed with raw insights from a true competitor who's still knocking lights out—just in a different arena. Key Takeaways Earn It, Don’t Expect It : Even with his “Lights Out” persona and first-round status, Merriman had to earn respect in an NFL locker room filled with legends like LT and Antonio Gates. Start Before It’s Over : Players—and entrepreneurs—should start their post-career or post-job plans before they’re done with the current chapter. Football = Life School : The adversity, discipline, and resilience from football are Merriman’s secret weapons in business. Combat Sports Are the Future : Merriman’s MMA league has produced several UFC fighters and now powers his new platform, Lights Out Sports TV. Free & Athlete-Owned Streaming : His FAST (free ad-supported TV) service is pioneering athlete-led ownership in sports media—no subscriptions required. Consistency Wins : His one-sentence advice for life? “Consistency will pass up talent, money, and hype—every single time.” Featured Quote “You can’t replace what I learned on the football field. No injury, no surgery—none of it would make me give up the life lessons football taught me.” — Shawne Merriman TRANSCRIPT From Knockouts to Network Deals: Lights Out’s New Arena Jeff Dudan (00:00.152) whatever would take whatever you got and that would be that would be great and anything in particular you want to promote. Shawne Merriman (00:07.151) Well, have my Lights Out Sports TV, my free ad -supported streaming service that's available on all major smart TVs. Jeff Dudan (00:16.078) Got it, okay, I had that, that was what I had. So we'll go with that. I'm gonna read a quick intro. I go back and re -record it, but I'm just gonna take a shot at it and then I'll bring you on. All right, here we go. Hey everybody, welcome to the home front. Please welcome Sean Merryman today. Sean was drafted 12th overall in the 2005 NFL draft by the San Diego Chargers, made the Pro Bowl his rookie season and was the AP Rookie of the Year. Shawne Merriman (00:27.45) You got it. Jeff Dudan (00:45.55) great NFL career. really enjoyed watching you play. 258 tackles, 45 and a half sacks, eight forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries, 20 pass deflections, and just one sweet pick, which is probably the sweetest of all. Sean earned the nickname Lights Out in high school after knocking out four players in a single game, and he has transitioned from the NFL to the founder of the Lights Out Extreme Fighting League. Please welcome Sean Merriman. Welcome. Shawne Merriman (00:59.694) You Shawne Merriman (01:15.931) Hey Jeff, what's up buddy, how you doing? Why Shawne Stayed Home: The Maryland Recruiting Story Jeff Dudan (01:18.062) Doing so good, doing so good. Thanks for coming on today. So much in your background to talk about. Would you care to just share a little bit about going back to Maryland? How did you choose Maryland as your college to play for? Shawne Merriman (01:35.26) Well, you know, it's funny. I went to a high school called Francis Douglas High School in upper Marlboro, Maryland, Prince George's County, Maryland, which is about 20 minutes from school from University of And when I went, there was no, there was no division one player ever from my high school. Like there was no, I the first division one player to go. And I wanted to stay home to kind of set an example because all the bigger name players from a DC, Washington, DC, Maryland. and Virginia area, they left and went to Penn State or they left and went to Ohio State or Alabama or Florida. They went to a bigger school in Texas. And I said, you know what? No, I'll be the first kind of homegrown big name guy to stay home. And that was my number one reason. And I had offers from just about everybody, right? As you can name. But I thought it was important for me to stay home and it worked because... We had a lot of the other top talent, Vernon Davis, who was from not too far from Walsh, he stayed home and EJ Henderson, who won the buckets, he stayed home. It was like, it was a snowball effect of a lot of these players from the DC Maryland Virginia area staying home. And that was my main reason to stay home. Jeff Dudan (02:33.272) That's right. Jeff Dudan (02:48.472) Well, great career there, transitioned, high draft pick. This was before the CBA, so you got a contract, got a good one, and then had a great run with the Chargers there. Talk to me a little bit about some of your favorite memories, if you don't mind, from playing with the Chargers. Earning the Name 'Lights Out' in the League Shawne Merriman (03:13.105) think for man, we played on some of the most iconic teams of the 2000s. And I remember walking in the locker room day one and seeing Daniel Thomas and Antonio Gates and Phillip Rivers, Lorenzo Neil. It was almost like a Twilight Zone because these are all the guys who I kind of watched play before I got to the NFL. And now I'm right across the locker from them. So was kind of a surreal moment. But I think, you know, for me, you know, coming out of college with, you know, a nickname like Lights Out and have, you know, this big persona. And there was so much expectation, right? Because it was all this hype coming from college that I had to come and approve myself, you know, which is crazy. You first round draft pick, you know, you're a talented guy. gotta come in, you gotta come and approve. You're playing on a team with, you know, four or five different Hall of Famers. You gotta come in and earn your keep. When I got there, man, I remember the first time we played the Kansas City Chiefs. I went out and got a big hit and knocked out Priest Holmes. And so I was playing hard like that because I was trying to earn that respect because a lot of guys, the older guys, especially Danny and Thomas, they didn't want to call me lights out. They called me Rookie of 56. So was one of those things I had to go and earn my name. But now looking back on it now, I appreciate. Jeff Dudan (04:32.739) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (04:39.199) you know, being in that situation where, you know, I didn't, couldn't walk in the locker room with a big head. Well, I couldn't walk in there with an ego and I had to really, really earn my keep to be there, man. And those are some of the memories just trying to earn those guys respect, respect, walk, walking in the locker room, you know, having three or four sacks on Monday night, those things are fun, man. But just when you're a 20 or 21 year old kid walking into the locker room with that level of greatness and having earned their respect and didn't get it. Jeff Dudan (04:45.848) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (05:06.589) Right? that's the biggest part, know, then earn their respect and then keep it. Respect Isn’t Given, It’s Bought (with $32K Rookie Dinners) Jeff Dudan (05:11.854) Well, I heard a story about a rookie dinner that you had to buy. And if they didn't respect you and know who you were, then you wouldn't have been at the table. yeah, that $32 ,000 bill is feeding those boys. Shawne Merriman (05:30.61) Hey, look, I wish they didn't know me around that time. that building that we have a sat... Jeff Dudan (05:32.6) Ha Jeff Dudan (05:35.982) You Shawne Merriman (05:46.73) You got me? Yeah. it's se - I'm we're good. We're good on mine. Jeff Dudan (05:47.297) says your recording has stopped. due to an incoming call on your machine. Okay, let me see if it says, what should I do? Make sure the recording device has enough space, make sure it's still going. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, off we go. Sean, I want to get your opinion on something. So, you know, I played college football. I was on the offensive side of the ball. My son was a defender. He played a Division I college football. Tackling. Your style of play. Shawne Merriman (06:04.725) It's recorded on my end. The New Rules of Football: Could Shawne Play Today? Jeff Dudan (06:23.79) was the way that we were all, now I played in the late 80s and early 90s, right? But we were taught to block, we were taught to tackle a certain way. We used our head, I mean, it was on center. If you slid up and you got underneath somebody's chin, that was all good, right? And the more, the bigger impact that you could create and the more damage that we could inflict, but tackling's changed now. They teach the the Gator role that you know that they put their head but like an angle tackle They're teaching kids to put their head behind the runner then across the chest Like how what do you think about that? Would you have been able to adjust to that style of play? With the kind of physical nature and the type of dominating hits that you you were so well known for Shawne Merriman (07:13.267) I make a joke that if played in today's era, I'd be playing for free, right? Because all the fines I rack up. the truth is that I could adjust. And I would be able to adjust because those are rules. I think that the NFL has done everything to make the game safer, right? Take for example the crackback blocks. mean, those crackback blocks back in the day from wide receiver to a guy that can't see you was just brutal. Jeff Dudan (07:19.554) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (07:31.384) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (07:39.914) And so they've taken that away. They've taken away the helmet to helmet contact. Got a letter, why receiver come down with the football before you go and attack them in the air. I think the NFL has done everything they possibly can to make the game safe. I think that. Jeff Dudan (07:46.446) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (07:54.648) What do you think of the new kickoffs? Shawne Merriman (07:57.816) It's gonna take some time to We're not used to seeing it, right? And so I think that it's gonna be weird for some time. don't really, I don't look at that as a big deal. It's just more one of those days it's gonna take time to get used to. 100 % I could adjust my game today only because the rules would have allowed it. But I would, I'll you, I'll say this. I wouldn't have played, my opinion, I wouldn't have played with the same amount of passion. Jeff Dudan (07:59.726) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (08:25.676) Cause all the things that you named, right? Being a knock somebody out and that big hit or get somebody up under the chin. All those things drove me to like do it again and do more of it. know, see inflicting pain, right? On someone else. Taking somebody else's will. And I always said, as I said, man, you gotta be a bad mother to go and take another grown man's will from him. He's looking at you from across. He just doesn't want anymore, right? Jeff Dudan (08:26.293) Mm Jeff Dudan (08:37.986) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (08:50.797) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (08:51.608) And you know, that's what made football football. So yes, I would have been able to adjust, but I don't think I would have had the same passion doing it. Why Football Prepares You for Life (and Business) Jeff Dudan (09:02.286) Yeah, they play standing up now. There's a lot of engagement. You want to tie up. want to keep a body on a body. I mean, I played fullback and there'd be 10 or 15 times in a game in an ISO where it's just you and that middle linebacker. it was just face mask on. Who could get lower? Who could hit harder? And it was a war of attrition, really. It's really changed a lot, but I think it's for the better. I I know there's a question about having your kids play. Both my kids started playing football at seven years old. And I think athletics has been one of the most formative things in their lives in terms of discipline and teamwork and perseverance and all that kind of stuff. And man, football is just, I think it's the greatest game that's ever been invented. Shawne Merriman (09:52.601) I do too, and I feel the same way. And I got a 14 year old son as well. And so, you know, he plays quarterback when he was first started and now playing around like 10, I think, around 10 years old. That question also came up too, because I still talk to a lot of kids where the parents are like, hey, I got a nine year old kid, I got a 10 year old kid, would you let him play football? I say, you know, that same thing I told my son, said, I'll tell them about the dangers, right? Because it is, it's a brutal, it's a violent sport. So I'll tell you about the dangers of it, but I'll also tell you how to protect yourself. But I would not. I would not replace what I've learned playing football for any amount, no injury, nothing at all because the values that has taught me in business, the values it's taught me in life is unprecedented. You can't even pay. You talk to some people who don't know adversity, who don't know what it's like in that. that one -on -one ISO, with that feeling you get having to do that 10 times a game, or training camp, where you guys are running those gas, or those 100 -yard sprints, and it's 100 -plus outside, and you gotta find a way to push through, or your finger's out of place, or your shoulder, you gotta shoulder -stinger, you gotta go back in the game. That's a level of toughness that is not, that this world is missing, truthfully. I know we're living in a different time, and I'm not like the old -school guy, like, back in the day, were, no, no, I'm not that, it's just that Jeff Dudan (11:12.397) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (11:19.52) I am. Shawne Merriman (11:20.27) it, yeah. And you know, so, and there's nothing wrong. And for me, I just, I'm able to kind of transfer my mind and keep up with the times. Like I'm not so very old school, even though I played very old school, I'm not very old school. Like I do think you got to move with the times, but that level of adversity and obstacles that you have to deal with made business and life much easier because I see people who never endured those things. They can't manage, can't handle, they fold, they fold under pressure, they can't handle a bad day or adversity or obstacles or any kind of trials and tribulations. They can't deal with it because they haven't been down that path before, man. So I got two shoulder surgeries I had, left knee, right Achilles, finger, and guess what? I'll do it again for the life lessons that I've been taught from this game on not to quit, teamwork. You know pushing through those things man is invaluable The NFL to Business Pipeline: What Most Players Miss Jeff Dudan (12:20.802) Yeah, man, I have both my knees replaced three years ago. left my knees on the field at App State. But it's, you know, but feedback on the football field, man, it's just it's honest and it's immediate and it's truth. And it's and people will let you know if you if you're not if you're not doing your job. Well, awesome. I'd love to talk a little bit as we transition into what you're doing now, maybe about NFL player transitions. I'm in the franchise business. We have several NFL players. Mike Tolbert, a of NFL players that have joined our franchise systems. How have you been able to transition so successfully into business? then what are some of the things that are available to players to help them maybe get into business today or help them? Because if you have a three to five year career, That's one thing. If you have a 10 or 12 year career, that's probably another thing financially. most people still have to do something after that. And if it's not in the booth or on the sideline or that kind of stuff, it's going to be something of business. What kind of resources are available and maybe what are the challenges that you see for some of these players today? Shawne Merriman (13:35.32) I think the biggest thing is, and I tell a lot of guys this, whatever you plan on doing after that you want to do after, start while you're playing. Don't try to sit back and wait and say, I'm going to start doing this when I'm done. That's not what you want to do. And I talked to a lot of guys this and said, year, two years, three years before you thinking about retiring, start doing already because you have this period of window when you retire to when you start doing it that is very, very lonely and depressing. where you're trying to adjust to being a regular person out here, right? A normal, you're trying to be a citizen, a normal person, that you don't have that regimen. That regimen is gone, that you've been doing for the last 20 plus years of your life, it's gone. And so you got this dark spot where you're like, okay, that whistle's not blowing anymore. No more mandatory film sessions or practices. And now you're trying to catch up and get into something new that you don't know anything about. So I would say the first thing to do, start looking into and actually doing what you wanna do years before you retire. That's one. you have to... That same passion that got you to run out the tunnel, 70 ,000 people, a strip sack, forced fumble, a big hit, a catch or touchdown. You find something, and I say this about athletes and I know you can kind of relate to this. Once we find out where we're passionate, that thing that made us go on the field, we're gonna dominate in life because all we know is discipline and dedication and structure and regimen. Those are all the things you need to be successful and believe it or not, most people don't have it. Especially business owners when they starting out, you know, being disciplined on their time, time management. There's no hanging out, going with your friends to brunches and kind of kicking it. No, when you're a business owner, your life is that. That's what you do around the clock. And very few people get lost into trying to do something or you know, because they don't have the discipline and structure to do that. Shawne Merriman (15:40.327) So that's the thing, one, start doing that before, start looking into whatever you wanna do after, and then two, find out whatever your passion is, because once you figure out that passion that gets you up in the morning, you're gonna be successful, because that same passion is through you that was on the field. Jeff Dudan (15:59.01) Yeah, I think that's good advice for anybody, not just players. College students, get a side hustle. Don't wait. Wait is a four letter word. You know, get after it. First things first, second things never. So you're very successful in business now. You also do production in -house with the network and you're in the entertainment business. Who were some of the influences or mentors that you were able to find through your NFL career that helped you like see what it could be in what you're doing right now to help create the vision for From the Field to the Boardroom: How Mentors Opened Doors Shawne Merriman (16:34.378) You know, I was, I was in a very fortunate situation because, when you, when you play out, play in NFL, people know who you are. You can at least get in the door, right? You can pick up the phone and be, Hey, I got, I got this idea. got this thing that I want to do. I want to invest here. want to, I want to build this MMA league. I'm going to build this streaming service, whatever it is. And so you can pick up the phone and, and, and, you know, I'm calling an exec from Fox sports or ESPN or, you know, Paramount or Lions gate. could get me on say, Hey, And if they don't know what I'm looking for, they'll put me in touch. And that's, goes back to having relationships and, and just really getting information that, that was out. That's the third thing I would say that we just talked about. The third thing is get with somebody who got more experience than you. Like just, you know, a lot of people go and they venture out and they start dumping money into, especially players, because you got money when you try. Most have, you know, good amount of money when you retire. So you start dumping money into things you don't understand. That's how you lose it. And so what I always did, what if I was looking to get into the streaming business, I stayed in the streaming business with other people that are successful, know, billion dollar companies and, you know, bringing in, you know, ridiculous amounts of revenue and different kinds of technology. I stayed around those people all the time. So by the time I was ready to go and launch my own, I was able to do it because I already knew the course of action. I already knew how to execute because I've been around it for a few years. So. Tell any guy out there, anybody that's retiring, those three things, man, if you start doing those, I would guess that you're have most guys that are successful that not. Jeff Dudan (18:09.57) Yeah, so through line for you was martial arts. I picked up on that early with my son. He was a wrestler and then he started doing some MMA and man, he became a much better tackler when you know how to grapple and things like that. So you came to the martial arts while you were playing, helped you as a player, especially with hand work on the outside, just everything, pass rushing, right? Hand fighting, all of it. How did that... Shawne Merriman (18:27.506) Yeah. Why Every Athlete Should Train MMA Jeff Dudan (18:38.318) help you in football, number one. And then number two, how did you decide that that was something you wanted to do after football? And maybe we let's let's move a little bit towards the extreme fighting league. Shawne Merriman (18:49.989) Yeah, so I grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland. And I had family members who were professional boxers. So naturally, I just grew up around boxers. So I kind of already knew how to, my standard game of striking was already pretty good. I was in the gym, Jay Glazer's gym actually, Fox, the broadcaster over at Fox Sports, friend of mine. He saw me hitting a miss one day and he said, man, you can box. Would you learn how to box from him? And I said, hey, you my family's, you know, got a couple boxes in my family, blah, blah, blah, whatever. He said, hey, I think if you tried MMA out, would help you with football. So I said, sure. If it's gonna help me with football, let me know what I need to do. So he gave me an address. The next day I show up at the gym and I got Jay Glazer here on my left. I got Randy Couture on my right. So my first day training anything in MMA was with Randy Couture. One of the best that I've ever done it in. I saw a couple things that it did. First of all, it humbled me. I mean, that, just, you you walk in a big strong guy, you're athletic, explosive, and somebody half your size can literally kick your ass. And it is, it's one of those things, man. You're like, man, it's just a humbling sport. The second part is, is that hand combat, you know, being able to get the big offense alignment off you and be very violent and active with your hands as the outside linebacker and pass rusher. And you start to see a lot of these guys during the off season. Jeff Dudan (20:05.698) Yeah. Shawne Merriman (20:12.736) pick up some kind of combat sport. I was just kind of 10 plus, 10, 15 years ahead of my time. But I think that the discipline, then last but not least, man, the endurance. Three rounds, three three minute rounds or three five minute rounds is a lifetime. And there's nothing like somebody on top of you and they're good at jujitsu and they got this amount of pressure and you're trying to get up and you're trying to explode your hips and get off the ground. and just get back up and standing on your feet and you can't. mean, there's nothing more exhausting. You're in a hot little sweaty room. It is demoralizing, man. really, really does something for you. And I came out the next year and laid in a film with Saks. It helped me out that much while I was able to use my hands, being able to open my hips and turn the corners against those big offense liners. Building the Lights Out Fighting League: Farm System for the UFC Jeff Dudan (21:04.536) Yeah, wasn't Ronnie Lott like a black belt? Is that right? He was one of those early guys that was so good. Yeah, I think it was him. So let's talk about the Lights Out Extreme Fighting Network. What opportunity did you see in the marketplace for athletes maybe that were interested in moving into MMA that you Shawne Merriman (21:08.181) Yeah, it is. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (21:33.292) met that opportunity with this network. How did you come up with that? Shawne Merriman (21:37.245) So I got Lights Out Extreme Fighting, which is my MMA league and promotion. Our last, I think, five or six champions all went to the UFC, if I'm not mistaken. So, know, think of us as a, you know, kind of a farm system, right, for the UFC. And we are on Lights Out Sports TV, which is my streaming platform. And... Jeff Dudan (22:01.901) Right. Lights Out Sports TV: Free, Athlete-Owned, and Built for Fans Shawne Merriman (22:04.802) You know, we got 26 channels in there from fishing, hunting, wildlife, wrestling, chess, which I've never thought that I would love chess so much. World Poker Tour is on there as well as you got cards and we got 250 sports movies and documentaries is on there and it's free. And we're on every major smart TV in the world. So you got a smart TV with air. You can download Lights Out Sports TV. And I'm constantly now working on adding more live sports. mean, live sports right now is where it's at. And I wanted to make it free. That was the biggest thing for me, man. I wanted to make it free. I didn't want to be another subscription, another bill that somebody got to work. now I got to spend five, 10 more dollars for this service. Completely free. But again, we talked about, you know, when I retired, I got straight into TV. I was at NFL Network for a couple of years and Fox Sports and ESPN and WWE Network. Jeff Dudan (22:49.389) Right. Shawne Merriman (23:00.719) you know, I, got the, the, the, the privileged man of seeing the inner workings of these multi, multi, multi billion dollar networks and businesses and understanding how the TV business work and now how streaming, is going. And so I just thought that it was important that a former athlete owned and ran all sports streaming service. It's never been done. And you know, it's also too, you gotta understand both sides of the spectrum. Sometimes I think that people may own something in sports or run something in sports, but never played sports, you know, never played, you know, and it always, it baffles me that, you know, you know, go back to the Olympic games, right? I mean, just the opening, the closing, it's like this artsy, that's people, people in sports don't care about that, man. We don't. Jeff Dudan (23:37.528) Right. Shawne Merriman (23:51.777) You don't want to see that. know, we don't, we're not looking to see nothing artsy. I mean, we just not. And so, you know, I started looking around and said, man, who has this ever been done? The question, the answers, no. but also understanding the market and understanding the tech side and understanding what things are going to understand in CTV and how things worked with ads and, and just the business and also athlete brand. So it was important for me to launch something like this because I started seeing all these other people that ran sports networks and never played sports. I said, how are you going to know what people like in sports if you never played it? And for me, man, it's like, was important. It's my, again, we talk about passion. It's one of these things that get you up, get me up in the morning where I'm like, okay, I need to get out of bed because that whistle's about to blow. That gives me that same feeling again. Jeff Dudan (24:28.951) Right. Jeff Dudan (24:43.63) So where can people find the programming? Shawne Merriman (24:46.656) You can find Lights Out Sports TV on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, Android, Philips, LG's, Vizio just launched last week, Comcast, Zumo. So any one of the major TV platforms, we're there. Jeff Dudan (25:03.278) Okay, so like I've got a Samsung and when I pull it up, they have all this free programming on there. So it's like that. I don't know if you're on Samsung or not, but it's just like, okay, well, you know, I've probably been watching it then. Awesome. So does your, got a 14 year old, is he looking to follow your footsteps in athletics? Is it a, is it a, is it a passion or is it a hobby for Shawne Merriman (25:10.913) Yep, yep, we're on Samsung. Parenting a 5-Star Quarterback: No Pressure, Just Effort Shawne Merriman (25:23.704) What he He plays quarterback. So I don't, he's definitely not following myself doing that. He is the number one quarterback coming out of New Jersey class of 2029. yeah, I always, and I talked to him about this sometime, and more so when he was younger. When you got a parent that people know that played the sport, like you have enough pressure already. I... Jeff Dudan (25:28.888) Okay. Jeff Dudan (25:33.184) Okay. Jeff Dudan (25:39.475) wow. Shawne Merriman (25:53.41) You even when I was, you know, when he was younger and I go to the games or I go to the practices, the coaches wanted me to speak and saying, I'm like, guys, I'm just here like every other parent, you know, I just want to stay, you know, kind of stay in the background. Even with him, I said, the only thing that I care about with him is his work ethic, the time he put in and how hard he goes in his work ethic. said, if you go out there and throw an interception or two, I don't care, that happens. If you go out there and have a bad game, I don't care if that happens. If you don't go out there and give me maximum effort, I care about that. That's the only thing I care about is whether you gave everything you had. if you did, and you didn't have that great of a game, I could live with that. But if you didn't, that I can't live with. so, yeah, it's cool, man, to see, you know, now that the game has changed. We talked about how old school and how things, like they're looking at these colleges, looking at kids in eighth, ninth grade now. It's, you know, it's different times. Jeff Dudan (26:46.274) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (26:49.592) Yeah, and you'll have to provide some counsel to him probably about things like NIL and transfer portal that maybe you didn't, we didn't have to deal with. Shawne Merriman (26:58.149) Right. Yeah, and it makes it, it's tough, man, because you got kids in a sense, anybody that's 18 or under, they're still kids, kids. And they're in a position to make these adult decisions, right? Because the money that's involved and things like that. yeah, step in to, you know, kind of advise on what I think should happen. But ultimately, man, I give him a lot of leeway just to make his own decisions. And I tell him, say, whatever decision you make, you live with it. You follow it through, but you can make it. And so I've always kept that same attitude with it. NIL, Loyalty, and the New College Football Wild West Jeff Dudan (27:35.47) Look man, they make it, they own it. Teach them how to think, not what to think. And let them make mistakes and they will find their way if they want to. Do you have an opinion on things like the transfer portal and NIL and the impact on college football? Shawne Merriman (27:50.681) Yeah, I think it's great. But I think it's going to end up being a little bit of the Wild Wild West if it hasn't already. And I've always said this. Jeff Dudan (27:57.59) Yeah, you can build a team. You can build a team overnight now. Shawne Merriman (28:01.731) Yeah, and the problem is what happened is these kids aren't loyal, right? And I'm not saying loyal to the university. I'm loyal to the guy that's next to you that's bleeding and breaking his bones and tearing his hamstrings and quads and rolling his ankles with you, right? There's no loyalty to that because they just jumping for dollar. Now the problem I have with that is, and by the way, I've always said that they should get paid. I thought that they should have been getting a stipend, something monthly, maybe let them make money doing autograph signings, something. It should have been something. They should have been getting paid long time ago. And they didn't. So now they got to deal with this whole NIL and all the things that come with it. Certain colleges are even suing now. suing the NCAA for stepping in with these NILs. So there's a lot going on. I think that Jeff Dudan (28:37.496) Right. Jeff Dudan (28:53.315) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:58.636) Yeah, well. Shawne Merriman (28:59.877) Like Nick Saban, I wanna use him for the prime example. People are so mad at him saying, he's retiring because of what's going on now in sports, in college football. I agree with him. I mean, I can't imagine a 17 year old kid sitting across from me saying, I'm not coming here unless I'm given me a half a million bucks. You don't even know how this kid is gonna pan out, right? I mean, he might be all world in high school. He hasn't done nothing in college yet to even require or request that type of money. And you got somebody like Nick Saban, who's one of the greatest and winning college coaches of all time. And you're talking to him telling him, what you gonna do, Willem won't do? That part I just really can't get with. Jeff Dudan (29:27.586) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:46.454) Yeah, I mean, I understand how he does not want to make that adjustment at this point in his career, nor should he have to. I mean, he's laid it down and his record stands for itself, but there's a whole new dynamic coming out. And at the end of the day, mean, it wasn't as pervasive, but players did get paid before NIL. I mean, certain players did get paid. I mean, you know. Let’s Not Pretend Players Weren’t Already Getting Paid Shawne Merriman (30:11.813) No doubt. was one of those meet me in the back alley with a brown paper bag paid, but you know, it's not how they get paid now. Jeff Dudan (30:19.534) or even just a car or something. Just a little something here and there, but it's nice to see it out in the open. It's nice to see it on an even playing field. And now the boosters can just put their money in a thing and the coach can, instead of having to give people a job at the oil rig for a thousand dollars an hour. Okay. Or whatever. Or whatever. Shawne Merriman (30:43.056) Right. Jeff Dudan (30:47.598) I saw a documentary something, all right. hey, Sean, this has been great. know you're up against it, but really enjoyed having you on today. Thank you so much. Super excited for the Lights Out Network and really excited for the opportunity to give some of these young athletes to really show their stuff and to give them just another avenue to get out and to be around great people like you, people that can mentor them and kind of give them a path. for success. We're huge into young people here. I mean, I coached over 30 seasons of my kids' sports, man. just think anything we can do to invest in young people and give them vision and talk to them. Which leads me to the last question, Sean, for you. If you had one sentence to speak to make an impact into somebody's life, what would that be? The One Word That Will Make You Win: Consistency Shawne Merriman (31:41.063) I would just say consistency, man. Just stay consistent for as long as you can. think that just staying consistent is gonna allow you to pass up a lot of people who just quit, a lot of people who just deterred themselves from their dreams or don't think that things are working out in pivot or go backwards or go another direction. Consistency wins every single time. And that's one thing that's been... been a key component in my life is that some days you're gonna get up not feeling that great, you're not gonna wanna do everything. And I know this Instagram is showing everybody smiling and jumping up and down and these positive workouts every day, but trust me, they don't show the days that they sit at the edge of the bed and they're tired or they're stressed out, they got anxiety or they're depressed. They don't show those things. But I guarantee if you stay consistent long enough, you'll break through. Jeff Dudan (32:32.568) Yeah, man, the best way to win the next opportunity is to succeed in the one that you're in right now and stick with it. Fantastic. I am Jeff Duden and we have been with the great Sean Merriman and we have been on the home front. Sean, thank you so much for being on. Yeah. Let hit the button here. Shawne Merriman (32:39.848) That's right. Shawne Merriman (32:48.242) Thanks, man. Jeff Dudan (32:55.022) If you just give me one.
Brief Summary In this episode of On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan, Jeff sits down with John “Gucci” Foley, a former lead solo pilot for the Blue Angels, bestselling author of Fearless Success, and creator of the “Glad to Be Here” mindset. Foley recounts his path from a visceral moment at an air show as an 11-year-old to becoming a Navy pilot, flying 18 inches apart at 500 mph. Through powerful stories of resilience, performance, and gratitude, Foley shares the rituals and belief systems that elevate individuals and teams into elite performers, both in the cockpit and in business. Key Takeaways Purpose Starts with People : Foley emphasizes that world-class performance—whether in the Navy or in business—always starts with people first, not process or purpose. Glad to Be Here : This mindset was born in the Blue Angels debrief room and evolved into a lifestyle of gratitude, presence, and giving. Mental Resilience > Physical Power : Despite being undersized, Foley made the D1 football team at Colorado through heart and mental toughness—a trait he credits for his success in aviation and beyond. Debriefing is a Growth Engine : The structured debrief process used by the Blue Angels is Foley’s cornerstone for high-performance leadership and team development. Overcome Limiting Beliefs with Liberating Ones : Foley teaches that people don’t perform at their full potential—they perform at the level of their beliefs. Raise your beliefs, and your performance will follow. Morning Gratitude Rituals Drive Elite Focus : John shares his personal daily ritual—his "Glad to Be Here Wake-Up"—which combines reflection, gratitude, and service. Featured Quote “You don’t perform at your full potential—you perform at your belief level. Raise your belief, and your performance will follow.” – John “Gucci” Foley TRANSCRIPT From Airshow to Afterburners: The 11-Year-Old Dream That Took 18 Years Jeff Dudan (00:01.738) the air show. the show. host host going going be host show. I'm going the show. I'm to the host show. going the show. I'm going be show. I'm host show. host of the sought after speaker and author of a great book which I consume this week Fearless Success. And I would like to please welcome to the home front John Gucci Foley. Welcome, John. John 'Gucci' Foley (00:41.145) Hey, Jeff, I'm glad to be here. And those four words are going to mean something much deeper here by the end of this Jeff Dudan (00:48.106) Well, fantastic. My first question, because it's a story that resonated with me, we have a passion and a heart for children here and really understand the impact that's made in young people's lives by people like that. Just take a minute. When was the first time that you realized that you wanted to be a pilot? John 'Gucci' Foley (01:08.702) man, I love that question. My dad was my hero, right? And my dad was an army officer and an engineer. So when I was growing up, I wanted to be just like him. So I'm thinking, hey, I'll be an army officer and I'll be an engineer. And then one day, I'll never forget this day, I'm 11 years old, we're in Newport, Rhode Island, and he took me to an air show. And I never forget that moment. If you've ever been in an air show, anybody who's listening, It's visceral, right? This is not just, you're just not looking at the jets. You feel it. You feel the energy in the crowd, the smoke oil, the thunder, the noise. And it's kind like being at the Superbowl and I'm looking up in the sky and there's these six magnificent blue jets flying that day. And something hit me in my heart, not just my head, Jeff, big difference, right? And I turned to my dad and said, dad, I'm going to do that. 11 year old kid, right? And it took me 18 years. From that moment when something hit me in my heart with lots of obstacles, of career path changing, then 18 years later I'm strapping in that jet. Jeff Dudan (02:17.982) You had some challenges getting into the service. Can you talk us through your path as you grew up and eventually getting into the Navy, what you had to go through and some of the stops you made along the How Rejection and Medical Red Tape Fueled Grit and Persistence John 'Gucci' Foley (02:30.468) Yeah, absolutely. I think more important it's for all of us, right? I mean, once you have that goal and that vision, you know, the path seems to change. It's never a direct line in my life, right? So I'll share a little bit of my story. So from that moment, you know, I mean, I think I'm in junior high. I realized, okay, you know, I got to join the Navy or, you know, at that time. And I said, well, but I got to be an officer because I need to fly jets. So I got to either go to the academies or go to RFC or something. I knew then I said, well, what does that require? And basically, do the best you can, get some good grades, athletics matter, and community service. those three things. So I said, okay, need to do some of that stuff. Everything's going well. Doing well in school, captain of the wrestling team, apply for the academies, and I get rejected. But I get rejected. Not because of that stuff, medically. They tell me I'm not medically qualified. Now this surprised the crap out of me, Jeff, because number one, I'm a healthy young kid wrestling, playing football. I mean, I'm as healthy as I think I can be. And here was the answer. They said I had too much protein in my urine. What the hell is that? Right? First off, I mean, as a kid, I'm like, first off, what is that? And what am I supposed to do about it? Right? So you ever feel like you can't control? the world, right? Well, we know you can't, but what you can control is yourself, right? And so with me, I'm disappointed because I'm moping around thinking my dream has just got cut down. And it took about three days and my dad's like, what are doing? He said, well, I said, what do mean? He goes, well, why are you moping around? I said, well, you know, I just got rejected. You know, my dream's gone. He goes, no, you know, come up with plan B. Right. And I was like, that's a novel idea. And my plan B was very simply, he says, well, So I did and I got rejected again. I was outside of the parameters of this stupid medical thing in the military. But again, instead of giving up, I said, you know, I'm gonna go through a waiver process and that takes a year. So went to Colorado, actually played football for the Buffs, walked on. But I never lost my dream of going to the academies. And I go through the process, sure enough, I find out there's nothing wrong with me. It's just, it's probably from cut and wait on the wrestling. John 'Gucci' Foley (04:51.142) But the bottom line is I get accepted and boom, off to the academy. Now, I gotta be honest with you, Jeff, I didn't graduate number one in my class. Okay, academically, I graduated in the half. That allows the other half to be called the top, by the way, okay? But I got above the line. It's something I talk a lot about in the book and other things. It's this red line. It's always there in life. You're above it or below it. And guess what? You know. Every person listening to this knows. Are they above or below that line in their life? And I was barely above it, but I got the slot as a pilot. And now in the Navy, you start all over again. Doesn't matter what your grades are. You start from zero and they've graded you every single flight. You go to Pensacola, ground school, then initial training, go into jets. And it's just a career path. And things seem to be going pretty well. I get lots of rejection on types of airplanes, but I end up flying a fours, a sevens, F -14s in the movie Top Gun. I didn't fly F -14, I was flying a sevens the days. We were off the Enterprise. And then I get selected for the Blue Angels. My life changed, Jeff. Absolutely changed. 18 years though of ups and downs to get Walking On at Colorado: Why Mindset Beats Size Every Time Jeff Dudan (06:05.418) incredible. I want to double click on your time at Colorado. Walking on to a Division one school. mean, some people say it's a bigger jump between high school and college, especially Division one like that than it is from college to pro. So you go, you walk on your DB, you're looking to do a DB. So right off the bat, you know, you're not six, you know, 65 to 65, you're running around on this field. and you're playing the scout team. I had the exact same experience. I walked onto the University of Northern Iowa. I had only played two years of football. I had never tackled anybody in my life. I had never been in the three point stance. And all of a sudden, and they expect you to have these skills. They expect you to have been playing your entire life. what was that like for you at Colorado? Are there any stories that you got there that are memorable? And then how did that ultimately prepare you for the Blue Angels? John 'Gucci' Foley (06:38.044) Wow. John 'Gucci' Foley (06:44.998) Yeah. John 'Gucci' Foley (06:58.034) Hey man, I love it. First off, you did look like a ball player. I'm sitting here going, this guy played ball, man. And, you know, you just nailed it, right? It's not the physical, it's the mental, it's the mindset that either breaks you or makes you, making those leaps. And, you know, in hindsight, I had a belief I could make the team, right now I'm a small. Jeff Dudan (07:01.396) Ha. John 'Gucci' Foley (07:20.852) under, you know, I'm a five nine, about 165 pounds. mean, I ran like a four, I don't know, six, but it wasn't your four four, right? And, and, so I didn't have the physical skills to walk on a division one team, but I had the mindset that, you know, I can play at that level. Why I thought that I have no, no clue, Jeff, no, no clue. Right. and, I remember, you know, walking on and I don't know what it was like in your experience, but my, at Colorado They take all these walk -ons and all those scholarship athletes, all the all Americans, they've been there for a couple of weeks. And they just run the hell out of you. Three days, right? Three days of trying to make you quit. Kind of like SEAL training. It's a very interesting thing. Let's just see how bad you want it, right? And I do fine on that, right? But I'm walking off the field last day and I know that they're gonna make a recommendation to the head coach on who to even, who to take and who not. Jeff Dudan (08:02.706) It is. That's right. John 'Gucci' Foley (08:16.476) And I walked up to this coach and I looked him in the eye and I don't know why I said this. hadn't premeditated. I just looked at the coach and I said, coach, give me the pads. said, just give me the pads because the first three days are in shorts and t -shirts and you know, I'm small and doesn't matter. Right. but I like, you'll find out and guess what? They gave me the pads and, and that's all I needed. That's all I wanted was a shot and someone just yesterday, I'm at an event here. I'm speaking up in Coraline, Idaho and They said this to me, they said, you you got a heart of a lion. And I thought, where the hell did that come from? And I realized that that's what it was. was the heart, undersized, should never have been on the field, but the passion and the heart said, just give me a chance. And I think that's so many people in life. We give up without even taking a chance. Glad to Be Here: The Humble Phrase That Became a Global Mindset Jeff Dudan (09:10.964) The glad to be here mindset is something that is a through line in your speaking and inside of your book. It's number five of the five dynamics. When did you first? Yeah, I read it. No, just didn't. John, I didn't just say I read it like I got into it and it was it was really, really good. I always appreciate when people put things together in a concise and actionable way. And, know, and generally people that have have done something like you've done. John 'Gucci' Foley (09:19.529) Yeah, good. John 'Gucci' Foley (09:23.603) You did. Jeff Dudan (09:40.212) the level of excellence and the blue angels that's required, the level of focus that's required, the risk that's inherent with that. You have a view of what excellence looks like and you did an excellent job of laying that out for all of us. But the glad to be here mindset, right? That's not a buzzword that you typically hear. When did you first come up with that and what does it mean? John 'Gucci' Foley (10:00.872) Yeah, well, to me, it means the combination of excellence and appreciation and gratitude. It's when you combine your passion with your purpose and presence. All right, so this isn't just fluffy. Glad to be here is not just fluffy. mean, where did I come up with it? Well, number one, first time my mom was always talking about positivity and stuff. But it really came up on the Blue Angels. The Blue Angels, when you apply for the Blues, you're never allowed to sit in on a debrief. That's the sacred realm of the Blue Angels. That's where we, after we fly. Think post -game with the team, right? Going through the films and stuff. But, you know, as an applicant, and when I say an applicant, you have to have like 1 ,500 hours tactical jets, flown jets off aircraft carriers, be an instructor pilot. I was all that stuff. So I'd flown F8. I went, no, -18s, yeah, flying F -18s, a Structor Pilot, know, like 400 carrier landings. So, you know, if you get to that level, you've got some skill, right? But that's not what we're picking on. You know, those five dynamics kick in. And what you pick on is, first off, does someone, you know, passionate about what they're doing? Are they doing for a purpose and a purpose higher than self. If you're doing it just to fly upside down, 100 feet off the ground at 500 miles per hour through buildings, which by the way is cool as hell. If you're doing that, all right, that's not why we're picking you. Because what you're picking you for is to be on that crowd line, to be an inspiration for a kid, right? And it's about the youth, right? I always used to sign autographs, know, reach for your hopes and dreams because that's what I did. And I happened to, you know, be fortunate to make So anyhow, the idea of the first time once I got selected, I sit in on the debris. This is now after the blues have flown and I'm just a newbie. We call them newbies, like a rookie, right? And all of a sudden it starts with the boss of the Blue Angels starts the comments. he's, you know, he's talked about how he felt. He talked about safeties, things that he had done wrong and was laying it out to the team. John 'Gucci' Foley (12:18.18) But he had he acknowledged others and then his last statement was glad to be here And I thought wow, that's kind of cool then the next person does the exact same thing they look inward first, though They say hey, I felt good about this event or I didn't here's things that I was off on pointing themselves out Not somebody else and then they said glad to be here all of a sudden it goes around the table Everybody's ending their comments with glad to be here and I'm sitting there going holy You know, these are my icons. These are the best of the best. They're self -reflective. They're it on the table. That's one of the five dynamics. Being open and honest. They're humble. Check your ego at the door. There's respect. There's accountability. And they end with glad to be here. And I went, something's magical there. Now I will tell you this. On the Blue Angels, glad to be here initially meant I'm just glad to be selective for this team. I'm glad to be sitting in the room. I'm glad to have this opportunity. But as my time on the Blues and more importantly, after the Blue Angels, glad to be here has taken on a much richer and deeper meaning. Sometimes it was just, I'm glad to be alive. I mean, I had three of those days where you're flying and you land and you go, my God, I almost died. know, and life is is better. I we've ever had those experiences. I'll tell you what, number one, the grass is greener, the sky is bluer, ice cream tastes better, people are friendlier. I mean, your whole perspective on life changes quickly. Then, you over time, you get sucked back into every day, right? But I'm glad to be here to me now means much more than even that. It's a lifestyle. It's a mindset. It's an ethos to live every day in its fullness and to give it to others. Jeff Dudan (14:03.53) And it's connected to the concept of gratitude, gratitude is scientifically proven to make us healthier, to make us happier, to make us more mentally fit. Appreciation for what we have. mean, you can look around the world. And I've had several military people on who have traveled the world. we'll catch comments, because they'll say, I've been around the world, and I've lived a lot of places, and I've seen a lot of things. And America is still the greatest country. John 'Gucci' Foley (14:06.334) Night. Jeff Dudan (14:33.138) in the world. so tying that to this concept of gratitude, being thankful for where we are, what we've got going on. And then to touch on the fact that being on the line after the show and talking to the kids, you've probably influenced people to join the military. Patriotism is down in this country, significantly down. Our volunteer forces are under where they need to be. It's at Homefront Brands, which is my company. General Brigadier, retired Brigadier General Tony Tata is on our board and we're partnered. Yeah, I don't know if you know Tony or not, we're of Tony, but and then we are, you know, we're partnered with Operation Homefront. So we're very much interested in, you know, helping veterans transition and what we do here. So now you talked about leadership and you've got six pilots that make it. You've got a diamond formation. You've got two solos and John 'Gucci' Foley (15:05.224) Have a nice. John 'Gucci' Foley (15:14.282) good. John 'Gucci' Foley (15:26.76) Yeah. Trust at 500 MPH: What Business Can Learn from Blue Angels Debriefs Jeff Dudan (15:29.492) probably goes lost on a lot of people is the size of the support crew that you have and the excellence. So when you talk about, you you're speaking to organizations and the work that you do creating excellence in organizations, the Blue Angels is a big team. It's not just the it's just not the quarterback out there, right? It's everybody on the organization. What's the interaction like between the pilots and the crew? John 'Gucci' Foley (15:54.354) Well, there's extreme trust, okay, and extreme respect. And it starts with respecting every single person for who they are and what they do. So just like he said, know, football is a great analogy. It's not the pilots, it's not the quarterback, right? There's a full team, right? You need the linemen, man. You need the scout team. You need everybody, right? And same thing on the Blue Angels. So number one, you know that teamwork is not a buzzword. It's not like something, you know, you just, talk about, it's real, okay? It's real because you trust them with your life. So if you ever want to really test what level of trust you have, make it life or death. Now, very few things in our life are like this, right? But when life and death comes up, it actually makes things easier. Things get very clear, right? Yeah, and here's the thing, I never worried about dying, right? Because I never worried about death. Jeff Dudan (16:43.789) black. Yeah, it's pretty black and white. John 'Gucci' Foley (16:51.058) What I didn't want to do, what I worried about was hurting someone else. I didn't want my mistake or my lack of attention to be the effect for somebody else. And that's what everyone on the team, mean, my plane captain, all right, who doesn't fly in the jet, but he or she owns the airplane. I told he or she that. said, look, even though my name's on the airplane, it looks fancy, right? Lieutenant Commander John Cucci Foley. No, they own the jet. I borrowed it for Okay. And, but see, they believe that it wasn't just a term. They would get out there well before I ever showed up. They, they made sure the jet was ready to go and make sure my left gloves are in my right glove, a hundred point six switches in that correct position. When I walk up to the airplane, I don't have to pre -flight it. I trust them with their, my life and they salute me and I salute them back. And all they say is this, sir, the jet's ready to go. Now that statement. was I got up four hours, they didn't say I got four hours earlier, I did all this stuff, you know, I started the engine, I made sure everything's ready to go, I actually waxed the airplane, I mean, they do everything. No, they just said, sir, the jet's ready to go, and you trust them. But they trust you back, see, it's communication. And that's when I got on the airplane, I realized you have to appreciate people. The glad to be here means we're a team. There's 140 support troops for the six pilots, right? And, Jeff Dudan (18:12.073) Wow. John 'Gucci' Foley (18:14.652) and they're the real heart and soul of the Jeff Dudan (18:17.406) And how many air shows a year for, and the tenure of the pilots is one year or John 'Gucci' Foley (18:22.822) Now it's two years as a pilot. One pilot gets a three year tour, which I was fortunate to do that, but your first year you're the narrator, right? But so two years in flying the jets, if you're support personnel, it's three years. So it's like a football team. know, new people coming in and coming out all the time. We rotate people through. So the idea of what position you fly, all that gets sorted out Right. But you're there for your first year, even though you're highly skilled, you know, instructor, you're in a learning mode. Okay. You get assigned a mentor. if you're number six, it's number five. it's number three or it's number four and the boss and two have a special relationship, but you and your mentor, you're truly brought to a level. got to tell you, we increase, you know, we fly at 18 inches. Now picture this Jeff, 18 inches. That's closer than you are to your monitor. now and me too. People who watching this are listening closer to your phone. A 22 ton jet at 500 miles per hour. You better know trust. It's not a word. It's a lifestyle and you got to trust yourself. You got to know what you're capable of. to know where you're weak by the way. That's even harder. You got to trust your teammate like we're talking about and at the end of the day, you got to perform. mean, just, there's no, you got to show up with your A game every single It's fun. Jeff Dudan (19:51.21) Does the crew turn over or is the crew consistent or they turn over with the pilots? John 'Gucci' Foley (19:57.426) Yeah, well, everyone's on their own rotation. So the crew is there for three years. So we have a third of the team is rotating out and they're usually your best and most senior people and a third of the new people are coming in and it's a pecking order. You have to earn the right to get the chance to do this. And then you have to earn the trust and respect of your own peers. And that's how it Jeff Dudan (20:26.502) any close calls or events that you're at liberty to share from your time flying. John 'Gucci' Foley (20:29.03) hell sure, sure, sure. Now, you know, the blues, we work really hard on alleviating these, right? And that's why we have a tremendous amount of preparation and focus called the brief. We debrief, that's where we learn and grow. We try to pick up near misses before you actually have an accident. mean, I don't know if you knew this, but when I joined the team, there was a 10 % mortality rate. had 26 pilots had been killed and there'd been less than Then there's less blue angels than popes, by the way. You know what pope number we're on by the way? I think it's 266. But so, you know, I mean, here's the thing. It's an extreme honor. But would you do a job where when you walked in, they said, hey, congratulations, you know, you got two years here and there's a 10 % chance that you're not going to walk away and you're going to die, but not like from a car accident. You're going to die on the Jeff Dudan (21:07.689) do not. John 'Gucci' Foley (21:30.94) Right? And it's like, holy shit, but that's not how we think. Okay. I throw those numbers and you know, no, what you really think is, you know, not only am I going to make it, we're all going to make it. Okay. We're going to do something special. we're here not for ourselves. We're here to inspire, be an ambassador of goodwill to another human being. I do want to point that you got to excel. when you push the limits, the limits push back. Okay. I'll say that again. When you push the limits, limits push back. So you gotta be Okay, it's easy to do something stupid, but to fly at that edge, you have to be smart and you have to have constraints in there. have lots of safety protocols. And since I joined the team, the blue is not because of me, because of this process, we've decreased that rate tremendously, right? So the idea there is be good at what you do, be constantly learn. We're in a constant learning. I want to grow. And then the most important part, and you talked about giving back to the vets is you gotta give back, you gotta give, right? That's where the magic comes Jeff Dudan (22:38.186) these rituals that were so important in keeping everybody safe and getting people back on the ground so that they could be glad to be there. How have you translated these rituals that you've learned into your venture capital life, into your business consulting, into helping people that maybe haven't had the benefit of service to be able to be better leaders, more disciplined leaders, and more successful? The Morning Ritual That Rewires Your Mind for Focus and Gratitude John 'Gucci' Foley (23:02.866) Well, I love that question because rituals matter, right? So there's two things I want to talk about here. One is the rituals that I now talk about in the business world or your professional life, right? And I work with the best companies in the world to a lot of, by the way, know, Jani King, I was just with them two days ago. I don't know if you know them. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of franchisees, which I know you're strong at, right? So number one, there's the, business side, but it's not the most important Jeff Dudan (23:21.0) Okay, great. Yeah. John 'Gucci' Foley (23:31.24) but the professional side, and that is you gotta connect, align, and commit. Okay, three things. Every high -performance team does this. You know this. First, you gotta connect as human beings. People come first. Second is you gotta align. Well, align what? Align the vision and the strategy. Align all the moving parts, communication. We spend a lot of time in business doing that. But the third one is the commitment level. And this is only an ask. You can't force this on anybody. But, know, I I ask and in military, it's pretty clear. It was definitely clear on the Blue Angels is that you're willing to give your life for your teammate. That's a pretty high commitment level. All right. And here's the thing is you, you, you know it. All right. And you also know when someone's struggling with that, right. And it's actually, it's easy at that level. It's easy. You will do whatever it takes for your teammate. Right. And so, so I always. ask a couple of things and I would ask, who's ever listened to this? Number one, what are you willing to die for? It's an interesting question. mean, reflect on that, right? Now here's a better question though. And that is, what are you willing to live for? And that's what we're doing, right? What are you able to share to make a difference in someone else's life, to enjoy this life, right? So on the business side, it is, I call it a cadence of execution. I unpack what worked not just in the military, but specifically on the Blue Angels. The magic is in the cadence. It's this, you know, habits brief, get prepared, execute with high trust, debrief. That's the most critical one. Most people don't do it at the level I'm talking about. It's an internal debrief, Team debrief. That will accelerate you up, but it starts from the book. I call it the diamond form, its framework or fearless success. You got to have beliefs first though. So it's not about the vision. It's about connecting. the vision to beliefs, getting people to believe in you and the organization and executing that I trust. Now having said all that, okay, that's in the book, that's a business case. I'm writing my new book called The Glad to Be Here Mindset. And Jeff, this is the difference. This is a differentiator, okay? It's the habit of every morning, how do you wake up? Okay, how do you start your day? So I start my day with what I call my glad to be here wake John 'Gucci' Foley (25:51.365) I did it this morning and do it every morning. The minute I wake up, first off I check, it's called awareness, right? Mindfulness. Check the first conscious thought that hits your head. Do this tomorrow, okay? For you, right? See what that is, right? See if it's a thought like, holy crap, what am I late to? What's the next problem I gotta solve? Or if it's like, wow, today's kind of magical. This is a beautiful life. I'm with my daughter. You're gonna be spending time, Jeff Dudan (26:01.492) Okay. John 'Gucci' Foley (26:20.224) Just watch your own mind. Now. Here's the beautiful thing if it's a negative thought or thought that's causing you angst Just be aware of it and go. Okay, that's that's fine. But what am I grateful for? What am I grateful for in the present moment? You talked about the the science behind gratitude, right? So I do that every morning Here's a technique what I've learned though is it's not enough just to say what am I grateful for in the present moment? My personal technique the Gucci technique is go back 24 You can go back as far as you want in your life, but I do this every day. So I'll go back 24 hours and I just say, happened yesterday? Did I have something to be grateful for? But I remember it in my heart, not my head. This is the technique. It's really easy to stay in your head. All right. But if you, what I try to do is remember like this interaction. I'm hopefully going to remember you tomorrow. Okay. And I'll remember your smile right now. And I'll think about how do I feel in my heart about doing that interview? You know, And I'll just remember the magical part or maybe it's, I'm leaving the hotel, right? So I always like to leave tips for the maids, right? And I give them a little smiley face. But I imagine when she walks in, and by the way, I clean the room for them. I always make my bed, know, make your bed kind of crap, but I do that, right? But I think of my mind, I just want them to walk in and feel relief instead of a room that's just been blown Jeff Dudan (27:35.551) Yep. John 'Gucci' Foley (27:45.344) It's like, did anybody even sleep here? That's what I want them to feel, right? So I'm thinking of them, right? And that's the idea as a leader, go forward. The third step is go forward in your day and think of someone else and what can you do to make their day better? That's what I call my glad to be awake up. It's my ritual every morning and I got a bunch more. We can talk later if you want, but that's just one technique. Jeff Dudan (28:08.872) love it. That's fantastic. I made notes of it. I will try it tomorrow morning. I did notice something interesting in the book, though. You listed people, process, and purpose. Usually people list purpose first. You listed it last. And I think what connected with me as I'm listening to you talk here is when you are in an elite performance environment, it's always people first. If you listen to Nick Saban about it. It's about the players. If you listen to Belichick talk, it's about the players, you know, so people when you listen to you talk about like, hey, it's about the people first, we got to have a purpose to do it. But if people fail in a high, high risk, high gain environment, like it's not going to be good. So you really people first, is that intentional? Was that intentional? Or is that just the way it fell out onto the page and then your editor switched it Why People Come First: Lessons from Nick Saban, Belichick, and Blue Angels John 'Gucci' Foley (29:02.985) No, hell no, no editors. That's the way I think. it's by intentional, it's not the way I always thought, right? It's usually more experience you learn this way, right? It's funny, you talked about Nick. So Nick Saban calls me up a few years ago now and he says, hey, Gucci, can you come talk to the team? I said, yeah, I'd be honored, of course, right? And so I got some Saban stories sitting in his office beforehand and he's dipping because he dips, you know, and we're talking He didn't want to talk about football. He wanted to talk about flying jets and stuff. And we did. And I spent three days with the team. It was precious, right? But Nick Saban is exactly that, right? And then you get, it's the people, then you get into the, get with the program. It's a process, okay? My dad used to say that, get with the program. There's a program, okay? And that's the process. And then the purpose will come out. Now, it's funny you mentioned Bill Belichick. just, Bill and I were, just on the phone here last week, okay? We met at an event and actually I didn't, it's a Blue Angel thing. This guy's walking towards me and I'm thinking it's one of my old buddies. And so I sort of a distance, I wave and I go walking up and I get about, you know, close as you and I are in the, with the cell phone here. And I look and I go, Belichick? He goes, And he looks at me he's like, who are you asshole, right? I mean, that's so much, but I look, I go, hey. John Gucci Foley, said, your dad was my coach and that, and then all of a sudden the, you know, the everything drops, right? He goes, really? And he said, yeah, cause I played football at Navy after Colorado and, and Bill's dad was the, the scout team coach. Right. And anyhow, we, we had a wonderful, incredible, experience and we're now we became friends. I'm not kidding you. And we're on each other's cell phones and we chat every now and then, but, you know, he's, got it down to, right? and, so the idea of people come first, there's so many companies that say that, but they don't do it. Right. And I think you're absolutely right. Did you know on the blue angels and in things I talk about, it's you've got to hire the right people. You got to bring the right eight players in and any team, right? but that's not enough, but that comes first. And then, then you got to train them. You got to mentor them. You got to bring them up to the standards. Jeff Dudan (31:07.486) Hmm. John 'Gucci' Foley (31:27.287) of the organization and guess what? When I jumped, when I got selected for the blues, I thought I was operating at pretty high level. I walk in that room, I went, holy crap, they're operating a whole new level. And you know this, you part of an organization, a culture, and I had to up my game. I mean, I was scared. I'm like, how am I gonna do this? Not as a human being also, but as a professional. And so people do come first. And then you better have the processes to scale this. right. And at the end of the day, you connect it back to that purpose. And now you got the magic. That's the glad to be here magic. Jeff Dudan (32:10.236) everybody wants to be part of a winning team. People want to be up to something and going somewhere. I'm always looking for people that are doing something interesting, pushing themselves, going somewhere new or exciting, because that's where the action happens, man. All the great things happen out on the edge in the rarefied air where the air is thin. And the opportunity, the margin for error gets smaller. The victory gets sweeter. So yeah, it's great. But you know, like for a lot of people, like we get, you kind of like that frog in the water that's boiling, you know, you get out into the, you get into the company and there's rules and this and that and the other thing, and maybe everybody's not wanting to put their oars and pull so hard in the same direction. And it's a challenge to get people in every environment to really want to win in that way. You know, I came across something, I got it. Yes. Removing Latency and Rushing to Conflict: Jeff’s Leadership Framework John 'Gucci' Foley (33:03.886) So how do you change that? I don't mean to throw you off, but we're having a great conversation. So how do you change that to where you get people? What's your technique? Rowan in the same Jeff Dudan (33:18.354) Look, Claire is a great book by Lencioni called The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary CEO and three of them have the word clarity on it. Right. So so so like what in our business and I just I just coached a new training class of franchisees this morning. And yeah, you know, so it's like, OK, one of your key roles is to remove latency from your business. So from the time that you determine that there's an action that needs to be taken to the time that that action is taken, that's latency between that time. So John 'Gucci' Foley (33:32.732) you did it. Jeff Dudan (33:48.234) What causes latency? Number one, a lack of clarity. When people aren't clear about what to do, they're going to hesitate, they're going to make something up, or they're going to do nothing at all. Latency in your business. Number two, people are conflict -averse. People are too polite. I say, there's three little words that ultimately got my wife to marry me. They're like, is it I love you? I said, it's lower your standards. John 'Gucci' Foley (34:16.447) Yeah! Jeff Dudan (34:18.27) But no, these three words are rush to conflict. if you can show up, right, because I do this thing where I tap out a song on the table and I say, what song is it? Nobody knows because they can't hear what I think. So the moment that you realize that something needs to, or there's a conflict or something going wrong, don't say, well, I'll send them an email and I'll set up a meeting two days from now and then I'll report back next week as to what it was. pick up the phone, but you've got to be able to show up without the blow up. There's a great quote that says, person who can most accurately describe reality without laying blame shall emerge as the leader. So to be able to rush to conflict, to pick up the call, to get an organization that understands that picking up the phone, rushing to conflict, and that everybody's responsible to, the moment they find out something is not going the way it's supposed to go. is to bring it to the attention or to rush to that conflict and then be able to not lay blame and just to get the situation resolved. It's a conditioning of a team that needs to happen because it's not typical in business. So those are the types of things that I really work on instilling in our organization. Making sure there's clarity, making sure that we're comfortable in having healthy conflict inside of it, and then making sure that Everybody understands that, you what the goal is, you know, the overarching goal. This is who we are. This is why it matters. I mean, for us, since you asked, we're partners with Carson Scholars Foundation. By 2037, we're going to give a million books away to children. We're going to raise a certain amount of money for Operation Homefront. We care greatly about financial security for families on Main Street USA. That's why we help people get into business. Businesses are a high class asset. John 'Gucci' Foley (35:56.525) Wow. Jeff Dudan (36:08.156) And then it's my job to show up every day and make sure that I'm over -communicating because some people get paid by the hour, other people get paid commission or by the job, but true leaders get paid by the conversation. It's the engagements that we have, it's the words that we say, it's the clarity that we create, it's the inspiration that we give to people. that's what people want to be a part of. And if it's anybody who's in a leadership position, You know, it's their responsibility to kind of further that agenda and then look and then we all just get to work after it. No, it's not gonna be perfect. You know, we don't by the way when we make a mistake like it's not like when the angels make a mistake like nobody dies generally, you know here so, you know, we have a greater margin of error than certainly you did. John 'Gucci' Foley (37:00.891) Wow, love your answer. can see why you're helping so many companies and so many people. Yeah, I love the clarity answer. I got the four C's of trust. I'm gonna add to your pile there. You might wanna think about this, but I really like what you talked about when, you know, why you're doing this. A million books to kids, man. I love that, right? Making a difference in other people's lives. And we started, my wife and I started the Glad to Be Your Foundation. And so we give 10 % of all our fees to charity. But here's the cool part, and try this Jeff, if you're not already doing it. Every client that hires me, they don't know this, but I tell them, hey, we're gonna give 10 % to charity. And here's what I find the difference is I let them pick. I let them pick what charity they wanna give it to. I think we've donated over our 460 charities. We sponsor 57 kids around the world. There's so many different things. that we're able to do, but it's not because of the money you realize by putting awareness to that, how important that is, how many people out there are doing good things like yourself, right? Making a difference in the world is huge. Love the idea of rush to conflict. You as you were talking and all that, I'm thinking I can apply everything you just said to my personal life, my deep relationships, right? And that's not always easy. You know, it's not always easy to rush Jeff Dudan (38:20.66) Yes. John 'Gucci' Foley (38:25.884) to the cave or the other conflict. I'm still working at it. I haven't mastered it, but I'm working at it. the other thought I'll just leave you with on that is, like when people ask me these kinds of questions, I say, you know, be Gandhi. And they're like, huh? And I'm like, yeah, be Gandhi. Just be the change you want to see in the world. So the world's coming from us, not at us. So if I want, you know, clarity, I better be clear. If I want to be, like you say, latency, then I'm the one that needs to show that I don't be late. And then of course it becomes a cultural Jeff Dudan (39:01.672) Look, we teach people how to treat us. I get these first time business owners and I'm like, look, what you put into the universe is exactly in measure what it's going to give back to you. you know, and by the way, you know, it's a lot of coaching these guys need because like, you know, you're going to get into dust ups in business and, you know, we have a set of values, the values break the ties and sometimes having a great reputation is going to cost you a little bit of money in the short term. John 'Gucci' Foley (39:10.813) There you From Limiting Beliefs to Liberating Beliefs: The Key to Unlocking Potential Jeff Dudan (39:29.684) So when you're faced with a tough decision, how do you make those decisions in the marketplace? it's such an opportunity to be able to work with so many of these first -time business owners and just give them a foundation and how to think things that took me millions of dollars of losses and years and years of road rash to be able to learn. And then go forth and we go as a unit. You know, we got hundreds of franchise owners out there. We move as a unit. We move as a group. We move in unison and we execute on our business plan. you know, easier said than done. I know we're going to come up against time here. There's something I have a bunch of stuff, but there's one thing that I would like you to speak to if you don't mind. Because I do a lot of work on the first thing that I have to do with these franchise owners is I've got to talk to them about their limiting beliefs. And. You know, you know, I just I hit them right between the eyes with like, look, this is an inflection point. You just wrote a check for a business that takes great courage. You stepped across the line. Now you can't re -contract. Why in the world would you try to make this business 50 % better than the life that you already had? Why don't you make it five times better or 10 times better? You know, and then once you put your business plan, why don't you challenge yourself to say, if I had to do twice as much in half the time, gun to my How could I, what could I do it? You know, so really pushing people into these solution sets. What it's really about, like everybody, we all are right where we are in life based on arguing with ourselves about our limiting beliefs. And, you know, I can't do this. I can't do that. I'm not good enough for this. I don't have the resources for that. I don't deserve it. Whatever it is. And, you know, people like Elon Musk, I mean, he has certain, you know, conditions don't allow him to have limiting beliefs. So he just sees like, we have to get to Mars. So then he does a regression analysis and he works backwards from it. Next thing you know, he can launch a rocket ship every hour on the hour and land it on its rear. But that's just a function of not having any limiting beliefs. So why can't you, or anybody else subscribe to that? But you said something that you made a distinction between limited beliefs and liberating beliefs. John 'Gucci' Foley (41:46.335) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:47.582) And that was the longest question of the history of the show. John 'Gucci' Foley (41:50.377) No, I love it, I love it because you're on it, you're on it. See, I think it starts with beliefs, right? And that's the idea. So when you get into it, you go, well, what's limiting me? What's causing me stuckness? What's holding me back? And more importantly, what's liberating me, okay? Where can I do that 5X, that 10X that you've talked about? I think that it comes from a concept I heard once in cognitive psychology. It goes like this, it says human beings, you and I, we don't perform at our full potential. What we actually perform at is a belief level. Now there's liberation in that because what that means is if you can raise your own belief, your own performance will follow. Okay, that's great for a franchisee owner. But the challenge in franchisee is all the other people, right? So it's more important, how do you raise someone else's beliefs so John 'Gucci' Foley (42:49.568) And that's the challenge, right? We as owners or leaders, how can we scale this to everybody? But it starts with yourself. I like to use that cadence of execution I talked about. The magic is in the debrief. We didn't get a chance to do too much of that, but you're probably going want to have me back on. I know both of us got to run, but at some point I'm honored to come back and talk more. I love what you're talking. Sure. Jeff Dudan (43:15.646) Let's do a whole thing on focus. Let's do a whole show on dynamic focus and that because that's some of the real money that was in your book. And I really got a lot out of that. But yeah, so we can keep going on this. I'll miss my flight. I don't care. John, I fly commercial. I don't fly the jets. But so last question for you before we have to pop off here. And well, first of all, can you want to give a shout out to your new project, something you want to promote real quick? John 'Gucci' Foley (43:22.965) Yeah, okay. John 'Gucci' Foley (43:32.653) Alright. Are You an Angel? The Five Roles That Define a Purpose-Driven Life John 'Gucci' Foley (43:45.087) sure. Well, first off, I just want to be grateful for you and your audience, right? Anything I can do to support them. A couple of things, you know, if you go to my website, johnfoliink .com, and you click on, I have a takeaway called the mindset and methods. So it kind of recapsulates some of the things we've been talking about. A couple of pages as a franchisee owner or whoever listening, it gives you a boost, right? Right away. Actionable. So that's fine. I'm going to put out that new called Be Glad to Be Your Mindset. In fact, that was the call I was on right before you, and that's gonna be pretty powerful. So just wanna be of service to others, right? There's lots of information there. what do you got? How do you wanna send people Jeff Dudan (44:27.076) question if you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody else's life what would that John 'Gucci' Foley (44:33.046) Well, you know, the idea of who are you, right? And so here's my sentence. When you ask, you know, who is John Foley or who am I is a better question. I like to say I'm an angel. And I said, why do you pick that? It's because I was doing some reading on wisdom and it says an angel has five qualities. An angel's a messenger, an angel gives guidance, an angel protects, an angel's a warrior, and above all else, an angel serves others. Well, know, Jeff, I don't know if that's really the five or not, but when I read that, I'm in. I just said, I'm in. So I would say, find the answer to that question. Who am I? And I'm an angel and I'm here to inspire a billion people to live and give life in all its fullness. That's the sense. Jeff Dudan (45:22.122) Perfectly said, great place to end. John Gucci Foley, thank you so much for your service to this country. Thank you so much for the inspiration that you provide to all of us. And this has been John Foley and I am Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thank you for listening. John 'Gucci' Foley (45:38.946) Jeff, glad to be here. Jeff Dudan (45:40.884) Thank you, sir.
Brief Summary Jeff Dudan sits down with Mick Hunt , founder of Premier Strategy Box and host of the Mick Unplugged podcast, for a powerful conversation on scaling businesses, living with purpose, and using technology to stay ahead. From a childhood promise to his mother to leading high-growth companies across industries, Mick shares the origin of his drive, the evolution of the modern buyer, and his unique leadership framework called The M.I.C.K. Factor. This episode is packed with heart, grit, and actionable insight for entrepreneurs looking to grow with integrity. Key Takeaways Business Was the Way Out : Mick’s entrepreneurial journey began with a promise to help his mother escape an abusive home—everything he built was rooted in that mission. KPIs Are King : He scaled and sold his first business by tracking key performance indicators and running it like a true CEO—not just a founder. Modern Buyers Think Differently : Businesses must evolve to meet the expectations of today’s consumer—who could be your grandma buying groceries on an app. Embrace AI or Get Left Behind : The rapid pace of AI means small businesses that don’t adopt tech are at risk of obsolescence or forced acquisition. The M.I.C.K. Factor : Mick’s leadership framework stands for Mental resiliency , Imagination , Character , and Knowing yourself —the traits that separate good from great. "Because" Beats "Why" : A deeper reason—your “because”—drives long-term action. Mick helps businesses find this clarity beyond mission statements. Build With Purpose : Business ownership isn’t just a wealth strategy; it’s a path to leave a legacy and protect the middle class from being squeezed out. Featured Quote “Your vision shows you where to go. Your imagination is how you get there.” — Mick Hunt TRANSCRIPT Mick Hunt’s Origin Story: A Promise to His Mom That Changed Everything Jeff Dudan (00:04.502) Hey, everybody out there. Thank you for jumping on the home front. I am Jeff Duden. And today we are with Mick Hunt. Mick, welcome. Mick (00:12.814) Jeff, thanks for having me on brother. Jeff Dudan (00:14.774) Yeah, absolutely. I've been watching your podcast grow and we got a little bit fascinated with it. So I'm excited to have you on the show here today. Mick (00:24.27) I'm excited to be on as well, man. And I love your podcast as well. So I'm a huge fan. So when your team reached out, I was like, absolutely. Jeff and I are about to crush this one today. Jeff Dudan (00:32.31) 100%. Great. Mick, would you share a little bit about who you are, how you grew up? Mick (00:42.382) Yeah, man. So I am Mick Hunt, obviously. I'm a Leo. I like running on the beach. I like sand in between my. That's not what you wanted, Jeff. My bad, my bad. No, so grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, went to college at the University of North Carolina. So I'm a tar heel through and through. But my journey, Jeff, man, started with a promise that I made my mom at the age of 10. Jeff Dudan (00:50.294) Well, no, it is. I usually just get that after. Mick (01:11.246) And a lot of folks that know me know a little bit about this story, but I'm gonna go deep with you, Jeff. So, you know, 10 years old, for 10 years, I had been watching my mom go through physical, emotional, psychological, financial abuse from my father. And at 10, I'm sitting at the edge of my bed and I have tears running down my face. But the tears aren't mine, they're the tears of my mom who had just suffered a horrific night, right? And so I'm sitting there and I'm telling my mom like, leave, like, please just leave. Like, I'll deal with it. You and my sister go, I'll handle it. And my mom looked at me and said, no, because I love you, I'm not gonna let you suffer. If one suffers, we all suffer. And that stuck with me. And so that moment. Jeff, I decided that I was at some point going to get my mom out of that torment. And I didn't know what that looked like at 10. Like, I'm not going to lie to the audience. I didn't have the answers at 10. But at 10, I made the decision that I was going to change my mom's life. And so everything that I did growing up was for that reason, was to get my mom out of that situation, to get my sister out of that situation, my brother who was born later, to get him out of that situation. And so growing up where I grew up, Jeff, and I know you're from this or you live in the South now. I don't know if you're from the South, but when I grew up, you saw success as either being an athlete or entertainer, right? Or a doctor or a lawyer. Like that pretty much was what success looked like. And so I was going to be one of those four things. I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, an entertainer or athlete. Jeff Dudan (02:41.014) That's right. Mick (02:48.142) And so everything that I did in life was striving to be the best. Went to college and was not either of those four things, but what I realized was that business was a way to make all of your dreams come true, so to say. So started my career as an insurance agent. realized that I was helping someone live their dreams. You know, I tell this story, you know, he was winning trips to like to Paris, to Rome, Italy, to Banff, Canada, to Atlantis. And then he was sending me on trips to Atlanta. Right. And I don't know if you know this, Jeff, but Atlantis and Atlanta are not the same thing. And so that sparked me to start my own business so that I could fulfill the promise that I made to my mom. So I was an entrepreneur, business owner at the age of twenty seven. and I've never looked back and like that has really driven me, but the drive really was the promise that I made my mom. Jeff Dudan (03:43.798) Greenville, South Carolina. Went to school at Chapel Hill. Now, did your sister and brother also get out of Greenville? Mick (03:56.75) No, so long story, my parents ended up divorcing my sophomore year of college and I'm the oldest. So my sister, I think, was a junior in high school. My brother was like five years old. So it was one of those things where it was a later deal, but they all live in South Carolina now. Jeff Dudan (04:20.054) somehow between the age of 27 starting your own business and then today you've become a very successful podcaster, a sought after speaker, a consultant, a business consultant. It looks like walk me through that first business and maybe the decision to make that business and then how did that lead to who make us today? From Insurance to Millionaire: Building and Selling His First Business by 31 Mick (04:44.27) Yeah, that's a great question and a great story. So again, I started in the insurance industry. So I was a sales manager for an agent, helping grow that business. He had goals of being like the biggest, baddest agent in the country. And we made that happen. But what I realized was that I could do that for myself. So the catapult for me at 27 was proving that I could do it. And I built one of the fastest growing insurance agencies without merger without acquisition in a three year period Ended up selling that business at the age of 31 for Several million dollars. I'll just put it that way what wasn't looking to sell But it was one of those things where like the Godfather movie, right? Like put a napkin on a table and I was like, yeah, if this is real then let's go make this happen So sold my agency went to go head up another Jeff Dudan (05:25.398) Awesome. Mick (05:39.488) large business where I just implemented the strategies that I had in my existing business and that that company went from 50 million of revenue to 70 million of revenue in four years and that's when I said Jeff you know what I want to show other business owners how to do this because a lot of times we make growth and scaling much harder than it needs to be I'm not gonna exaggerate and say that it's easy but when you focus on the right key performance indicators and you really run your business like a CEO, growth and scale becomes the output of that. And so from. Jeff Dudan (06:37.933) Okay, so we're picking it back up. We good? Mick (06:41.262) Yeah, you're back now. Yeah, you were frozen on my end. I just kept going because it happens. Jeff Dudan (06:44.973) Yeah, it was still recording and stuff, so hopefully we're good here and we don't have an issue. We recorded one earlier today and it went fine. Okay, so KPI, 50 million to 70 million dollars, KPI is growing a business, and then you made a decision. Scaling With KPIs: Why Strategy, Not Hustle, Drives Growth Mick (07:06.67) Yeah, I made a decision that I wanted to help business owners do this, right? And so again, focus on the right KPI is running it like a true CEO was really what I was doing. And so I created a consulting firm, you know, consultants kind of have a bad name, right? Bad image, you hire this company and they're going to come give you some rule books, but they don't know your business. They don't know how to do it. But I've been very successful. Jeff Dudan (07:29.165) Well, I'll tell you what I told my wife consultants are is somebody that you pay so much money to tell you what you already know to do, but you've paid them so much that you will actually do it. Yeah. And there's accountability, right? Mick (07:42.414) Exactly. And that literally, and that's what I and my team become. We become, we like to say we're your chief revenue officer, your outsource chief revenue officer, but more importantly, we're your account, we're your accountability. We're gonna make sure that the things that we're gonna accomplish are the things that we actually are gonna accomplish and do it together. But that's been my thing, Jeff, is really helping businesses become who they are. But it all goes back to my core principles of I made promises, right? And so I talk to business leaders about what's your real why? Not the superficial why, but I call it your because. What's your because? What's that real reason that you're doing what you do? And let's do everything around that. And so that's been who I've been, Jeff, since the day I started my company. Jeff Dudan (08:33.485) Okay, Mick, who's a typical client for you? What do they look like? Is it five million, 10 million, 20 million in revenue? What's it look like? Attracting the Modern Buyer: Why Business Must Evolve or Die Mick (08:42.67) Yeah, so I'd say typically anywhere from small, say three to five million revenue, but then I have a couple of Fortune 500 companies as well, different dynamics, but I can tell you the problem that we solve or where most people are looking to hire me or my team. It's really, you're stuck. Like you're stuck with how do I grow? And more importantly, how do I attract the new modern customer? And then how do I provide that experience? Because, Jeff, like all of us are the modern buyer now, right? Like when people hear modern buyer, they immediately think age. Well, that's not the truth, right? Like we all buy differently. My mom now, Jeff, buys her groceries with an app and just pulls her car up and has them delivered to her car. Right? My mom's not a 20 year old. My mom's not a millennial or whatever the new generation is. But that's how we all buy. And so I help businesses. We really help businesses that are stuck with this new modern buyer. And then more importantly, once they are a customer, the experience that they should have with it. Jeff Dudan (09:51.949) Yeah, so million dollar business, it used to be that one million dollar businesses were the absolute hardest size of business to run because you don't have enough revenue to hire real qualified middle management. You don't have enough revenue to hire a seasoned, experienced executive team. But yet you still have all the functions of a billion dollar business. You've got sales, accounting, finance, technology. Mick (09:56.91) Mm -hmm. Mick (10:16.558) Absolutely. Jeff Dudan (10:18.445) And if you can't pay attention, if you're just executing inside of a business like that, and maybe that's a three to $5 million business today, and you don't have your head up on the horizon, especially now with AI and how fast things are changing. And, you know, there's things that I literally looking at things today for our business that used to be a four month project with a project manager, with some technologists. assessing and integrating some software technology into something. And at the end of it, you would have this outcome. And we were all doing those projects. Maybe it's a hundred and hundred or $200 ,000 project to get this thing implemented. And then I'm on the phone with somebody, you know, an ex naval military intelligence officer who's been working in AI for three years. And he's like, here, this does everything. I can install it in a week and it's $300 for your whole company. And I'm like, okay. And it does it does it all. So like if you're not out there, I'm spending more and probably 50 % of my travel time is split between recruiting the right people to lead our businesses and then out there figuring out who's got that customer acquisition cocktail that includes intelligent consumer engagement. Mick (11:15.694) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (11:40.525) you know, re ranking, who's how to identify out of the massive list of potential customers, who are the five star customers, who's engaging right now, who's ready to be talked to. And I'm telling you, it's, it's every month I'm finding something new. So if you're a three to $5 million business owner and you're just like, you know, I'm really comfortable. I got another 10 years to retirement. I just want to keep doing what I'm doing. You're at risk right now. Like you are at big risk of being either made obsolete. Mick (11:58.542) how hard it may. The AI Wildfire: How Tech Is Disrupting Small Business Valuations Jeff Dudan (12:10.637) or somebody coming to you and saying, I'm going to give you pennies on the dollar for your business because it's, you know, or we're just going to, we're going to roll you over and take it. Mick (12:21.07) I totally agree. I totally agree. Like I actually just spoke two weeks ago on that very similar topic, Jeff, where I told people literally what you just said. If you're not evolving, like our technology and AI is evolving, you probably won't be here in the next three years. Because if you're not trying, trust me, other people are. And what Jeff and I are not saying is AI is going to replace humans. That's not what we're saying. But those companies that don't utilize AI, those are the ones that are going to get replaced. Or maybe it's not AI, but maybe it's machine learning, but something. If you're not using some type of advanced technology in your business, you're not going to make it. And you're not going to attract what I'm going to call the modern buyer. Right, like you're missing customers that you never knew existed, but more importantly, they don't know you exist either. And that's a big dilemma. Jeff Dudan (13:13.741) So here's something I'm observing right now. Like a forest fire or a fast moving brush fire in the mountains, right? The winds are just right. That's what I'm seeing in acquisition of small businesses right now. Because the compelling argument that you can make that if you put your business onto this platform and we put these tools around it, that it is going to drive five times the value than you're able to drive in keeping it yourself and driving it yourself. And I'm seeing like the roll up game right now. And it doesn't almost matter. It's like, if you have customers in any business, service industry, insurance industry, any of those things, there are people that have constructed these migration implementation platforms. And so they can pay you a lot for your business because it's worth many times more than that when they get it onto their system. And, you know, and I don't know, you know, I said I probably shouldn't say this, but that's when I go ahead and say it, Mick. So I used to work with a guy, right. And he's you know, we're in Huntersville, North Carolina, and this guy was a second generation real estate guy, residential properties, commercial properties. So their family. was in Huntersville when there was nobody in Huntersville. So they just bought farmland and they bought houses and they bought buildings and they just ended up with lots and lots of property. And this guy was second generation. So they've been accumulating property for 30 or 40 years. And you can imagine stuff you bought in the 50s, if you still owned it today. And he said to me, and then he said this like 10 or 15 years ago, he said, Jeff, there's just no more stupid farmers left. Jeff Dudan (15:14.413) And I mean, he made and you know, that's that sounds horrible to all the farmers out there. But, you know, well, actually, it's just Bill Gates. But, you know, he owns all the farms now. But sorry, Bill. But, you know, he would say, I mean, it was the point was, it's like, I mean, he did a same day. He had a family friend and she was a German lady and they own this beautiful piece of property. And, you know, he had been Mick (15:25.678) Right. Jeff Dudan (15:43.341) eating Sunday supper with them and all of that kind of stuff. And he went and bought that property from this lady for $200 ,000 and did a same day close to a developer out of Atlanta for three million bucks. And it's like, and you know what I mean? Did he take advantage? Probably. But he had the connections, he had the contacts to do it. And my son said to me the other day, and we're business builders, we're blue collar guys, we build businesses and then private equity comes in and makes the real money on our lifetime of work that we do. But how many people are out there right now that say, hey, my business is worth $2 million and somebody comes in and offers them four, right? And they're like, this is the greatest and it's a great deal for them and they take it, but it was really worth 12. Mick (16:36.878) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (16:42.029) In a different platform, looking at it from a different view with different tools, it was worth more. And I think this value creation through acquisition from a technology enabled position is, like I said, it's a wildfire. And I'm seeing it very quietly start to kick up in different industries and different markets. My question is, what's the earth going to be like after that's done? Mick (16:42.542) Right. Right. Jeff Dudan (17:10.029) because very few people are going to own a lot more of everything. And we see it in real estate with the private equity firms. Started some years ago, decided we need to own all the homes in America. Private Equity and the Shrinking Middle Class: Who Will Own Everything? Mick (17:24.27) And that's what's going on in the insurance space as well too, right? I mean, I'm sure you can see it. I don't care where you're at now, but go out and look and see how many nationwide state farm all state agencies you see now compared to just even 10 years ago. It's not as many. It's not as many private equities coming to the insurance space and. Jeff Dudan (17:25.997) Is it? Mick (17:43.342) the exclusives, the independents are all now parts of big conglomerates. It's almost like college football and realignment, right? Soon there's just gonna be two or three conferences. I feel like that's how the insurance industry is gonna be and probably the real estate industry, right? There's gonna be three or four big private equity companies and you're gonna belong to one of them. Exactly. Jeff Dudan (18:02.285) Yeah, yeah, and I think so. It seems to be the way of the world. I just don't know, I don't know what's on the other end of it when so much wealth gets accumulated in such a small place. And I think historically, when the middle class shrinks in other countries, it's usually not a good thing. Yeah, so that's what we do. I mean, there's really three things we care about at Homefront Brands. And part of it is financial security, economic freedom for families on Main Street USA through business ownership. Businesses are a hedge against inflation. Business ownership lets you take advantage of the tax code. So you can be very tax efficient with your earnings from a business. not only when you sell it under capital gains, but also when you're building it. Take advantage of all the deductions that you get there. And it's going to move with inflation. So if prices go up, the prices in your business go up. If wages go up, your wages go up. But at least you have a hedge. Businesses are a high class asset, as you found out. And so we care greatly about giving families the opportunity to participate. in business ownership and it doesn't have to be the only thing that they do, but it can be one of the things that they do because businesses are a high class asset as part of anybody's portfolio. Then the other thing we care about is children. We're committed by 2037 to give away a million books to children and we've partnered with Ben and Candy Carson and Carson Foundation to build reading rooms across the country. We're building two this year. We want to build two or three or four as many as we can. every year with the Carson family in schools. So Homefront brand reading rooms, and then we care a great deal about transitioning veterans. So we are partnered with Operation Homefront where we support transitioning veterans, anything that they need. Patriotism is way down in this country and the military is about 60 % of where they need to be in terms of volunteer people signing up. And it's a military is a great option for many, many people, especially with the technology. Jeff Dudan (20:24.525) today that you can learn and all of that great stuff. So those are the things that we care about. That's what gets us out of bed in the morning here at Homefront Brands. And the business, like, you know, it's build a business for you, build a business for your family. Mick (20:40.878) I love that. I love that. That's amazing. So I know Jeff, you're the interviewer, but I've got a question for you though. Like loving everything. Hey, we'll repurpose it or something. Who knows, right? But knowing what I know about Homefront brands and the values that you place. Jeff Dudan (20:46.285) Sure, I just took over the interview. I forgot, I thought I was on your show for a minute. Starting a Business? Here’s What’s Really Holding You Back Mick (21:02.446) Where do you think the biggest challenge is for the family or the person that's like, I want to start a business, but I don't know if I can. What do you see as the biggest challenge? Jeff Dudan (21:14.925) Look, you just have to commit and you have to decide that that's what you want to do. You can say it's economics, but man, getting into a property service franchise is not expensive. You can, I mean, there's all kinds of different ways to fund these things. You can fund them through a rollover of 401k. You can get an SBA loan. You can, I mean, some of our fees are so low, you can put things on credit cards, but it's really just about deciding that you're at an inflection point. which usually has three things around it. Number one, people. People that you're responsible for, people that you care about, your mom, your brother and your sister. People that you wanna do something with, or sometimes even people that you wanna get away from. But there's always a people component to an inflection point. Then it's an adventure or an opportunity to do something different, to bet on yourself, to do something great. And then there's a risk of loss, because generally if you're gonna focus on something new, something's got to come off your plate. And you got to, so you have to make a, it's just really this conscious decision of I'm going to trade this potential future of my life for this other potential future for my life. And then you run the scenarios and you just say, is it worth it? But the deal is, is like once it's like I used to coach little kids in football and the deal was this. We ran a very autonomous program. I taught them everything in the first third of the season. We coached them the last third of the season and the middle third of the season. And then in the last third of the season, we turned the team over to the kids and we let them be autonomous. And man, dude, they were warming up loose just like a college team and they weren't doing pushups or we didn't have them lined up in lines, but man, they played fast, loose and for each other. And we won more championships than we lost. So, you know, when you can get people that are playing for themselves and for a purpose and for the person to the left of them and the person to the right of them, anything is possible in this life. So, you know, that's what it has to be. You've got to be committed to building this business. You might not like every piece of it. Nobody does. There's things you have to do. But it always comes down to can't or won't, right? Either, you know, very, very 99 .9 % of the time it's not can't because people can do it. Mick (23:26.766) Mm. Jeff Dudan (23:37.165) It's just they won't do it. And so that's where that commitment piece comes in. Our businesses work. I mean, they work. They work great, you know, until they don't. You know, and it's usually because you've had a genius attack and you've tried to make this your business in your way instead of doing it our business in our way. But so that's, yeah, that's, you know, so it all comes down to that first step of making a commitment and making a decision. Mick (23:38.19) Correct. Correct. Mick (23:44.992) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mick (23:51.042) That's right. Mick (23:58.094) Of course. Jeff Dudan (24:06.605) and all of that. And then, you know, you've got to, because you never know what are the decisions and the roads and the challenges that are going to come up. You just have to realize that it's not fatal. And, you know, chaos will be the norm. And you've got a lot of learning to do. But over time, you will build the muscles and you will build the muscle memory. And you'll start seeing things not for the first time, but for the second, third, fourth and fifth time. And you'll know what to do. Mick (24:24.942) Absolutely. Jeff Dudan (24:37.089) And then it comes down to, once you establish a beachhead, then it becomes who, not how. Like, who do you put on your, your ability to scale anything is gonna be directly correlated to the people that you can put around you. And that's that. So we work them through, like, so that's what I love, man. I'm a coach. I love working them through these phases. But like I went back to the football analogy, I would teach these kids. You know, once you step across that white line onto the field, you cannot re -contract. You cannot decide not to tackle. You cannot decide not to jump on a loose ball. You cannot decide to walk when you need to run. Like it's the decision was made when you saw when your parents signed you up, you know, and if you decide like it's so, you know, you have to shut the door to a failure behind you and you've just got to burn the boats and, you know, move forward with it, which comes back to the whole commitment thing like and that's what life is, man. It's just about picking. Mick (25:13.23) Yeah, that's it. Mick (25:25.55) Yep, that's it. Jeff Dudan (25:41.421) the right opportunities with the right people and then making sure that you execute on those things. So, which, you know, if we want to transition over to this, I'd love to talk about the make factor philosophy because we, we, four pillars of it. And, I really am very interested in a couple of these, but if you don't mind, would you share a little bit about that? Because I've got some specific questions, but, what is that? Never, I don't want to never answer an unasked question. Mick (25:41.454) Mm -hmm. Mick (25:47.246) I totally agree. The M.I.C.K. Factor: 4 Pillars That Shape Resilient Leaders Jeff Dudan (26:11.533) So I'm not gonna, I will see what I can learn from you on these four pillars and then I'll maybe have a couple of questions that are just nagging at me. Mick (26:12.558) There it is. Mick (26:21.646) Yeah, man. So, you know, you probably know this, but Les Brown, motivational speaker, is one of my personal mentors. Les and I have like a father -son relationship. We talk literally four to five times a day. We start our morning talking to each other. We talk to each other right before we go to bed. That's the relationship that we have. Jeff Dudan (26:28.397) Yes. Mick (26:41.998) And part of what he saw in me were my core beliefs and my core principles. And anyone that's ever worked with Les, he's going to give you an acronym. And he was like, Mick, what you're saying is that you have the Mick factor. And everything that you've been able to do, you've done it because mental resiliency and mastery. So the right? Imagination and innovation, the I. character and courage to see, knowing yourself and the power to keep going, okay? And so to me, that embodies not just a leader, but also just, I'm gonna say a great human being, right? Because life is about humans being humans. And so I like to impart the MEC factor as a way to always give your best in the situation that you're in. I never tell people that your yesterday's best should be your today's best, right? Like if Jeff wakes up and he's not feeling 100%, I can't expect him to be who he was yesterday. But I can't expect Jeff to give me the best version of Jeff that he can today. And so that's what the MICK Factor does. It reminds me that, hey, there's things that I've got to make sure that I do. And in order to be the best, again, going back to that 10 -year -old me, in order to be the best, in order to be the kid that made straight A's or the kid that was going to be a first round driver, or the kid that was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, I had to have mental resiliency. I had to master something, right? Like Bruce Lee says, I fear not the man that practices, you know, over 10 ,000 kicks. I fear the man that practices one kick 10 ,000 times, right? And so you've got to master something. And that goes into what we do with executive coaching as well too. Like what's your business really going to be? And are you going to keep the main thing the main thing? And then as you know, Jeff, with business, especially in today's world, imagination and innovation is. is huge, right? Like you can't stay the same. And as things evolve, you have to evolve. Mick (28:35.022) And so if you're not using your imagination and if you're not using innovation to your advantage, you're not gonna be there. And then with courage and character, you just, you hit it on the head. It was like, I almost asked you that question, right? Like you've got to have the courage to take the first step because you're never gonna take the first step until you take it. And sometimes that takes courage. And then character to me is like the most important thing. Are you really gonna have integrity with what you do? It would have been very easy for me at 31 years old to be at more I'm a multi -millionaire to forget who I was. And I think for a lot of us, we go through that phase, whether it's relationships, whether it's business, whatever, there's always moments that challenge us and challenge our character. And for anyone listening, don't think it's not gonna happen or it hasn't happened. But are you really gonna be the person that you say you are? And then that leads to know who you are. Right? Like you've got to know that you have greatness within you as Les Brown would say. I probably owe him $20 for saying that today because that's his deal. But then more importantly, keep going because life is going to life. Right? Like life is really going to smack you at some point. And how do you respond? And are you going to keep going? And if you were to ask me, Jeff, what separates good from great? Because I hate when people try to quantify, you know, here's average, here's good, here's great, here's exceptional. those rungs on the ladder aren't equal. Like the rung between good and great is really like this. It's not right here. It's not this small little step. But the difference is people are battle tested and they keep going. And at some point you're gonna come on the other side. And so to me that's what the MEC factor really is. It's the core pillars that can make you the best version of you every single day. Jeff Dudan (30:23.821) Imagination is an interesting piece. You don't hear a lot about that, but you said something. I read this book, How Google Works, and this is an older book. It's been out for a while. And they talk about how they built that company on smart creatives. And as I think about AI and the ability to fix code and do all this stuff, Mick (30:36.366) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (30:50.349) A lot of engineering, a lot of coding type stuff is now getting easier for more people to do through these tools. So smart creatives who can think about the question as opposed to the mechanics of working through to getting to an answer are the ones that are really going to be able to leverage these tools. So I find it interesting that you have imagination in here. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit deeper about how you encourage your clients to access their imagination and maybe how it impacts their leadership. The Power of Imagination in Leadership and Business Strategy Mick (31:28.27) Yeah, absolutely. I tell people this all the time, your vision will show you where you want to go. Imagination is actually how you get there. Jeff, to use a football analogy, we know if we started the 20 yard line and we're going to the end zone, our vision shows us how to get there. We know where it is, but our imagination is what takes us to the end zone. Exactly. Jeff Dudan (31:49.607) the double reverse pass. Mick (31:52.91) Because nothing's gonna be as simple as going from point A to point B. And so for me, that's what imagination as a leader has to be a core principle. Imagination for a business has to be a core principle because you always have to evolve, right? Like if everything were easy and simple, everyone in this world would be billionaires, right? But the one thing that most billionaires have in common, Jeff, is that they had imagination to get to where they were. I don't know any billionaire, number one, I don't personally know a ton of billionaires, I know a few, but all of them were creative and used imagination to come up with a new answer to a problem or a new question that maybe doesn't exist yet. And so if you talk to a Damon John, a Mark Cuban, they're all gonna tell you they didn't solve today's problem. They solve the problem that nobody's thinking about. And to me, that's what imagination is, is the ability to see steps beyond steps. And for everyone that's listening or that's watching, literally, for your business, for your personal life, what is the solution that you're providing that no one's thought about? Because to me, that's the essence of true imagination in your business. Jeff Dudan (33:05.485) You know, to see things clearly in the future and to have the conviction to pursue them today. There's a Chinese proverb that says brilliance is, and of course I'm gonna butcher this, but, you know, the ability to look like a fool amongst the crowd. and to withstand it, like brilliances. You've got to be the first one to see it, and you've got to be going after it, and most people are going to... How many of these stories do you hear where, now we had 120 private funding meetings, venture capital meetings, and nobody would fund us, and now it's Uber, or something like that, right? So you've got to be able to stand among the crowd and see it. So we're doing this thing. So one of my buckets, when I sold my business and I... I tried my best Steve Jobs and I wrote up four pillars on the, four squares on the whiteboard. And I said, you know, when jobs came back and you know, they were in a hundred business lines and he said, we're just going to do these four things. And that's when he came, they recruited them back and he built Apple into what it is today. And so, you know, I, I had a bucket on my future imagination and it was called intellectual property, just IP. And you know, it's. Okay, what is that? Well, it can be a podcast It can be a book or two. It can be trademarks. It can be speaking But now there's all these little tools out there like where they're either blockchain tools or their IP Repositories where you don't even have to file a trademark or a patent You can just put the idea in there and then because of the blockchain it'll prove that it was your idea on this date so Mick (34:59.15) Mm hmm. Jeff Dudan (34:59.437) You know, so I'm building, I'm building my team around me, assistance and, and, you know, specialists and stuff like that so that we can really, we can really pursue this IP. But when I have that conversation in a meeting and I'll say, Hey, we're going to use this tool and we're going to use that tool and we're going to use this tool. And, you know, here's all the little things that I want to put in there. And we're just going to start protecting all everything that we come up with. We're just going to start protecting. It might be a hundred bucks to, you know, I came up with this little phrase, cash is king, but equity is the kingdom, right? I'm like, well, right? Right? That's a tweet, for sure. But, you know, and I've been saying it, and now people are playing it back to me. And I'm like, I should probably protect that. Because unless, you know, there's a chance I heard it somewhere, but I don't think so. So anyway, so, but we're in this room with a diverse set of people. Mick (35:32.814) That's it. Right. Mick (35:44.974) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (35:55.853) And they all start coming up with saying, I had this idea about this. I had this idea about that. And it's just a whole fun time of people telling you all the inventions, all the ideas, all the things they think the world needs that don't currently exist that they can't find anywhere online. And they're everywhere. But people don't act on them. They don't write them down. Mick (36:24.462) Yep. Yep. Jeff Dudan (36:25.773) They don't protect them and they certainly don't say, you know what, I'm gonna give up something to go after this crazy idea that could be the next RJ45 connector that plugs a phone into the wall where the guy made billions of dollars, you know, because he had the patent on that or who knows what it is, you know? And it's so these, you know, the ideas that people can imagine are flowing. Mick (36:33.678) Right. Right. Mick (36:40.846) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (36:53.677) in and out of people's brains every day, but the conviction to actually say, you know, that's a business because that's a future need that people have. It's fascinating. So I love, and I think today more than ever, I think creativity and imagination channeled the right way, paid attention to, can create dividends for people. Mick (37:05.569) Yeah. Yeah, because I think now... Mick (37:16.59) No, I agree with that a thousand percent because I think one of the challenges today, especially with, I'm going to say the generation younger than us, Jeff, is that if it can't go on TikTok and go viral, they don't consider it to be a great business idea. Right. And to me, it's there's there's money in the mundane. That's what I tell people. Money in the mundane. So so be mundane sometimes. It's OK. Jeff Dudan (37:34.797) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (37:39.949) What's the most viral thing you've ever done, Mick? You got anything that ever went viral? Mick (37:46.126) Nope, and I don't even try to think of anything to go viral either. One of my most viewed podcasts is with Les Brown. That's the only thing that's gonna go viral, and it wasn't even me. It was Les doing something silly, but I've never tried to do anything viral. I don't pay attention if something has gone viral. I don't know. What about you? Jeff Dudan (37:55.789) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:06.381) You know the quarterback Sam Hartman who played for Notre Dame? Yeah, yeah, I had him. I went down and the day before the draft I went down and he's a family friend. So I went down and did him. I the one clip that went viral wasn't my core audience was does Sam Hartman have a girlfriend? That's the most viral thing we've got. I don't know what does it got 3, 400, 500 ,000 views or something like that. It's yeah. Mick (38:11.822) and wait for us. Yeah. Mick (38:28.202) There you go. Beyond Mission Statements: Find Your "Because" Jeff Dudan (38:35.373) The answer for those wondering, yes, he does. So save yourself the pain of going to find that clip. So when is it you came to understand that because could be more powerful than why? Mick (38:35.469) Crazy. Mick (38:41.602) You just ruined some hearts, Jeff. Mick (38:58.286) That's a great question. So I don't want to be cliche and say when I was 10, but I would say literally halfway through my first business, when I kept going back to the more success I have, the better my mom is going to be. My mom is my why also. But it was because of promise that I made. Jeff Dudan (39:19.692) Yeah. Mick (39:24.75) It was because I didn't want to let her down. And to me, that was more powerful because I had to look myself in the mirror every day. Right. And did I let my mom down today? Did I give my best? Right. When you know what your why is, it's awesome. Right. Like, I'm sure everyone's kids are their why. Everyone's spouses are their why. Right. But why? Right? So, so what's the true reason? You know, like if you ask why five or six times, you get to the actual answer, right? Like, I'm sure you've done this with your kids, right? Why? Why? Why? Then you get to the real answer. Right. But well, that six or seventh is your actual because. And so that's why I like to go deeper. And I actually do this exercise with businesses that I coach as well, too, is we get rid of mission and vision statements at your business. Jeff Dudan (39:58.317) yeah, I'm pulling my hair out while I'm saying that. Jeff Dudan (40:04.653) Okay. Mick (40:16.686) Because most of the time, those statements were created by a marketing firm or marketing company or marketing consultant. And no one on your team really embraces or they're not really impacted by your mission and vision statement. And honestly, this was a Harvard Business Review study. Only 8 % of customers even know a mission or vision statement of one of the top brands that they work with or that they do business with. But a because statement can be powerful. So we actually have businesses Jeff Dudan (40:20.269) Hmm. Mick (40:47.086) go through a because statement exercise and we really boil it down to what's the real reason that your business does what it does for its consumers. and that should be your because statement. You don't need a mission statement. You don't need a vision statement. I could probably guess everyone who's listening that owns or works at a business, I could probably guess within five words what your mission and vision statement is because most of them all sound the same, right? But if I told you, Jeff, we do what we do at Premier Strategy Box or at Mic Unplugged because results matter to our customers, that means something, right? Because results matter. Jeff Dudan (41:21.933) Hmm. Okay. Mick (41:28.878) because somebody gave a darn, right? Like those are, that's an example of one that one of my clients changed their suit. Because someone gave a darn, we could start this charitable foundation that we have that gives back to veterans and servicemen. Because someone gave a darn. You're gonna remember that as a consumer. You're gonna connect with that. If I say our mission is to be the most sought after real estate agency in the country and we have a vision to be the leader in our community, which I'm sure everybody that's listening, you have something like that in your mission and vision statements, I promise you. That doesn't resonate with anyone and I promise you no one on your team can recite them either. Jeff Dudan (42:09.261) Yeah, dude, I really, really like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. That makes a lot of sense. Mick (42:14.894) Thank you. Yeah, like when I go speak, I'll say, okay, who's the business owner here and who are the employees? And raise your hand, right? If you're the business owner, don't look at me. If you're an employee, look at me. Can you recite your mission and vision statement verbatim right now? And hardly anyone's hands go up and I say, get rid of them. Don't put them on your website. If they don't connect with you personally, if they don't give you chills when you think about it, get rid of them. Jeff Dudan (42:45.965) Yeah, so we have a vision statement and it's long. Our purpose statement is embedded within it and it's impacting future generations and we do that by the three things that I mentioned earlier. So that's tight, but I wonder what the because would be. You know, like why, like why does it matter that we impact future generations? You know, if we did a because statement, exercise. Mick (42:58.766) Mm -hmm. Why Legacy Matters: The Heart Behind Homefront Brands Mick (43:11.31) because your legacy matters. Jeff Dudan (43:13.229) Hmm. Mick (43:15.63) Right? And we could go through an exercise. Jeff Dudan (43:16.813) Jen call easy IP and before Mick does and I don't get that. Is it? All right, make sure we record that. Yeah. Mick (43:24.141) That's my gift to you, Jeff. But something like, but knowing what I know about home front brands though, right? Like you do what you do because legacies matter or because your financial legacy should matter, right? But along those lines, right, right. Jeff Dudan (43:39.981) Yeah, but it's more than just financial. It's more than that. Yeah, I like, you know, I am impulsive, but that might work its way into the deck or something, you know. I'm definitely gonna do an exercise. I'm definitely gonna look at that. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And it's Christmas in July. Mick (43:58.126) It's my Christmas gift to you, Jeff. It's what I'm here for. It's what I'm here for. Right. Because Christmas happens every year, you know? Jeff Dudan (44:07.437) It does. It does. Okay, got it. Because Christmas happened. That could be somebody's because statement. Like the, what is it, Franklin Ministries? Have you ever done that where they pack up all the boxes up here? That's halfway between you. That's down in Fort Mill, I think, right? Yeah. And we've done that as a family. That's pretty cool. What is that? Do you remember the name of that? It's Franklin, it's Billy, it's Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son. Mick (44:12.782) See it? Great. Mick (44:22.414) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Mick (44:31.982) I don't. If you wouldn't have asked me, I could have been... Jeff Dudan (44:37.773) And they're packing up that's the and you pack up all those boxes and you send them all over the world for Christmas. Yeah, yeah, we did that. That was pretty cool. That would be great. Well, fantastic boy. Enjoyed that so much I've lost my train of thought. I'm all in. You got me all in my belly button now, make I'm thinking about our business. That's not supposed to be thinking about yours, but I guess that's you know what? But that's a testament to what you do. Mick (44:38.222) Yep. Mick (44:44.526) Mm -hmm. Yeah. That's awesome. Mick (44:55.118) Hahaha Mick (45:02.414) But so are the listeners. Jeff Dudan (45:05.357) What a perfect example of great advisory and great consulting right there in real live action. Yeah, yeah, awesome. So as you imagine your future from here, what types of things do you put in that picture? Mick (45:12.078) There you go. Let's go. Let's go. Mick (45:25.678) Yeah, so, you know, the reason I moved back home, you and I, we talked offline, right? And part of it is I have nieces and nephews now. And so, you know, I'm such a family person, if you can't tell, family means a lot to me and it's my driver. And so being able to be closer to them and then coming back to the community that I'm going to say shaped some of the ideals that I have and just being able to be active in a community that I care about. Jeff Dudan (45:33.485) Mm. Mick (45:54.286) And so for me, the future is really just continuing to impact individual lives and businesses through whatever avenues that I can, whether that's building online communities, whether that's doing things in podcasts or. bringing some of my friends who have been guests on my podcast to actually come speak or just show up at places, right? Like I feel like being a giver and being a servant leader never gets old. And so that's what my future is gonna continue to do. Jeff Dudan (46:16.109) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (46:26.381) Coming from Raleigh, which is a fast growing, carry Raleigh area, fast growing, Greenville was one of the fastest growing towns and counties in the United States. Mick (46:41.102) It doesn't look like it did when I left when I was 18. And I can promise you. Jeff Dudan (46:43.221) No, no, lots of businesses, beautiful downtown area. You got the river there, all kinds of stuff going on. We would stop. My daughter went to Clemson and sorry. Well, you know, yeah, I know it. I know it. So my my son married a Tar Heel and we went to the graduation, what, two years ago, maybe she's in pre -med now. She's at Wake Forest Medical School. Mick (46:56.586) I'm a Tar Heel and Tar Heel only. Mick (47:10.606) Okay. Jeff Dudan (47:11.949) And I think it was when, I think you went to the national championship, but I think you didn't quite finish, right? Didn't quite, you just, but you ran out of time, Mick. You didn't lose. You just, you ran out of time. And, but the great thing about that team was they had no expectations of making it that far. And they just went on a run and just really threw some, I think it was a great guard play and. Mick (47:21.134) I like that. We didn't finish. Exactly. We just keep doing what we do. Jeff Dudan (47:41.197) You know, I think I remember the season well. Mick (47:44.334) I do too. You know what I remember most about that season and probably what I'm most proud of Jeff and I'm going to get real emotional when I say this. I'm going to come into the mic and I'm going to look Jeff in his eyes. We beat Coach K in his last game. To all my dookies out there, that season went very well for us. Jeff Dudan (48:03.725) Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, so you don't you you so Clemson's just you have casual dislike for but Duke you're actively you act now. Mick (48:18.35) There's, I don't use the word hate often, but the four letter word that goes with hate is usually Duke. That's how that goes. Jeff Dudan (48:27.405) All right, well, we shoot for fair and balanced reporting here on Homefront brands. But, you know, when it comes not except when it comes to college sports in the Carolinas, which is huge. So but yeah, I mean, we would on our way back from visiting her, we would always stop in Greenville. And there's just up to something going somewhere town. And I'm sure you're going to find a lot of yeah, I don't think now your client base because of your affiliations that you that you have with Les Brown and others. I mean, you work nationally or do you try to work to where you can Mick (48:37.934) There you go. There you go. Jeff Dudan (48:57.869) comfortably and easily get your hands on people. Okay. Mick (48:58.958) No, we're internationally for sure, for sure. So we have clients in eight countries and three continents. So yeah, we. We're out there and I have a team, so it's not just me. Like I promise you, I'm the, purposely, I'm the least smart person on my team. So we have a great team that does amazing things and, you know, COVID introduced the world to remote meetings. And so it makes it a lot easier for us to do what we do as well. Jeff Dudan (49:18.925) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:31.213) Awesome. Well, fantastic. Mick, is there anything else you'd like to cover before we jump off here today? Mick (49:40.302) No, I just appreciate you having me on. Like I said, I've been a fan for a very long time, so this is like almost bucket list for me to be on here with you, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (49:48.525) Well, that's very kind. I appreciate it. And you've got a new fan in me. I think this has been great. I really appreciate it. I got a lot of respect for what you do and how you do it. And maybe we can find a way to work together. I can certainly, if I understand who your clients are, as I'm knocking around this world, maybe I can make some introductions for you and vice versa. Mick (50:12.078) And same, I was gonna say same, like I reciprocate. So to me again, back to being good humans, that's what good humans do. So that's what I wanna do for you as well. Jeff Dudan (50:18.189) Yeah, 100%. Last question for you. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Mick (50:32.878) Great question, Jeff. You're hitting me hard. If I had one sentence to make an impact on someone's life, what would that be? So I'm gonna, I wanna give the sentence, I don't wanna have to give color around the sentence. Keep your inner circle tight. Keep your inner circle tight. From experience, I will tell you. Everyone that's for you isn't always for you. So make sure you keep your inner circle tight. Jeff Dudan (51:05.101) Got it. Perfectly said. We'll end on that. Mick, thanks for being on. Mick (51:12.174) Thank you for having me, brother. Jeff Dudan (51:12.717) All right, this has been Mick Hunt with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.
Brief Summary Jeff Dudan welcomes Kevin Sorbo —iconic actor, outspoken Christian, and founder of Sorbo Studios —to the podcast for a raw, honest conversation on faith, culture, education, parenting, and the role of storytelling in America’s future. From his time as Hercules to his growing portfolio of meaningful independent films, Sorbo shares why he stepped away from Hollywood, what it means to take a stand, and how he’s helping restore values through media, faith, and family. Key Takeaways Hollywood’s Culture War Is Real : Sorbo shares how his conservative Christian beliefs got him blacklisted from Hollywood and why he's embraced independent filmmaking through Sorbo Studios. Faith-Based Films Still Win : His movies like God’s Not Dead and Let There Be Light are more recognized than his big-budget roles—audiences are craving meaning. Culture Is Downstream from Hollywood : Quoting Breitbart, Sorbo emphasizes how storytelling and media shape politics and public perception. Homeschooling as an Antidote : Sorbo passionately advocates for pulling children out of the public school system and taking back education through homeschooling and Christian values. Discipline and Hard Work Matter : Raised with a strong work ethic, Sorbo calls out the entitlement generation and makes a case for failure as life’s best teacher. Upcoming Projects With Purpose : Sorbo discusses his upcoming films The Firing Squad (Aug 2 release) and Reagan (Aug 30), as well as multiple faith-driven documentaries. Featured Quote “The journey may be over, but the legend lives on.” (– Kevin Sorbo, recalling the inscription on his Hercules sword after wrapping the series) TRANSCRIPT Kevin Sorbo Joins Jeff Dudan: Faith, Film, and What’s Next Kevin Sorbo (00:50.287) Is that better at all? Jeff Dudan (00:52.102) I can hear you fine, I can, I can. Kevin Sorbo (00:54.011) you hear me? Jeff Dudan (00:59.2) Still a little quiet. Yeah. Hmm. Say something. Jeff Dudan (01:16.212) That sounded a lot better maybe when you got a little closer Jeff Dudan (01:21.6) How's that? Yeah, I can hear you. Kevin Sorbo (01:21.672) Still nothing. Still nothing there? So weird. Jeff Dudan (01:26.484) Yeah, it's pretty quiet, I think, it turned out not I'm really loud in my ears. yeah, I mean, look, can hear you. So it'll be, I'm sure it'll be good on the, we can pump it up, right? Yeah, again. Kevin Sorbo (01:47.976) Is that working now? Jeff Dudan (01:49.362) I can hear you. It's just quiet. But you okay, Jen? think we can get it? Yeah, man. We're fine. Yes, sir. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much for being on. There's a lot going on right now in the world. And I'm really excited to talk with you about it. I think it's a critical time for our society right now with lots of things going on and you do some great work. I'll go back and do an intro. Kevin Sorbo (01:55.912) You can make that work? I don't know what's going on. It's weird. Kevin Sorbo (02:02.32) I'll talk to you later. Kevin Sorbo (02:18.768) Okay. Jeff Dudan (02:19.23) So if you just want to kind of get started into it, Jen, is it possibly this Jeff Dudan (02:28.468) No, Okay. Kevin Sorbo (02:31.556) Okay, let's do it. Jeff Dudan (02:38.169) post speaker. Well we'll just get going Sir I know you're how much time you have today, Kevin. Kevin Sorbo (02:48.258) I can go half an hour at the most. Jeff Dudan (02:50.046) Half an hour, okay. We will go right into it. And you feel free to take it anywhere you wanna go with it. But I think we'll just start into it. Okay. Kevin Sorbo, welcome to the home Kevin Sorbo (02:57.947) Okay. Sorbo’s Mission: Speaking to the Next Generation Through Faith and Film Jeff Dudan (03:09.108) Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate it. I met you at the Liberty CEO Summit. You did a panel with a group of people from The Chosen. It was fantastic. How often do you get to get a chance to get in front of young people today? Kevin Sorbo (03:23.944) Actually quite a bit. I do a lot of different speaking events. I limit to about 15 a year. Half of is pro -life, the other half is Christian education. So certainly Christian education is me speaking to mostly under 18 years old kids, which is great. Jeff Dudan (03:41.44) Got it. Yeah. It was a great event. I was there for three days. We did a panel, incredible speakers, and really gives you lot of confidence going forward as to what we see happening in the world today. So we're sitting here in July of 24. Two weeks ago, there was an assassination attempt on former President Trump. Over the weekend, President Biden dropped out and recused himself from the election. You've been very upfront. throughout your career about your faith and your worldview. What are you seeing and hearing now as to kind of what people are looking for? Is the pendulum swinging back a little bit more towards a conservative stance? It feels like it Trump, Media, and a Cultural Tipping Point in America Kevin Sorbo (04:23.976) Oh, I definitely feel we've reached a tipping point and you you know, well as I did, was something wrong in Biden when he so -called won the election four years ago as the most popular president of all time. I've always wondered what he did as a Senator for 40 years and I've asked people that are such big fans of the left. I said, well, list his accomplishments. And they can't list anything. It just seems most of the time, especially over last nine years, everything is to just not let Donald Trump win. And that been, you know, just bred into people every single day for the last nine years for reasons I can't quite figure out. It's amazing to me how the press has just attacked this guy. And here's a guy that for for for decades, every every talk show, everybody in Hollywood wanted to do cameo on their TV shows or movies. But the minute he said, I'm going to go run as a Republican president, they just go after the guy every day. It's unbelievable. I don't know him as best buddy, I have golfed with him. I've hung out with him. I've got to MC a couple events at Mar -a -Lago. I've probably been to Mar -a -Lago, I don't know, 30 times in the last five years. And I see a guy that is so nice to people and such an amazing, you know, most people age and reverse when they run for president. This guy just seems to get younger with it for some reason. And, you know, God bless him for fighting. And I think, I think people are waking up more and more. And with the presidential debate, it just shows. how much the left was lying. There was no way anymore they could cover for this guy and have these people come on TV say, no, he's as sharp as he's ever been. I mean, come on, the television doesn't lie with all these coverage of the guy. We can barely walk up some steps and I feel bad for the guy, but he hasn't really been running the country. You know that the Clintons and Obama and everybody else would have pulled the strings behind this guy. So, you know, the destruction of America has got to end. I think people are finally waking up, even a lot of people on the left, a lot of people are middle -line voters are realizing, hey guys, I go to the grocery store now and a good steak is gonna cost me $30 just for a steak when it was 18 just a little while ago. people are starting to wake up. Jeff Dudan (06:36.938) Well, I think that's it. And how does it affect people on Main Street USA? And I always tell my kids, you need to run towards things, not run away from things. look, nobody's perfect. And when you get into public eye, everything you've done is going to have intense scrutiny on it. The world's a tough place. And to be taken seriously, we need strong leadership. And people need to know that we're serious and we're capable. And I tend to keep things relatively simple in terms of how I look at that stuff. And I'm really good friends with the Ben Carson family. We've done a lot of business together. My son is on their board for Carson Scholars. And we're committed with the Carson's. Part of our goal here at Homefront Brands is to give away a million books to children by 2037. And then we're building multiple reading rooms under the Carson Scholars program across the country. underserved and under -resourced schools. So we're passionate about children, we're passionate about education. And I remember hearing Dr. Carson speak one time, he said, you know, the world comes down to three things, or the country comes down to three things. It's the media, it's the schools, and it's the courts. And you can't lose all of those in terms of creating a positive, powerful future for the country. And I've heard you say, you know, what is it, Hollywood or is it politics reflects culture and culture reflects Hollywood or Hollywood? What is The Power of Storytelling: Why Hollywood Shapes Culture Kevin Sorbo (08:10.492) Well, was Andrew Breitbart said that politics runs downstream from culture. Who runs the culture? Well, Hollywood does. And you know, got the bubble of Washington, D .C. over here. You got the bubble of Hollywood over here and they work together and they pay no attention to the flyover states whatsoever. And, you know, Dr. Ben, I got to meet him years ago. He came and spoke at an event when I was still living in L .A. And I got to sit with him at the table. I got to introduce him to speak in front of our group there. This was the old FOA group, the Friends of Abe, Abe Lincoln group. that Gary Seneason and John Voight, number of the people were going and it was the ultimate photo bombing ever. I sat next to him I said, can I do a selfie with you? Dr. said, sure. So we took the selfie and John Voight was in the background doing a little hand wave and stuff, which is kind of cool. So Dr. Ben and I actually, we both spoke at the opening night of the Moms for America 20th anniversary in Dallas, Texas. And I've been to his house. I know your friends with him as well. Don't ever challenge him to play pool Jeff Dudan (09:10.048) Pool, yeah. No, I was on his team. It was me and him versus two. Yeah, so we did fine. Kevin Sorbo (09:10.282) because he's a little dark. really? man, he brought a soldier that it was January, it was New Year's Day and he invited my wife and over to meet with him and his lovely wife, of course. And we go into his pool room and he opens up this oak case, takes it out, pieces it together, puts on these gloves. I said, wait a minute. said, wait a minute. So it took me seven games to win once. One guy, but. Jeff Dudan (09:35.69) Well, you know, he deserves it. know, let him take them. Look, you're incredibly busy. You do a lot of great things. I'd love to hear a little bit about Sorbo Studios because I know you've got projects coming out right now. You've got the firing squad coming out. You're also going to be in the movie Reagan with Dennis Quaid. Kevin Sorbo (09:39.9) Great. Great. Inside Sorbo Studios: Why Independent Films Matter More Than Ever Jeff Dudan (10:00.64) coming out here I think August 2nd is which one comes out the second which one comes out the 30th. Kevin Sorbo (10:04.724) August 2nd the 5th the school year. August 30th is going Reagan. People go to sorbostudios .com. Please sign up. Keep up to date. That's my wife's side along with myself. She's obviously a homeschool advocate. She's written a number of books on it. We have a lot of things coming up through Sorbo Studios. I actually have three more movies booked this year. I've got another four movies in post -production right now. Not the ones that are coming in theaters. I have three documentaries all coming out over the next year as well that are in Jeff Dudan (10:41.406) At Sorbo Studios, you have smaller budget films, three to five million dollar budgets to make a film. How do you keep talented crew and people passionate and aligned on what you're trying to accomplish there? And what are you trying to accomplish? Kevin Sorbo (10:57.276) I wanna do movies that Hollywood used to do. know, movies that have love and hope and laughter and redemption and faith or whatever it may be. They don't have to be Christian movies. Every movie's a faith -based movie. If you're an atheist, that's an incredibly strong faith to believe in nothing. It's kind of sad in a way, but I think it's kind of a tough way to go through life. every movie's really faith -based. But the movies I do, really, Hollywood used to make these kind of movies that had more positive messages to them. And right now, Hollywood's got a very bizarre agenda they're pushing out. Disney took well over a billion dollar loss last year because people are tired of going to these theaters and having all these agendas that really just break up the morality of the country and I want to do movies that the Hollywood like said that they used to do so three to five million dollar budget yeah it sounds like a lot but they're not obviously that's like catering budget and Pirates of the Caribbean but we do very good movies with that kind of money and the reason we keep those kind of costs production values just as good as anything Hollywood does because camera equipment today is not expensive and you I mean I can record off my phone I can get a you know Jeff Dudan (11:51.337) It is. Kevin Sorbo (11:57.058) a very high -definition movie made. You'd be amazed at how many people reach out to me. We're talking people that do these big -budget movies, whether they're directors of photography, whether they're makeup people, whether they're lighting guys, camera guys. They contact me through Sorbo Studios and say, look, I want to work on one of your movies because I'm tired of the crap I'm working on. I'm someone that believes the way you believe that there is a positive moral value that kept this country on course to begin with. And now, of course, we're flying up the wheels. Ever since Thomas said he's going to fundamentally change America. has he ever. I tell people, I never thought about this whole race issue until he became president. He's the one that really brought it to the forefront. People are going, the whole racism thing was kind of going by the side. People were, does it exist? Yeah, but it exists on both sides. You're going to tell me LeBron James isn't a racist? Give me a break. We need to get past this crap, get past all this and the anger we have to people on the left seem to be waking up every day going what can what what can I look for to be offended by today and that's good though I mean what a horrible way to live your life every day and these are people that hate themselves obviously because they want to attack people like you attack people like me because they've got nothing better to do in their lives and what what it just to me it's just what a a sad existence that these people have so I'm the Kate make making movies that have a positive impact on people as simple as that Why Kevin Turns Down 20+ Scripts a Day Jeff Dudan (13:24.57) scripts do you get and how does a script catch your attention? Kevin Sorbo (13:30.952) I'll tell you, I get at least 20 scripts a day sent to me through my website and I keep telling people I'm not looking for new products. I've got enough scripts of my own that I've already fallen in love with. Not when I say of my own, they're in my production company. I didn't write them. These are ones that I fell in love with over the last 10 years and these are the ones I'm trying to make right now. So I don't try to do anything and get new ones. I say, look, if you're funded and you got a place to shoot, then I'll look at it. You have a real offer. Jeff Dudan (13:34.803) A day? Kevin Sorbo (14:00.998) But none of these people, I got an idea. I got a great idea. great, everybody's got a great idea. I just don't have the patience for seriously ground level projects. I got enough of my own. I just signed on to a six picture deal to shoot two movies in the next three years each year. we're new. I'm booked for the next three years unless someone's got a two week role for me over here or a two week role for me over there. Jeff Dudan (14:22.792) Are those outside of Sorbo Studios? Kevin Sorbo (14:26.952) Are they outside of my studios? No, these are within, they came to me. They want to fund the scripts that I have. And I've had these, some of these scripts I've had for 10, 15 years. I would say, you know, last year we put out a Miracle in East Texas and Left Behind Rise of the Enterprise based on Left Behind books. And those were, that was in my, my, Sorbill Studios family. So the people brought those to me. We fell in love with the scripts. We found the funding. Thank God we found the funding and we made the movies. Jeff Dudan (14:28.19) Yeah, are they in your Kevin Sorbo (14:56.906) theaters last year. everything I'm doing pretty much right now, if it's not through my production company, it's through other independent production companies. Because Hollywood booted me out 10 years ago. The hypocrisy of Hollywood said that we can't work with anymore because you're conservative and a Christian. And I just kind of laughed at that. Apparently conservatives are now the ones in the closet because the gays aren't in the closet anymore for sure. it's people, you know, what's so funny is this country was founded on Judeo -Christian values. Our documents, our constitution was faith -based men that put that together. Our laws come from the Bible. And now we have half this country that wants to get rid of all that stuff and turn this country into a third world country, which is unbelievable to me. And that comes down, once again, what you mentioned, Dr. Ben mentioned, our education system is absolutely pathetic and it's been brainwashing people for decades. But over the last 20 years, they've just exploded with this insanity, what they're doing to kids and doing. I think one of the blessings Education Crisis: Why Public School is Failing—and What to Do About It COVID is that some parents finally woke up to realize how crappy the public education system is and they took their kids out and two million more families are now homeschooling and we need more people to do it. Bill Maher came out two months ago and said don't send your kids to American universities. That was Bill Maher. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Get rid of the schools. Get rid of our public education system and let our education system become a business and not run by the government because I think one of my favorite Ronald Wagen quotes, of which there are many, he said these are the greatest words to fear. Hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help. Jeff Dudan (16:34.356) That's right. Well, look, Bill Maher is very, he's clear about his position on things, but he also, you know, like for me, it's everything you learned in fifth grade. It's be personally responsible, take accountability for yourself. If you know the right thing to do, do that. Be a servant, put other people's needs first, look for areas where you can, like these are basic principles, right? That we, like every coach, every football coach, every teacher, Anybody that was in our parent group, all were, you we were all, you know, that was what we were taught. And it seems like it's gone all the way the other side was worry about now, worry about what everybody else is doing, correct everybody else. If you don't like what's happening to you, you know, scream, throw a fit, advocate, you know, it just, seems like it's gotten, sometimes the kids are running the asylum. From Hercules to Homeschool Dad: Life Lessons and Hard Truths Kevin Sorbo (17:25.724) Well Jeff, all you gotta do is look at what the, ever since Trump's been elected, look at what our Democrat elected senators have been saying. They're saying, attack anybody on the right. If they're in a restaurant, go after them. I mean, we had everybody from Johnny Depp saying, I don't know, it's been a long time since an actor killed a president, maybe we're at that time right now. Madonna's saying, I've dreamt of blowing up the White House. All this rhetoric, know? Kathy Griffin holding up the head of the head of Donald Trump. Can you imagine if I did that with with Obama's head in my hand, what would happen to me? Why is it okay for the left to act like little seventh grade mean girls? Because they're such little children. They really are. It's amazing to me. And the power they have, how come they all go into office and all become worth $100 million or more? Like there's no insider trading. Let's talk to Nancy Pelosi about that and our little cohorts because these people are evil beyond evil, they're corrupt beyond corrupt. And I've said it many times, I'm gonna say it every time I do any kind of these kind of interviews when we went to war against the most powerful country in the world at that time which was Britain the British monarchy we go to war against them over a small tax and when that kicked off I look at today's government, our government treats us far worse than the British ever did. And we just like, we just sit there like frogs in the kettle in cold water as they keep slowly turning up the heat. And we keep saying, everything's okay. Everything's okay. They only want this. Only want that. Where every time they take an inch through the decades, they've taken miles upon miles of freedoms away from us and people to sit back because they're nothing but sheep. And I got to tell you, Jeff, every time I do these movies I've been doing last six, seven years, I'll get another actor, a director, a makeup artist. Jeff Dudan (18:52.288) That's Kevin Sorbo (19:11.262) Whoever it may be comes up to me says, hey, Kevin, thanks for being a voice for us. I go, be a voice for yourself. Stop letting fear control your lives, because that's the government's favorite weapon outside of actual physical threat. They love fear and control over everybody's life. Jeff Dudan (19:16.8) That's right. Jeff Dudan (19:25.98) Look, I try to get outside of my echo chamber, the enough is enough already seems to be spreading. It's like, you know, I mean, look, we teach our children to speak up, we teach them to, you know, advocate for themselves. But, you know, they need to do that respectfully and they need to earn it. I mean, you get people to come into a company and they've been there three months now and they're telling you how to run the business and that they need to be a vice president where when we were growing up, and I don't know what kind of jobs you had growing up. I assume you played sports. I mean, I've seen Hercules, right? So you... What did you play growing Kevin Sorbo (20:01.846) yeah. yeah. I was a jock. I was a football, basketball, baseball guy. yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:07.166) Basketball, baseball? How tall were you like, how tall are you? Six, three. Kevin Sorbo (20:12.392) I'm 6 '3". So my Hercules years, I was 2 '30". I'm 2 '10 now. I'm an old guy now. I can't keep that kind of muscle mess on, but I still work out every day. I still love to do it. Actually, I got the Hercules sword here right behind me. That was given to me in the very last day of seven years on Hercules. It's got the dates 1993 through 2000 on there and says, the journey may be over, but the legend lives on. So was very nice for them to give that as a gift as I left this here. New Movie Spotlight: The Firing Squad and the Power of Redemption Jeff Dudan (20:36.928) What was that rap party like? Kevin Sorbo (20:40.104) It was emotional because you you're honest you know you work 14 hours a day and then I was lifting weights and I went half every day I mean a typical day for me from door to door was anywhere from 16 to 18 hours every single day. It was a grind but I loved it. I lived in New Zealand for those seven years it was fantastic the people are great my crew was phenomenal in fact my entire crew went on to work on Lord of the Rings and half of them went on to win Oscars and Golden Globes so it was an honor to be part of that series by season three where the most watched show in the world. Not many actors can say that so I was blessed with that. had an absolute blast doing it. But you know, I'll tell you one job I had grown up in college for two summers I was a caddy at a private country club. My dad was a school teacher. I'm the fourth of five kids. We didn't have that kind of money. You know, these guys. But I asked all these guys. But one thing my parents, both my parents instilled in us was hard work. They grew up in Farms in Iowa. And they told all of his kids, you need to work hard. Don't expect handouts. Work hard in your life. They put very strong I asked these people I catered for how did you become so wealthy? do you become so successful? They all said the same thing. Oh, I failed. Oh, then I failed again. By the way, I failed for about 10 years before I found success. That taught me don't give up. Keep plugging away. We have too many kids. They just lazy beyond lazy. This privilege stuff is absolutely nuts to me. And it's part of the wild. It's part of this what we're talking right now. Our phones, computers, all this instantaneous. to be successful now. You got people on, TikTok or whatever flashing their boobs or shaking their butt and they're making money off of that So every kid goes I'm gonna do that and it's all about displaying bad behavior and stupid behavior and everybody wants to be a star right away They don't have the patience to work hard. They want instantly you said they want to be instantly they want to they want to you know Rolls Royce right now and then hill that's got a 14 ,000 square foot house on top of it and People need that it's not gonna work out that way. So what happens they get angry and they become BLM. They become antifa they become that are disgruntled that their lives didn't turn out so well. it's your fault they don't have success. So they're going to attack you. I mean, it's just, it's really amazing to me. I'll screw it up that our television and movies and our governments and press have done to make people impatient and angry. Jeff Dudan (22:57.502) touched on it a couple times, education. What experience can you share about raising children? And I know you have three. I'm not specifically asking about your kids, but to parents in general, to discern, teach them to discern like what's true and you know, what types of things would help somebody raising their kids in this really time where there's lots of social media, there's lots of distractions, there's lots of points of light to look at. Like, how do you keep it simple and what experience could you share with parents today? Kevin Sorbo (23:34.268) Well, number one, homeschool. Get them out of the school. But you know what we did every day with our kids is we start the day at breakfast reading the Bible for half an hour. Read the Bible. You don't have to be a Christian to read the Bible. It's the most popular book ever written of all time. Every year it's the number one best -selling book. Read the Bible. You'd be surprised that this Bible that's thousands of years old with its literature in there applies to everything that's happening in the world right now. Right now. mean, teach your kids some values. Teach your kids hard Don't be your kids best friend, okay? That can come later in life. Right now, be their parents and learn the word no. know, no and failure are good things because you learn from those things. And people are afraid to discipline their kids now in today's world. My parents weren't. When I was going to school, there were swap boards in every public school. That the parents were giving that teacher, you want to whack my kid a good one in the butt for being a jerk, go for it. And I'll tell you, it will stop you from being a jerk. What Kevin Sorbo Wants to See in America 10 Years From Now Jeff Dudan (24:30.496) Yeah, I hated those ones that they had drilled the holes in it. You know, they would drill the holes in it and it would whistle. Yeah. Well, hey, let's talk about the firing squad. Is that your project coming out? I know you've got a role in Kevin Sorbo (24:34.512) Yeah, our Jim T is better. That's fun. Kevin Sorbo (24:51.121) I got a rolling That's all. Tim Che the director came to me. We've been talking for years about a project. I love true stories. This is a true story. I play guy that was over there in his late 20s. He was surfing. He got angry at some guy hitting on his girlfriend. They got in a fight and he killed the guy in Indonesia. He was in Indonesia. He got the death penalty. He was in prison for many, many years. And during all that time with all his hate and anger, somehow he found Jesus. He found God. He became a pastor and he started preaching daily to other inmates and He ultimately was executed in 2015. So it's not that long ago because they still have the firing squad in Indonesia. So it's a wonderful true story. Cuba Gooding Jr. is in the movie as well. And it's a movie about, you know what? You can find redemption and hope in the darkest of places on death row in a foreign prison. You can find it anywhere. So it's a wonderful true story, touching story. It's not made up. And August 2nd, people go to firing squad Jeff Dudan (25:55.828) Yeah, I was there and I found something million souls dot Kevin Sorbo (26:00.968) Tim Che, Tim Che, the director, very heavy, strong Christian guy. He said that I hope that this movie will save a million souls. And so it's good to have that kind of goal. And, you know, it's funny, I used to get stopped all the time to airports, hotel lobbies, whatever people would say, Oh, I love Hercules. Or I love you as Captain Dylan, hunting and drama, you know, but 80 % of time now it's God's not dead. What if Soul Surfer, let there be light, Miracle is Texas. It's the movies I'm doing that have a good message. That's what people want me to keep doing. So, It's been a blessing to go down this other road that I never thought I'd be on. Jeff Dudan (26:34.912) Well, awesome. I know we're heading towards the end of our time. I got two questions for you. One is this one of regression analysis. like I kick off our training with all of our franchisees and I talk, I compare them to Elon Musk. Like, what's the difference? And, know, Elon Musk, he doesn't have filters to tell him no. So when he decides we need to go to Mars, he just works backwards and does a regression analysis to figure out, we have to launch one rocket an hour. How do we do that? And it just fills in the gaps. If you were to look forward 10 years from now, what is the change that you would have wanted to see in the world? And what are you willing to do during your time here to make that happen? Kevin Sorbo (27:16.008) Um, I think the change I want to see is the change i'm starting to see right now in slow motion But it's starting to happen is that tipping point we talked about now i'm hoping 10 years from now We're back to where we were at least 20 or 30 years ago I mean if you can look back to um reagan's presidency It's always it's always going to be battles all that kind of stuff even clinton's presidency Clinton was bill clinton was smart enough to at least work on both sides of the aisle I would say he was actually more of a centrist than anything else He didn't want to take away a lot of stuff that reagan was already building up on I think Bush kind of blew it, you know, in terms of the things he said, you know, read my lips, no new taxes and he did get new taxes out there. you know, Clinton initially got in with the lowest percentage of votes of any president, I think it was like 38 % because of Ross Perot running against Bush. He took a vote of what he would have had. So, you know, we got to be careful about, you know, we have enough division going on right now. And I'm hoping now this whole Jeff Dudan (28:03.712) I know, my wife won't let me forget that I voted for Kevin Sorbo (28:15.942) change America that Obama wanted to do goes back the other way because I told my wife you would have said the morning of our wedding that you're gonna fundamentally change me the minute we're married I would have been a runaway husband right away trust me I wouldn't have stuck around. Jeff Dudan (28:30.612) Outstanding. Kevin, last question. If you had one sentence that you could speak to someone to make an impact in their life, what would that be? Jeff Dudan (28:45.792) Perfect. Kevin Sorbo, thank you so much for being on. Kevin Sorbo (28:51.59) Thank you so much. it. Let's talk in November. got two documentaries coming out. Mid -November. Jeff Dudan (28:53.098) This has been great. Kevin Sorbo with What's Okay, when? Jeff Dudan (29:02.834) Okay, awesome. We'll look for him. This has been Kevin Sorbo with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for
Brief Summary In this episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Jon Davids—entrepreneur, author, and digital marketing expert—to break down how small businesses, franchises, and thought leaders can build influence and drive growth through social media. Jon shares his journey from flipping snow-shoveling contracts as a kid to pioneering influencer marketing and running one of the top agencies in North America. They talk YouTube, LinkedIn, AI, newsletters, personal branding, and what it really takes to win in today’s noisy digital world. Key Takeaways Marketing is About Clarity, Not Complexity : If people can’t understand your pitch or your posts, it’s not their fault—it’s yours. Simple = powerful. Choose Your Main Character : Every brand should have a recognizable, trusted face. People want to follow people, not logos. Different Platforms, Different Algorithms : Success on LinkedIn doesn't equal success on YouTube. Understand and play by each platform’s rules. Rent to Own Your Audience : Use paid ads to rent attention, but always be building asset s like email lists, podcasts, and newsletters you own. AI Is an Intern, Not a Replacement : It helps with productivity but still needs your judgment, leadership, and originality. Franchises Need Content, Not Just Ads : Content builds trust, educates future customers, and separates you from the price war. Featured Quote “Do stuff to make yourself happy—not to please other people or chase the status game.” TRANSCRIPT Meet Jon Davids: From Kid Hustler to Digital Marketing Powerhouse Jeff Dudan (00:05.202) Hey everybody, Jeff Duden here and we are on the home front and I am more than excited to have a great marketing talent influencer and somebody who can really, I think, help a lot of us try to sort out this whole social media and promotion for ourselves personally in our business, John Davids. Jon (00:25.432) Jeff, great to be here on the home front. Jeff Dudan (00:27.922) Yeah, man. Yeah, man. It's awesome. I've been really excited about this. I've been digging through your book, which is marketing superpowers, which is that you have made the information in that book so accessible and so actionable. And maybe it's just because I'm on that path right now with the podcast. And we've got, think, the fastest growing property service franchise platform in North America right now. So we just got lots and lots of reach that we're trying trying to obtain and then also, you know, we're trying to be known, liked and trusted because this is important decision for people as they get into franchising. I'd like Jon (01:06.254) I'm glad you say that because I'm so glad when I hear people who maybe don't come from this world and I know you have a marketing degree, but I love just hearing that people find it digestible, easy to access. I find there's too much intimidation and high walls that are put around business and marketing and growth. And it doesn't have to be like Jeff Dudan (01:26.192) Sometimes you sound really smart when you try not to be too smart and Jon (01:30.146) That's exactly it. taken me a long time and getting all the knowledge that I have to be able to express it in a way that everybody understands. I tell people, if people don't understand what you're saying, it's probably because you don't really get it all that well. Jeff Dudan (01:44.338) That's interesting. The book opens up, you dive right into this axis of influence and real simple, the interplay between whether people know, like and trust you and reach and you know, how you, which quadrant you fall into. And for us, mean, we, you know, we've got this podcast, it's going really well. It's going better than we expected it to obviously because you're I mean, who would have ever thought we'd have John Davids on the home front? you know, sometimes dreams come true, John. You know, if you live long enough. Jon (02:20.972) Listen, man, I see you climbing the charts and I have tuned in. mean, this podcast is really good. And I'm actually surprised that you haven't been doing it for longer because you really polished at it. It's climbing the charts fast. You look great on Jeff Dudan (02:32.942) Well, hey, I appreciate it. You can keep going. No, but like, so but but we're in that point of trying to figure out like, what does it mean? What is the real impact that it can have? How do we best help people? And then also, you know, how do we how do we accomplish our goals inside of this? And I think what we've learned with the podcast is that, you know, it's really not for compelling people, it's more for convincing people, convincing people Number one, we're good people. Number two, our hearts in the right place. Number three, we're gonna give unconditionally by having people like you on that are gonna share things that are gonna really be able to make an impact, make the stuff digestible. And also, look, we've had some success in different things, but we're also approachable in here. So I think for us, it's really good to help people when they decide to engage maybe in the franchise industry. or in Homefront brand specifically to get to know us and get to know us and they don't even have to tell us they're there. That's the beautiful thing about it. They can be voyeurs and just listen and engage if they want to. But ultimately, it's so nice that when I finally get to meet people at the end of this process that we put them through that they already have a good background about who we are and what we stand for. Just makes everything easier. Jon (03:54.464) And you pointed something out there that was so interesting. And this happens a lot, especially if you've got a megaphone and an audience or a community on the internet. People come out of the woodwork and the first thing they'll say to you is, hey, I've been tuning into your podcast for seven months. I've been reading you on LinkedIn or on Instagram for two years. And these are people that you've never heard of before. They're not loud in the comments. They're not liking all the posts, but they're ingesting everything. And it makes a big difference. It almost feels like when you're on that sales call, It's not even a sales call. You've been selling them for two years just by talking in their ear and putting messages out there, which is completely authentic. Jeff Dudan (04:30.448) It is, and especially in franchising, the most important thing is the relationship with the franchise partners out there. the fact that they can get to know what to expect from us over time and do it on their own terms, just makes it that they already know that they're going to be a fit for our culture and they're going to get along with us and that they can kind of get aligned with the things that we believe in, whether it's giving a million books to children through Carson Scholars or helping veterans or this whole financial freedom for families on Main Street USA. Those are the kind of the things that we care about. If those matter to these people, and it's not like they're going to see it on a deck in some sales presentation where it's just going to fly by on a screen, they know that we walk the walk, we talk the talk, and it just makes everything easier. So that being said, this is not a home front brands commercial, although it kind of turned into it. see, that's what's great about John. John just... The Secret to Viral Content in 2004: MSN, AOL, and AdSense Jon (05:29.718) Rally your believers, man, I love it. I'm eating this Jeff Dudan (05:30.066) He just pulled it. He just pulled it. Yeah, well, so, John, why don't we go back? Because you've got an incredible background, very similar to mine in a lot of ways. Tell us, if you don't mind, just go back and tell us how it started for Jon (05:46.242) I was a kid who didn't do all that well in school, didn't have any of the check marks on my resume as a teenager that would have told you I was going anywhere special. But I had a lot of passion in here, in my mind, in my heart for a couple things. And I kind of just started dabbling early on. So my first kind of big story of entrepreneurship happened in college. So even before that, I was a kid, I was doing snow shoveling, I was trying to find the arbitrage. How do I? find labor to do the activity and how can I capture some value in the middle? And when I got to college, I had a buddy who was building internet websites and, and, you know, kind of making a little bit of money on the internet. And I was always passionate about media magazines. That whole side of the business I was I was always walking into bookstores and picking up magazines and just looking at the masthead, what does it take to make a magazine? And I thought, you know what this internet thing is taking off this like 2003, four And I love content. Why don't I build a magazine on the internet, which sounds super simple today. That's Buzzfeed, but this is before Buzzfeed. So I basically had to figure out three things. I had to figure out how to make the content, how to get the audience and how to monetize. And so that three steps for me. The first thing I did was I went to my college English department and I said, Hey, I'm a student here. I'm making a magazine. there any students who can write for my magazine? And they ended up saying to me, yeah, we can actually send out an email to all the students with this magic thing called a list serve, which I'd never heard of before. We could blast out to all 5 ,000 students here in our department and tell them who you are and to email you. And with one email, I had 100 applications of people that wanted to write for my magazine. They just wanted the experience. So boom, overnight I had writers, had an editor, and I got lots of content. We're writing about sports and cars and pets and music and relationships. anything we could think of. So that was step one. And then step two was the hardest. How do you get traffic to the internet? And this taught me so much and a lot of the lessons that I ended up putting in the book, Marketing Superpowers, came from this one tactic, which was figuring out where the attention is and how to hijack it. So back in those days, it was MSN, AOL, and Yahoo. That's where all the traffic on the internet was. About 92 % of all the internet traffic started with those three homepages. Jon (08:10.356) And I thought, okay, on these pages, you've got news and sports and lifestyle content, just like the stuff I'm making. I wonder if somehow I can get my content on those sites and get people back to my site. And over the course of six months with a whole lot of calling and a whole lot of cold emailing, I finally convinced the guy who ran MSN to let me put my content on their site in exchange for links back to my site. said, how much we have to pay you? I said, nothing. Don't pay me any, just put links back on every article back to my site. And overnight, Jeff, had, it was like 2 million readers a month cumulatively that came to my site, threw up that Google AdSense JavaScript, and I was making hundreds and hundreds of dollars a day doing that. So that's how I got into the world of entrepreneurship. Jeff Dudan (09:00.702) So you were, who was generating the cat? Who was the payer on that money that you were bringing in? Was it MSN paying for the clicks or advertisers? Jon (09:09.646) Yeah, so the way it works actually really simple. What you'd need is traffic on a website. So I had traffic coming in from this fire hose of MSN and eventually AWOL and Yahoo. We got our content on all those sites. And when you get on the homepage of Yahoo in 2004, holy crap, you got a lot of traffic coming in. So once you have traffic coming into an article, let's say it's five ways to lose weight this summer. on that page there on my website, you'd have ads that were being generated automatically by Google, weight loss supplements, pills, nutrition plans, whatever it is. And when you clicked on those, Google sent you a check. So if we were generating thousands of clicks every day, you could imagine those checks added Jeff Dudan (09:52.126) Oh yeah, 100%. Now was that your first, what was your first side hustle going back to when you were a kid? When did you make your first dollar? From Fashion App Fail to Influencer Marketing Pioneer Jon (10:00.462) My first dollar would have been snow shoveling. So the hustle there, it's funny, one of the great questions when you're around entrepreneurs is what was your side hustle at the very, very early age? When you were nine years old, how were you making a buck? Because we all have those stories, right? So my first hustle really was snow shoveling. And I realized that getting the contract from the neighborhood home was the most important thing. So I would go and get a contract for, let's say, 100 bucks a season. And I would find the neighborhood kid who would shovel the snow for 50 bucks. And I would say, okay, cool. I'll pay you 50 bucks to shovel this driveway. And I would net the 50 in the middle. So it was just an arbitrage. Jeff Dudan (10:39.742) Got it, got it, awesome. Then you go through college, now you grew up in Toronto, all right, lots of snow, that makes a lot of, lots of snow, and then you go to university and you create this internet business. Where did you go from Jon (10:48.662) Lots of snow here. Jon (10:56.91) From there, so by the time I graduated, was making $300 ,000 a year. I ended up selling that internet website blog in 2009. And from there, I kind of stumbled. So between 2009 and 2012, I had this weird phase where I thought I had the Midas Touch. Everything I touched turned to gold. Well, everything I touched felt good, but not all of it made money. So I had my school of hard knocks between 09 and 2012. And then in 2012, I was doing this really bad app. had this idea to build, it was basically Instagram for fashion. was going to be, your photos or your fashion. Your friends can vote on it. And I was trying to do this and consumer tech is like the bane of my existence. I will never touch it ever again in my life. But that was the concept. And while I was looking to promote that fashion app, I stumbled on the world of YouTube influencers. And I came across this video of this gal on, on YouTube. who was making fashion videos. And there's a whole story there that led to the creation of Influicity. So discovering influencer marketing really happened in 2012 for Jeff Dudan (12:03.422) She was doing like unboxing, if I remember correctly. She'd go to the store, grab a bunch of stuff, throw it in her living room, and then just film herself like opening it, Jon (12:12.462) It was a fashion haul. That was exactly it. She'd go to Nordstrom, buy a bunch of stuff, come home and then do a fashion haul. Hey, here's everything I bought at Nordstrom. And she was getting 50 ,000, 75 ,000 views on every single video. It was wild. Jeff Dudan (12:24.85) Yeah, that's crazy. then, so you partnered with her. you you said, hey, come out and fly to meet me. You guys get together and you're like, I'm gonna try to get a sponsor for this and then we're gonna make some videos with intention. How did that work Jon (12:41.458) That's it, man. So you've read the book. All these stories are in there. So I emailed or I DMed her on YouTube, not thinking that she would even respond to me. said, hey, I'm a guy in Toronto. I see that you're making these videos. How are you getting all these views? And she says, I just throw videos up on YouTube and people seem to like them. And I thought, this is crazy because surely you have to be doing something more than that to be getting 50 ,000 views on a YouTube video. This is nuts. And she said, no, this is all I'm doing. And I've only been doing it for like eight months and I'm doing videos every week and this is what's happening. And I said, are you getting paid by the brands that you're talking about? And she had no idea what I was referring to getting paid by who who's going to pay me. I'm going shopping and I'm just talking about what I buy. And so I put Jeff Dudan (13:26.376) So she was just like a narcissist. She just was like, I just like people looking at my face. I don't care. Jon (13:31.462) That's it. It's a generation of people that just wanted to show what they were doing. And so I said, I come from the world, and this is actually a really important point, Jeff, for people that are listening here and want to think about how they can apply their expertise. I basically combined two worlds now. So I had just discovered this pot of gold of traffic, a new traffic source, just like the MSN AOL traffic source a decade earlier. But I had the expertise now of knowing how to sell advertising, knowing how the internet works. One point of the story I'll just I'll mention here. I mentioned that I made money off Google ads back in the Internet days in the 2004 time frame. I also sold advertising, so I learned how to go into advertising agencies. Hey, you have Toyota as a client. Pay me $30 ,000. I'll promote Toyota on my website directly. So we were doing a lot of direct sales too, and so I knew that world and I just thought, wow, L 'Oreal Nordstrom CVS. They would love to pay you to be a part of this. So I flew her into Toronto, she agreed, flew her into town, partnered up with a retailer that I knew. said, hey, could we just film in your store? Don't pay me anything. I was going to film in your store for like an hour and a half with this gal on YouTube. And they said, sure, yeah, no problem. You can do it. And we did that. She just filmed the video walking through the store talking about these products. And that video, which I guess you could say kind of looked like a sponsored video, even though we weren't getting paid, got 50 ,000 plus views and I thought, holy moly, we've got a business here. So I just started brokering deals with her, with all these brands, and I did that for two years straight. And that's all I was doing in that time. Platform Evolution: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and the One That Never Worked Jeff Dudan (15:07.742) Got it. Can you walk me through your relationship with the various platforms since 2012 to today? Are there some platforms that you have specialized in or are agnostic to where you find your people? Jon (15:23.118) That's a great question. And it changes every couple of years because platforms go in and out and platforms rise up that were never big earlier. So in 2015, officially, I founded Influicity, which is my agency, still my agency today. And Influicity got our start in influencer marketing. That's all we were doing. We do more now. We make podcasts, we manage social media, we build communities for brands of all sizes. But for the first five years, it was just Jeff Dudan (15:37.658) Mm Jon (15:51.818) influencer marketing and even within influencer marketing was really just YouTube. And so the niche that we fell into very early was YouTube and fashion. And that was because of Teresa. That's the world I came from. So that was really the first big platform that I got to know after YouTube. I would say it was Instagram because it was rising up and doing very well around that time too. So YouTube, Instagram, after that, there was sort of some, you know, Snapchat going on. There was Vine. There was Musically. So there were a few others in there that were a bit more transient. didn't really stick like the others did. And then after that, you would get into obviously TikTok, Twitter a little bit. And then notably, Facebook was never a big influencer platform. The reason being, Facebook is, I believe still today, the largest social platform in the world by traffic. However, it's not very good at influencer because Facebook Jeff Dudan (16:32.946) Mm Jon (16:48.75) Generally speaking, prioritizes individual connections. They're sort of notorious for you can have a million followers, but they're only going to let 2 % of those people see your content at any given time. They really kind of the influencer culture never really got there. And there are exceptions for sure. But Facebook never really got there like the others. Jeff Dudan (17:08.914) Got It seems for us, and we've had a lot of discussion about it, like, you know, we're a franchise organization, you know, I'm 56, I'm the face of it. It's like, okay, what are the platforms that are good for us? Where are we, number one, where are we gonna find our people? But number two, where can we actually compete? Where can we be relevant? I think we just crossed over this year, we're about six months through the year, 1 .1 million views on YouTube. For us and we're a new show like we're only we're less than 12 months old really now we're little we're right at 12 months old and and then maybe a couple million downloads across Apple and Audio platforms and other things like that. So, you know, we're we're we're just getting started inside of this but how does a business owner who decides that they want to Expand their reach through these various platforms choose which are the best platforms for Jon (18:10.51) Well, first off, kudos to you. Those numbers are massive, really massive. The vast majority, 5 million plus podcasts have less than 10 episodes. They all suck and no one's listened to any of them. So the fact that you have this longevity this early on and you have those numbers, a million plus downloads on Apple, people don't get that in a decade. So kudos to you for accomplishing that. And by the way, I would never think you were 56. So that's another kudos. Jeff Dudan (18:34.962) Ha Jon (18:38.666) You're doing everything right. So I love these, what I would call middle and lower funnel activities. The podcast is great. People can sit there and binge and listen to hour long plus conversations with you and industry experts. Great move there. YouTube is a different animal. So here's something interesting. Every platform is sort of native to itself. And the reason, the magic key to every platform is that platform's algorithm. And so you might think if I have an audience on Instagram, I can just port all of them over to YouTube and they'll watch my YouTube. The problem with that is, yes, it can work. And there can be some examples there where that, you know, you're famous here, so you can be famous there. Generally speaking though, you're big on YouTube because you've tapped the YouTube algorithm. You're big on Instagram because you've tapped the Instagram algorithm. You're big on LinkedIn because you've tapped the LinkedIn algorithm. And they're pretty separate. The way to think about YouTube is to make content that serves a very specific audience, just like you're doing with the podcast. And then really home in on that with the right keywords, the right titles, the right thumbnails, and give it time. You might find that your Apple downloads are going through the roof and your YouTube's taken a bit longer. It's not a problem. You're not doing anything wrong. You just need to give the YouTube algorithm time to ingest and move forward. and Apple's gonna do its own thing. that's one way to think about it. Don't get impatient and say, I gotta change things up, especially if you're doing basically recordings that are gonna go on multiple platforms. It's totally fine if one takes off before the Podcasting vs. YouTube: Understanding Platform Behavior and ROI Jeff Dudan (20:15.23) How do you think about quality content versus volume of content on YouTube? Jon (20:22.446) On YouTube, I definitely lean towards quality. On other platforms, quantity actually is in favor. So the billboard, the billboard platforms, which are essentially Instagram reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts, those are your billboards. Those are people driving along the highway, which in the digital world is just swiping your thumb. And you need to have the 10 to 12 to 15 second clip, which is probably going to be a clip from this podcast or something you've created separately. that just gives people a little slice of what you might sound like, what you might be able to provide in terms of value and gets them into your funnel. And your funnel might be, give me your email address. Well, the first thing is just follow me. And then it's give me your email, download the podcast, give us your phone number, join the mailing list, something like that. And then once they're there, you can nurture them for months and years on end, but you got to capture them Jeff Dudan (20:57.982) Mm Jeff Dudan (21:17.138) Got it. And then on YouTube, is more about, for our experiences, if we put up a clip that maybe wasn't that thoughtful and it doesn't do well, we suspect that hurts us in the algorithm. Jon (21:33.046) Yeah, it also, I would say, just confuses the algorithm. YouTube is extremely good at learning, hey, what kind of person is going to click on this and then watch this for two, three, four minutes? And the problem is that if you put different stuff out, some short, some long, some good, some bad, you're just confusing the algorithm. You don't need a lot of content on YouTube. Look at MrBeast, a video a month, biggest channel there is. You just need good Jeff Dudan (21:53.054) Oh yeah, yeah. yeah. So I have a 20 year old, he grew up on everything on YouTube, walking around the house. I mean, just so we watch Cletus McFarland, we watch Mr. Beast as well. You know, like YouTube is, if he's home and he happened to get to the remote first, then we're going to be watching a YouTube video instead of if my wife gets to it, it's going to be Hallmark. If I get to it, it's either going to be sports or Netflix. you know, So he's been the one that's really championed our YouTube and has very strong feelings about putting out stuff that's good that he knows what people watch and what people want to watch. But it's the you know, Mr. Beast is just absolutely defying numbers on when he put stuff up. But man, if you listen to his his story, like it was years and years and years and years of figuring out what that algorithm was for him. And the you know, of thumbnail with my mouth open versus my mouth closed. Background, just this picture, for no reason, this color background does better than this color background. So it's complicated. And I gotta think that some people, it's a combination between art and science. Like number one, art, do I like this? And would I watch this? If I have to go out get a sandwich and I got 10 minutes and I go to YouTube and I see something and that's nine minutes and I can consume it. Like, what's going to get me to click on that? But then the science of it is A -B testing, constantly refining what you've got, using the numbers, using the analytics. They give you great analytics on that channel. that's been. And then the question is, like you said, we had to learn that what's going to go good on the audio platforms is something completely different that we need to be paying attention to on YouTube. Jon (23:47.446) Yeah, you've dug into this in all the right ways. And I agree with you that Mr. Beast is a scientist about it, but you also have to look at the objectives. So are you trying to get famous or are you trying to make money? And they're two different things. So Mr. Beast, he's in the get famous bucket. He's done a great job at it. And his videos are very general interest, very universal, very highly clickable, very easy to watch. And really they're about nothing. know, they're about I've fallen into a hole. Let's see how long it takes me to get cool. You're going to do very well in the get famous bucket there as he has. The other side of it is let's make money. And that's where you get much more into the niching down and to the not caring as much about how do I optimize the thumbnail so that everybody's going to click this. actually kind of want to rally my believers and repel everybody else. I don't want people watching this you know, messing up my comments and then rep, you know, calling our reps and taking up our sales time. They're not the right ICP for us, the ideal customer profile. So I really want to focus. And that's where you start to see channels being built that are less focused. You know, my YouTube channel, we actually, we started doing creative thumbnails, really creative, wacky thumbnails, trying to get lots of clicks. And we realized, let's just standardize the thumbnail. So it's the exact same thing every single time. So we actually create habit and ritual. rather than impulse clicking. If you have no idea who I am and no interest in really what we're gonna talk about, I don't even want that click. I want people who are qualified. And so you gotta think about what the objective is and then align the strategy around Jeff Dudan (25:25.682) Yeah, I mean, if you look at Theo Vaughn, who gets millions and millions of downloads and everything he puts out, mean, it's just, the thumbnail is very simple. It's him and then it's whoever the other person is. there's no real, like anybody can put that together. There's no real creative around it. We went through, we had our wacky thumbnail phase, you know? We had our overproduction phase where we were overproducing things. And I'm like, and then you look at the page and it's There's no way to tell that these things even go together. Like they all look like different things. So now you're trying to, you're trying to just grab somebody by some, by a hook or by something as opposed to just like they're coming back and they're looking for our show. They're looking for, you know, they recognize that's our thumbnail. And generally when they click on it, there's going to be something good behind Don’t Be Random: How Consistent Thumbnails Build Habit on YouTube Jon (26:17.174) The signature thumbnail is the strategy that I'm talking about. Steven Bartlett at Diary of a CEO does a great job at it as well. You see the thumbnail and it's not supposed to just attract you to click it. It's supposed to tell you, this is Diary of a CEO. I'm talking to a guest. The little quote tells me what there might be talking about. And I either want to listen to that episode or not. But they're not trying to fool me into thinking I'm going to see a man falling into a hole trying to get out. That's not what this is. Jeff Dudan (26:45.298) Right, right. A man falling into a hole trying to get out. So for that business owner that's looking to jump into this complex world of promoting your business on these platforms, you talked about choosing a main character in your book. What does that mean? And what is the process for somebody to make sure they choose the right main character for their story Jon (27:11.246) People like following other people. A mentor told me early on many years ago, you like going to McDonald's, but you don't want to follow a French fry on Twitter. That's not what you're interested in. You're interested in the chef, the barista, the community, the farmer. So we're very attracted to people. And people is a term that I use actually kind of loosely because it could also be a cartoon character. People are very attracted to Homer Simpson and Bugs Bunny. So you have to think about what the character and the main character in the case of marketing superpowers that you're going to align your brand with. Now, one pushback I get early on is people will throw examples of me and say, hey, this is a big brand with no main character. This is a big brand with no main character. A, I would argue they did have a main character at some point and they kind of still do. But also, I'm trying to give you a way to create marketing superpowers, not be an average marketer. I want the advantage that my readers have, the readers of marketing superpowers. to be so wildly out of whack with everybody else that it looks like something weird is going on. And a part of that is you have to have a main character. So how to choose a main character, it's the main formula, -A -I -N. And essentially what it is, you might have to, I'm gonna have to crack open the book here because it's been a while since I wrote this. But essentially you want somebody who mirrors the audience or at least looks like someone they aspire to be like. You've got to either be someone that I feel like I could have a beer with or I could aspire to be like Jeff Dudan (28:44.03) Yeah, I got it. Mirror, authority, the it factor, and they're not going anywhere. Jon (28:51.18) That's it. Authority in some categories is actually even more important if you're talking about a pharmaceutical brand or something. I'm actually looking to someone as an authority figure, but at the very least they have to be someone that you care to listen to to get the KLT, the known like and trusted factor. Jeff Dudan (29:07.784) Yeah, you believe like they have some basis for what they're saying. Yeah. Jon (29:11.818) Exactly. The it factor is that charisma that je ne sais quoi, what do they have that there is something that you want to watch. And by the way, that can be totally different for different people. So some people say, well, I've got to be like Gary Vee, I've got to be over the top and way to my arms and loud. Listen, there are a lot of people who are actually very quiet and subdued and have a really attractive quality to them. Think about people like Lex Friedman. The podcast was very quiet. Jeff Dudan (29:37.628) Tim Ferriss. Yeah, Lex has an interesting, at first, everyone's talking about, so he's what, an MIT guy, very smart, but he's got prepared questions that he reads. And I made the mistake of thinking, okay, well, he's got prepared questions that he's reading. It sounds like he's reading off a page. I think my default was, I prefer an interviewer that's more interactive, that's live. that's taking the conversation where it needs to go. But he also has that ability. He's just very, very thoughtful and very deliberate about where he wants to take it. And I guess if you're going to do three hours like he sometimes will do, you better have a plan. Because you can't just run around in a circle for three hours. I it would be very hard for us to do three hours of this. Main Character Energy: How to Build Personal Brands That Scale Jon (30:29.068) Yeah, and you also want to make sure that you hit the points that you can get value to the audience. I just want to talk about random stuff Jeff Dudan (30:37.394) Yeah, Tim Ferriss has a very kind of thoughtful, down -low interviewing style that I think obviously a lot of people have come to enjoy. Jon (30:47.99) And that goes to the point of just completing that circle with the it factor. It has to be about you. It's got to be personal. Don't try to mimic somebody else. Everybody does this at the beginning, by the way. We all have this style at the start where you say, OK, I've got to be like that person. And that's OK to kind of just get started. But you have to trust that the more you are, the more you're going to be able to attract people who are like you and like your ideal customer. And then the end is just not going anywhere. You don't want to have to switch out your main character in three weeks. So it should ideally be a founder, an owner, someone with an equity stake in the company that is there for the foreseeable future. Jeff Dudan (31:33.288) We're an entrepreneurship podcast and there's a lot of founders and small business owners that listen to the home front. Does every business need to be on social media? Jon (31:47.319) Does every business need to be on social media? Jeff Dudan (31:49.552) regardless of size, regardless of category. Jon (31:52.718) I would defy you to give me an example of a business that can exist without social media. I would love to, I'm thinking, going through my head here right now, I would say that businesses don't need to be on every social media. You could certainly define where you want to be, but to not exist on social media would actually be a statement of some sort. if you already had, if you've been around for 30 years and you already exist and you have the tailwinds, that's cool. A business starting in 2024, not have any social media presence? I don't know about Jeff Dudan (32:29.202) Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a small accounting firm and you've got your clients and you're not looking for more clients, you still, you probably still need to have a page. But I don't know that you're gonna, you I guess you just set the camera up and video yourself doing returns. That'd be exciting. I'm e -filing right Jon (32:46.712) You know, it's funny that... You could do that. What I would do is I would look, what I always say is look at behind the scenes stuff. The things that's boring and routine to us is actually very interesting to other people. So if I was an accountant and I actually wanted to share something with people of value, the two directions that I would go in are, would explain simple, I would explain complicated things in a simple way. So the go -to there would be, how to read a profit and loss statement, what is a balance sheet, why do I need a balance sheet? is a, give me three things on a balance sheet that I should look at. I wanna read 30 lines, give me three of them that are gonna tell me something about my business. So it's certainly utilitarian content like that. And then it's also the behind the scenes stuff, know, but people use a term like write off. What is a write off? Do we even know what that means? Explain to me what a write off is like I'm three, know, like I'm in third grade. Those are two things that an accountant could do. Jeff Dudan (33:45.778) Yeah. So if there was any small business, and let's just say that they were really looking to drive new customers, and they're not experienced on social media, or they're just getting started, maybe even it's one of our franchisees, what are the top two or three things that you would recommend that small businesses or startups can easily do on social media to help them attract customers? Content Strategy for Franchisees and Small Business Owners Jon (34:14.328) So the first thing I would do is think about the main character. So who is the main character going to be and what is the fit in terms of the content that you can create versus where the customer is. Find that Venn diagram of this is what I can do. And you can write content, you can be on video, you can do photos, photo content, could do meme content, you could have content where you're just doing audio or a combination of those things. And What is it that I'm comfortable doing and what is it that the audience is comfortable consuming? So for example, if I'm opening up a apparel retailer, I'm going to sell fashion, I'm going to sell shoes, probably just written content is not going to do the trick. My audience is going to want to see photos or videos of something. You got to think of what that Venn diagram is of here's what I can do. Here's what the audience wants. What kind of content can I create that is entertaining, educational, inspirational. at least one of those things, if not all three of those things. And then choosing the platform of choice. So some of that is gonna be dictated by the kind of content you're creating. Video content obviously is gonna go on YouTube, but you can also think about written content being on multiple places and having different forms. So I'll give you my example. When I started doing written content back in 2020, I started to really get into copywriting and do a lot of writing. I started on Twitter. And I was doing these long threads on Twitter and they were doing okay. Nothing was doing great. They were doing fine. And then I started taking that exact same content and putting it on LinkedIn and the same posts that were sort of okay on Twitter were crushing it on LinkedIn. I don't know why. Maybe it's the right audience. Maybe the algorithm liked me better. Who knows? Maybe it was timing, but I started to build an audience and that's where I have the biggest audience now is on LinkedIn. And And so there's an example of sort of experimenting and figuring it out. And then from there, I grew, I started making a podcast, video content. Now I'm on YouTube. Now I have a newsletter with many, many, many thousands of subscribers. So you grow from there, but start in one place. Jeff Dudan (36:26.77) I was just going to ask you about LinkedIn. We started very intentionally with a LinkedIn strategy May 29th and we're sitting here about six weeks later and it is absolutely crushing. And now we're rolling out our first newsletter. And I had somebody on the podcast really early that was an author that would write for CEOs and he would do like four articles every month. And on LinkedIn, He had 880 ,000 people subscribe to his newsletter or something like some ridiculous amount because he was a great writer and everything that he wrote, it was tight. It was concise. was fat. was really he just was a very, very talented writer. And I think I mean, I enjoyed just reading anything that he had. It was quick, easy, interesting, a little bit emotional sometimes and very thoughtful always. What is the cocktail on LinkedIn? You've got a big following on there. What's the cocktail? that you have found on LinkedIn that people are attracted Jon (37:30.798) And by the way, I can see you're doing super well. 12 ,000 plus followers. This is relatively new for Jeff Dudan (37:36.19) Well, no, I've had my LinkedIn for a long time. I got 12 ,000 followers and then I think another maybe I don't know 10 ,000 connections or something like that. So it's Yeah, it seems to be it's it's been a good platform for me. I haven't really leveraged it much I candidly I don't know how I got that many over time It just kind of built over as long as I've been on there So now we're getting very intentional about it launching the newsletter Hopefully we'll be harvesting some people's contact information from to be able to continue just to connect with people and provide value to them. But yeah, it's definitely been, it was my main platform before we started doing all this. Jon (38:16.814) LinkedIn is a place where you've got to really develop a voice and you just, you can't be boring. So much of what I see on LinkedIn is the exact same. We're congratulating an employee. I'm so honored to be on the Forbes 30 under 30, you know, with Beyonce, like believe me, Beyonce doesn't know that she's on that list. you shouldn't be so proud of that. But it's just, it's a lot of just self bragging and, Jeff Dudan (38:35.676) Hehehe. Jon (38:42.942) And congratulations for your inner circle. And look, that stuff's fine. I'm not knocking that as, you know, you want to post that, go for it, but don't be under the illusion that that's going to build you an audience or any credibility on LinkedIn. It's going to get a round of applause from people that already know you and, maybe, you know, it might, it might lead to a conversation or two. The strategy that that has worked on LinkedIn and obviously I'm on LinkedIn and we have a lot of clients who we manage on LinkedIn as well. It's really about identifying your voice and then creating exceptional content that provides value. And don't worry about some people want to say, okay, well, I should make my posts short because I want people to read them. And then, and then like, I actually max out my posts every single time I hit the word count, I have to trim them. And I do these long posts and people say, I don't understand. You're getting all these likes on your posts with 400 words. I don't get likes on my posts 20 words and I say yeah because my posts are really interesting people like reading them they like sharing discussing engaging re -reposting and so you've got to be interesting provide value and then there's no getting around it if if you really want to be if you want to be able to make posts that get lots of attention copywriting is key you've got to really understand how to write copy at an advanced Newsletter Growth, Copywriting, and Why LinkedIn Still Crushes Jeff Dudan (40:05.202) Yeah. Let's talk about Influicity, your agency. Who's a customer for you, typically? Jon (40:13.71) So our clients typically, I would say are mid -market and larger businesses. So when I say mid -market, I mean like 10, 20 million revenue and up. And then the larger businesses, the Toyotas, the Disney's of the world, that's the world I came from. I sort of been working with Fortune 5 ,000 type clients since my very first company in 2005, six, seven. So that's who we tend to serve. Although I would say that, you know, we have clients that venture -backed startups, maybe they've raised two or three million bucks and they wanna fast track and grow their audience really quickly and do it with both organic and also paid strategies. Cause we do a lot of paid at Influicity also. I've got this framework that I talk about called rent to own marketing, which basically means you should rent your audience on day one. Don't be afraid to spend money on Google and Facebook and TikTok because you've got to make sales pretty quickly. And then at the same time, you need Jeff Dudan (40:57.533) Mm -hmm. Jon (41:09.268) own your audience. So you should be investing in those owned channels, like organic social and newsletter and podcast. But people seem to have this impression, especially once they read marketing superpowers. They say this is great, but how does this drive revenue from day one? Well, it drives revenue from day one because you're doing it in conjunction with performance advertising and that sort of thing so that you have that sustaining you and then your brand takes off and instead of getting I'm going to spend a dollar and make $3. You're going to spend a dollar and make $1 ,000 because your brand is really kicking in and Jeff Dudan (41:45.106) Yeah, yeah, that makes great sense. Is it all digital that you focus on or do you get across a more comprehensive marketing program projects for these companies? Jon (41:58.206) It's all digital, but it's not all social. you know, our clients will come to us and obviously it's the social media platforms, but it's newsletter, it's e -commerce website building. We have a client right now, they sell home goods actually, ironically, curtains and blankets, things like that. And we're now building out their e -commerce website and we're sort of building the brand from the ground up. And so that requires us to do a lot more work. We haven't gotten into things like broadcast television billboard. We're not going totally analog. We are within the connected Jeff Dudan (42:33.351) I started the show with an unsolicited endorsement for your book marketing superpowers When did you write this and and yeah, there you go. It's great. It is absolutely great wouldn't say it if it wasn't Yeah, man, when did you write it and? How has it helped Jon (42:41.634) There you go. Jon (42:46.638) Appreciate that, man. Jon (42:52.45) Yeah, writing a book was a journey. Have you ever written a book or tried Jeff Dudan (42:55.792) I have, I have. As a matter of fact, I think I signed one for you. sending it to you. It's called Discernment, the business athlete's regimen for a great life through better decisions. Jon (43:05.294) Oh man, I can't wait to read that. That's going to be great. Yeah, it was, was a journey for me. So I, I got into the writing game in 2000 when I started writing for LinkedIn and Twitter, I sort of developed the muscle habit. have a joke with my wife. She says, you know, what are you doing on your laptop? I say, I'm doing my creative writing and she knows what that means. Now, back in the day, she had no idea what, what are you writing? And so I got into the writing habit and then I found writing a book was really the same thing, just a lot more of And so I have this Google doc. wrote my entire book on Google docs. think it's, I gotta be 250 pages by now. And I would just get into the habit of writing a chapter at a time. And then it was a process of refinement. I think the number one thing that I got out of it, maybe you had the same experience was it's better to just write everything you can and then trim versus trying to add, add, add. It's easier to trim than it is to add. Jeff Dudan (43:59.742) Yeah, mean, I wrote Stephen King's got a book called on writing and his method he would write the same time every day. So like your mind would get into this state and he would do it from 10 in the morning till two in the afternoon or whatever it was. And every day, same time, he would write a certain number of words. Then once he was done with a phase, he would put it aside for months and then he would come back to the book, to the manuscript. And the goal is to cut out 40 % of words. I have found that to be the absolute best method for writing because I'll write something out and I'll be like, and it could be an important business communication, something that's got to land. It can't be too aggressive, but it needs to be firm. It's got to be direct. It's got to be clear. And just then going back and letting it sit for even 30 minutes and then going at and saying, I need to take 40 % of the words out of this because There's lots of extra that's and ands and because there's all these different things that you put in there as you were spilling it out of your face onto the paper. But there's also just distractions of making things too complicated. And anytime I read marketing materials, you got like too many adjectives and connected by ands and all of this stuff. It's exhausting. just say what you mean. that's what I liked about there's two things I liked about your book. like the I like the simplicity with which it was written and the clarity with which it was written. And then I also like the table of contents because you got very granular. So if I and a lot of times you'll see like eight chapters, and it'll it'll it's almost like trying to, you know, figure out a code, a secret code, what's in that chapter, I don't know, you know, it's like a little little hook for a video to try to pull you into it. But you I mean, you know, every You you put what's on every single page. I mean almost here So, you know, I could I could find something that I was interested in and I could jump right to it So I appreciated that as Jon (45:59.258) I appreciate you saying that and noticing it. I'm very particular about that sort of stuff. So when it comes to writing and copywriting, and by the way, there's a whole chapter, because what you just mentioned was actually brilliant. It takes a long time to make something very concise and short. And I spend so much of my time editing all of a sentence. And I'll just look at it and reread it and I'll go, this is bloated. It just doesn't need all these words. And I'll chop and chop and chop. And then when you get a sentence down from, you know, it was, It was 17 words and now it's six words, but it says the same thing. That is just such a feeling. You know, it's like, it's like losing, you know, you've just lost 11 pounds. Great. You feel lighter and happier. You're following through the fields. It's wonderful. Uh, but to get to your point there on the, on the way that I designed the book and I do this with all my writing, all my landing pages as well. I like to give people a sense of, I want to give you the Coles notes inside the full book. And so if somebody just wanted to browse the table of contents, Hey, section six, chapter 52 talks about check -in testimonials. I want to know what that is. John talked about it on a podcast. What is a check -in testimonial? It's right there. And you could just go right to it. I do the same thing on my landing pages. What I'll do is I'll write, let's say, a long sales letter. It's like hundreds of words. But I'll use capitalization. I'll use bold, italics, and highlighting such that if your eye just wanted to follow Jeff Dudan (47:04.008) Mm -hmm. Jon (47:23.758) the highlighted and bold text, you could read that entire thing in 30 seconds, or you could read it in seven minutes. It's up to Jeff Dudan (47:31.998) Yeah, you're writing it in a way that cannot be misunderstood and people aren't going to have to burn a lot of calories to figure out what you're trying to say. Jon (47:45.152) And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is the idea that once someone knows a lot about a topic, maybe they feel smarter or it strokes their ego to speak about it in a way that's got a lot of jargon, a lot of lingo, you know, because I want to show you that I know things that you don't know. And I'm very educated. And the more I know about the topic, especially marketing and entrepreneurship, where I spend most of my brain power, I find once I know something really, really well, if I can't explain it to my mother and my test for the book, my editor was my mother. So I said, you need to read this book. She knows nothing about marketing and nothing about what I do. You need to read this book. And if you don't understand this, you need to tell me so I can simplify it. I want to make it easy to understand. And believe me, the information in there, just because it's easy to understand, doesn't mean it's not powerful. It's extremely powerful when you put it into practice, but it's also very digestible. AI in Marketing: Superpower or Shortcut? Jeff Dudan (48:38.178) The biggest things that have changed my life are just a simple statement. Somebody made a simple statement and then just like, okay, that's what I've been doing wrong in this area of my life. And also having your mom as your editor, there's no way she's not gonna like it. So there's that. Jon (48:54.222) I had a few people read it because you're definitely she has she has that bias for sure. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. She did of course. She was the first one on Amazon. No, I'm kidding. I actually It's funny I said to her she's like can I have a copy of the book? said I'll give you a copy but I'd love it if you would go and buy one and leave a review is Amazon knows of what a verified review is they see if you if you buy it I'm curious to know from you though because you work in the franchise world Jeff Dudan (48:58.994) Yeah, she give you a five -star review? I hope she did. Yeah, and the second, third, fourth, and tenth. Jon (49:22.048) What are the biggest marketing challenges or maybe the biggest challenge you would say that someone has in the world of franchising? Jeff Dudan (49:29.799) Yeah, you know, getting a lot of it's gonna depend on whether you're working with a legacy brand, a Mynakee, a Mako, somebody that's a household name that's recognized, you know, and people get into those brands if they're even available to get into. And they have a built -in set of customers, because people are just gonna drive, you know, McDonald's is McDonald's, and you know what you're gonna get, and, you know, people are just gonna pull in. if they're a customer to McDonald's, regardless of whichever one it is. When you're dealing in the service industry like us, we have a big lift to educate customers and to become a household name. then the demand is sometimes inconsistent. So people are only gonna need a fence once in their life or when they're putting in a pool or maybe when they're moving to a new house. So now you've got to compete not only for that tip off, the ball goes up, right? Everybody has a chance to compete and bid on that word. But you know, so there's the slot machine, right? Of I'm trying to land an ad directly on a person who has that need today. Okay? So there's that, it's a slot machine and you're throwing your dollars out there and you're trying to get it. And then, but the other side of it, like how do you build a vending How do you build a vending machine of customers that raise their hand and say, I may be looking for a fence, not today, but sometime over the next two years, sometimes in the future, and I want to get a piece of content that might be a catalog or an educational piece or engage with somebody that tells me that they understand my problem so that you're building a set of potential customers. There's customers today. There's customers. that are going to buy sometime in the near future. And then there's brand awareness, right? So how do you sort your activities between those three things? I mean, we all want dollars today, but to your point, you're paying for your customers. So not only are you, got to pay for customers today because you got people that need to do work. You also need to find a way, you know, along the way to be able to own those customers and to be the one of choice. you know, get making it the standard stuff, making it easy to Jeff Dudan (51:49.766) If you can get an app, you we have multiple brands and if you can get an app where people go there first to see if that's a service that you provide in their area, providing, you know, and then and then it's capacity is a big problem in the service industry. So you might be able to drive the lead, but then you've got to convert the lead in such a way that says, yeah, we're available to get out there today and those types of things. But I mean, you know, it's it's the same old stuff. And then and then I think like there's still. There's still that, even though the internet, which I believe one day will be very successful, even though the internet exists and has gotten to be, call me, I'm a visionary, call me crazy, but there's still belly to belly referral marketing, places where you need to show it up because it becomes down this know, like, and trust factor. So now, can you, Jon (52:26.06) Waiting for Jeff Dudan (52:45.542) you know, there's referral partners that you get through places like BNI networks or chamber or these types of things or that you gain over time. So people will say, you've got to use John because John's the best at this. And if you can get John, you know, get John. But I think you look at that. Well, maybe podcasts are a way for small business owners to develop that without, you know, on a broader scale. So, you know, I think I think the challenges in marketing, which is exactly where I wanted to go next. for us come down to the dynamic nature of the digital space. we spend, mean, I am flying all over the country doing two things, recruiting people that can come in and help us build these great companies. So, you know, one of my big jobs is recruiting executives and presidents and things like that. We just acquired another brand. So now I've got to staff that up. And then going out and getting in these places If I detect that the customer acquisition cocktail is being done, being mixed together somewhere out there in a new and exciting way, then I need to be there to figure out what that is. Because you run the risk of the interception of your leads by people that are just a little bit smarter and faster. And that's the risk. when you, well, I had a great business coach. said, Jeff, your job is to disintermediate. any intermediaries between you and your customer. Okay, well, the internet is a intermediary between me and my customer. And if I'm not careful, other people can step into that intermediary and take my customers before I ever see that they're there. So the challenge for us is to make sure that we are staying current with, mean, I'm looking at AI tools now that, you know, two years ago, this would have been a four month project with project management. to build a piece of, implement a piece of technology and connect it all together. And that might've cost me 200, $250 ,000 to accomplish this one thing where I can go buy an AI tool now and have it installed within a week. And if I can do it, other people can do it. So that's the challenge. I'm, know, those are the two, like I am traveling everywhere to make sure that we stay current. And I don't know how long this AI thing is gonna last, but the transformation has been amazing so far. Why Only 3% of Customers Are Ready to Buy—and What To Do About It Jeff Dudan (55:06.622) And it's, and I think it's just getting started. And for people that are not paying attention and just want to do it the way they've always done it, I think they're going to look around and they are, they are going to find themselves Jon (55:18.798) I think you just dropped a lot of gold there. So I want to go back for a second because you said something that I talk about quite a bit, which is the idea that only 3 % of your customers are in market to buy at any given time. And you need to be catering to other 97 % who are going to be buying, who maybe are solution aware. So they know you exist, they're not ready for you yet. Maybe they are problem aware, but they don't know that a solution exists yet. Or Jeff Dudan (55:31.304) Mm -hmm. Jon (55:46.254) They're not even aware that there's a problem or a solution. And so you need to be doing marketing at all those levels. That's the bottom 97%. The best way to do that is with the long tail, the podcast, my favorite is the newsletter. So if you can collect an email address and nurture that person for weeks and months on end, you can indoctrinate them. And by the time they realize they have the problem, there's a solution and you're the best solution provider. You've made the sale before you've ever entered the And that's also the other thing that I like to think about is the idea that I don't really ever want to be in a competitive sales environment. I don't want to be one of four vendors that you're looking at. I want to be so clearly the obvious choice, which is what you get. know, the stuff I talk about in marketing superpowers, it's not just about getting more customers. It's about winning the deals with the customers that you do have. And we all know what it feels like to be sitting at a table and you know you're getting the deal because the buyer is your neighbor. or the buyer is the guy you went to school with or the buyer is good friends with your wife. Okay, great. So I know I'm getting this deal. Imagine if you had that advantage in every single room you walked into every time you entered a competitive sales scenario, you knew that you had an unfair advantage because you are just the guy or the gal in that industry that everyone trusts. That's what this is about as well. And I totally agree with you. You don't want to be in a situation where people are shopping on price. and then choosing someone who they met yesterday, even though you could provide the service just as well. That's a really, really cogent point that I think people need to pay attention to. Jeff Dudan (57:19.166) Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's future customers. Who are they? And how can you be in their orbit? How can you be in their brain so that when that demand manifests into an action, that there's nobody else that they're going to call first? And that's it. No. Oh, yeah. Jon (57:36.002) They wouldn't even think about it. And we all have those people in our own cities. Think about your dentist, the plastic surgeon, the wedding DJ. Everybody has examples of, I'd love to get that person. They were booked up for months. I've got to go for this person now. You want to be the first person. And it's not that they're better. It's just that they've developed this image and this brand that's the aura that's around them. Everybody wants to work with them. Jeff Dudan (58:00.274) Yeah, nobody ever gets used to be, no technologist or no chief technology officer ever gets fired for going with IBM. So if they can get IBM, they're gonna go with IBM, and if they can't, then they'll try to suffer with somebody else, but they know their career's on the line. John. Jon (58:18.478) In my world, was nobody ever got fired for buying a 30 second spot or a Super Bowl ad. You don't get fired for that stuff. It's much easier to do that than it is to take a risk on some other advertising vehicle. Jeff Dudan (58:29.832) Yeah. John, due to the dynamic nature of the technology in particular around marketing, what has been, and particularly AI and machine learning, what has been the impact on your agency and its ability to help your clients and also the ability to operate your business? Jon (58:52.782) AI has been a net mega positive in my view. I'm an AI optimist. There's all kinds of things you could look at five, 10 years down the line. Is AI gonna be taking over jobs and economic impact and GDP? And I get all that, put that aside. On a micro level, it is extraordinarily powerful to automate and simplify a lot of busy work just takes people's time up. I I look at something like simple tasks, people are working in spreadsheets or Word docs, they're writing sales copy and using chat GPT or specialized tools that can do these different things. The thing that would have taken you two hours to figure out in Microsoft Excel, now you do in 30 seconds, because you just go to chat GPT and say, how do I do this? Just do it for me. And it boom, it's done. It gives you the formula that you need in two seconds. So I love it for productivity like For the bigger jobs, the way we're looking at it in terms of serving clients is it allows us to do much more high level strategic thinking and actioning. And that's really where the value is anyhow. then we can sort of, wherever we can, where things are becoming commoditized, because they can be done by AI, we can have that do it for you. Now, what I will say, and this is a big caution, because I can sniff this out like a is when you are being lazy with AI. So I have people, this happens all the time, where people will say, I've written some, some sales copy that you asked me to do. Okay, great. Listen, you know, send it over to me. And I understand that it's chat GBT because the first words are always let's dive into the great world of anytime I see the word dive in, it was, it was AI. Cause that's for some reason AI loves to dive. And Jeff Dudan (01:00:20.136) Mmm. Jon (01:00:43.542) And so I have to say there's never, and I still to this day do not have a moment where I will actually let AI do the job. is an intern that knows a lot of stuff, but has very little wisdom and very little judgment. So yes, it can do the work, but you need to be supervising it like a real leader, like a real supervisor. Don't let it run loose because it will do all kinds of wacky things. It can do the job, but you got to watch Jeff Dudan (01:01:12.21) John, how has AI and machine learning impacted who you hire? Jon (01:01:20.286) I would say it hasn't really gotten to the point where it replaces a specific job function. It's a co -pilot, if you will. So I wouldn't say it's replaced or changed hiring in any great sense. We've always been an organization. I've got our key values up on the wall behind me. And one of our core values has always been learn fast and share knowledge. for us, you've got to be, to be in my orbit, you've got to be a very quick learner, you've got to be a curious person. You've got to be like, like you said, a moment to go, you're wandering around looking for AI tools that are going to disrupt you because you want to jump on them first. You know, you want to be the disruptor, not the one who gets disrupted. So I'm in a culture constantly where people are bringing things to me. People are sharing things with me constantly that I haven't seen a or heard of before. And that's becoming more more important because in the world of social media or platforms come and go, Advertising tactics change all the time. Algorithms change. Now we have AI changing all the time. It's more important than ever to be a fast learner. Education didn't stop in college, right? When you're 30, 40, 50 years old, 56 years old, you've got to be learning every single day. Jeff Dudan (01:02:33.106) Yeah, the rate of change is just so fast now. Change is constant. And if you have people that want to settle in and just move the widget from left to the right, then those people are going to struggle. And by the way, you specifically asked about the marketing challenges in franchising. That's probably one of them. Because, wait, it's six months ago. You told us we were using this tool and doing it this way. And now you're telling us we're doing it that way. And you know, I thought this was a proven system and I thought, well, at that point, that was the best practice. But now for these reasons, I mean, this is the best practice and this is the best tool and it's more affordable and it does these things and this is what we get out of it. So, yeah, that's that's what we're doing today. They don't like that. Yeah, they don't. You know, some of them don't some of them don't like that. So I think conditioning ourselves to be comfortable. and accept the fact that we are constantly going to have to test and challenge our business practices, our business tools and our business processes. Because if not, then you're going to get left behind. And we don't want to miss the opportunity to take advantage. And by the way, then there's always the chance that we're first or we're near first and we gain ground. We grant, we gain market share, we gain customer base. So for us as a franchise or it is really I mean, we're an adult learning We're a training, we're a call center support company, but now like we are a research development and change management organization as Influicity, Training, and What’s Next for Jon Davids Jon (01:04:10.026) Yeah, and that's a very smart way to look at it. I recently launched a business a training company. So we do corporate training, and we do individual training, you know, for for small business owners, entrepreneurs, just like the folks that listen to this podcast. And the reason I got into that, you know, I wrote the book. And one of the big learnings for me was basically what we've just been talking about for the last few minutes, which is that the idea that you can sort of know something and then coast through life for years at a That's just not how it works. You have to constantly be upping your skills. And one of the reasons companies work with us, both on Influicity, doing the work, but also now on the training side, just training you guys how to do the work, whatever organization you have, a one person team or a 5 ,000 person team, is because the things that you're doing every single day, which are working now, that's great, but it's gonna look different in six, 12, 18 months. And we're here to say, hey, here are the things you need to be looking at to make sure you can get that job done. Really good example, like a example that comes up all the time in our world is you really want to be early to new social media platforms because it's much easier and it's much quicker to grow. The people who are big on TikTok right now, most of them just happened to join TikTok in 2021. And that's why they got big. It's way harder now to build an audience on TikTok than it was in 2021. So just be early to the platform. But if you don't know the platform exists and you don't know how to, how to make content for That's where we can come in and say, guys, here's what you want to be doing. Jeff Dudan (01:05:43.006) So John, what do you see on the horizon for you and your companies? What's out there in the future for Jon (01:05:49.773) It's a great question. It's something I think about every day. So the book has definitely opened a lot of doors. The new things that are happening on my side. So Infelicity is running strong, have a phenomenal team there, working with great clients. I'm very focused right now actually on the training side. So we basically have corporate training and we've got this, we call Marketing Superpowers VIP, which is essentially, and you can click there, there's a QR code in the book. can go to it, Marketing Superpowers Pro or VIP, same thing. And the idea there is we really want to help people implement everything that they're learning in marketing superpowers, because it can be intimidating. You great. You've just taught me 17 things, but I'm running a business. I'm one person or I've got nine people. How do we actually do this in a reasonable amount of time? So that's what I'm spending a lot of my time doing now, doing it for small companies and big ones as well. And then I really see a world where we can turn a lot of this into playbooks and formulas. I'm really probably got from the book. I'm very into developing a system, a template, a formula that works and then exporting it out as many times as we can. So I see us getting more specialized. know, franchising is an area that we're looking at very closely. We work a lot in the restaurant space. We work with a ton of restaurant clients. So I'm sort of looking at how do I apply marketing superpowers to real estate, to franchising, to restaurants, to travel. Jeff Dudan (01:06:57.458) Mm Jon (01:07:16.918) And is there a way for us to kind of specialize that in different areas? Jeff Dudan (01:07:20.744) Gosh, John, if there was only somebody you knew that you could talk to about franchising. Jon (01:07:24.844) Here we are, here we are Jeff. Jeff Dudan (01:07:27.486) Here we are. I'll be here all week. All right. Well, that sounds awesome. And I'm particularly interested in personally building tools, building tools, building playbooks, and working towards events with entrepreneurs and helping people grow their business and just continuing to expand the horizon of what we're doing. So I'm really excited for you on that. When did the book come Jon (01:07:55.022) Book dropped June 18th, 2024. as of yesterday, I mean, pretty quickly, but as of yesterday, we're recording this in July, it was trending number one on Amazon in internet marketing and global marketing. So I'm so happy with the reception. All I ask is if you get the book and you like it, please leave a review on Amazon, because that'll help us just grow, grow in the search results. Jeff Dudan (01:08:16.114) This book's gonna be huge. I didn't know it was that new. It's gonna be massive. mean, it's really gonna, it's really good. Everybody needs to read this book, Marketing Superpowers, by John Davids. Highly, highly, highly recommend. And I've certainly enjoyed it, and I've gotten some really great information out of it. John, last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be? Jon (01:08:38.082) Yes, sir. Jon (01:08:46.968) Do stuff to make yourself happy, not to please other people and chase the status game. That's taken me a long time to learn, really figure it out. And it's about figuring out what makes you happy, because you got to get up in the morning every single day and do stuff for yourself. Chasing status and prestige, it's not going to do it. You've really got to do it for yourself. Jeff Dudan (01:09:09.086) Yeah, beautiful. Well said. John Davids, can't thank you enough for being on. This has been absolutely fantastic. The book is amazing. Again, marketing superpowers hot off the press. As of June 18th, get your copy now before they run out. And John Davids, thanks for being Jon (01:09:27.192) It's a pleasure, Jeff. Thank you so much. Jeff Dudan (01:09:29.02) Yep, John David's with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks everybody for listening. Talk to you soon.
Brief Summary In this rich and thoughtful episode of On the Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with award-winning chef, restaurateur, and wine entrepreneur Mark Tarbell . From working in European kitchens at 14 to opening his own restaurant in Phoenix with no partners, Mark shares the gritty reality of entrepreneurship in the culinary world. They discuss resilience, hiring for cultural fit, balancing family with ambition, and why wine—like business—is all about context, curation, and care. Key Takeaways Slow Burn Beats Fast Fame : A fast start in the restaurant business can be deceptive. Sustainable businesses take time, consistency, and a deep connection to community. Hiring for Culture, Not Just Skill : Mark’s hiring process focuses on chemistry, values, and human connection—not just resume credentials. Resilience Through Headwinds : Despite no Food Network, no celebrity status, and active discouragement from others, Mark pursued his culinary passion relentlessly. Wine Is a Language : Anyone can learn to appreciate and understand wine—if they’re willing to keep showing up and be unafraid to say “grandma’s sock drawer.” Family First, Without Losing Ambition : Mark shares how having children reshaped his ego-driven early career into one of intentional, balanced entrepreneurship. Build Community, Not Just Brands : His new venture, Cha Cha Mouche, offers wine, storytelling, and connection—not just products. Featured Quote “You know you, and you know the right thing. Just trust that. Life comes from you, not at you.” TRANSCRIPT From Iron Chef to Entrepreneur: The Story of Mark Tarbell Mark Tarbell (00:02.158) Yes. Jeff Dudan (00:03.126) Okay, well, hey, we'll get cranking then. Right now and we won't dilly around with it. And we'll just go if you don't mind where I generally like to start, because we kind of do the hero's journey anything I know you started getting interested in food at the age of 14 took a gap year went over but anything you want to share about like starting back then and your journey would be great. And then I've got I got a bunch of great stuff. I listened to some of your other podcasts that you were on and just Mark Tarbell (00:26.829) Okay. Jeff Dudan (00:32.598) I mean, I'm just really excited to kind of dig into all this and just see where it goes. All right. Yeah. Hey, you know, we've had two million downloads over the last six months. Yeah, it's growing. I mean, we're kind of on this uphill thing. And people like you are, you know, do nothing but help that get bigger. So hopefully, hopefully this works for everybody. But we'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and crank it out right now. Mark Tarbell (00:36.878) Thank you. I really appreciate you doing this. my gosh, that's fantastic. Mark Tarbell (00:58.124) Yeah. Okay, let's do it. Jeff Dudan (01:02.038) All right, three, two, one. Hey, welcome everybody to the home front. This is Jeff Duden and we are thrilled today to have an Iron Chef America, a multiple Emmy award winning television host in the food industry, French trained chef and entrepreneur, Mark Tarbell. Mark, welcome. Mark Tarbell (01:28.3) Thank you very much, Seth. I really appreciate you having me on. Jeff Dudan (01:32.598) Yeah, and I'm not going to leave out the James Beard Award either. So, you know, but I had the great fortune to meet you out in Arizona a couple of months ago at an event. You were very gracious. You spoke to us as a group. And then the coolest thing was, which I couldn't believe it. Well, first, I couldn't believe that you were there. Second, that at the end of the event, there was a food challenge set up. Mark Tarbell (01:38.284) A nomination. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:02.358) And we went downstairs and there was about eight teams. There was tables of ingredients. We had some really good sashimi grade tuna. We had some lettuce. We had eggs. We had avocados. We had a whole table of ingredients. And we got we had 30 minutes to present a dish to you and the other esteemed panelist judges. And I'm not going to miss the opportunity to say our team won that. Mark Tarbell (02:26.795) Well, Jeff, doesn't it feel good to win? For those that think that winning isn't everything, Jeff, I think they haven't won yet. It feels good. Jeff Dudan (02:29.398) It does. Jeff Dudan (02:35.51) That's right. They're still trying. Well, really, really honored and excited. I'm a huge foodie and a big fan of, you know, I think the best thing that happened to television other than the Discovery Channel was the Food Channel. And getting a look, you know, and with all these, with all the great chefs and getting a look behind the industry, learning, like it just, I was in New York this last weekend and we always go to great restaurants when we're there and now, Mark Tarbell (02:38.859) Yeah. Cooking Found Me: A Culinary Calling at Age 14 Jeff Dudan (03:05.078) and we kind of get a sense of what's going on behind the scenes there. So I really, you know, food's a cultural thing that people come together over all the time and to be able to, you know, just share a great meal with somebody, there's nothing better than that. Mark Tarbell (03:23.817) Well there's nothing better than for the heart and soul to either cook for someone or share a meal with something. It's just so much part of our DNA. I believe that there's something that happens, an equalizing effect, a normalizing effect, a joy effect that happens when you're around food. And it truly is special. I'm very blessed that I was, this found me I should say, this business and cooking found me. Jeff Dudan (03:47.478) Mark, would you share a little bit about how that happened? I know you first got interested in food in your early teens and then you got an early start in your career. You traveled to Holland. Mark Tarbell (03:57.257) Yes, I did. So, you know, there's a lot of headwinds being an entrepreneur. There's certainly a lot of headwind in the restaurant industry. High rate of failure, very challenging, adrenaline driven, you know, very tough on everything, right? Tough on your shoulders, your hips, your knees and ankles. But, you know, the bigger headwind for me was there was no food channel when I started. There was no celebrity chefs. The Julia Child, who's famous, was off the air for a decade. you know, bam wasn't created, guy was a dude that lived next door, you know. So there was no notion of it being a career or a celebrity career. So not only did my passion drive me to it, but I had a lot of headwind around my family and people just not understanding my choice, saying that it was a bad choice. Well, I'm still wondering what it might've been. But so I just left. I mean, my drive and passion, I created an opportunity for myself in Amsterdam as an apprentice. I did a full apprenticeship there and that was when it exploded. I made a decision, I was going to open my own restaurant with no money, no prospect and no future. I made that decision and then I went to culinary school in Paris, wine school and the rest kind of unfolded. But the headwinds have always been there. Jeff Dudan (05:19.766) Where was that restaurant you opened? Was it in Holland, in Amsterdam? Mark Tarbell (05:23.526) No, I worked in Amsterdam and I worked in Paris. I worked in a three -star and a one -star restaurant there as an apprentice. And I worked in a lot of other places, both what they call front of the house, which is like management and wine training and wine education and things like that. And then back of the house, which is cooking. I learned enough, I believe, at some point by the time I was 30 and I was in Phoenix at the time. And I opened my first restaurant here in Phoenix 30 years ago, which in chefs... Jeff Dudan (05:30.006) Okay. Mark Tarbell (05:52.453) years that's like a hundred thousand years old. Jeff Dudan (05:54.646) Yeah. And then you're also a pretty good guitar player and an accomplished musician. So I can only imagine the people in your life at that time saying, don't pursue the food career, pursue the music career, which is more of a certain thing. Mark Tarbell (06:14.853) You know, it was a dual passion. I played when I was in high school a little bit, but I was really an acoustic player. I played classical and acoustic and finger picking and stuff like that. Electric, I just never could get. There were people in my friends that were better than I was. And then I just left it. I went because when you go into my career, you're in 100%, 1 ,000%. And I picked it up again decades later and had one goal that I wanted to play in front of an audience. And I accomplished that very quickly. eight months of re -picking the guitar up. And I've been scared ever since. I think I've done it so much. I mean, I've played with like Alice Cooper, Nils Laughren from Bruce Springsteen's band on stage. I was on stage just me as an accompaniment with a guy named Chris Christopherson, who was the original star of S .B .O .R .N. and wrote me and Bobby McGee and a bunch of other famous songs. So I've had some really crazy experiences on stage with friends. Opening a Restaurant With No Partners (And No Backup) Jeff Dudan (07:02.774) Mm -hmm. Mark Tarbell (07:13.765) But I still get up there and I'm going, what am I doing here? Jeff Dudan (07:19.734) Yeah, that's two incredible careers. So you're 30 years old and you've been hustling it in the back of the house, you've worked your way up, you got an education. Was it just absolutely crystal clear that it was time for you to start your own restaurant? Mark Tarbell (07:41.669) It was sort of a burning desire. I've always been running like I'm late and I'm behind my whole life. And I still do that to a degree. I haven't ever been able to solve that issue, but I always feel like just that something's on my back and chasing me and I got to keep running. So I felt like the opportunity would pass if I didn't do it. And the desire was there, 100%. Again, had no money in prospects, but I did have a 401k. I did have a car that I'd... Jeff Dudan (07:49.718) Mm -hmm. Mark Tarbell (08:10.117) nice car that I bought and paid for when the career that I built and a little bit of cash. And then I borrowed some money. So I didn't have any partners or anything, but I just borrowed money. And that was hard because people like you're opening a restaurant and you've never been in the business. First of all, you're opening a restaurant. The answer is no, I'm not loaning you money because nine out of 10 failed independent restaurants historically or data around the country. So I had to kind of scrape it together myself and put myself out there on the line. And I was there every day. Jeff Dudan (08:26.006) Right. Mark Tarbell (08:40.069) during construction because my dad was in marine construction. So I did understand building to a degree. I'm not great at it, but I understood how to swing a hammer. So I was here every day. That was my job. And I pushed it along and helped put together the restaurant and, you know, scraped and scraped and opened it up. Jeff Dudan (08:58.55) How many seats did you open with? Mark Tarbell (09:00.453) 144. so I, I had, I took two thirds of the space and built this oval, semi -circle bar, which back in 30 years ago was actually quite remarkable. And I called it a dining counter and back then people could smoke in bars and I didn't let them smoke. And they're like, this is a bar you should be able to smoke. And I'm like, well, it's a dining counter. What are you talking about? I mean, I had people yell at me saying, I'm going to fail. No one's going to do this. And, Jeff Dudan (09:02.646) Okay. Mark Tarbell (09:26.565) Actually, for the first four months I was open, not one human being sat at my bar. Not one, except the mad people that left because they couldn't smoke. And then I remember there was this guy named James, and he owned an insurance company. At the end of the bar one day, he sat at it. And then he was like, this is really cool. And then he brought another person and another person and another person. Five years later, it was 3D. Jeff Dudan (09:52.854) No, is that the location that you're still in? OK. In 30 years. Mark Tarbell (09:54.981) Yeah, believe it or not. Yeah, it's, you know, I don't reflect much on that, but, you know, I'm obviously intellectually understand that it's quite impossible what I've done being here in the same location for 30 years with no partners and no trust fund. Jeff Dudan (10:15.286) Right, yeah, very unusual. Even the best of places need to change it up a little bit once in a while. So I'm in the service industry, and for us, when we put people in business in a franchise, the first year's slow and the next year's a little bigger, the next year's a little bigger. In the restaurant industry, especially if you do some of these franchises, that first year can be big because everybody wants to try it. But do they come back? You know, and once people try it and if it's if it's if it doesn't hit just right then word gets around and you can induce people to get back into the place and I think you're you know, You can see the writing on the wall at that point How do you keep it? How do you keep it fresh and and how do you keep people coming back year after year? Why Slow Starts Build Legendary Restaurants Mark Tarbell (10:55.461) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (11:04.581) Well, Jeff, I want to touch on that because it's actually very true. And I believe that it's better to not have a hot burn early in any business you do. You learn so much that first year, you make mistakes, but it's not as critical because you don't have as big an audience or a bigger pool of customers. And you can communicate with them. There's so few of them, generally speaking, you can talk to them directly and learn from them and hopefully save them and those kinds of things. So I've really I teach and advise slow burn. Jeff Dudan (11:12.278) Hmm. Jeff Dudan (11:20.822) Okay. Mark Tarbell (11:33.733) because you're absolutely right. There's so much interest in trying what's new, but it's very, very, very deceiving because generally speaking, it's a big spike and then a big drop. And you have built all your dreams and desires and your business model on that big spike. And then all of a sudden, oops, you know, you went out and bought the Porsche or the, you know, the country place or the lake house and based on your projections and how it's going, doesn't happen. So that's where a lot of restaurants fail in businesses, I think, but... You know, the other thing is, you know, that, you know, I think, how do I keep relevant? You know, that's a really good question. It's actually, I'm rather simple. I wake up every day believing in my heart that I've opened for the first time at five o 'clock. And I have to believe like it's that first day I open and I look at every customer with gratitude and thanks, I listen to them. I don't ever read, I've actually never written. read an article that's been written about me and there's been tons, Wall Street Journal and Wall... I mean, just a lot of New York Times, a lot of great stuff over the years, but I've never read it. Been on TV a lot, never watched myself on TV. And so I think that's a part of it. It's not only part of who I am, but it's a discipline that none of that stuff matters. The day, when I open tonight at five o 'clock, no one cares. They don't care about that. That might have brought them to the door, but actually the expectations are even higher. Jeff Dudan (12:57.878) That's right. The Secret Ingredient: Front of House > Food? Mark Tarbell (13:01.957) when you have accolades. They're coming in up here and in their own mind what up here is. They've made that up, that narrative. So you now are competing against a narrative that you didn't create, but it's created in their own mind. So you really have to work hard to blow them away. Jeff Dudan (13:19.158) How important is the front of the house to customer loyalty in a restaurant like yours? Mark Tarbell (13:26.725) Well, as a chef and chefs that may be listening, you may be upset, but I've been saying this for years. It's number one. Customer loyalty is driven by guest facing people, salespeople. In our case, it's bartenders, servers, server assistants, hosts and managers. They are number one. Without them, your food, well, first of all, if they do their job well, even if you make mediocre food, it'll taste better. But if they do their, because everyone knows how they feel. Jeff Dudan (13:33.718) Okay. Jeff Dudan (13:37.814) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (13:56.709) and how they've been treated. Not everyone knows the nuances, the subtle nuances, the last 5 % of what they've eaten or tasted. So everyone knows how they've been treated. Jeff Dudan (14:07.83) Yeah, the places that we frequent, there needs to be good, crisp, honest service. It doesn't have to be, you know, I don't need a mater de to greet me all the time, although it's nice when they have a key person there that recognizes you by name. But the food, if you want me to go back 20, 30, 40 times a year, the food needs to be good. It... It's, we have a little place right here by us and we moved to a new neighborhood on the lake. And I always say, one of the best things about it is I'm three minutes away from this restaurant because I can swing by there on the way home. I can get takeaway and it's always gonna be, it's always the same. And it's not fancy, but I'll bring people there that are guests in from out of town because it's actually one of the best meals that I can get for them. Mark Tarbell (15:03.781) You know, you're speaking to me and it's like music to my ears, but everyone finds that place and it has a lot to do with consistency, it has a lot to do with comfort, it has something to do with habit, but those habits are formed because they know you and you know them and it's a sure thing. And the fact that you feel, trust them so much to bring your friends, because that's a risk, you're probably not going to bring them to that new hot place that just opened that you haven't been to and the friends are only there for one night. Unlikely it's going to happen. Jeff Dudan (15:09.782) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (15:33.797) You might go on a Monday, you know, when it's a toss off night, try it out. And I always say that it may be true in other businesses, but it takes at least three visits to change people's habits. And you have to just blow them out of the water in those first three experiences for them to change. Like if I was moving to that Lake community you're in, I would have to work so hard and you know me, but I'd still have to work so hard to pull you away from that other place because you're already there. Jeff Dudan (15:37.205) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (16:02.373) The only way I can win is if I overdo it and go crazy and really win you over, or they lose. You know, they somehow mess up some night and I'm there to catch you. Jeff Dudan (16:11.734) That's right. Yeah. All right. Quick fact check. You said Monday. Kitchen confidential. Anthony would say don't order fish on Monday. Well, I don't know that that's probably not a fair question. Should I redact that question mark? Okay. Mark Tarbell (16:23.543) Yes, well. It's a very fair question. I'd love to answer that question because obviously it very much depends on the sourcing standards and the integrity of the restaurant. But like if you're in a city like Phoenix where from both coasts, which would be Santa Barbara, Seattle, Gulf Coast and Boston, where we have direct flights that come in every day, two, three sometimes direct flights. Monday Night Fish? Mark Debunks Kitchen Confidential Jeff Dudan (16:38.486) Mm -hmm. Mark Tarbell (16:52.663) What we've done for seafood in particular is we put it in the belly of that plane and then we go down and pick it up. So we're probably getting our fish order from that morning the same time the fish is being delivered in Boston. And that's a true fact, because there's an eight o 'clock plane and with the time difference, we get it about 11. And we order it as much as we can. Mostly it's three to four times a week. Jeff Dudan (17:11.51) Yes. Mark Tarbell (17:19.222) So, and you might think, well, there's, you know, what if I order it on Monday and I still have it on Tuesday, if it's properly iced and it's gonna be fresher than probably most of the restaurants in Boston or Santa Barbara. And so, and then we only order enough so that we run out. So we always wanna be in that deficit scarcity. So we're not going, my gosh, we paid so much for this swordfish. We have to do something with it. That's never been the way that a philosophy that I wanted to cook with, it's not uncommon, but we basically do, we... Jeff Dudan (17:36.95) Sure. Jeff Dudan (17:40.438) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:46.55) Yes. Mark Tarbell (17:48.757) We run out. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:50.29) Yeah, well, and it's an upscale location. And then these days, how many plates are you turning a night? Mark Tarbell (17:58.333) So, it's during season. So our season is pretty much eight to nine months a year. And then we have a little bit of, because we're mostly built on regulars and local business. So we don't go in July and August, we're still busy, but not as busy as season, which is the winter. But during winter, we'll do, you know, on the corner, we will do four to 600 meals, sometimes 700 meals a night. We're only open at night. And if you can imagine, let's say you're doing 300 meals. Jeff Dudan (18:07.766) Okay. Jeff Dudan (18:13.078) Okay. Mark Tarbell (18:27.668) a good solid night and you have an 11 foot stainless steel, what they call pass or counter where the kitchen separates itself from the restaurant. And imagine people ordering three courses, you know, salad, entree, maybe a dessert. So that's 900 plates in two and a half hours or three hours going across an 11 foot span with six people working on it. So that just puts kind of in sharp focus, the complication and the dance that it takes to make that happen. Jeff Dudan (18:57.462) Yeah, and I love the thought of that. So I had an early experience in front of the house and back of the house. I was 12 and 13. I was in seventh and eighth grade. And we had there was a really popular Mexican restaurant in this in outside of the city of Chicago called El Matador. And it was where my parents used to go. So they they said, well, so Friday and Saturday night, I get there around three in the afternoon and we would eat. They would feed us all. So they'll all, you know, family style enchiladas and all that. And then we would spend 30 minutes folding napkins, which I can still do, you know, at least 10 a minute right now and, you know, fold them into little triangles and stuff and set them up. And then we'd, yeah, then we'd set up the tables and everything. And I would, so I was busing to get started. And then the second year I actually moved into the kitchen. And I don't know what the position would have been called, but I was responsible for appetizers and stuff and that kind of stuff. So I was on the line and I'm 13 years old. I'm on the line and this fast moving, you know, I don't know how many seats we had, probably 100, 200 seats in there, 150 seats in there. It was a pretty good sized place and just had a really great experience. I've heard you say that you must love hard. You must love repetition and you must love consistency to do what you do. How challenging is it today to find the kind of people like the like like when I was I just I did whatever I was told, you know when I was growing up like I gently well That's not exactly true in all cases, but I was a heart that's actually that's actually not true in most cases But I will say that I didn't like to fail and I was a hard worker. I was hard -headed But you know, what's it like today finding people that want to go into that kitchen and really work their way through? that career path. Hiring Gen Z: How to Find Warriors, Not Victims Mark Tarbell (20:46.897) Well, you know, so I have been open 30 years and I've had, and it's sort of a person that business attracts a lot more youth, right? So I've had at least three or four, maybe five generations of X, Y, Z, Z, whatever they are, generations. And for me, fundamentally, all young kids are the same. There may be different ways you communicate. There may be different motivations. There may be different... Jeff Dudan (20:56.79) Sure. Mark Tarbell (21:16.08) you know pressures of the time or dialogue or things that are happening out there in the world in the news and their influences. But once it comes down to it, if you can get anyone to fall in love and find purpose and get reward and get growth and get challenge, like truly challenge and learn to love that, it's addictive. You know, I think it sounds like it was for you at that Mexican restaurant. you'd probably run through walls for them and you didn't mind the work, you just cranked it out and like you said, you can fold 10 napkins in 10 seconds and that was probably a badge of honor for you when you could do that. Like I'm sure you got reward, the owner liked it, people around you liked it and when you were in the kitchen, I'm sure you were a mad fast, it's called gare maje in France, but the cold station, you did salads. You know, that's a fast station, especially if there's desserts and salads and appetizers. I call it, you get crunched. Jeff Dudan (21:47.318) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (22:12.559) because when there's a turn of tables, you're doing apps and desserts at the same time, so it's like an apex. So you get it, but I have a great deal of hope and we still only hire one, two or three out of 100 people we meet. It's been that way forever. It is hard if you put it that way. Yes, it's hard to find people, but we're very particular and our hiring process is very intense and it's not for everyone and it's very non -restaurant. Most restaurants are like, Jeff Dudan (22:17.238) Okay. Jeff Dudan (22:29.59) Hmm. Mark Tarbell (22:41.102) you can, you showed up, you're in, you know? And that is not a good plan. A lot of turnover happens when you do that. So I recommend really being patient, high or slow, and move people on quickly. But yeah, I love the kids of today. Now, during that period of time we just all lived through the worldwide pandemic. Yeah, a lot changed, you know, a lot changed and it but it's all zipped back pretty quickly. People are back to work. They're loving work. They feel motivated. They want to grow. They want to, you know, have a career out of it. Even if they don't make a career out of restaurants, we teach people leadership skills here. We teach them business. We teach them personal responsibility. We teach them what culture is. We teach them what good communication is. So. Jeff Dudan (23:09.686) Mm -hmm. Mark Tarbell (23:28.013) I really take it very seriously that I want to make them better and more prepared for no matter what they do. We're a restaurant and it helps us for sure, but mostly we want them to be prepared for what's next. Jeff Dudan (23:41.398) Well, that's an incredible and very responsible and very admirable tack to take. And I take the same thing in our company. I do. I mean, I have an owner's only call with all of our franchise owners. We're over 200 out there now. And just pouring into it. We're not talking about your business. I just want to give them and pouring into them about being a business owner. We had health. We did blood work. We do. assessments. We do anything that just has to do with making them better as a per anything that they can take with them into their next life or whatever it is. And and we also include all of our staff inside of that. I would be interested, Mark, to hear anything that you would be comfortable sharing about your hiring process. You said it's different. You said it's non -restaurant. Is it Cirque des Soleil where you make them climb up a pole and sing standing on a platform or what? What do you do? What do you what do you put these people through? Mark Tarbell (24:35.244) No, I am definitely adding that, Jeff. I am adding that to our, everyone's gonna love that one. Well, I'll break it down as quick as I can. First, there's, you know, and it's a little complicated because most people want to apply online and we wanna meet people. So we've changed it to make it very easy, meaning you can click and make an appointment at that moment, a one click, and make an appointment with a real human being here at Tarbells. And you know, that's a big deal. We want to meet you. Jeff Dudan (24:38.198) Okay. All right. Mark Tarbell (25:05.131) So there's the first meeting. Jeff Dudan (25:46.39) interrupt out. So stop it. Let him come back in. Okay. Boy, I queued up that question so good. he's awesome. Dude, he was he was so nice when I met him. Like, I mean, he talked to me for like 15 minutes. Yeah. He's got. Jeff Dudan (26:20.982) Hi, how are you doing? I see you got kicked out here. Jeff Dudan (26:30.618) Trying to come back in. Jeff Dudan (26:37.622) It's no worries. You're speaking to me on whatever you all need to do. No, no. Jeff Dudan (27:01.206) Is he gonna be able to get back on? Okay Well, I see somebody trying to come back all the phone must be trying to come back in Looks like it reconnected All right. Well, is he so good to finish we got 30 minutes. Okay good No, no, it's not a problem at all. Not a problem at all. I'll cue that question back up. Do we want to knock them out and let them come back in clean? I will kind of close you out and we'll let you come back. Well, I don't know how to do that. sure I can do it. Thank you. Let me know if you need anything else. Why don't we you want to stop this one or keep it going? I'll keep it going. It's fine. Okay. I'm just making it it's easier if it's in one more quarter. This guy's great. yeah he's awesome. Really nice, really just interesting life. Jeff Dudan (28:24.662) It'd be funny if we forget to edit this out. Hey, so anyway, Mark, Mark Tarbell, Tarbell's restaurant, his phone died and it overheated. So now he's standing in the walk in freezer at Tarbell's restaurant in Phoenix waiting for his phone to come back on. You can hit that remove button there. Remove. Yeah, you see it down there below. Jeff Dudan (28:57.718) I'm wondering if we should upload what we've got so far. No, it'll go up. You didn't take them out though. No, I didn't. Okay, I gotta cue up the question about the hiring practice. That was interesting. Yeah, that was a good question. Questions are good. Questions are better. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to horn in on your mom tonight. I need to go do laundry, but I don't think I need to be... Jeff Dudan (29:33.942) La la la. Jeff Dudan (29:41.91) Well, even if he, even if we go get food or something, it's not gonna, we'll only be out for an hour or two. Mark Tarbell (31:10.392) Hi Jeff. Can you hear me? Jeff Dudan (31:13.686) Are you in the freezer? Mark Tarbell (31:15.543) Well, no, I put my... So we have this, you know, we do these cube ice for, you know, cocktails, the large blocks, and then there's a little metal bin in there which has nothing in it, so I just threw it in the freezer. That has never happened. That is so bizarre. Anyway, I can... It is. I'm right near the kitchen, and that's probably why, but it's also the quietest place in the restaurant. I couldn't get back to my home office because I have a... Jeff Dudan (31:23.798) I'm very familiar. Jeff Dudan (31:29.782) Yep. Well, is it hot where you are? Jeff Dudan (31:38.614) No. Jeff Dudan (31:43.734) That's cool. Mark Tarbell (31:44.631) two o 'clock and I had a, you know, whatever, 12 .30, so. Jeff Dudan (31:48.214) Well, do you need five or 10 minutes before one to or before two to get get ready? How much time do I need? Where do I need to land it? 10 will be good. OK, so that gives us about 18 minutes. That gives us about 18 minutes. OK, that'd be perfect. That'd be that'd be great. Mark Tarbell (31:52.663) A tenner would be good. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, so I will answer the question again about hiring. Does that sound good? Answer the question about hiring again. Jeff Dudan (32:07.446) Yeah, yeah, I'll just I'll ask it again. So I'll just say, all right. So Mark, can you share whatever you'd be comfortable sharing about your hiring process? Mark Tarbell (32:17.27) Absolutely, I'm going to tell you the whole thing. First, we make it one click easy to make an appointment with a director level person. And that's really important. I think that we lost a lot of people because they're just sending in an application and getting no response and going through three steps to get an interview. So we do that right away. And then we make it, we used to have a three step interview and we compress it in one day to respect people's time. It used to be like a week long of interviewing and a week long of discussion and you know, there was a methodology around that. We wanted to see if people really wanted the job so we made them come back and back and back. Today's world is one click. So we do it all in one day. We have all the key people there and it's always a trio. And we ask a series of, there's three pages of questions that each leader gets. It has to be the primary leader who they're gonna report to and then two others, doesn't matter who else. And... We believe that each person as they interview these candidates and ask these questions, and they could be random, like what's your favorite TV show? What's the best experience you ever had? Tell me about your favorite boss. It's not unusual, but they're all really interesting questions. But there's a goal behind it. We want to get to know the person. That is the whole goal of the one, two, three interviews. And at that third interview, if everyone gets together, that trio, and says yes, yes, yes, three yeses, then we move forward to what we call the demo. Now that demo, it could be a server in the kitchen that could be chopping or that could be following a server and clearing a table. That demo is when we tell them they're interviewing us because this is a very important relationship. Everyone that's in the interview process, both someone hiring and the person getting a job, both want to put their best foot forward. Usually it's a scarcity thing from the person hiring and usually the... person interviewing wants a job, so they'll pretty much say and do anything to get the job on both sides. We remove all that and we make it very clear that we're interested in you, but you have to tell us if you're interested in us, if this environment works for you. And so we try to get it down to that human level very quickly. And then the first week is very much about making sure that everyone made the right decision, because it isn't about someone who has technical skills to do something as much as it is, will they fit in? Inside Tarbell’s Unique 3-Stage Hiring Process Mark Tarbell (34:37.746) with the rest of the people that we've hired? Will they fit in with our culture? Will they enjoy it there? Will they thrive? Will they feel like they belong? Those are more important questions to us than anything. So we clear all that up through the interview process. Jeff Dudan (34:53.814) fascinating and very smart and very efficient. I've come to, I heard something last week that I've started to adopt a little bit that complainers, creators don't complain and complainers don't create. And I've heard you say that, we look for people that are warriors, not victims, which is kind of two different ways to say the same thing. How can you tell? if somebody is like your people when you're interviewing them, is there things that you've learned, whether it's backgrounds or adversity that people have faced or just their general approach and demeanor within the interview process? Any clues that you've discerned over time? Mark Tarbell (35:39.121) Yes, I mean, first of all, taking the lens of really being observant and making notes and asking open -ended questions. We never talk about who and what we are because those are all tells and leads and also facial expressions, nodding, any acknowledgement of something that may be favorable or unfavorable. You have to be really, really neutral and just keep asking the open -ended questions like, where did you grow up? I grew up here. What was that like? it was like this. What was your favorite part about it? Did you have a person you liked there most? Tell me about them. You just keep going down that chain of questioning and eventually it exhausts itself. But you might find some interesting information about who they really are and what they believe. And that's when you know. You know, you talk about a challenging time they had with the boss and you go, well, why? And tell me about that boss. Did you learn anything from him? So that's always the grace part, right? Even if it was a tough boss or a bad situation, ask if they learned anything. Jeff Dudan (36:25.942) Right. Mark Tarbell (36:37.104) And if they positively say, well, yeah, it was really tough, but there was one part of that after I left, I really reflected on, I got this out of it that was positive and it helped me in the future, even though it didn't work out. That shows you that they have resolve, they can pivot, they're gonna shake themselves off and step it up and learn what's best and maybe learn from an experience. And hopefully that's helpful. Ruin Your Nightie: Mark’s Wine Journey from Ruin to Refined Jeff Dudan (37:03.062) Absolutely and I think very very wise Mark we can't get off the phone today without saying a few words about great wine and I know that wine is is a big part of The relationship with food. I know that you've got some interest in it. You have the wine store and you also have a new venture called cha cha moosh and I would love to learn a little bit about your history with wine and then how that's, you know, how that career has paired with your restaurant career. Mark Tarbell (37:40.366) Well, that's a great question, Jeff. Like most people, my relationship with wine started very awful. And I'll explain what I mean by that. There was a wine called Rionidi Lambrusco, and it was Rionidi on ice. And after my very first experience with wine, which was Rionidi, not pleasant, I renamed it Ruin Your Nightie, and it did. So my introduction was, everyone created this aura around it, or this... Jeff Dudan (38:03.03) Hahaha. Mark Tarbell (38:10.766) this elegance or this, you know, basically it had its own sort of status. You know, wine was very status driven. And I have to be honest with you, I went to wine school when I was 19 in Paris. And before that, I tried to taste wine and learn about it. Even in my first few months at wine school, I had no idea what they were talking about. I'm like, this is bitter and it's awful. And they're going on, well, it has, if you were just to churn up with a delicate flower in the forest floor of this place in Tuscany and. That's what the aromas would smell like. And I'm like, have you lost your mind? Like, I had no idea what they were talking about. But I'm not a quitter. And I just kept at it. And I kept tasting. And I kept learning. And eventually, what I can tell you now is very simple. It's like learning a language. Everyone, every single person has the ability to be a master sommelier. You have all the tools you need. Some are a little bit more adept at it because they're more interested in others. But physiologically, we all have the tools to be a great taster. We just don't have the language and the words to put to it. And the barrier is not that we can't put words to it. It's because we're afraid, because we don't want to be embarrassed. We don't want to say the wrong thing. We don't want it smells like my grandma's sock drawer because it does. And that would be accurate, but you don't want to be shamed at a table, right? So what I tell people is, say it's grandma's sock drawer. And then, you know, maybe eventually you'll... Jeff Dudan (39:28.598) Yeah, I would use the word tannins instead. Mark Tarbell (39:34.444) talk about other words that might mean the same thing like forest floor or a little bit funky or a degradated earth or fertilizer. There's so many other ways it could be put. Anyway, a misty morning, which is mildew. So fast forward, after all these years of trying to demystify wine, I always wanted to do my own wine project. And in fact, I was just out there in California yesterday. bottling my reserve Chardonnay and Merlot and also blending my and working on my reserve cab and Petite Ferdot. But most importantly, the best part of the day was I'm making a Method Champagne, while I was a true champagne style wine in two ways. One with a grape called Pickpoole, which is low alcohol, super fresh, really exciting, easy, no brainer stuff. And I finished the blend of the 2023 of that. And then we're doing this long term project, we won't be available for. It's been in the bottle for over two years. Probably won't be ready for another two. I want to go head to head with true champagne. I've found an organic vineyard and a farmer that I love of Chardonnay. So we'll be blonde to blonde, Chardonnay based, and I'm going to go after those people in champagne. To say I'm passionate about it is true. To say it is part of life for me, yes. Is it the most important thing? No. I still believe food and community, I believe friends and family, I believe who's around your table is more important than almost anything. And then food comes next, and wine is just there to enhance. It's there to enhance flavors, to contrast flavors of food. And if you choose to try it in moderation, it's there maybe to bring some tactile, aromatic joy, interest to your life and maybe take. Maybe you get a little happy too, but. What Is Cha Cha Mouche? Wine, Stories, and Membership Jeff Dudan (41:07.222) That's right. Mark Tarbell (41:27.305) You know, it's really just there to add value and enhance. It's not center of the plate. Jeff Dudan (41:34.614) Talk to us about Cha Cha Mouche and what the opportunities are for people to learn from you and experience some great products, some great wine, and what's your vision for that brand and what it's gonna bring to people. Mark Tarbell (41:51.848) Well, it's a unique, very, very rare, you know, it's rare because I'm not making very much wine. And it's really an opportunity for you to play with me, go into my playground, if you will, the world of wine. And I am going to be making wines from here. I've already made wine in France. I'm going to be making wine in other places with friends that I know very well that have excellent wineries. I'm going to, you know, use their wineries, but buy all my own stuff, buy all my own grapes. and make my own farming protocols and make these really limited production unique wines. And I'm going to share those experiences in the form of stories or things you wouldn't thought of, areas that you've had wines from or heard about, but never had wine quite like this. Now, I'm going to make them delicious. I'm going to endeavor to make them delicious and not, hmm, that's interesting. I don't want to do that. I want to make like, yeah, this is great. I can't believe it's from X or I can't believe I have this from Y. I've never had this grape. Try this out. And so I really want to take my 40 years of experience and bring it down to something that's super enjoyable, super easy, and delivered right to your door. It's a membership -based, direct -to -consumer, direct -to -your -doorstop model where you pay one fee every quarter, you get quarterly wines, at least six bottles, and then three times a year you get little treats from me, little birthday presents. And that's my chef side. I'm going to be using my creativity and access to share with you some things three times a year, intermittently throughout these wine deliveries. So it's kind of a community. I want to know everybody in the community. I want to build community. I want to do events with this community. And I want to be useful to this community. I can't wait. Jeff Dudan (43:39.734) personally curated wine and food gifts by you. What could be better? So it's C -H -A -C -H -A -O -U -C -H -E. Is that a dot com or where can people find it? So www .cacamouche .com and sign up today available in 14 states right now. Mark Tarbell (43:46.246) Yes. Mark Tarbell (43:54.63) Yes it is. That's a dot com. Mark Tarbell (44:06.501) No, it's available in all 47 states that allow delivery. But we limited our first. We're taking, there's two reasons. We did a pilot and we have 14 states and we have a great group of members already. We're taking a wait list, which we haven't quite set up yet, but it will be done tomorrow or the next day. We're not gonna do any deliveries in the summer for the reasons of heat. Even though we do it with cold delivery in cold trucks, we just don't wanna risk it. Jeff Dudan (44:09.11) okay. Mark Tarbell (44:34.212) So the next delivery will be end of September and we're taking a waitlist because we don't have a lot of wine and we want just the right people and we're going to accept more people from the waitlist in August and September for our next delivery. Jeff Dudan (44:48.854) Well, the good news is, Mark, that this episode won't air for probably four weeks. So I will have I will be in front of everybody who's listening right now on the wait list. But after me, feel free to pile in. But I'm not sure I signed up when I met you. I think I went to the website, but I do need to sign up for that. And I'm very much looking forward to sharing your experiences. Quick, quick question here. And, you know, you've done all of these things. Mark Tarbell (44:53.732) Okay. Balancing Ego, Ambition, and Family as a Founder Mark Tarbell (45:09.156) Thank you. Jeff Dudan (45:17.75) and you've had multiple lives within a life and overseas and back here and musician and chefs and restaurant very but yet family is important to you and you've integrated any experience that you can share for entrepreneurs who are looking to not sacrifice their dreams not sacrifice their careers but also not sacrifice their family. Mark Tarbell (45:43.427) Well, I'll just say what I believe in how I've done it. I was a workaholic, insane driven chef restaurateur until I got married and decided to have kids, which I did on purpose, by the way. It was a choice. That put in a lot in my face, a lot of how I was living, how I was working. I didn't think I worked that much. A 12 hour a day was a half day for me. Like it was easy peasy. Jeff Dudan (46:09.318) Right. Yeah. Mark Tarbell (46:12.675) I could outwork anybody. And I wore that as a badge of honor. And what it forced me to do is threw it in my face some of the things I was saying yes to, some of the decisions I was making, and was I doing that for ego or pride or to be efficient? Was it the best way to live my life? And since I had kids on purpose, I wanted to be a great father and husband. And I had to say no to a lot of things, and I had to reorganize my life. I give up a lot of my ego, things that really gave me a lot of self -worth, ambition. And I told myself I was going to do this. It took about three years of transition. It wasn't easy. And I'm still faced with it a little bit, but I also see the runway. My kids are getting a little bit older. I can start to accept different challenges, but I'm also doing them more thoughtfully because I do believe balance in life is maybe a better entrepreneur, a better businessman, a better leader. I really felt I just buried people, you know, because I felt I knew more than them or I could work harder than them. And I knew everything in my business. As I've learned, not so much. I don't even know what I'm good at now, frankly. But I try not to stay in people's... I get out of people's way mostly at this point. Jeff Dudan (47:24.95) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (47:31.573) The kids are a great grounding rod for your lightning and they bring you back. And I think too, we're also obligated to do lots of things and we're obligated to push ourselves because we want to set an example for them. And we want to show them what good looks like. We want to show them how to make decisions. There's one little story in my book that I wrote about. going to a restaurant and the with my young son and we all recognize that the waitress didn't charges for the second glass of wine and you know i could see that he was watching what i was going to do with that and you know i brought it to retention i said hey i don't think you didn't charge with this you know because so if you know what the right thing to do is you should do that and if it's clear Mark Tarbell (48:11.583) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (48:24.054) what the right thing to do is. And those little examples that are set in those little moments, and then the big examples that you set by pushing yourself to take, trusting yourself to take chances, going on television, creating a restaurant, doing a business, they will, they are watching everything that you do and they will be much better off. Even if it doesn't work out, there's lessons of humility and failure that they can gain. So, well. Mark Tarbell (48:40.191) Yes. Mark Tarbell (48:50.558) You've said it very well, Jeff. I mean, that humility and failure, we're very open about them, that we're not perfect. We talk about it. When I've made a mistake, we openly talk about it. Sometimes serious, sometimes with laughter. But I have to share that I've had a lot of friends that, you know, in my time, we all started together that have become 500 millionaires or billionaires or 100 millionaires. And to a person, those that... did what they thought they were doing right, being a provider and working and traveling and not being home and not being there to pick their kids up or drop them off at school to a person, there are three of them that have balled in private conversations with me just saying that they were not there and if they had all the money in the world, they wish they could go back. This is before I had kids. They wish they could go back and do that over again because they literally can't get it back. Now they try with their grandkids. Jeff Dudan (49:38.294) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (49:45.566) but it's a different relationship and already their kids relationship with them is already locked in to a degree. And you know, it's the thing they carry around with great weight. I mean, they have everything in the world, money, boats, planes, whatever, but they're sad. So I didn't want to do that. Jeff Dudan (50:02.582) Yeah, I have many experiences with people that have shared the same thing with me. I sacrificed a lot, a lot of economic upside. I coached over 30 seasons of my kids' sports. I franchised my business because I was all over the Caribbean and Hawaii and California doing disaster restoration work and I was never home and I made a conscious effort to sell all of my company stores under a franchise model so that I could bring people to me instead of me having to go to them and it allowed me to be... more present and it is the best decision I ever made and you know we still do we do okay you know we're not eat we're not eating tv dinners every night so well hey mark I know I know you've you've got a bounce but I've got my last question for you if you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life what would that be? Mark Tarbell (50:31.453) Yeah. Mark Tarbell (50:39.741) I am. Mark Tarbell (50:53.788) You know you, and you know the right thing. Just trust that, take a pause, take a breath, and be very, very quiet and intentional about every choice you make, because life comes from you, not at you. Jeff Dudan (51:07.734) perfectly said. Nothing to add. Mark Tarbell, Tarbell's restaurant, even Scottsdale or Phoenix. Mark Tarbell (51:14.832) Phoenix is the restaurant, yes. Jeff Dudan (51:17.878) Phoenix is the restaurant. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on today. This has been Mark Tarbell with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thank you, Mark. Mark Tarbell (51:29.563) Thank you, Jeff, my friend. Talk to you soon. Jeff Dudan (51:31.414) Absolutely. Yes, sir. If you hang on.
Brief Summary In this rich and reflective conversation, Jeff Dudan welcomes Tom Rowland—legendary Florida Keys guide, television host, and podcaster—for a deep dive into life on (and off) the water. From humble beginnings in Chattanooga to fly fishing in Yellowstone, competing in elite tournaments, building a 20-year television brand, and becoming a wellness role model, Tom shares how his passions for fishing, fitness, and family shaped a purpose-driven life. With stories of big fish, bigger storms, and even bigger life lessons, this episode is both inspiring and grounding. Key Takeaways From Room Attendant to Fishing Icon : Tom’s journey began cleaning toilets in Yellowstone—just to earn free time to fish. That decision changed his life. Tournaments Were His Fast Track to Mastery : The pressure and competition of professional tournaments accelerated his learning curve beyond anything else. Fitness Is the Foundation : A 4:30 a.m. training schedule, Wim Hof breathing, and sauna sessions form the backbone of Tom’s longevity and mental clarity. TV Success Didn’t Come Overnight : The first season of Saltwater Experience bombed. But Tom pivoted to a two-host, no-voiceover style that’s now iconic. Water Quality is Florida’s #1 Issue : Tom gives a masterclass in the ecological crisis around Lake Okeechobee and why supporting clean water initiatives like Captains for Clean Water is vital. "You Can Do It" Is the Whole Message : Whether it’s switching careers, starting a show, or trying fitness at 50—Tom’s entire story is living proof. Fe atured Quote “Fitness is not selfish. I train so I can be strong for my family, my business, and whatever life throws at me. If you’re optimized, you can help others. If you’re not, you can’t.” — Tom Rowland TRANSCRIPT Tom Rowland’s Welcome & Early Television Fame Jeff Dudan (00:01.38) a little bit of the hero's journey so I might ask you to talk a little bit about growing up and you could do as much or little as you want with that awesome all right and they've given me a new intro to read which we haven't been doing but bear with me here we go welcome everybody to on the home front with Jeff Duden thank you for tuning in just a quick reminder before we get rolling if you enjoy our podcast take a second to drop down Tom Rowland (00:04.73) Sure. Yeah, no problem. Okay. Tom Rowland (00:16.09) Okay. Jeff Dudan (00:28.388) to that comment or review section to leave us feedback. And of course, like or subscribe. Whether you're listening on Apple, YouTube or Spotify, we wanna hear from you. And if you haven't already, check out at the Homefront pod on Instagram to stay up to date on new episodes and additional content. Today on the Homefront, we have an incredibly special guest. Welcome Tom Rowland. I'm doing great, Tom. Really appreciate you being on. Tom is a... Tom Rowland (00:51.834) How you doing? Thanks for having me. Jeff Dudan (00:57.828) expert fisherman fishing guide television with an incredible television show and and now a very successful podcaster all around fishing and guiding So excited to dig in with you a time. I was mentioning that You know we we come to the keys. We bring our boat down we go fishing So, you know in the in the weeks and months leading up to that consume so much your content excited to meet you and thanks for being on the home front Tom Rowland (01:24.41) Nice. Where do you like to go in the Keys? Okay, nice. Yeah. Okay, two great places. Fantastic. Yeah, that's great. Well, I'm happy to have you as a watcher of the show. We've had a great time producing that over the years. This year is 19 years. This season is the 19th season. So... Jeff Dudan (01:28.548) We go to Isla Morada. It's generally our spot. And then sometimes we'll charter out of Key West. Yeah. Tom Rowland (01:53.306) We're getting ready. We've actually filmed some shows for the 20th season, which is hard to even imagine that it's gone on that long, but it has. And we've had a great time. We've had a great time doing it. Jeff Dudan (02:05.668) How do you stay out of the sun, man? Your skin looks good. Tom Rowland (02:08.026) Well, you cover up like a long time ago. I guess I am one of the very first people to ever discover the the. Buff. Do you know what a buff is? The thing that covers your face. You see all the guides and the keys wearing it. Well, one of my clients brought that to me so long ago. They said, I don't know what this thing is. My wife gave it to me. I think they wear it when they're riding motorcycles. And I looked at it and I was already wearing this. I was wearing a Patagonia thing. There was a, there was a guide in the keys named Marshall, Marshall Kutchen. And he was the first person I ever saw wear anything over their face. And at the first time you saw him, you just thought this guy's insane. Jeff Dudan (02:22.5) Yes. Yes. Tom Rowland (02:49.836) Like what, you know, it's super hot down there and everything, but then I went to Costa Rica and everybody got so sunburned and I had one of these, it was a Patagonia, Capilene face mask. And I had one and I thought, well, man, I'm so sunburned. I'm just going to try this thing. And I really liked it. And so I went back and started wearing it in the keys and it was all baggy. It didn't fit well. And then, one of my clients brought me this buff and I started wearing that. And, then they turned into a nice sponsor of the show. And now literally everyone down there wears them, but that's how you stay out of the sun. Well, hat and sunglasses and like the buff covering your face. it's a lifesaver in, I mean, literally a lifesaver. I had melanoma taken off my back, but I haven't had anything on my face. So yeah, that's a good thing to stay out of the sun. Jeff Dudan (03:42.052) Hats don't do it because it's the reflection. So it's getting you from every angle. And you don't realize it when you're out there. But really, really important. And I know as we use a variety of guides down there, if they haven't taken care of it, they really will have a lot of sun damage. Tom Rowland (03:45.754) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Tom Rowland (04:01.978) you can see it. Yeah. But the older guys that, you know, that, that we're doing a long time before, you know, things like the buff and, you know, even a big wide brimmed hat isn't good because usually, usually it's so windy that that thing's blowing all over the place and that doesn't work. So, you know, a lot of guys did not take care of their son, take care of their face because, they didn't have any other choice. I mean, they, they were doing the best they could. But I don't really wear sunscreen that much. I just cover up. I don't think sunscreen is great for you. I can't imagine it's great for you. I don't know that it's not good for you. It's just got a list of ingredients this long on the back of it. I can't imagine that's the best thing to have that every single day. So I just try to cover up. Jeff Dudan (04:32.932) Cut. Jeff Dudan (04:45.86) Yeah, 20 years from now they're going to figure out that's what's giving everybody skin cancer. Time reveals all. Tom, you've had an incredible career growing up in Chattanooga, then going out west working in Jackson Hole. Would you care to share with us a little bit about your journey? Tom Rowland (04:49.05) Maybe. Tom Rowland (04:53.114) Yeah. From Cleaning Toilets to Catching Trout in Yellowstone Tom Rowland (05:00.794) Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (05:04.762) Yeah. No, I mean, my journey, exactly like you, like you said, I started out in Chattanooga fishing with my dad and, we had a, I had a great childhood. but mostly what we were doing here was just fishing with crickets and worms for large mouth bass and, and, you know, bluegill. And I loved fishing. I can remember he took me trout fishing one time. and it wasn't that, you know, we didn't go, we had a river that was pretty close. And, one of his friends. You know, ask us to go and we caught some fish and they were really pretty and I thought they were super cool. And the whole river was, was amazing. And I just kind of thought at that point, you know, one of these days I'm going to learn how to trout fish. And I used to get the outdoor life magazines and the field and stream magazines and, and you would go through there and there'd be some guy backpacking and cooking trout over the fire and fly fishing. And I just thought that was so cool, but that's not how we fished. And so when I went to college. I just really, really had this yearning to try that and to do that. And I didn't even know where you did it, but the pictures look different in the back of those magazines and everything. and so I've, I came upon a, an opportunity to work in Yellowstone national park and I went to Yellowstone national park, got the job there. I was a room attendant, which means that you got to clean toilets. And, still to this day, I say it's the best job I've ever had because they would give you 16 rooms. You go in there and you clean these rooms as quickly as you could, as long as they pass the standard. And you were free to go for the rest of the day. You didn't get paid anymore if you left, but you were free to go. And so, man, the Yellowstone river, was just up the road and I could go up there and fish for the rest of the afternoon. And, and it didn't get dark until, you know, nine or 10 o 'clock in the West. And so I just. I just thought that was the greatest thing ever. And the water was super clear and it was the first time in my life that I'd ever been able to, fish, which was more like hunting where you see the fish in the water. You have to sneak up on it. If you just walk up on it, it, it swims off. It's scared, you know? And I was like, that's, that's different. I've never seen that happen before. And so I got a new appreciation about fishing and then I was terrible at fly fishing, but I learned how to do it a little bit enough to catch a couple of fish. And then the next summer. Tom Rowland (07:27.386) I thought that I wanted to go to Alaska. And my dad was wise enough to think, hmm, you don't have a car, you don't know anyone in Alaska, you've never been there before. Maybe, you know, without pushing me away from that idea, without telling me it was a bad idea, he just kind of steered me in a slightly different direction. And there was a... an opportunity to go to a guide school in Jackson, Wyoming and that's how I ended up in Jackson, Wyoming. I went to that guide school. I got hired out of the guide school by the gentleman that ran it, Joe Bressler, and I ended up working for him for seven years and it was amazing. Drift boat guiding on some of the most beautiful rivers in the country and the fishing was amazing and that led me to Key West, which I wanted to fish year round. I didn't want to just... I tried to spend the winter in, in Jackson, Wyoming. That's how I ended up in Key West because it's, it's cold, very, very, very cold. And, I went about as far away from there as you possibly could get. And honestly, I just wanted to fish all year round. I didn't want, I didn't want to work as a snowmobile guide or a hunting guide, like, like many of my friends were and that, and I wasn't really a skier like they were. So Key West suited me a little bit better, got my business going down there and. you know, that turned into trying to first just learn my way around and get decent at, at guiding. And then many years later, I entered a couple of tournaments. Happened to do well in the tournaments. And I really liked the tournaments. I liked the, it was kind of like a boat race in the morning. And then, you know, it was kind of like the same feeling I had when I was a high school wrestler. Of like, there was this, you know, you had the butterflies in your stomach. There was competition and what made the tournaments most exciting to me is that I was learning at a level and a speed that was. Impossible without the tournaments. For example, you got to see all the different people and then they had this huge board that showed you what everyone caught. And so you knew like. Why Tournaments Fast-Tracked His Growth Tom Rowland (09:39.802) I saw where that guy was and he caught all that. I saw where that guy was and he caught nothing. And, you know, you, you saw where you stacked up and, and just the amount of learning and how quickly I was learning made me want to fish more and more tournaments. And that led me to do a, a professional redfish tournament with, with my partner, rich that's on TV. And that was kind of like bass fishing or rodeo cowboying where you. You gotta go from one place to another and every weekend's a different spot. And at that time I was starting my family. I had two babies at home with my wife and not a great time to be leaving home, even though I kinda thought that this could possibly be a breakthrough to a new level of sponsorship is what I was thinking about. And I - I kind of had enough of that when a hurricane came through Key West and we were in Louisiana and my two boys were there with my wife and they had to seek shelter in the in the local fish house with no windows and you know they were with my friends and they were safe and everybody was okay but I just decided I don't want to do that anymore and that's how we started the TV show but we started thinking about what is it that we could do that's similar to this where we could spend all our time at home. And that was the birth of saltwater experience. So that's about as quick as I can make it, I think. Jeff Dudan (11:06.148) interest well I tell you 65 either wins or top five finishes and in tournaments later and interesting so I was in the disaster restoration business and I was chasing hurricanes for better part of 15 years and I had a similar experience when after Katrina and I was driving home in the middle of the night I real I had three small children at home and I realized that Tom Rowland (11:19.066) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (11:32.9) I was constantly, we were working in the Caribbean and Puerto Rico and Hawaii and all over the place. And I decided to sell all of our offices in the Southeast and franchise the business because that was gonna allow me to be home and live life on my terms and bring people to me. So when I read that about you, I'm like, man, exact same inflection point. Hurricane gave you this realization that you wanna be around the people that you care the most about, that you're responsible for. Tom Rowland (11:52.858) That's right. Jeff Dudan (12:01.348) and people can make a choice and you can make a decision to still pursue your dreams and be successful and accommodate a family in doing so. Tom Rowland (12:12.09) There's no question. Do you remember what hurricane that was where you, you had that, Katrina that's okay. You said Katrina. Sorry. The one that, that was for me was Wilma and, you probably did some, you were probably working on Wilma at some point somewhere, but, yeah, that one, that one leveled Key West. Jeff Dudan (12:16.068) Turkey and Katrina. Jeff Dudan (12:22.308) Got it. Jeff Dudan (12:27.364) We did. Jeff Dudan (12:31.748) Yeah. Tom Rowland (12:32.506) It really wasn't the wind that did the most damage. It was a storm surge after just a slow rise, about four and a half feet of water we got in our house. That was it. That'll do it. You know? Jeff Dudan (12:43.556) Yeah, for sure. When you moved to Key West, you had been fly fishing and guiding for a living. Was your intent that you were gonna be a fly fisherman doing bone fishing and tarpon fishing and things like that? And how did you transition to more traditional inshore and offshore methods? Tom Rowland (12:57.402) Mm hmm. Exactly. Yep. How Fly Fishing Made Him Respect Bait Fishing Tom Rowland (13:05.178) Well, that happened on its own kind of because I felt like I was pretty good at fly fishing and fly fishing guiding. And my original goal was that I would go into these other tournaments where you could use fly gear, but you could also use regular gear and bait. And the tournaments were this, this series called the red bone series and the red bone series would raise money for cystic fibrosis and. While it was a charity tournament, it was still incredibly competitive. Like all the guides wanted to, it's where, this was before social media and it's before so many other ways that people, websites and everything else where, where you can, you know, kind of show what it is that you do. The way that we could differentiate, differentiate ourselves from other guides would be to win these tournaments or do well in these tournaments. And, so while it was for charity, behind the scenes, it was incredibly competitive between the, between the guides. So I thought I could go in there and if I had a really good fly angler, we could maybe win one of those tournaments or at least compete with the bait guys and with the, with the, the spin fisherman. And, I was the, actually the first one we did pretty well like that, but quickly realized that, man, you, it is really, I don't care how good you are. Some of these guys are as good with bait and spinning rods as anyone I've ever seen is with a fly rod. And so then when you're that good with bait and, and when I say good with bait, it, there's a lot of things that go into bait fishing that people don't realize. First of all, you have to have the mechanical skills to be able to throw almost weightless shrimp, you know, to, to a target and be as accurate, if not more accurate than you can be with a fly rod. And these fish are very spooky. They're in shallow water. So you have to lead them or, or play this situation the right way. But then there's all this other things that go into acquiring bait and, and keeping it alive and, and all this, there's an entire learning process that goes into bait fishing that I didn't know about. And so after getting slaughtered many times by all the bait fishing guys, I thought, well, Tom Rowland (15:28.89) I think I'm going to need to learn how to do that because what I really want to do is I really want to win those tournaments or do well in those tournaments or at least be a competitor in these tournaments. And it became more and more clear that I was going to need to do that. I got a couple of good customers who were very good at spin fishing that helped me to make that transition and to start learning that, you know, a lot of fly fishermen believe that, anybody can catch them on bait. And probably anybody can catch one on bait, but these guys are catching like 50. Right. And to do that, it's, it takes a tremendous amount of skill and especially, you know, it's the same kind of fishing as, as fly fishing, you're pushing a boat through there. You're seeing the fish, you're making this cast to them. But when you make 10 perfect casts at say a permit, which is a very difficult fish to catch in the Florida keys. And if you make 10 perfect casts with a fly rod to a permit, Maybe you catch one, maybe on a good day, the guys that I started fishing with, they made 10, every cast was perfect. And if they made 10 perfect cast to 10 permit, they caught 10 permit. And I was like, Whoa, this is fun because I used to say I'd rather catch one on fly than 10 on bait. But honestly, I had never caught 10 on bait and catching 10 on bait is really fun. It, it is really, really fun. And so. It took a couple of experiences like that for me. And then I realized, you know what? A fly rod is a tool. Just like a driver in your golf bag or a putter or any of your clubs. And it's not enough to just be good at that one thing. You want to, I wanted to try to be good at all of the different clubs or all of the different fishing situations and, and to, you know, what, what Lee Wolf called a complete angler, like to be good at. at everything and all different types of fishing, freshwater, saltwater, fly fishing, bait fishing, all of it. That, and so that became the passion of, of how can you be good at all of these things? You don't have to be the best at any of them, but how can you be really good at all of them? And that became the passion. Jeff Dudan (17:40.772) So this is just not Redfish because you know, you're Red. Tom Rowland (17:44.698) No, we have over 50 50 different fish species of fish in the Florida Keys that we fish for regularly. And that's just out of like a Bay boat. And you add the offshore boat and everything. There's even more. but red fish were just one of the fish that we fish for mostly what I did because I was in Key West and we didn't have a lot of red fish, even though I was fishing professionally on those tournaments, was bonefish, permit and tarpon. Those were my three big fish. And then in the winter time, we do a lot of barracuda fishing. and shark fishing and other kinds of fish, you know, just to kind of get through to the big three. But that's what most of my customers came down for with a permit bonefisher tarpon. Jeff Dudan (18:27.524) When you started the television show, which sounds like 2005 or thereabouts. The Birth of Saltwater Experience Tom Rowland (18:32.762) Yeah, probably. Yeah, right in there, probably. Yes. Yep. Jeff Dudan (18:35.172) Were you still guiding at the time? Okay. So sometimes would your clients be on the television show? Tom Rowland (18:45.242) no, we didn't really do that. The original idea of the, of the television show was that, we liked fishing so much that even though we were fishing 300 days a year, anytime there was a day off, like you'd find one of your guide buddies and you would go, or you would go by yourself and you would, you would go explore things that either, you know, we're like high risk, maybe high reward. That maybe you didn't take clients to because like it was a long way. And, and like you could, there were, there were certain places where, you know, maybe it's a 50 mile run in one direction. And if you got to this area and it wasn't happening, that was your whole day. And if you had never been there before and you felt like, you know, this is, I need to go out there a couple of times before I start taking people out there because I don't even know what I'm looking for. That was the kind of thing that you did on a guide's day off. And then. You know, you would, you would, and a lot of times those days are the best ever, the first time you find something. And so that was kind of the idea of the TV show in the very beginning was that, it was more like a guide's day off, like what Rich and I would do on our days off. And then we would take his experience and my experience, and then we'd put it together and we'd go to an area that we, neither one of us knew. And we would see what was, see what was happening. but I didn't really take a lot of customers. It wasn't ever like that. It was just like me and him going. Jeff Dudan (20:14.884) When you decided to start to film, did you nibble at it or did you go all in thinking this is gonna be something that's gonna translate to television? What was your approach and what did the original crew look like that was going with you? Did you have a second boat? Tom Rowland (20:31.258) Yep, he definitely had a second boat right away. I was pretty fortunate because like behind me there's this picture here for the great outdoor games. There was something called the great outdoor games that happened in 2000 and 2001. I was in that and I was lucky enough to win that one behind me and it was on ESPN and other things. And after I won that, there was an interesting little hook that this. Jeff Dudan (20:33.444) Okay. Tom Rowland (21:02.266) person from Key West at that point, it was a kid from Key West came to New York and won this, this, trout fishing competition. And so on the surface, that sounds like what that, how does that happen? But I had already been a pro, you know, a professional trout guy. And I was actually much better at trout fishing at that time in my life than I was at saltwater fishing. And so I went up there and I had this opportunity to, to win that came back and there were a number of TV shows that. invited me to be on as a guest. And so I got to see how a lot of them did it. And they all did it pretty similar. There would be a chase boat and a film boat. You'd have one or two cameramen. At that time, we didn't have drones or GoPros even. We just had basically two cameras, one or two cameras. And so when we started the TV show, I kind of had a vague idea of how it should go down. And I had a... a professional bass fisherman named Shaw Grigsby, was incredibly nice. And that was the first TV show that I was ever on was his TV show. So I called him when we were thinking about, doing this TV show and I asked him, you know, what, what, what do we do? Like, I don't, I don't know how this works. And he told me pretty much laid it out and he said, you know what? First you need to film a pilot. And I was like, okay, what, what's that? And I didn't even know any of this stuff. Right. So. He's telling me all this stuff and he says, I'll tell you what, I'll even give you my crew to, I'll let you use my crew and you can go film your pilot. You're going to need to pay them. Right. But, but he gave me the personnel and they came down there and they helped us to put it together. But at the time, and we went for it, you know, we, we, we went for it as best we knew how. And there was a, there was a, network called the outdoor channel, which at the time, now it's a much bigger channel at the time. It was pretty small. And that was our target. That's just what we knew. And at the time, the only thing that we could draw from were the other TV shows that were on and the other TV shows that had come, and filmed with me. And those were all single host TV shows like bill dance. and that host would talk directly to the camera and, you know, you felt like you were kind of in the boat with that person. Well, there were two of us. And so that became a very awkward situation. Creating a New Format for Outdoor TV (That Actually Worked) Tom Rowland (23:30.394) It didn't, it did not work. And these guys had only filmed with a single host before and, and it was the first time and, and that first season just was not very good. In fact, our pilot was so bad that the outdoor channel told us that we would have to go back to the drawing board and try again, which we did. And we did all the things and they were kind of like, even then they were reluctant to put it on because you know, if you go back and look at any of those, or when I do, they were very awkward. Cause we were trying to do the same thing as everyone else had done, but it just wasn't working because there were two of us. And it was going against all of the formats. I don't know. And so later after that season, we reassessed and what was disappointing to us is that we had all these customers coming down and I would ask the customers, did you see the show? And they were like, what show? Like the one that we mortgaged our house for the one that we have spent this whole year filming and no one saw it. And it was because the outdoor channel was a smaller channel. You needed, you really kind of needed direct TV or, or dish to get it. And like even my father couldn't get dish at his house because he had too many trees around his house. So he, it wasn't even available to him. And that was the frustration is that this, you know, that's a fine network. And it's a big, much bigger network now, but at the time, there just weren't a lot of people that were, were getting it. And, and none of my customers saw the show. So I was like, well, what are we even doing this for if nobody's seeing it? So then the next year we decided that we were going to make a major jump and we were going to be on ESPN and OLN at the same time. And we found a new producer who had some really great ideas. And he was like, you got to ditch this. This way everybody else has been doing it. We got to come up with something new and out of necessity, not out of, you know, some brainchild of, of being super smart or anything, but out of necessity, we came up with this format, which is the same as it is today. Two people sitting at a table, talking to one another, not talking to the camera. And at the time, nobody had ever done that before. Wasn't like we were trying to do something different. We were just trying to make something that was good, you know, and, and it worked. Tom Rowland (25:55.386) It worked really, really well and it was unique and original and people tended to like it. So we stuck with it. Jeff Dudan (26:05.22) Is it the dirty jobs thing where there's other people, they're having a conversation, the camera's almost like a voyeur there, and then occasionally you're gonna turn to the camera and you're gonna point something out. Tom Rowland (26:16.794) Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (26:21.466) We don't ever even point to the camera any no, no, it's like it's like the camera is not there. That's how we were, you know, coached into it from the very beginning and then the other shows would have a voiceover like this disembodied voice would come on and tell you what's going on. We didn't do that either. This producer that we still have and still work with today, he produces all our shows. It was his idea just. Jeff Dudan (26:23.492) You don't. You just, like it's not there. Jeff Dudan (26:36.868) Right. Tom Rowland (26:50.81) Look, the voiceover, the narration is going to be you guys talking to one another at the table. We're not going to look at the camera. We don't address the camera. We don't talk to the camera unless you're doing a tip directly to the audience. Like this is the rod and reel I'm using and everything. And you know what? I wouldn't have thought about that and it worked and it speaks to the who, not how kind of thing. If you're trying to, you got a big goal. and you're trying to get someplace that seems impossible today, if you find the right who, you don't even have to worry about how, right? Like that all takes care of itself. The who will be the one, that's the most important ingredient, it certainly was for us, is that particular person. Jeff Dudan (27:26.852) That's right. Jeff Dudan (27:40.516) Right, yeah, and by the way, there's a great book to that effect on it. Yeah, Dan Sullivan. Tom Rowland (27:43.45) I know, I know. Yeah. Well, I just read his other book, that, what was it? the, the, the gain and the gap. Yes. The gap and the gain, I think is one, it goes one of the ways, but I just finished that and they, and then I read the, the who, not how also very good. Jeff Dudan (27:52.26) yeah, yeah. Gap in the game. I was on, Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:02.116) Yeah, so have you are you familiar at all with strategic coach? Tom Rowland (28:07.354) just what I read in the book. I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know about that. I know other coaching programs, but not that one. Jeff Dudan (28:09.508) Really? Yeah. Yeah, so I started that a year ago? Yeah, sure did. And big fan. Tom Rowland (28:16.854) really? Tom Rowland (28:22.106) Well, I'm a big fan of the whole approach of the gap, not the gain or the gain, not the gap, and measuring backwards. It seems really good, you know, because people do get in that. I mean, the way that he described that you're, you're perpetually looking for the next thing. You see it with athletes. You see it with all kinds of people that it's just the neck. I'll be happy when I make a million dollars. I'll be happy when the TV show has been on the air for 20 years. I'll be happy when this happens. And, you know, you can find your, I think we've all found ourselves in that situation of, huh, I got there and I thought it was going to be better than this or that didn't do it. Right. But I loved that book for that reason. Jeff Dudan (29:07.012) Yeah, sometimes you just need to sit in awareness and be where your feet are and be appreciative of the fact that we're above ground. We're getting to do what we like to do every day. We get to meet interesting people, have incredible experiences. I've heard it a million times, but now I'm actually starting to begin my day with gratitude and we'll see how it goes. But I think, as in New York visiting my daughter this weekend and... She wanted me to do a yoga. She's a yoga instructor in New York and she's going to school there but she does that on the side. I did yoga once and I think I narrowly avoided the stroke. So, you know, I was like I really didn't want to do it. And I had other... I could have made an excuse and whatever but I just changed the meaning of it to say, you know what, she wants me to see her do this. This is something that she's worked really hard at. I've never had a chance to see her do it professionally. and I just changed the meaning of it and I went and had a great experience. It was all on me. Dan Sullivan, who's the founder of Strategic Coach, he's 80 years old and he's been doing it for 35 years. And a couple, two interesting things I've heard him say is, well, first of all, last year at 79 years old, he filed 79, 75 patents. Tom Rowland (30:32.25) Wow. Jeff Dudan (30:33.124) on his tools because like you say, some of these tools are really simple, kind of, okay, that makes all the sense in the world but I hadn't had it put that way. So he took all of the tools that he's built and he writes one book every quarter and the Gap and the Gain, it's a thin little book. It's not a novel. I mean, these things are one concept books, just enough for you to get it. Tom Rowland (30:48.602) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (30:56.356) And so he went and filed patents and trademarks on all of his IP that he's put together over the last 35 years. Another thing that he said was fascinating to me. Five and a half years ago, he stopped looking at social media and watching television. But he did say other than the saltwater experience. But he stopped watching television and he said, because I can do more with my attention than they can. Tom Rowland (31:16.122) Yeah. Behind the Camera: How Producing Made Tom a Better Host Jeff Dudan (31:22.628) So, you know, really, I mean, at some point, you know, understanding our attention and what we give it to, and like you did with your family and the choices that we've made for, you know, making sure that we could give the attention to our kids is really interesting. But anything by Dan Sullivan right now is highly recommend for me. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Tom Rowland (31:47.066) Yeah. Well, I agree. I really enjoyed that book and, it was, it was, suggested to me by one of my good friends and we have, talked about a number of books. and so when he suggested that I read it immediately and, and it was, it was good and powerful and I really liked it. That's right. Jeff Dudan (32:04.324) Yeah, nothing new without a who. That's my new thing. I mean, I've, I'm a, I start a lot of things, but you know, if you don't have the right who, then it's on you. So, nothing new without a who. All right. Well, I would like to transit. Well, I have one more question about the television show. You have a producer. Tom Rowland (32:16.954) That's right. Tom Rowland (32:26.074) Sure. Jeff Dudan (32:29.956) I had Andrew Zimmernan and he said his understanding of what happened behind the camera made him a better host in front of the camera. Do you find that to be true for you? Tom Rowland (32:39.834) For sure. Yeah, I mean, for sure. So we also have a couple of other shows. So Saltwater Experience is one of the shows. And then because that was successful in the inshore saltwater world, we thought, well, you know, the offshore saltwater world is also very popular. So what if we took a couple of our friends? And, and did an offshore show kind of similar to saltwater experience. And that one's called into the blue. We have another one called life on the water. We had a bass fishing show and, I produced all of those. So I was in the camera boat on all of those talking to the camera guys, watching how this all worked. I was driving the camera boat, you know, while, while all that other stuff is going down and it made me much, much, much better of realizing like, what these guys are going through, how hard they're working to make the other two people in that other boat over there look good. And more than anything else, it made me much easier to work with, I'm sure, because I realized like, you know, like everybody here is working really hard to make those guys look good. So that made a big difference. But then also like, you know, just realizing that, you know, batteries die, cards, you know, run out. You have to do all of that stuff. Everybody's doing the best job they can. Right. Of course you'll, you'll get some people on occasion that you're not happy with their work performance, but for the most part, when you build a good team, everybody's working really, really hard. And so, you know, like in order to be a great leader, this is what I learned in, in the seal fit, camp that I went to. In order to be an exceptional leader, you need to be an exceptional follower. And I guess that the experience that I've had behind the camera has helped me to lead in front of the camera. Like these, these guys are going to tell you what they need you to do. And then you need to do that in a way that it's easy for everybody to work with. Right? Like don't, don't tell them what your idea is. Like, no, no, I think it would be better if we did it this way. Look, they already know, they know what the light looks like. They know everything. They just need you to say this. Tom Rowland (34:46.042) Just say it, right? Like don't make it harder than it needs to be. And I think that, I think that that, you know, for sure knowing what they're going through may be better on the other side of the camera. How Fitness Built His Career (and Why It’s Non-Negotiable) Jeff Dudan (34:59.364) You mentioned SealFit, you're a fitness guy. Can you talk to me about the alignment between building businesses and great content, such as you've done, and then finding a way to incorporate fitness into that, and also family, those three things, and how you find alignment and balance between them? Tom Rowland (35:24.09) Well, I think throughout the search for balance is going to be the hardest one because in order to really succeed at any of those things, there's going to be times where you're out of balance. Like you have to put more time and effort into your business than, than maybe you should. And then maybe, you know, your fitness falls off a little bit or your family falls off a little bit. But then I think for me, it's been more how quickly I can realize, okay, you know, I've been putting a lot of time in this right now. Now I need to put more time in these other two buckets. But fitness for me is the foundation of all success. And it goes back to, it's interesting the way that you asked that question, because my feeling on fitness is that fitness is not a self, it's not selfish. It's the other way around. I'm trying to be as fit and healthy and strong and capable as I possibly can so that. I can take care of my family and so that I can take care of my business and so that I'm easier to work with. And so that whatever comes up, I'm more ready to handle that. And so one thing that, you know, I have to put fitness kind of as a priority. but what I learned was that that priority can take place at different times of the day to where. It doesn't interfere with other things with business or with family. And so a while ago, about, I guess maybe 25 years ago or something, I, I realized I have three kids and my oldest son is, is 26. So before he was born, I wanted to get in really good shape to be a good role model for my kids. That was the, I was the first goal. Tom Rowland (37:25.626) But then later as he, as he and his little brother and his little sister kind of grew up, I realized that fitness is still really important to me. But if I think that I'm going to get home from work and then, you know, be able to take a run or, or work out, you know, before dinner or, or whenever I'm going to be able to do that occasionally. But my feeling on fitness and what has been proven to me over and over again is, is in order to be in good shape, consistency is king. Right. And so what was happening and it happens to parents and, and people that are, that are busy all the time as you plan on this afternoon workout or, or a lunchtime workout or something. And there's going to be a PTA meeting or there's going to be a wrestling match or a soccer game or a lacrosse game, or you want to go watch practice or you get called into the school for some reason or you're something happens and you get your workout on Monday. And then you don't get it on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. And then you maybe get it on Friday. Well, you've only worked out two days. So eventually I just started to think, okay, what is a time that I could work out that will fit into my schedule, but won't take away time from either my business or my family. And to me, that was early, early mornings. So I get up at four 30 and I have from four 30 to about seven. That's my time. And that time is. coveted and sacred for me. I, that's when I'm going to get my workout in and you know, after doing it for 25 years, I don't, I don't usually miss. I can't even imagine like not doing it at this point, but I think that, you know, that's, that's the big thing for me is not only having that time that, that, that allows you to do whatever it is that you like to do, for fitness. that doesn't interfere with the other things in your life, but then also something that you find fun and interesting and is more than just a drudgery of a workout. Like I have a whole group of people that I work out with and we, it's all a bunch of dads and everybody feels the same way. Like this is our time. This is when we can do this. And then once this is over, now it's family time and business time. And that's what we do. Jeff Dudan (39:48.42) Yeah, we're on weirdly the exact same, that's exactly when I get up in the morning. I have a trainer three times a week. I might now be working yoga in on the off days. I usually do a rower or something at home, but usually five days a week. And we can give our kids lots of things. We can put a few nickels together. We can leave them some money. We can give them great experiences. We can give them education. But the most powerful thing that we can give them is examples that we set for them, both in fitness and I think also in entrepreneurship. When children have an early entrepreneurial experience, they're like 10 times more likely to have success as an entrepreneur later in life. So are your kids entrepreneurial? Tom Rowland (40:37.626) yeah, they definitely all value fitness, for the other part of your, of your, question that they all, they all have fitness habits that, that they now have on their own. I don't have to encourage them or anything like that. And they're all, they all enjoy fitness, different, different types of fitness. One might like, you know, Jeff Dudan (40:44.356) Mm. Right. Tom Rowland (41:06.074) more running ones, more pickleball, more, you know, but they're active and they, they understand the value of it, both for your physical body and for your mind. Most people don't associate fitness with, with mind health, but that to me, that's probably the most important thing of having a clear mind and, and, and being able to, to stay focused throughout, throughout the day. And for me, like all, all, anxiety or. or nervousness or I don't know, it all goes away when I'm working out regularly. And... Jeff Dudan (41:40.612) Do you have any hacks? Do you like, do you do peptides? Do you jump in a cold plunge? Tom Rowland (41:45.946) I do a lot of, I do a lot of things. So we, we have the cold plunge. but I don't know if I have any, any hacks. One thing that I really do like is the Wim Hof breathing. I've been doing that for, since I heard about it and of late, it has become less and less popular because some people have actually died doing it, but they've died doing it around water and. Wim Hof Breathing, Cold Plunges & The Mental Clarity of Sweat Jeff Dudan (42:02.244) Hmm. Tom Rowland (42:14.586) When I was trained to do it, I went through his course early and his course specifically said that you should never do this around water. You shouldn't do it in the cold plunge. You shouldn't do it anywhere because you can pass out from doing it, but I do it on dry ground and, certainly every single day I'll go through at least one or two rounds of it. And that has, has been very, very effective because like what you were talking about with yoga. a lot of people are into meditation, you know, and, and they'll tell you that, you know, you, you're supposed to meditate and you're supposed to reach this state. And I was trying to do that. And honestly, I was not getting there. I don't know if I've just got, my mind would wander and I wasn't able to, to get, I mean, just occasionally I would kind of get to this state to where my mind was clear for seconds. But then when I started that Wim Hof breathing on the very first time I ever did it. my mind just, I was like, that's what they're talking about. That's what they're talking about in meditation. And I saw the benefits to this of just, even for just a minute, of just having your entire head just go completely silent, no thoughts whatsoever. And the benefit of that was amazing. And I was like, that's what all these people are talking about in meditation. That's the state that I've never been able to reach. And on the first time that I tried the breathing, I was able to do that. And then every time after that, I'm able to do that. So for me, you know, the breathing has, has, you know, if you, if you listen to him, I mean, he talks about all these incredible benefits for your body and your, all these different things. And certainly it probably has those benefits. I have seen two benefits. I have seen that it has the effect that. people, you know, brag about or, or expand, expand on for, meditation that all of these benefits that meditation gives you, I get it from the breathing. Then, there are certain, benchmark workouts that we'll do. Like a hundred burpees. Do you know what a burpee is? You drop down on the ground and get up and jump. So if you do that a hundred times, yeah, unfortunately, you might know what that is. if you do that a hundred times. Jeff Dudan (44:31.428) Yes, sir. Unfortunately, I do. Tom Rowland (44:39.578) You're doing it basically the exact same way every time. And you can keep your time over, over the course of, you know, 10 years, 20 years, whatever. And, and I, I keep my, all my workouts in this, in this, on this website called beyond the whiteboard. And so I have like a whole thing and it'll graph it out for you. And I was having a, you know, pretty, pretty plateaued, performance until I started that breathing. And a hundred burpees is going to take you somewhere between six, six and a half minutes and four and a half minutes. And it's kind of like running a mile, right? So you're running a mile, you're running a mile at seven minutes and you do that for five years. And then you incorporate something into your routine. And the next time you run a mile, you do it in five and a half minutes. What in the world happened? You've been trying to knock a second off of this time for a long time. And you're basically able to just chip away like one second or two seconds. And then I started, and that was the same way with the burpees where I was doing this and I was all at about six and a half minutes. And then I started doing this breathing. I did it very consistently for a long period of time. And I go back and I try this hundred burpee workout again, and I knocked about a minute off and I was like, okay, well, that's the only thing that's really changed. So I get two benefits out of the breathing. That would be my. Jeff Dudan (45:43.076) Right. Tom Rowland (46:07.482) That would be my hack. I like going in the sauna. I go in the sauna every day. I have a regular sauna. I've, I built my daughter a, playhouse and that she never went in it. And so then I converted it to a regular sauna. I lost you. Jeff Dudan (46:11.556) What kind? Tom Rowland (46:26.234) I lost you. I don't hear you. Jeff Dudan (46:30.788) Now I muted there for a minute. Okay, so you do, it's a, well, wet sauna or infrared? got it. Yeah, got it. Yeah, I do the infrared. Doesn't quite get as hot, but it works. It's good. I can get about a 160. Tom Rowland (46:31.002) There you are. OK. Tom Rowland (46:36.858) Just a regular sauna heater, you know, not an infrared Tom Rowland (46:45.946) Hmm. Yeah, no, it's good. There's a ton of, of great, you know, research on, on the sauna. If you listen to Rhonda Patrick or somebody like that, she's, she'll go on and on and on about all the benefits. And again, you know, I like the benefits that I get from it. And if I'm getting additional benefits, like, you know, I, I, I keep dementia at bay or something like that later in my life than great. But right now I love. Jeff Dudan (47:11.428) That's right. Tom Rowland (47:15.77) the cleansing sweat, like it's just amazing. I love the sauna, but that comes from wrestling as a kid. We used to get in the sauna all the time. So when I get in the sauna now, I have the same feeling that I did when I was cutting weight, except now I can drink water while I'm in there. Back then, you just got all the water out of your system. It wasn't fun at all. Jeff Dudan (47:21.476) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (47:36.484) Yeah, yeah, look, you know, I do it right after my workout. So I already have an elevated body temperature and then I'll do 30, 35 minutes in there at about a buck 55, a buck 60. And I stopped sweating probably after 10 or 15 minutes. So, but you know, all of this stuff, I think for people out there, I mean, we're entrepreneurial. Tom Rowland (47:43.994) Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (47:54.458) Yeah, yeah, I don't know if that's good. I think you're supposed to keep drinking. Jeff Dudan (48:01.316) focused podcast so we get a lot of business owners and people that are trying to figure it out and I mean I I'm doing an owners only with all of our franchise owners it's just it has nothing to do with their business or anything that's going on in the business but more really just talking with all of the owners about you know things like this so I'm bringing them blood work I'm able to bring them an opportunity to to to get a free blood screening Tom Rowland (48:20.634) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (48:30.724) just to understand where they're at. And they might not want to spend the money to do anything about it right now. Some of the stuff they're going to be able to do with supplementation. But what you said, I think if you're a business owner out there, you can't help anybody else until you're optimized. You've got to be in good shape. You've got to have a, I mean, our will is an exhaustible resource. And the day from the moment we wake up in the morning, we start burning our battery down. So if you're out of shape, Tom Rowland (48:32.89) All right. Florida’s Water Crisis Explained: Okeechobee, Seagrass & Solutions Tom Rowland (48:45.818) That's exactly right. Jeff Dudan (48:58.628) and you're not living clean, then it's really gonna compromise the amount of time that you can kind of be in the zone and focusing on the things that matter. And then you might be able to get your workday done, but then you go home to your kids and you got nothing left for them, so you're just sitting on the couch. I mean, we have a lot of service obligations in our life and we gotta be tuned up and we gotta show up and we gotta be ready to go. Tom Rowland (49:23.866) That's right. I believe it 100%. I think that for any success that I've had, I can think that being in good shape has been a major part of being able to do the work that it required to have whatever success that I had. Jeff Dudan (49:42.372) Yeah, 100%. Tom, can we talk a little bit about Florida? We've been, so I learned my trade of disaster response in South Florida in 1992 responding to Hurricane Andrew and helping the people of South Florida recover. I think I'm a couple years older than you, but I was down there. Tom Rowland (49:47.578) Sure. Jeff Dudan (50:10.532) I was in my early mid 20s there in 1992. And we've always traveled down there. We vacation in the keys. We've looked at buying property down there. I've owned property on and off in Florida. And it's, you know, as we're looking around there recently and traveling down there, there seems to be a lot of demand, a lot of pressure, particularly on the keys in terms of building, in terms of, you know, tourism. You go and start looking at houses and 50 % of the conversation is on insurance and whether you can get it or whether you can't and how you do it. And of course, with all of the, you know, there's a lot going on in terms of confirmation or conservation with the reefs and the fisheries and all of that. So, you know, what trends do you, is there any trends in the Keys that you're particularly concerned about right now or any things that you think? Tom Rowland (50:58.49) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (51:09.252) needs attention. Tom Rowland (51:10.394) Well, the number one thing for the entire state of Florida is the water quality issue. And for people that, Jeff Dudan (51:18.756) Okay. Tom Rowland (51:22.234) are somewhat familiar with Florida, even people that are very familiar with the Keys and Florida, it can be a very kind of tricky thing to understand. But in some areas of Florida, there's way too much freshwater. And in other areas of Florida, there's no freshwater. Okay, so there's a lake in the middle of Florida called Lake Okeechobee. And when that lake fills up, which happens all the time, because it rains a lot in Florida, there are And you have a lot of agricultural land. They grow sugar all through there. There's tons of fertilizer that is on the ground that ends up in the lake. You have stuff that people put on their lawns. You have all kinds of chemicals that end up in Lake Okeechobee. Then imagine you get a tremendous amount of rain. Jeff Dudan (52:10.5) phosphates. Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (52:16.73) and that lake fills up and they don't have anything to do with that lake so they want to they want to stop the flooding so they send tremendous amounts of fresh water out both sides of Florida they go out the two the two rivers on both sides of the state of Florida that water which is unnaturally it's way too much water for for the natural occurrence and so all of that water is going out the sides of Florida because the way that Florida used to work is below Lake Okeechobee into the Everglades and then into the Florida Bay was what the Everglades are is the river of grass. It used to be kind of a laminar flow all the way across the entire state of Florida that would just, freshwater would just flow through the Everglades and grass and then get into the Flamingo area and then into Florida Bay. And it would just be like this, you know, really wide hundreds of miles wide river basically that's very, very shallow. That would just, the freshwater would just flow down through there. Well, because Florida is a, it's a wonderful place to live. It was a really miserable place to pioneer. The mosquitoes are terrible there. I mean, if it was the way that it was in the 1800s, I don't think anybody would live there, but they became, they, they started with drainage ditches. Jeff Dudan (53:16.484) Mm. Tom Rowland (53:42.394) Mosquito spraying, all these different things. They built roads all through there. So where now you can, you can, drive through places that would be totally inaccessible. And when they do all of that, they create dams, dikes, and they block, eventually block the flow of water. That, that natural laminar flow of, of fresh water that would go south has been blocked up to the point that maybe 1 % of the water that used to come down through there. and that could be wrong. It's a very small percent of the number of the amount of water that used to flow south has been cut off and it does not flow south anymore. So in parts of the Everglades and parts of Florida, you have incredibly high salinities like parts of Florida Bay, Flamingo, this area. So when people are hearing about the water crisis in Florida, They're like, well, how come some people are saying that the water is so salty that nothing can live there. And then other people are talking about, there's too much fresh water. I don't know what it's very difficult for people to understand. It was difficult for me to understand. I didn't understand what was going on, but the flow of that water going south has been cut off. The, and, and so they have all that water to deal with it used to flow south. Now they push it out the sides of Florida through these two different rivers. That water hits. the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, it has a tremendous amount of fertilizer and effluent and everything else in there. And it sometimes will supercharge these algae blooms that will create red tides. And if there is a red tide out there, it will exacerbate that to a point that maybe we've never seen before. Big fish kills, algae blooms that make the water kind of green and doesn't, it's not good. And so, in the Keys, the water is too salty. In the other areas, the water is too fresh. And so there are solutions to this. And there's a group that I do a lot of work with called, Cactus for Clean Water. And they know that there is money that has been set aside to create these reservoirs that will... Tom Rowland (55:57.914) They can push that water from Okeechobee into these reservoirs. It'll settle in those reservoirs. They can treat that water in those reservoirs. And so when it does go out the sides of Florida, they can remove a lot of the pesticides and chemicals and other things that are causing a lot of these problems. The money has already been set aside for that. And it's called the EAA reservoir and those reservoirs have not been built yet. They started on them, but they haven't been, they haven't been built. Now. That is a situation that could help the issues, but it's not gonna fix it immediately and it's not gonna fix it totally. So other things that have been going on is they've been removing some of these dikes and dams and other things and allowing more water to flow south and kind of reestablishing this flow, but it's nothing that is gonna happen very, very fast. But it is important that people that like Florida, And like to go to Florida, kind of understand what it is that's going on and understand that there are solutions to these things. It's not like, we've just created this problem that we're never going to be able to solve. There are solutions and there's even money that has been set aside for these solutions. And it's just a matter of like, in, in a lot of cases, when it comes to time to vote of voting yes for clean water, like, yeah, I think that we want more water to flow South. But if you don't understand the problem. And there's something on the ballot that says, would you want this? I don't know. It sounds like maybe more mosquitoes. No, I don't want it. So, you know, those are the biggest problems because without clean water, like Florida is an amazing state. And people on both sides of the coast, they love walking on the beaches. They love seeing the birds. They love seeing the clear water and the fish and, and it's beautiful. But when those beaches are covered with dead fish and it smells bad and, and it's. It affects everything. It affects the real estate values. It affects the restaurants. It affects everything about the state of Florida. And all of those things can be fixed and they all can be improved as long as there is, you know, education and people understand what it is. As far as the keys go, you know, the same thing kind of happens when there's no, freshwater coming down, it gets super salty and things don't even want to live there. Conservation Groups Tom Supports (and Why They Matter) Tom Rowland (58:13.882) And so they move out and we've had big grass die -offs in the Florida Bay. In the last few years, it's come back and it's been really good. And it shows you that if you give nature a chance and what it needs, then it will come back. But the seagrass is the, I don't even know how to explain it more so than it's the most important thing for South Florida. Like if the seagrass dies off, then... everything's gonna everything's gonna suffer. So the seagrass was dying off because you would have these algae blooms and the the light couldn't penetrate through the algae blooms to get to the grass and then it would die off and then it would become this muddy area and then the water just stays muddy and as the water staying muddy it's not giving the grass any opportunity to start growing again. So the last couple of years has been really good and we've had regrowth in a lot of these areas. But You know, it could happen again anytime. And, but what also could happen is that, is that we could get those reservoirs built and we could, we could send a little more water south and things could really, really improve. Jeff Dudan (59:25.732) Is the sea grass in the Okeechobee or is it in the coastal areas? Tom Rowland (59:30.17) No, the seagrass is like what you see when you go out of Key West and you look and you see the green kind of bottom and you have long kind of, it almost looks like monkey grass, right? Like that's the seagrass, that's healthy seagrass. And, you know, Alamarada's got it, Florida Bay is covered with it. And you'll see it interspersed with sand holes and different things, but that holds the bottom together. That's why the water's clear in the Florida Keys because... Jeff Dudan (59:36.516) Yes. Jeff Dudan (59:40.068) Yes, yes. Tom Rowland (59:57.146) There's nothing, you know, everything's being held down to the bottom. You have tons and tons and tons of creatures that live in there. The mullet will feed in there. You got seahorses and shrimp and crabs and everything that lives in that seagrass. It's like a rainforest. Like there's so much life that lives in that seagrass. And when that dies, then the fish don't have anything to eat. The water's all muddy and it's a real problem. That, to me, is the most important... thing to Florida. Now, of course you have, when you have more and more building, you know, like one of my friends, he he's always put it, it's like, it's about the number of toilets, right? So you got a big, you got a big apartment building going in where there used to be just two houses. And now instead of four toilets, they've got, you know, 400 toilets. You got to make sure that that is a count accommodated for, so make sure that the sewer systems are. are up to date and good before you start building some of these things. And I know that some of the areas in Florida are really struggling with that. The building has gone on so fast that the infrastructure to support that, specifically the sewer systems, hasn't kept up. And so some areas are suffering from pollution in the water. That's not what the Keys is. The Keys has been much, better about zoning and keeping the building to a, to a minimum and not allowing, you know, there's not high rises all the way down the keys. Like it's, they've done a good job of that. And I think that they just realized that, that at some point can't do it right. Like it's just not enough sewer pipe to support more building. Jeff Dudan (01:01:48.804) It's a skinny piece of land in a lot of areas. I mean, you can see both sides of it and we're, you know, Isla Morada being one of the world's best fisheries. You've got the Gulf side and you can do all of that fishing on that side. And then you're right in the Atlantic Gulf Streams, not far. You can get to it. We have a Bay boat and with a single screw. So we've gone out farther than we probably should have. But if it's a clear day and there's other boats around, we've gone out. Tom Rowland (01:01:50.97) Yeah, for sure. Tom Rowland (01:02:09.178) Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (01:02:16.794) Sure. Jeff Dudan (01:02:17.988) with my kids and figured out how to go for mahi and got into them and just had an experience like you would know. It looked like a murder scene on the boat when we were done. There's fish everywhere and blood everywhere and you know when we were in 400 feet of water and you'd throw a small one back and a shark would come up and grab it and it's like you can't, you can't make that up. Other than the one captain's cause that you mentioned, Tom Rowland (01:02:26.81) Yeah, it's awesome. Jeff Dudan (01:02:47.108) What are some other organizations that you would recommend that people might want to support for this issue with the water? Tom Rowland (01:02:54.042) Yeah, well, my favorite one is the captains for the clean water and those guys are fishing captains that basically were impacted by... this Okeechobee situation and they said, look, all we want is clean water, right? Like that's what we want. Now there's, there's, many different organizations that do similar things, many different Everglades organizations. And I support all of them. Like they're all looking for the same thing, clean water. whether you're a birdwatcher or you like to go to. nice waterfront restaurants or you like to walk on the beach or you're an angler or you're a fishing guide. It's all the same. And, and what I like about captains for clean water is that they have, been very inclusive. They haven't just said, this is for fishermen and this is, you know, this is a fisherman's organization. No, they realize that. real estate people, restaurateurs, anyone that has anything to do with tourism, the reason that people are coming to Florida and the reason that people want to live in Florida is because of the beautiful water and because of the things that live in that water. And as soon as you take that away, everyone loses. And so it is by no means just a fisherman's cause it's, it's everyone's. And in fact, it's such a big thing that it affects the entire country. I think, because not only just the people that come to Florida to visit, but also like, if we have to put billions of dollars into, fixing these situations, once they get so bad that, that the whole country has to come together to fix something. Tom Rowland (01:04:49.53) Nobody wants that. I mean, that's going to be tax dollars from everyone. So it's at a point right now that it could be, there are things that can be done about it, like these reservoirs and different things. And, you know, I like that organization because they're very inclusive and they're very open to educating people and they don't just point the finger and scream and yell. And, you know, there's a place and time for those people too. And they're very effective. But, you know, my... I think this organization has been really, really good, but everybody from the nature conservancy to, I don't know, there's like ever there's another Everglades organization. I can't remember what it is, but if they're for clean water, I'm for them. Jeff Dudan (01:05:38.308) I was fortunate to spend a couple of days with Guy Harvey and his daughter Jessica, who's the president of their foundation. And they do a lot around education programs, camps, mostly around the fish, but also the habitat offshore. Of course, they're down there in the Caymans and have their stingray camp and all of that, but very active, very big educational program. I don't know if you've bounced across them at all in the things that you've done. Tom Rowland (01:06:04.986) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:06:08.164) but I certainly got the impression and have supported them in the work that they do. Tom Rowland (01:06:14.81) Yeah, and again, like there's one that I didn't even think about the guy Harvey think he's got a foundation and he's doing great work. Certainly has has been a leader and in the Marine. kind of industry with his art and then how he's been able to parlay that into education and into things that are much bigger. So good for him. He's certainly a legend of the sport and we had him on one of our shows called Life on the Water last year. He and his daughter, both of them were on that show. It was great. I wasn't on that particular shoot, but it was great. The show turned out great and it's always great to have somebody like him on the show. Jeff Dudan (01:06:48.612) How was that? Jeff Dudan (01:06:59.684) Tom, you've got a bunch. When you think about telling your best fishing story, something you couldn't believe happened. Does one pop into your head? The Most Unbelievable Fishing Story Tom’s Ever Lived Tom Rowland (01:07:10.842) you know, there, there are a lot and there, there are a lot of them that, that seem impossible. And I don't know why I thought about this one as soon as you said that, but, I don't know. I had this, I don't know. There's been, there's just been so, so many, I had this, I had this one person and. Like when we were growing up, you would see people and they would have kind of a, I don't, I don't want to say this wrong or, or give it any kind of disservice, but you would have one person that had kind of like a small, small arm, you know, like I think it was from something that the, that, that women would take when they were pregnant and it was way more common when we were kids. And, and it would just, it was kind of like a dwarf arm. Do you know what I'm talking about? Jeff Dudan (01:08:03.3) Yeah. Yes. Tom Rowland (01:08:05.178) And so I had this gentleman and he came down and he had that on his left arm and he wanted to go permit fishing. So we went, we had a half day permit fish and set up and I take him out and he was like, he was, he was so cool and he was a great fisherman. And what he would do is he would just hold the handle, but his right arm was super strong and really good with it. And he could make a cast anywhere. And then he would just hold the handle and then he would reel the rod around. the handle as opposed to the reel around the, you know, the handle of the reel around the reel. And he was very accomplished and he could do it. And so we go out and you know what a permit is. It's got like a long, there's, there's one actually behind me, right? Right there. Jeff Dudan (01:08:49.444) Yeah, and you, when I fished for them, we'd drop like a crab down on a wreck, something like that. Okay. Tom Rowland (01:08:54.006) Yeah. And, but they're also on the flats, you know, and, and so you can see them on the flats and, and that was the fish that I fished for just a ton. And if you, if you look at it right there in the back, you can see that it's got a fork tail. And so we go out there and I see this permit and I start pulling for it and I get him to see it. He throws right over there. He catches it, pulls it right in. And when it came in, the bottom lobe of his tail was. Dwarf. Jeff Dudan (01:09:03.94) Yep. Yep. Mm -hmm. Tom Rowland (01:09:23.994) Like all shriveled up tiny. I've never seen one like that before. Never seen one like that since. And he picked the thing up and he goes, look, we're twins. And I was like, wow, that is, that's amazing. I've never seen that. He's like, do you see them like this all the time? I said, no, I've never seen one like that before. So we put that one back and we go down the flat and we see another permit throws over there catches that one. And the top Ray of his tail is dwarf. Like that. And he picks it up and he goes, man, that's crazy. Two in one day. And I'm thinking, you have no idea how crazy this is. I've never seen this before. And you caught one with the lower lobe and one with the upper lobe. Those are the only two fish we saw the whole day. We caught both of them. And it was with this particular gentleman that had that deformity on his arm and the permit were like mirror mirror images of that. And I, I've never seen it before and never seen it since. And that is one of the weirdest things that have ever happened. And it left me with like this, this feeling of like, like gratitude of like, man, that is, I think that was like a sign of, of something like, I don't know what that was, but I'm glad I was a part of it. Right. And he was too, he was like, that is so cool. We caught those. I mean, he had a great, great attitude about life in general, right? Like he didn't have it. He didn't have a handicap. He. He, you know, the handicaps in your mind. I fished with this guy long time ago. Kyle Maynard, do you know who he is? Jeff Dudan (01:10:59.044) I do know the name, I can't place it. Tom Rowland (01:10:59.802) He was a, he was born with a congenital birth defect and his, his arms only came to here and his legs just went just a little bit past and he won an SB award. He was a wrestler and yeah. And he wrote a, he was on your show. Yeah. He's a phenomenal guy. And he wrote a book and, and, I had him on the show a long time ago on saltwater experience. He was one of my favorite guests ever. And Kyle, you know, and it was really cool about having Kyle there as. Jeff Dudan (01:11:06.244) Yeah, he was on, yes, yes, yes, yeah, he was a wrestler. He was a wrestler, yeah, he was on the show. Yeah, we had him on. That's right. Tom Rowland (01:11:26.586) My kids were there too and they were young and and Kyle was really great with kids and He he saw this ring game where you know in the keys you have it like a string and there's a ring and you Swing it and it lands on a hook. You know what I'm talking about. We call it the ring game. I don't know what it's called, but Kyle goes Hey Hayden, that's my boy. He says You want to play that and Hayden said Yeah, how are you gonna play it and he goes Jeff Dudan (01:11:36.836) yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:11:40.772) I do. Tom Rowland (01:11:56.794) Like this, and he pulls this stool over there and he jumps up on this stool and he goes, hand me the thing. And he does it with his arms and my son was just like, wow, that's amazing. And he beat my son at that ring game immediately. Immediately. And later the next day we were talking and Kyle just had this amazing attitude and he was like, you know, I don't see a... A handicap is not something that I have just because I don't have arms or legs. That's not a handicap. A handicap is, is negative self -talk that people have in their brain. They can't stop it. They have it their entire life and they can't do anything about it. He's like, I've been able to overcome everything. He can eat with a fork and knife. He can do anything that you can do with your arms and legs. It might take him a little bit longer, but he's figured it out. And he's like, this isn't a handicap. The handicap is, is a bad attitude. A handicap is a, is a negative self -talk. Handicap is no confidence. Handicaps happen in your brain. They don't happen in your body. And I was like, man, that is awesome. I love, I love that with Kyle. I've stayed in touch with him for a long time. but he, you know, I, that's how that guy was with the fishing story. He didn't think he had a handicap. He didn't have a handicap. He, he's overcome every single thing and he was able to do anything that anyone else could do. But then he saw these fish and just like I did, he realized, I don't know what that was, but. That doesn't happen every day and it was cool to be a part of it. So I don't know if that's kind of the, I mean, I can tell you stories about giant sharks eating things, but that one, that one was probably one of them. I'll never forget that. That's one that I will never ever forget. Jeff Dudan (01:13:29.7) No, that's better. That's better. I mean... Jeff Dudan (01:13:37.348) Yeah, just sometimes sit in awareness with that and like, what is the universe trying to teach me here? There's a lesson in it. Tom Rowland (01:13:43.674) I hope maybe one day I'll figure it out. I don't know. I haven't yet. Jeff Dudan (01:13:45.86) Yeah, there is a lesson in it. Tom, you've been incredibly gracious with your time today. We're heading towards the barn. I do have a question, our final question for you today. But again, really appreciate you jumping on. Yeah, man, so great to talk to you and appreciate all the work that you've done. I think there's a lot of inspiration in what you've done and the way you've went about it. Final Wisdom: “You Can Do It.” Tom Rowland (01:14:03.002) Well, thank you for having me. I've had a good time. Tom Rowland (01:14:12.57) Thank you. Jeff Dudan (01:14:14.34) If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be? Tom Rowland (01:14:19.386) You can do it. Tom Rowland (01:14:23.45) You can do it. That's it. I mean, I'm serious. I do believe that, that that's it. I don't know that it needs, it needs a lot more explanation, but most of the time. Jeff Dudan (01:14:23.62) All right. Tom Rowland (01:14:36.666) The only thing holding people back is the fact that they don't believe in themselves and you can, you can do it. I don't care how crazy it is. That's basically what my podcast started out being was I wanted to find these stories of people that it started out being like wanting to be a fishing guide or wanting to do something different. You had a job, you know, you'll hear about these guys that are like lawyers or doctors or whatever, and they want to be a fishing guide. Well, maybe not a doctor, but you know, like they got one career. And they just don't like what they're doing and they want to do something else. And there's this moment where they have to decide I'm going for it. And most people stop right there because they don't think they can do it or they're scared or something. But you know, you can, if you believe in yourself and you can, if you're willing to take the risk and, you know, I think that's what I would tell people. You can do it. Jeff Dudan (01:15:32.612) perfectly said I kicked off a training class this morning 19 new franchisees and our temporary wall brand and I really like to get them the first two hours and One of the things we talk about is self -limiting beliefs and that you know, we're all exactly where we are based on the decisions that we made and Whether we've taken fearless action or we haven't on the things that we've thought about and just encouraging them that Nothing is fatal. And I mean, at the end of the day, you're not going to die getting up in front of people and speaking. The audience wants you to win. They're not going to remember what you forgot to say. There's no reason not to push yourself into situations where you're uncomfortable. And if you continue to argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And. Tom Rowland (01:16:24.986) Yeah, I like that. Jeff Dudan (01:16:26.276) Yeah, I mean, and it's, you know, we play Minecraft. my family didn't do this. I don't have enough resources. And you just start putting these walls around you. You're limiting all the opportunities that you have in life. You've had multiple lives within a life. I mean, you I mean, for some people to go out and and be a guide out west. I mean, that's a dream. And then you come to Florida and you do it all again. and then you do the television show and we didn't even talk about your podcast which has over a thousand episodes in it and as I was preparing for this I'm scrolling through it I listened to the one with the guy with the with the with the big wave that got lost at sea which was which was a recent one I mean that is an incredible I mean his story was incredible so Tom Rowland (01:17:04.474) yeah. Yeah. Tom Rowland (01:17:12.538) Yeah, it was. That was absolutely incredible. Jeff Dudan (01:17:14.276) just so much value in what you've put together and what you've presented to the world. And I really appreciate you coming on. It's just been an absolute pleasure and a joy to hang out with you today. Tom Rowland (01:17:24.538) Thank you. I really appreciate having you. I need to have you on my podcast. Okay. Yeah, we'll, we'll set it up for, we'll set it up for a time in the future. but I would like to have you on there. It sounds like you've had an incredible, go at entrepreneurship yourself and you're been incredibly successful with it. And you are also helping lots and lots of people. So I love that. I love that story. That's really awesome. Jeff Dudan (01:17:27.94) 100%. I'm ready to go. We'll just click over and we'll go right at it. Jeff Dudan (01:17:51.236) Good so far, got a long way to go, and I'm excited for it. Tom Rowland. Tom Rowland (01:17:55.866) Just measure backwards, dude. That's all you gotta do. See how far you've come, right? Jeff Dudan (01:17:58.852) Yeah, man. That's right. That's right. Well, this has been Tom Rowland with Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks again, Tom. Tom Rowland (01:18:08.122) Thank you. Awesome. Jeff Dudan (01:18:11.652) All right, let me just click.
Brief Summary In this powerhouse episode of On the Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with serial entrepreneur, author, and business builder Brandon Dawson, co-founder of Cardone Ventures. Together, they explore Brandon's journey from family business struggles to ringing the opening bell on Wall Street, scaling businesses into the billions, and building a new generation of empowered entrepreneurs. Packed with no-nonsense insights on equity, family dynamics, AI, hiring, platform businesses, and building legacy—this episode is a masterclass for anyone serious about scaling their impact. Key Takeaways Most Founders Never Make It to CEO : The journey from founder → entrepreneur → CEO is rare, with fewer than 0.002% of businesses ever reaching true CEO-level operations. Don’t Take Capital Too Early : Instead of outside capital or debt, force your business to be self-funding. Build the discipline first, scale later. Mentors Are Not Friends : Brandon breaks down the difference between learning from someone and needing their approval. You don’t need to like your mentors—just learn from them. Family Businesses Need Structure or They Collapse : Success requires transparency, accountability, and removing family if they’re not contributing. Use AI & Automation or Fall Behind : Businesses not deploying tech to streamline sales, marketing, training, and operations will be left behind by PE-backed or scaled competitors. Collaboration > Partnerships : Don’t give away equity. Align people through shared goals, incentives, and collaboration instead. Build Legacy Through Others : Real freedom comes when you help others succeed personally, professionally, and financially. Featured Quote “You’re not building a business until it can feed itself. Until then, you’re just hustling for survival.” TRANSCRIPT Brandon Dawson’s Unlikely Rise: From Pastor’s Son to Wall Street Jeff Dudan (00:01.195) you want to share about we do kind of the hero's journey. We don't have to dwell on it, but maybe I'm going to. Brandon Dawson (00:05.806) Yeah, I think you just jump. I think you just jump. Let's just go for it. And, and you can ask me and it'll come. Jeff Dudan (00:10.315) Yep, you got it. Brandon Dawson, welcome to the home front. Brandon Dawson (00:15.726) Yeah, thank you. Great to be on your show. Jeff Dudan (00:17.259) Yeah, super excited about it. Your book is the first one that I ever listened to on tape. I was traveling yesterday, so I didn't realize your voice was this deep. It sounded really high on two times speed. So I'm glad to, yeah, but it was really great. We have very similar backgrounds growing up. I think if we added our GPAs together, we still fall short of like five. So, but yeah, 100%. Brandon Dawson (00:29.226) Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Brandon Dawson (00:41.518) Makes sense. Jeff Dudan (00:44.523) What can you share about how you grew up and how that shaped who you are today? Brandon Dawson (00:50.606) Yeah, great question. Well, I was in a little town in Corvallis, Oregon. My dad was a pastor. My mom was a nurse and she and my dad divorced in 1976 and she met a gentleman who is an entrepreneur invented the in the ear hearing aid. And so he was running around the country trying to convince people to try to buy it, even though they didn't work real well. And she and my dad divorced. She ran off to Minnesota with him and took me with her. So when I was eight years old, I moved to Minneapolis and I watched this little tiny lab from the vision of an entrepreneur grow to when I left there in 1995, it was a $375 million global company that had gone through several iterations of ups and downs. They went through a nasty divorce in 91. I was still there working, running North American sales. And so between going back and forth to my dad and my stepmom, that were your traditional kind of middle America family, and then being in an environment with an entrepreneurial family with my stepdad and my mom, I really got the true context of rich dad, poor dad, thinking and doing. And I knew as a little kid, I didn't want to live in Corvallis, Oregon. I wanted to go build something huge, something cool, and I got my juices going. And once I graduated high school from Corvallis, Oregon, I was out of there. And that was the start of my journey. Jeff Dudan (02:27.915) You got into a family business and very quickly made a name for yourself as a top producer. And it's really difficult when you get inside of a family business because everybody thinks everything's handed to you. You got to work extra hard to prove yourself. People still don't believe it. There's a lot of resentment inside of that. We're a family office, family business here. And we have a lot of family members working in the business, some of our young people. What experience would you share? for people that feel stuck inside of a family business. The Family Business Trap: Resentment, Rewards, and Reality Brandon Dawson (03:01.422) Yeah, well 93 % of all businesses under $125 million in revenue have family orientation is what I call it. So there's somebody in the family working in the business and 97 % of all those businesses will fail every 10 years. So it's very difficult because when the family business fails, usually the family suffers and then when the family suffers, the community suffers. So I clearly understand this idea that when you're in a family business and you're expected to do more, for wanting less and not complaining, I get that that's a majority of the mentality of family businesses. When I grew up, I had all my older brothers working for me and I had fired them all at some point in time. So it is very difficult. In fact, it really helped me get stronger because I felt like if I can do that with my own family, my older brothers, I can certainly do it with strangers. And so, What you need in a family business is you need targets, you need resilience, you need transparency. And it is true that most older founders that have kids in the business treat them disproportionately to even their lazy employees. And so what I would say is every business should be structured properly to recognize the contributions of the people contributing. There should be reward mechanisms. And if you're family or not family, you should follow that exact process. And if you are family and you're not, you should be replaced because otherwise the good employees will think there's no opportunity for them because you're allowing mediocrity to exist in the business. And these are the things that are very difficult for family businesses. And generally speaking, they'll screw all that up because they don't want to play with the politics or dynamics. They either screw their family up or they screw up the business. Jeff Dudan (04:39.211) That's right. Jeff Dudan (04:50.059) Yeah, they don't they room they don't want to ruin Thanksgiving is it your experience that family businesses or are more reluctant to find a bigger room to get outside you know we always go find things like strategic coach or these other networks that people get involved with to get around other business owners that are up to something and going somewhere and Right. Brandon Dawson (05:13.998) Well, I mean, that's the premise of our whole business, right? Like we have tens of thousands of business owners cycle through our events every single year and millions participate online with us. But to answer your question, birds of a feather flock together. 99 or 98 .3%. So 1 .7 % of all businesses under 125 million ever break $3 million of revenue. The average business at three million has 12 employees. And that's where they sit. They sit there forever until the 10 -year cycle, until their profitability gets eaten up with cost and taxes and expenses, and then they go out of business. And so it's unfortunate, but what happens in a lot of family businesses is they don't want to put pressure in the system because they don't want to deal with it at home. They don't want to hold their kids or their spouses accountable. They're tired of fighting about everything. So they just exist. until it doesn't work anymore and it's very unfortunate. Now, contrary to that, when you learn to align your business, for example, Cardo Ventures, we're a high performance organization, started this business exactly 60 months ago after partnering with Grant and Elena, a husband and wife team. My wife is the partner and co -founder of Cardo Ventures, we're a husband and wife team. My brother runs sales, her brother runs technology. And so when you have the right rules in place and expectations, Everyone can thrive, not just survive, but thrive. But when you're placating to people and when you're holding certain people accountable and others not accountable, you are ripe for problems in your business. So I always tell business owners to have family. Treat everybody when they walk through that door in the proportion that they contribute to the organization. And it's easier to remove family that's not working because then the rest of the business will work. And those family members will move on and find things they're actually passionate about instead of feeling obligated or stuck to work for the family business and being disappointed they don't feel they're being treated fairly. Mentor vs. Friend: Why You Must Learn to Separate the Two Jeff Dudan (07:19.147) You make a very interesting distinction between mentors and friends. Can you speak to that? Brandon Dawson (07:24.622) Yeah, a mentor is somebody that you're specifically learning and developing from. That has nothing to do with being a friend with somebody. So when you're friends with people, you're co -contributing to each other, personally, professionally, financially. When you're mentoring from somebody, you are specifically learning and developing in areas of opportunities for you to succeed. You don't need to know your mentors. You don't need to like your mentors. Your mentors don't need to know you. They don't need to like you. They don't need to know anything about you. A mentor is someone that you learn and develop from because you're inspired by something that they can help you with. And if you really learn your mentor's information and bring that to fruition, bring it to life, you probably will meet your mentor at some time who will want to be your friend because you exemplify what they're teaching if you handle yourself properly. But there's no... There needs to be clear understanding. There is no commonality between a mentor and a friend. Those two things are entirely separate and they have nothing to do with each other unless you're able to develop a rich enough relationship with a mentor that then they become a friend. And this is what I've spent a majority of my life doing and I talk about it in my book. Almost every single mentor that I had, I didn't know because I was reading their books or I was somehow otherwise found them. But all those mentors became dear friends, some of them family, and collaborators, because of the contribution they made to me, me always telling the world I learned this from them. A lot of people aren't willing, because of the egotistical aspect of the human nature, when they learn something new and they're quoting it, I'm an expert in leadership, and this and that, they don't talk about where they learned it from. So if I'm somebody that's teaching something and someone's using my words, and I know that I've talked to that person or they've read my book and they're not quoting me, then when I do meet them, I have less of an aptitude or less than the appetite to actually get to know them because I feel like they're not, they're not giving back to what I did. Jeff Dudan (09:30.187) Yeah, it's really clear when you pick up a book and it's just a collection of things from other people's book that are put together as opposed to the authenticity that comes across in your book, sharing your stories, sharing your experiences, and really giving people a blueprint and a framework with which they can inform their lives and their journeys. Acquisitions, you built a company very, very rapidly through acquisitions. You got out over the tips of your skis a little bit with the board. And now what you learned in that process has led you down a very interesting path in building businesses through collaboration. Can you talk a little bit about how important it was and what you learned in that acquisition process that spoke into what you're doing today? Building a Billion-Dollar Platform Business (and the Mistakes That Taught Him How) Brandon Dawson (10:18.638) Yeah, great question. You know, a lot of I have and I know you have experience with this on both levels, both being the acquirer and capital raising and all these things. So when I was 26, I went the traditional route. I went out and made hundreds of presentations, got my first million, then raised six million, then raised 28 million with Warburg Pincus at 29 years old, rang the opening bell of the American Stock Exchange. Jeff Dudan (10:30.155) Yes, sir. Brandon Dawson (10:44.686) as a high school graduate, voted least likely to succeed. All those were things that I was told would never happen, and I was able to make them happen. The problem was buying 130 businesses and shoving them together to try to create a platform company. And for those that are listening, they're like, what's a platform company? A platform company is what Wall Street talks about that has 10 specific elements. It's an organization that has a strategy, it has proper promotion and marketing, it has proper sales conversions, it has... proper people alignment mechanisms, it has proper operational protocols, it has proper leadership, it has proper data that it knows what it's looking at and what it's doing, it has proper technology and systemization, and it has proper investment thesis that fits the strategy. And in order to afford all that and to be successful making 20, 30 % of profitability per year, you're gonna have to be between 100 and 150 million dollars of revenue. or you can't afford all that and the expertise associated with it. So a platform company is a company has all those resources, all those assets, all that leadership, all pulling the business in one direction towards a stated objective to execute and drive value. Okay, that's what a platform company is. A platform company isn't a 10 million or a 20 million or a 30 million dollar business because you're not big enough yet to have all those things. So understanding what a platform company is. and I understood what it was because my mentors told me so I was on a race to build a platform. And I had to do it by buying hundreds of little tiny half a million million million and a half dollar businesses and trying to shove them all together and create all the leadership team and create all the systems and create all operating protocols at 29 years old with no formal education. So if there was a recipe for disaster, I was it. But because I was able to survive and push through, I had this false sense of I can overcome everything. And that caught up to me. Actually, the business started doing unbelievably well. We were going to be the largest in the world. People were throwing money at me. But my investors of five years, Warburg, the professional investors, were watching me thinking any minute this guy could drown, right? Any minute he can make a technical mistake. Because although I was in survival mode, feeling like I conquered, they were in, my god, this guy's in panic mode all the time. So. Brandon Dawson (13:02.062) when there was an opportunity for them to exit, take all their money, plus 100 % of their money, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, leaving me and my investors with nothing, they took it. At the time, I was bitter and upset about it, but in reflection, if I was them in today's state, I would do the same thing because I was just very fortunate that I survived. I was missing the strategic and leadership and investment thesis side, and I just looked like a reckless doer. when I go back and look at myself at that point in time, right? So everything in business is two things when you're building a business, context and contrast. And until you have wisdom and experience, it's very difficult to have context and contrast. But I would never trade all those experiences because they were unbelievable. And the one thing it did say to me is I can overcome whatever's in front of me. And so what I wanted to do in my next iteration of business is retool how businesses are built. And that set me on the course I'm on today. Jeff Dudan (14:03.595) You had unusual vision at a young age. thinking about that acquisition strategy, building the platform, had to be informed from what you learned and what you saw in the business that you were a family business from growing up. And said, I can do this bigger, better, faster. I can do it differently. And today, you work with business owners. I saw one podcast where you had somebody on there that came to you pre -revenue. And it was an engineering firm. So you work with businesses from zero, probably up into the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars at Cardone Ventures. When you... Founder → Entrepreneur → CEO: The Rarest Career Progression Brandon Dawson (14:36.942) Billions. Jeff Dudan (14:37.739) Yeah, billions. So when you think about the smaller companies that come to you and ask for help and ask for partnership, when is it appropriate for them to take on debt? What have to be the conditions in the business for them to take on debt versus perhaps raising outside capital? Brandon Dawson (14:56.014) Yeah, it's a great question. I always recommend they do neither. So what we teach businesses is to do what I did with my last company that I sold for 77 times EBITDA, and that is force the business to be responsible enough to fund itself. Because here's the thing, 97 % of all businesses fail within 10 years. So if you're raising money from third parties outside investors, you're going to have all the pressure associated with demands that you will struggle meeting because you're just going to struggle in general building a business that works. In addition to that, Jeff Dudan (15:11.947) Yeah. Brandon Dawson (15:31.758) When you raise money, the first money you raise will always be the highest valued money statistically because the next round you raise is because you're not working the way you said you're gonna work and then you're gonna get crushed. So instead of putting any energy into that, because I know a lot of entrepreneurs, they're just professional fundraisers and this whole concept that Wall Street pedals of deficit financing, you know, raise capital and sure, Uber, it worked for Uber. It worked for Amazon. Bezos was made fun of for not making money in today's richest guy on the planet. Okay, so yeah, so there's a few scenarios where that works. WeWorks is an example where it didn't work, right? So even though the founder made out better than all the shareholders, everyone else lost money. So at the end of the day, the best, safest way for the average founder, now this is different, a founder is different than an entrepreneur. Jeff Dudan (16:04.651) Yeah, he can deal with that. He's fine. Jeff Dudan (16:12.011) That's right. Brandon Dawson (16:29.262) and an entrepreneur is different than a chief executive officer. And so anybody can be a business owner founder. But you don't become an entrepreneur until you recognize the significance at the 15 to 25 million mark when you actually realize, wait a minute, I need a strategy. Wait a minute, I need leadership. Wait a minute, I need systems. That's when you move to being an entrepreneur because you start recognizing the things the business requires in order to succeed. A CEO is someone who's chartered with creating massive value, aligning, incentivizing teams, hitting targets, defining the business objectives and strategies, and knowing where to properly invest in the organization in order to create massive value and hit internal rates of returns. That's a professional CEO. A lot of founders call themselves CEOs, but they don't even know what it means to be an entrepreneur yet. So founders tend to be, founder business owners tend to sit in that one to two, 15 million range struggling to survive every day. And so what I tell business owners is you need to know your place and you need to know the difference between the specific differences in competency, contribution, and abilities. And you need to be honest with yourself because if you don't, you're gonna surround yourself with all the wrong people. So you ask a question which is, When is a good time to bring on capital? Well, the best time to bring on capital is when you can prove, because remember the chief three complaints for why businesses fail. Chief complaint number one is no demand for product or service. You should never bring capital into the business if you haven't yet vetted the demand for product or service. Chief complaint number two is can't find any good people to help me. Well, until you prove that you know how to be successful with your products or services, you're never gonna find good people because good people don't work for shitty business owners. So it's a natural law of progression. And then three, can't get access to capital or money. Well, what moron's gonna give a founder money that can't hire any good people because they themselves can't prove demand for product or service. So it's all excuse for actually not vetting what the true business opportunity is and not owning the responsibility of actually building a business. A business is a thing that has its own life, that is able to grow up and feed itself. It has a purpose. When (and When Not) to Raise Capital or Take On Debt Brandon Dawson (18:50.03) It has mission, it has vision, it has values, it has intentions. And so I tell business owners, the best time to bring on money is when you know how to generate 20 or 30 % profitability, you know how to scale and grow your business. You built a great management team. You haven't given any of your equity away. That's a good time to bring money in, in order to go through rapid expansion. Until then, statistically, you're going to die. Why take all your friends with you? Jeff Dudan (19:12.556) Yeah, that's such a great answer. That is, people need to listen to that. That was really incredible. Brandon Dawson (19:20.718) Well, you're in the business too. How many people tell you, I just need capital. I just need capital. I just need capital. It's the default thing because in their mind, if they just had money, they could solve their fact that they can't even build a basic business and demonstrate it works. So like do that first. Jeff Dudan (19:26.507) every day. Jeff Dudan (19:39.179) Yeah, and then I think at the other end of the scale, and we see it with some of these great national brands that have gone bankrupt, they go through a transaction, they get levered up on debt with the promise of using that debt to expand the business. But again, they haven't vetted out the products or the service. The plan doesn't work out. You try another CEO, and the next thing you know, you're in trouble. and you've got so much debt on your business, interest rates go up and now you're in trouble. Where great businesses, I mean how much cash does Apple have on the balance sheet? I mean just, you know, tons of tons of tons of cash. So the fact that these businesses need to grow up and feed themselves, I think that's a great analogy for what founders and entrepreneurs really need to think about. Brandon Dawson (20:27.342) Well, and I'll be honest with you, and you know this, you're a successful business owner and you talk to a lot of people. You're gonna sleep so much better at night when you have a little money in the bank. You don't have the gun to your head. You don't have people yelling at you. Even if you're not growing at the speed in which you wanna grow, if you're sleeping well at night and you're able to achieve your personal, professional, financial goals, you've got a team that's able to achieve their personal, professional, financial goals. The business has the discipline to self -fund. you're just gonna have a much higher quality of life. And so the first reason to not take on debt and not use other people's money with the concept of trying to build something is you're probably gonna fail and you have to live with all that liability. So go slower at the beginning, structurally build it correctly, learn the rules of starting building, optimizing, scaling, and then exiting a business. Learn those rules, this is what we teach. And then just, Do it a little slower until you figure out the algorithm for doing it. And then build a great team of people who enjoy working with you, that you can be passionate with, that are highly aligned for execution, not being mediocre and incentivized to flourish and prosper. Prune the orchard once in a while when it's not working, keep the core discipline in place, go prove out what you're doing, and then hit the accelerator. after you've built some cash reserves. So if you're wrong, you can afford to make the mistake and you just retool and go back to where you level set and do it again. That is ultimately gonna be a much, for pro survival mode, that's gonna be a much better way to do it than just trying to chase everything as fast as you can using everybody else's money only to suffer the consequences of the statistics that 97 % of all businesses fail within the first 10 years. Jeff Dudan (22:17.387) Yeah, that's right. And losing other people's money is a bad look. How to Think Bigger Without Breaking Your Business Brandon Dawson (22:20.814) sucks. Jeff Dudan (22:21.899) Yeah, so you just walked us through a mindset progression where founders to entrepreneurs to CEO. So Cardone Ventures works with people and you have tools and you have processes and technologies that you put in place. How do you communicate how to these people, how they should think bigger and think in a more disciplined manner? Brandon Dawson (22:47.246) That's a great question and really the art and the reason I wrote this book is because sure I have a bunch of operating system books right like like we have documented there's to go from zero to a platform company 125 million there's 10 specific elements 76 sub elements and 240 specific things you need to do okay so that's all been documented we teach on it every day across every single one of those 10 elements in the sequence in which you need to do things if you think of your business as the thickness of a pad of concrete. and you start your business thinking you're gonna build a one story building and then as you, and that would be to three million statistically. And you get to three million and you're like, man, this was good, I'm gonna go for eight million, but you don't increase the thickness of the structural pad. After you add a second and third floor, you're gonna collapse. So there's three to five things that you must have in place at level one through level seven, and that's zero to 125 million. There's actually 11 break points to a billion. Jeff Dudan (23:30.571) Hmm. Brandon Dawson (23:45.39) And so as you're building your, so think about it. If I came to you and said, engineer me a 10 story building, 12 feet each, 120 feet high, and you do the engineering work, you build the blueprints, I pick the interior design, we pick the exterior design, we go through this whole process and then we start building. Well, that is entirely contrary to how the founder builds the business. And it isn't until you run through a couple cycles as a failed founder that you ask the question, what do I need to do differently next time to be successful? And that's where you move to entrepreneur. Now, if you can bypass the failures at 15 to 25 million, you're going to be sitting around going, how do we get bigger? How do we make more money? And someone's going to go, eventually, you know what we need? We need a strategy. And you're like, strategy. We just have always just done, and it worked. And so you grow into being the entrepreneur. Like, we need to think further out. We need to have better things in place. We need to find, attract, align, develop, and retain great people. You start to move into that out of necessity. And if you don't, you will collapse and fail, right? So there are three to five things at each break point, zero to three million, three to eight, eight to 15, 15, 25, 25, 45, 45, 75, 75, 125, all the way up to a billion, there's 11. If you know what elements need to be in place, now what you need to do is ask yourself the question. So this is the fundamental question. Do you have the patience to build? Because there's a few things that you need to equip yourself with. to move from founder to entrepreneur to chief executive officer. And those things you need to equip yourself with is the patience and the resilience to learn context, contrast. If I do this, what can I expect is gonna happen? And if I do it wrong, what will probably happen? And you need to be patient and move delicately. Jim Collins talks about innovation as incremental improvement on the things that you can prove work. So first part of innovating is proving what works. Or you can apply radical innovation, which is what Elon would talked about, which is just invent something new and go all in on it. There's a few people that have been successful doing that, but most fail. So in small business, you need to apply the Jim Collins definition of innovation, granular incremental improvement on the things that you can prove works. Slowly, systematically. Break Points, Snapbacks, and Why Most Businesses Collapse at Scale Brandon Dawson (26:11.598) within the rules, and then you build. Well, if you follow that principle, you're gonna be successful because you're not gonna have big radical shifts because you're not doing big radical things. You violate those rules and you start trying to do big radical things, chasing revenue, statistically you'll collapse. So what happens is you engineer as you go, but if you don't recognize the fact that you're on the third level or fourth level and you have not reverse engineered, you've not structurally engineered, and you haven't gone backwards to say, what did I miss that I need to have in place? You will eventually implode. And this is what happens to 97 % of all businesses in the growth cycle. So you're either going to break through to the next level or you're going to break. If you break back one break point, it's a slip back. If you break back two break points, it's a snap back and it's catastrophic because you can't catch yourself in the fall. So there's just all these rules. And what we do is we teach business owners these rules. Now, the fundamental question that we talked about is, do you have the patience to learn context, learn contrast? Do you have the resilience? Are you willing to do the hard things, like family and moving people around and realizing you put the wrong people in the wrong place and you're paying them too much, you're not paying them enough? Do you have the resilience to make good decisions? And then fourth, do you have the wisdom? And then fifth, do you have the aptitude? Do you really want it? Because boy, if you don't really want it, it's going to be so hard. You will conform to mediocrity and sit wherever you're at until your costs exceed the benefit ratio of being in business and you go out of business. Or you sell. Jeff Dudan (28:01.995) And then P makes all the money, which happens, I see happen all the time. People spend 25 years, 25 years building a business, they sell it for nothing. The people that know what they're doing come in and two years later they sell it for 10 times what they paid for it. And it's not that difficult. Well, know what it is, because I'm gonna reference your model of founder to entrepreneur CEO. I would suggest, and I'd love to get your feedback on this. Brandon Dawson (28:07.214) Dude, you and I. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:30.827) Without a card on Ventures Playbook, as you described, 95 % of founders will not transition to entrepreneurs. And I would say another 95 % of entrepreneurs are not going to transition to CEO. True? Fair? Brandon Dawson (28:46.766) I would say the stats are higher because remember 98 % of all businesses are stuck at 3 million or less if they're under 125 million. So only 2 % break through the 3 million zone. So you get to the micro percentages at 15 million to 25 million. So I'd say 0 .05 or 0 .08 get to the entrepreneurial stage and 0 .002 get to the CEO stage. Because how many entrepreneurs do you know? or founders do you know that built businesses greater than 75 to 125 million and stuck with it without bringing in the professional leadership team to run it? Jeff Dudan (29:20.875) We acquired five businesses in 2022. And we spent the entire year platforming them onto a business platform, a franchise business platform. We went out and hired the best C -level executives that we could. We launched to the market in 23, and this year we'll do somewhere around $98 million with those businesses. And. Brandon Dawson (29:38.862) Yeah, because you're an entrepreneur, dude. You're not even the CEO. You figured something out. Here's the funny part. When you say that, like you and I are going to laugh at this, the people listening to it need to hear this because you and I have never met and we've never talked. But we're speaking exactly the same language because here's what you and I are. We're entrepreneurs that are investors. We don't want to do the work. Jeff Dudan (29:43.307) Right. Jeff Dudan (29:56.331) Right. Jeff Dudan (30:00.587) Yes. Yes. Brandon Dawson (30:03.182) There's no reason for us to be the CEO. We don't need that control. We just need to know we put the right people in the right place, doing the right things the right way in order to hit the right targets. We're entrepreneurs who are investors. We see opportunities, we go acquire the opportunities, we build the things that I mentioned to take care of all the bullshit that we're not going to want to do. Not that we can't, we just don't want to do that. We've been there, we've done it. So we do it differently. And I think that's the difference is that you are an entrepreneur investor who can be a founder, who can be a CEO, but you and I both know it's not the highest use of our contribution and we're better off finding great people and giving them that opportunity to succeed and doing more of those things. So what you just described for those listening is he is an entrepreneur investor that knows the requirements to build a huge business. Jeff Dudan (30:46.091) That's right. Brandon Dawson (31:02.318) and knows the people that need to be there to do the right things. He's building teams, finding opportunities, placing people in there, giving them the opportunity to accelerate and thrive and conquer. And then he's going to go get the next deal because that's what smart people do. By the way, it's a $12 trillion space, that small business space, and 5 trillion of it is looking for an exit that can't find it because they're not profitable. And you're running around picking off all those businesses. and then bringing life to them for the people that are sitting there underneath the poor owner that can't figure out how to grow it, and they probably love you for it. Jeff Dudan (31:35.211) Yes, we're closing in our sixth brand today. The docuSigns are in my box as soon as we're done. And by the way, it's my birthday. So I think that's Serendipity 56 today, closing on our sixth brand. And I will, was that right? Well. Brandon Dawson (31:41.934) Happy birthday, dude. Yep. Brandon Dawson (31:47.15) You and I are the same age, man. We're one month apart. Yeah. Mine's May 22nd. We're two weeks apart. Jeff Dudan (31:52.363) happy birthday to you. And of those six brands, only one original founder remains active in the business. It just, it didn't work. It can't work because it's the, they get the bends. Brandon Dawson (32:05.07) Dude, one of two things, I hope you're, one of two things, you know this, and you're listeners, look, again, I'm gonna qualify this, you and I have never talked, this is the first time we've ever had a conversation, true? But we know something, we know that there's only one time a business works, and that's when it's kind of working. Because when a business, when you acquire somebody's business and it doesn't work, they're gonna be disenfranchised and they're blowing out on you. Jeff Dudan (32:16.843) True. Brandon Dawson (32:30.542) When you buy a business and you blow it up and it becomes more valuable than it's ever been, they're pissed off at you because they think that you screwed them over. When the reality is they just couldn't figure out how to do it, which is why they sold in the first place. So the only time a founder actually works in a business after you acquire is when it's just kind of going along and they haven't been able to get enough money to score. So they're willing to drug it out or fight it out. There'll still be a pain in the ass in most cases. But the only time it works is when it's just kind of working because when there's too much money or not enough money, it's always gonna be a disaster. Jeff Dudan (33:01.003) Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Can we talk a little bit about the future trends? I would love to get your perspective because I think you're probably thinking five, 10 years ahead of me and everybody else that's listening here. Marketing tools, 24 months. I've been on the road 16 of the last 30 days talking to, looking at, figuring out like what... the marketing stack and customer lead generation stack at tomorrow looks like. And some people have really figured it out and they are blowing up their businesses and other people are trying to figure it out. The risk of not figuring it out, not incorporating these tools. I mean, if I owned a marketing agency, I would be, I couldn't even, how do they even keep up? with everything that's going on and serving all their clients and stuff. What's your view of marketing tools, automations, technologies, and the impact on people, things that people used to have to do that they no longer have to do? And how are you leveraging that? AI, Automation, and Marketing Tools That Separate Winners from Dinosaurs Brandon Dawson (34:10.158) Yeah, and this is where small businesses really needs to like open their mind up, right? Because there's seven promotions in a business, you know, promote who you are, promote what you do, promote why you do it, promote your impact in the community, promote why somebody should join your team, and then teach everybody the six promotes. That's the seventh promote. Now, how do you promote? You promote through digital strategies, paper strategies. You and I are 56. Back when we were 20, we were running around handing flyers off and sending newsletters to people and doing all that bullshit. Today, you've got a full automation stack that AI should be able to make the outbound calls, should be able to qualify the leads, should be able to schedule them into the appointment, should be able to confirm the appointment, should be able to listen to you actually communicate when you have a live person either on site or over the phone and score how well you're doing it and then immediately give you feedback on did you fit within the 90th percentile of being the best version of what we know works or are you in the... 70th or the 50th or the 30th and it should automatically Institute training protocols and you as the owner should just get your alerts green yellow red red means somebody's entirely Butchering the process yellow means they could use some work mean green means they're great and they're your top performers So so now the question is okay does that even exist and the answer is yes And not only does it exist but it can do it in every language in this world and do it in real time And so then somebody's like wow does that? Is that real? Yeah, but it has to be structurally built because here's the thing. The only reason marketing doesn't work, if you think about there's this funny thing that, and you'll appreciate this because I know you're already looking at it in your due diligence. So you and I have never talked. I know you look at it. Recurring revenue, what percent? If a business has been in business for five years, 65 % of its revenue should come from a second, third, fourth, fifth, eighth sale to somebody they already built a relationship with. 35 % should come from. new relationships. If the ratio is 80 -20, 80 new relationships, 20 % recurring, it's a broken business and they're spending 10 -15%, 20 % marketing because their operations suck. Okay, so if you know that and you understand what your targets are, now I don't mean to tip off these businesses that are like, how do you guys know if we're good or not? There are certain things that a guy like this and I will look at immediately and we'll know if you're good or not. Brandon Dawson (36:26.83) even if you try to trick yourself into thinking you're the best. So here's the thing, automation, AI. will work to the extent that you're committed to operationalizing the best practices across the total spectrum of everything you do, and you're willing to hold the manual teams, the physical team members, the people you're inter -reliant on, to the extent you're willing to hold them accountable and incentivize them to do the right things at the right time in the right way. Okay? You can have all the technology in the world, but if you're not gonna be able to do that with your team, you're still gonna fail as a business. So technology for businesses that embrace the systemization, the automation, and the intellectual capacity of what all this technology can do for you, if you're willing to embrace it, that's great. But to the extent that you're unwilling to initiate the discipline and accountability through the manual delivery of it, you'll still go out of business. So to me, I think that technology is creating this unbelievable, and now if you're competing against a large institutional owned business and you don't embrace the idea that you need to embrace these tools, deploy them in your business, align your team with them and hold them accountable to doing the right things at the right time with the right people, you're gonna go out of business. And the private equity guys, There, you know, I go to Alaska and I go to Alaska and fish with my buddy and we're in the back of the boat jigging for salmon. Then the big troller comes by, right? And you see him throw all hundreds and thousands of fishes in there. And then they're throwing off the ones that you're like, man, I would love to catch one like that. Boy, I haven't got a bite for five hours. They're throwing out fish. I'd love to catch. Well, because they have the benefit of having a net so wide, they are looking for something so specific. The rest of it, they don't even think about it, right? Versus you're just sitting there jigging in the water. Jeff Dudan (38:25.643) Right. Brandon Dawson (38:28.046) Well, if you're the business owner who's just jigging in the water, private equity or the guys coming by and trolling through or your big competitors are just throwing back the stuff they don't want and keeping the absolute best of what they do want. If you want to be the best and the most valuable, that is a commitment that a business owner needs to make. And then it's a pursuit they have to stay committed to with all the resilience in the world or their. They're working harder, not smarter, and they're not able to create value for their team, so they'll never have the best people. Because once your people find out you're not paying attention, and you're not pursuing excellence, you're top performing people. We'll go to those other groups that are growing fast, because fast growth is exciting. Fast growth that recognizes talent is rewarding and exciting. So if you're not that person that's talking about growth, talent, and rewards, through operational effectiveness, you're in big trouble. No matter how much technology you think you can deploy, if you can't align your team with it and execute to it, you will be left behind. Jeff Dudan (39:38.091) It feels like entrepreneurship is accelerating at an accelerating rate. There's so many sophisticated collaboration companies out there, such as your own, that have really figured out how you can get into win -win -win alignment with companies. And I see companies, particularly in the blue collar spaces, like we operate, we're property services, some companies just seem to be hitting the nitrous in the car and just accelerating away from the pack. So the bigs are getting bigger. There's roll ups that are happening out there that puts more pressure on the small business owners. Yet entrepreneurship, it seems like even at the side hustle level, the blue collar level, online, you know, influencers and marketers and Amazon shops, it just seems like entrepreneurship is really alive and well and expanding and accelerating to people that had never really thought about it before. What's what's your view on that over the rest of this decade here? The $12 Trillion Opportunity: Why Right Now Is the Best Time to Be an Entrepreneur Brandon Dawson (40:38.062) Yeah, well, there's 12 trillion of existing businesses in the small business space. Five trillion are looking for a back door. It's really, there's never been a better time to want to be an entrepreneur. You don't need to start it from scratch. You can just walk into somebody else's existing brand and business and make it better immediately. And, and it will be self -funding, but you need to learn the skill set and the talent to do it. I think it's important for business owners to understand that Gallup Pull does a survey every single year. And in that survey, a hundred million U .S. workers respond. Two -thirds say they're disengaged. 18%, 18 million of the US workers say they're actively disengaged. They're sabotaging the company they work in. So really, if you have 10 employees, three are actively engaged, aligned with you. You better make sure you know who those three are and you're leaning into them. And you need to get rid of the bottom two or three and replace them. And then just continue to have that mindset. Because if you're looking at your workforce right now and you're like, wait a minute, I haven't added anybody or fired anybody in five years, two -thirds of your people are disengaged or actively disengaged. They're sabotaging you. Jeff Dudan (41:20.843) That's right. Brandon Dawson (41:36.814) and three or four are gonna leave because they're like, man, nothing's happening here. We're gonna go take advantage of this entrepreneur wave that's happening because who becomes an entrepreneur? Well, here's the funny thing. We interviewed. So I did all this research in 2009, 10 and 11, and it's interesting because many of the blue collar businesses back then, HVAC, garage doors, electrical, plumbing, they were considered low valued EBITDA businesses. So a $50 million blue collar sheet metal building business would have been worth. four to five times EBITDA back in 2009, 10, 11. Today it could be, well, two years ago it would have been 12 to 15 times. And that's because where technology was deployed and where you have a business that becomes a front door to other things happening, you're worth so much more now because of the recurring revenue and the automation, blah, blah, blah, all these things that allow that to happen. But here's the thing. There's so many businesses, 96 % of businesses, I'm sorry. 86 % of business owners self -disclose that the reason they started their business became entrepreneurs is because they didn't want a boss, they didn't want to be told what to do, they didn't want a limitation on their earnings, they didn't want to be held accountable, and so they started their business because of what they did not want versus those that started for what they do want. So when you talk about the ability to flourish and prosper as an entrepreneur, The three people out of the 10 that are working in somebody's business who are watching this dysfunction happen, the reason they go start a new business is because they don't want to deal with the bullshit anymore. So they move somewhere where they can be in control and you lose your good people and then you're really in trouble, okay? So could there be an amazing boom? of forward thinking entrepreneurs. Well, when you go start a business, you're already like, I'm moving to something new. I'm excited about it. I'm going to get it going. If they can learn the technical aspect of how to do it right out of the box versus before they get disgruntled and before they get disappointed, before they're under stress, pressure and anxiety and fear and all that stuff, they could crush it. And we're seeing that with 20 some year olds because they're not stuck with all the broken thinking that they're experts. They go find help. We have so many people between the age of 18. Brandon Dawson (43:58.03) and 28 that are running 10, 20, $30 million businesses. I can't imagine a better time in the history of youth and entrepreneurialism than there is right now. Just remember that space of 31 million small businesses that do $12 trillion a year in revenue, they employ 67 % of the workforce. It creates 45 % of the gross domestic products, the GDP, the economy, and yet it's only represented 8 % on the stock market. So all those founders with all those employees that are killing it every day, they just never get the value. Imagine a world where you could learn how to turn the switch of value creation on like you have, and all of a sudden bring all those young, ambitious people that are, or older, ambitious people that are tired of the BS where they're working into your atmosphere. You pull them into your world and put them to work where they can pursue their personal, professional, financial goals. There's no rules. It's a wide open throttle. and you know the valuations on those businesses are going up every single year, so you know you'll have a huge accident at some point if you build it right. Man, I can't imagine. I'm 56, you're 56. Could you imagine the knowledge we have today at 26? Jeff Dudan (45:08.683) yeah, it'd be amazing. But you know what? Man, there's a lot of things we can do right now to stay good. So we got time. We got lots of time. Dan Sullivan with Strategic Coach. I don't know if you know who that is. One of his great books, Who Not How. Don't look for the who, find the how, like you mentioned a lot of these young people are doing. He's 80 and still just, you know, doing it every day. Whether it's a partner or whether it's a key person or a star employee, what are some of your favorite strategies for incentivizing and retaining these people? I know you mentioned P shares at one point, you know, really from structuring, you know, the ability to structure some collaborations and some deals like that. What would you speak to some of the people could use to really be more thoughtful about how they retain people and incentivize the right behaviors? Stop Giving Away Equity: How to Incentivize Without Ownership Brandon Dawson (45:58.19) It's a great question and you and I both know that the top five reasons businesses fall apart between zero and 25 million is bad partnerships. People giving equity to the wrong people with the wrong expectations, getting the wrong results, and then the sabotaging and destroying their own companies because they're all caught up in the emotional aspect of that. So look, there's a proper way to incentivize people. You have long -term incentives, LTIs. You have short -term incentives, STIs. And what you want to do is you want to create Jeff Dudan (46:09.167) Yeah. Mm -hmm. Brandon Dawson (46:27.438) the motivators that drive value in your business, you wanna be able to give your team STIs, you don't wanna overcompensate. There's a bunch of problems that happen with compensation between 3 million and 25 million, and most people do it wrong. It's another huge reason at 15 to 25 million, they go through a massive break point, they lose a third of their best people because they realize they've been entirely compensating incorrectly. They switch the compensation, the best people leave, because they go find another business owner who doesn't know that yet. and they're able to go command the income they were earning and the business owner ends up falling backwards. So there's so many technical things that are as certain as gravity in business. And what I would say to people is if the equity that you want to have with all your employees is their personal, professional, and financial goals, if you can align and if you could listen to your human beings talk about the things they're most ambitious and excited about over the next one, three, and five years. personally, professionally, and financially. And if you could show them through their contribution in the organization how you're going to help them achieve those things, that is the equity in your business until you're about 50 to 75 million where you need the sophistication of bringing somebody that knows how to run a hundred million or 200 million dollar company into your organization and they're looking to make that move downward, they're looking for something they missed the last time. And so that's where you talk about real equity. And that has to be structured appropriately as well or end up screwing things up. So the equity, a business owner sub 75 million should really be thinking about with all their team members is how do you align their personal, professional and financial ambitions and allow them to succeed and accelerate and accomplish those goals through the business by contributing to the business, knowing when the business wins, they win when they win, the business wins. That's the best equity you can have. And then the technical equity. outside of that and normal compensation, you should factor whatever base you pay somebody, you should show them how they can make 50 % to 100 % of that base through driving value in the company. Then on top of that, have that goal setting mechanism I talked about. So I would say it's very important, but most people are giving equity to the wrong people when they're too small, they already don't know what they're doing, and then they have a disastrous cap table, and then it causes all the friction and resistance and it keeps them small. Brandon Dawson (48:51.278) I wouldn't even contemplate equity or partnerships in business. Statistically, those are all be the reasons you fail anyway. They're in the top five of all reasons you fail under 25 million. And so I would just try it. If you're going to start a business, collaboration with other people is the best. Let them have their thing. You do your thing. You guys work together. You add value to each other, but you own your business. They own their business. Collaboration is the highest form of currency. that you can have with people and I would just recommend that you try that first before you start giving your company away to a bunch of random people. Jeff Dudan (49:24.491) Great advice. Partnerships and sinking ships, avoid them both sometimes. We're heading towards the barn here, Brandon, but this has been Fireman. I really, really appreciate it. What would you say today is the number one way that you would like to define your legacy? What Brandon Dawson Wants His Legacy to Be Brandon Dawson (49:48.366) You know, I have in my career, I now have 290 millionaires to multimillionaires that I've been directly involved with impacting their life. I have another thousands of people behind that that I've helped hit their largest income goals they've ever hit in their career. I want to help 1 million 10x business owners achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals and because For me, that's somebody that wants to hit 50 to a billion dollars. So that's millions of human beings to this personal, professional, and financial planning strategy and compensation, long -term incentive strategy that we've created for the businesses we work with. I want to be responsible for millions and millions and millions of Americans or people globally. We just launched CardoMentors UK. I want to be responsible for millions of people. Like when I'm on my deathbed, I would love to be getting those messages saying, you changed my life by teaching me how to achieve something I'd never been able to do before and it's impacted my life, my family's life, my legacy. That's what I'm looking for, to be the ultimate. I don't wanna be the king, I wanna be the kingmaker. I wanna create million, multi -million dollar kings all over this world that can invest in their families, invest in their communities. invest in the things that will create value to other human beings. And that's what I want to be known for. It just so happens my talent and my skill set in doing that is is economizing businesses. Jeff Dudan (51:26.411) That's beautiful, man. That is a purpose worth doing, definitely. And we need it. I mean, we absolutely need it. Think about today. Kids can't buy a starter home for less than $400 ,000. People have more month at the end of their money because of inflation. Wages and things don't go up as fast as everything else has. And you're really starting to see the stress of this economic condition that we're in. And you got to give people a way to achieve their financial freedom, economic security, create generational wealth on Main Street USA for everybody. And I think it's a very important patriotic thing to do. It's important work that needs to get done. And I applaud you doing it. That's why that's our, you know, we have three purposes here. The one I just what I just said, and then we want to impact kids. So we're building reading rooms across the country in Title I schools because. The earlier in a manufacturing process you fix the defect, the cheaper that it is. So the more that you can pour into youth, I think is critically important. And then we support transitioning veterans through Operation Homefront. So. Brandon Dawson (52:28.974) Dude, we're right there with you. I just signed a partnership with 52 Ventures, Ray Lewis and the Grant Cardone Foundation and Cardone Ventures to start bringing all this technology and learning abilities into inner city kids and kids without fathers. Those are our missions. We have a huge vet space. I have a SEAL Team Commander 4 and I have a retired special forces very high up and I have a general or two. that we're launching a bunch of programs to give vets an opportunity to own businesses. So I'm right there with you and here's what I already know. I know that this is the first time you and I ever met. We did this podcast together. We're so aligned in how we view the world because of our experience, by the way. That should tell your listeners if they're like, well, how do I know I can do it? The only reason you and I are having this conversation and we're speaking the exact same language intuitively is because you'd learn by doing it. It's trial or error. You're either gonna do it with somebody collaborating. or you're gonna go figure it out yourself, which is the slow way to do it, to be honest with you, and it's the most dangerous way. I have a feeling that post this podcast, you and I are gonna connect somewhere and we're gonna end up investing in something or somebody together, or a multitude of things together, because this is what happens. Smart people wanna work with smart people. Good people wanna work with good people. The predictability of somebody's ability to be smart and good is based on historical results and what they're currently doing. And I would just recommend to anybody listening and watching this show, surround yourself with people that have proven they're actively doing it and they're willing to share how, or do it with people who are actively doing it and being successful. Just make sure that you're aligned emotionally, you're aligned. with the target, you're aligned with the mission, the vision, the purpose, the values. And if that's the case, man, go all in because you and I both know we've created so much wealth for people who work with us. They don't have to own the business. They can do it through us and with us faster than most people will do it by themselves. So I have to just say, look, get involved, go show up, educate yourself, get out of your mindset. This is what nine figure mindset is about getting around the right people. Brandon Dawson (54:49.134) Becoming an owl. Who can I trust? Who's doing it? Who can I do it with? Who else is doing it? Who can I learn from? Who's gonna do it next? Who do I need to talk to to get help from? Who, who, who, who, who? Become a professional owl. And I know either one of us would entertain that conversation with someone who is serious about wanting to succeed. Jeff Dudan (55:07.499) 100 % and I'm gonna make that happen. I'm gonna chase you around and figure out where you are and then we'll just happen to bump into each other. Last question here, Brandon. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be? Brandon Dawson (55:12.43) Let's go. Brandon Dawson (55:23.822) The true freedom of personal, professional, and financial success is through how many people you can help achieve that, and then you will find that freedom. You doing it for yourself isn't gonna get you there. Jeff Dudan (55:37.803) Perfectly said, perfectly done. This has been Brandon Dawson ripping it up with Jeff Duden on the home front. Brandon, thanks for being on. Yeah, right on. And. Brandon Dawson (55:46.318) Jeff, thanks for having me.
Brief Summary In this soulful and hilarious conversation, Jeff Dudan sits down with Casey Webb—actor, seasoned restaurant pro, and host of Man vs. Food. From his blue-collar upbringing in New Jersey to a late-blooming entertainment career, Casey shares stories of grit, grief, growth, and gratitude. The episode is packed with rich storytelling, laughter, and powerful reflections on family, purpose, and staying open to life’s adventure—one “yes” at a time. Key Takeaways "Yes, and" isn't just for improv—it’s a life strategy. Casey credits his improv training with helping him build a career by staying open, present, and engaged. Athletics laid the foundation. From nose guard to performer, the discipline of football shaped Casey’s resilience and confidence. Late bloomers bloom beautifully. Casey didn’t land Man vs. Food until he was 40, after years of restaurant work, acting gigs, and creative hustle. Losing his father changed him. The pandemic gave Casey unexpected time to care for his ailing dad—a gift he now carries forward on global travels with his father’s ashes. Behind the scenes of food TV is wild. From eating challenges to custom-created show openers, the grind of production is real—and so is the fun. New show in the works. Casey’s pitching Stage, a Dirty Jobs-style series exploring the unsung heroes of restaurant kitchens, from dishwashers to prep cooks. Featured Quote “I stopped saying no to myself. No, I don’t have enough time. No, I can’t do this. I realized I was the same person bartending and acting. I just had to say yes.” — Casey Webb TRANSCRIPT Casey Webb’s Road Trip, Rebirth Band & Crawfish in the Carolinas Casey Webb (00:02.318) Oh hi. Jeff Dudan (00:03.892) Hey Casey, how are you? Casey Webb (00:05.934) I'm doing great. Oh, do you wanted me to start? Oh, I'm sorry. Was that was I leading this? I'm totally ready. I'm ready to go. Are we ready? Jeff Dudan (00:11.412) Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, hey, we're here with Casey Webb. I am Jeff Duden and we are on the home front. Welcome, sir. So excited to be on with you today. Casey Webb (00:21.422) Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. And we just so happen to both be in the Carolinas, which I don't live in, but I do visit often. So that was a nice surprise, right? As far as surprises go. Jeff Dudan (00:32.628) Yeah, absolutely. Down in Wilmington, we're in Lake Norman area, north of Charlotte here. So what have you been up to down there this week? Casey Webb (00:40.462) So I took a road trip with my dog, landed in Cape Charles, Virginia, camped out over there on the Chesapeake, which is pretty incredible. And then I came in day before yesterday, it's a buddy's birthday party. He hired the Rebirth Brass Band from New Orleans, Crawfish Boil, at this dive bar called the Greensville Yacht Club, which is formerly the Double Nur, which is right near the Greensville. Ample Theater or theater that's over there. So it was a lot of fun. We had a good time yesterday and it's really cold and dark and rainy in the Northeast and New Jersey where I live and where I'm from. And so it was time to take a little road trip. Last year I traveled a bunch, Thailand, Costa Rica, Ireland, New Orleans for Jazz Fest, which I'm going to next week for fun. And I could, I usually write that stuff off because it's travel and part of business. It's part of doing business. Jeff Dudan (01:15.86) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:33.3) That's right. Casey Webb (01:36.494) But this year I was, I hadn't gone anywhere. I was just kind of embracing the winter in New Jersey and I'm sorry I did that. Because January was the longest six months of my life. But hey, I'm here and I got some sun and it's great to be outside. Yeah, I can hear you, can you hear me? Did you lose me? Oh, we're good. Jeff Dudan (01:49.364) I see you froze a little bit there. Are you still good? Can you hear me? Jeff Dudan (01:54.868) Yeah, yep, awesome. Now you're just kind of freezing a little bit here and there, but that's cool. Well, hey Casey, so tell us a little bit about growing up in New Jersey and the things that you did. Casey Webb (01:59.566) Okay. From Football to Theater: The Pivot that Changed Casey’s Life Casey Webb (02:10.638) So I'm originally from New Jersey. Parents are both New Yorkers that made their way in the late 60s to a little town called Little Silver, where the train conductor affectionately called it as small change. And a lot of blue collar in that town, mixed, I guess. Dad commuted to the city. So my mom was a stay -at -home mom, which is pretty great. I got to spend a lot of time with my mom in the kitchen. Yeah. Very humble beginnings, you know, for me, sports was a big part of my life. Later in life, I guess through high school and into college, I played football, I wrestled in high school and played football in high school and college. That led me to play or high school led me to play football in college for a brief stint. And it was I realized then like I did real well. I walked away with no injuries. I had the body for a football player, just not the height. So I went D3, I thought I was going D1. And then, you know, like most things sometimes it's time to put, you know, hang up your helmet and leave it on the field. So I did. And that's actually when I started acting. Or I was always acting out, but I put some energy into actually performance and I started doing theater at 18. But. Jeff Dudan (03:23.38) Ha ha ha ha. Casey Webb (03:30.318) Before that, you know, living in a small town, like, parents know each other and a friend's family had a pizza place. So I started washing dishes at this pizza place. So there's like this parallel world of acting in restaurants that would lead up to why we're here. Talk probably about man versus food. Jeff Dudan (03:41.46) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (03:46.068) Yeah. So what position do you play in football? Casey Webb (03:50.894) I was a defensive tackle. They tried me on both sides and I just wasn't, I was more, I was more, and this is much as such as life, you find out later in life, I was more reactionary, you know, or reactive. So defense is where I excelled and I was about to go in as a freshman. I was like 230, 240 at five, nine, just a big head, big shoulders, big hands. It's my Italian Irish heritage, I think to that and my grandfather. So, uh, I, uh... I... then what? Jeff Dudan (04:22.228) And I'd put you right over the ball, right? That's what I'd have done with you. Yeah. Casey Webb (04:25.102) Yeah, I was nose guard. I was a nose guard. So I later became nose guard. Yeah. And I was, by my senior year, I really got into running, believe it or not, my junior, senior year. And when we go to football, we went to football camp every year at Penn State from Jersey. And it was pretty, really probably still is popular camp for kids. And that really got us ready. These days, kids are playing whatever sport. all year long, which is incredible. We would have been a different team if we played all year long, like most kids are doing with, be it baseball, soccer, basketball, what have you. But I dropped like 30 pounds, like over the course of like junior to senior year. And then going to senior year, they had to change the defense. So I was a D tackle. I became nose guard fast and just popped out of my stance and coach called me pop. Actually, that was my nickname. And he would scream it from across the field. And he was like, Jeff Dudan (05:14.42) So what? Casey Webb (05:17.294) He had a titanium hip and he walked like he had one too and he would scream and it was amazing. He was like the coach you would see a character on a television show or movie and I was like, it was complete and we were the Buccaneers believe it or not, we were the Bucs so go Bucs. Jeff Dudan (05:27.028) Like a pirate. Jeff Dudan (05:32.212) So you had, you were the Buccaneers and your coach had a metal leg basically. Casey Webb (05:36.526) He was a total pirate without the parrot. He was pirate without the parrot. And my buddies to this day, it's like anytime there's anything, because a lot of these guys that I grew up with, now their kids are going to the opposing schools that we definitely were up against, or I still hate actually. And their kids are going to those schools. And anytime I finish off with texts, it's always go bucks, go bucks, go bucks, you know, hashtag go bucks. So I haven't forgotten and I will never forget. Life Lessons from Sports: Visualization, Grit & Growth Jeff Dudan (06:01.076) Yeah. Anything you learned as an athlete that you still take with you to this day into business, entertainment's tough, you're always getting knocked in the mouth, you gotta go do auditions, it's kind of thankless and football man, like you make a mistake, you're out. What, yeah. Casey Webb (06:18.414) Yeah, I'm gonna go jump off a bridge right now. No, that's not. It's every all of it, you know, truthfully, because I had my older brother was just a tough son is still a tough son of a bitch. And he, he kind of paved the way for me, my grandfather was my uncle's my dad. Just a sweetheart of a man wasn't an athlete, but he was really wise. And so like, I had this great. masculine energy from my uncles and my brother specifically because it was home with me and then my grandfather this looming presence of my grandfather and then there's my dad who like He would sit me down and when I was a junior in high school when I started playing a lot more I actually made Varsity as a sophomore you have to play freshman and then unless you're like a really good cat you catch real well so as a defensive player I made Varsity as a sophomore he would sit me down and visualize my day and visualize the game every Saturday. Every Saturday, he would do that. And like, and my dad grew up in the Bronx, poor Irish guy from the Bronx, but he's part of this program that brought him to Massachusetts in the summer. So he had some worldly vision. And he growing up in the 60s and 70s, he found a, you know, as a Catholic, he grew up Catholic, but he had these life philosophies that he, he passed down to me and my brother and he would have, he would have me visualize and, and quite that, that changed the game. for me because I already saw what I was doing and like everything was in slow motion, but I was at full speed and that's how I excelled really. And I've taken that with me wherever I go, especially with, you know, for any sort of performance. Um, you know, I got knocked around a long time, but that's just part of the business. I didn't man versus food for instance, was like what people most know, know me for. I didn't get that till it's 40, you know, and that was 2017. So I had worked as a PA for years, uh, while Jeff Dudan (08:04.852) Right. Yeah. Casey Webb (08:09.934) bartending, working in restaurants, pursuing acting, I was trying to do all these things. And the sports element, that's where it came to a point when I was in college, I was like, I'm done using my noggin to knock people over. I'm good at it. That's great. And I'm not going to be a pro. I'm just a small guy, right? So I hung it up. And that's when I really started pursuing like, you know, because it was always a physical and emotional release. You know, we had some problems as kids, parents got divorced, yada, yada, yada. But I was able to use of sports to kind of relieve that tension, that child of the banks or even just testosterone, you know? And it was, I just jumped into another thing and that was, it was acting theater. Yeah, it started with theater. Jeff Dudan (08:53.204) So when you jumped into that, were you doing scripted productions or improv? What was your first opportunity? First Cold Read, First Failure: How Improv Saved the Dream Casey Webb (09:00.174) So I came back home to New Jersey. I was in Western Pennsylvania playing football, which is a school called Wilkes. It was Wilkes College then. It's Wilkes University. It's near Scranton, near Susquehanna River. And it's only football and beer, basically. Football, beer, and girls, which is great. I just realized that I wanted to do a little bit more, you know? Are you leaving? You're taking the show on the road? Jeff Dudan (09:15.956) Right. Jeff Dudan (09:24.083) Wait a minute. Jeff Dudan (09:28.884) That sounds good. Casey Webb (09:30.446) Yeah, it was great, you know, at the time, but I was just like, I just had to change the heart. And I wrote this really long letter to my father and my brother and told him that I was done. You know, I drafted this letter on legal tender letterhead, whatever, legal pad, and he just wrote, wrote, wrote telling that I was done playing football. And that was when the hardest, probably the first hardest decision I've had to make because, you know, the legacy my brother had and like, I was. He's a bit of a hero of mine, as well as my father. So to tell them that I was quitting something, because my heart just wasn't in it anymore. And I couldn't just do it anymore because of them, for the sake of them. So that was the toughest part. So I got back to Jersey and a really close friend, my three closest friends were pursuing acting in some capacity. One was going to conservatory, American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The other one was getting his undergrad at UVM University, Vermont, but he was minoring in theater. He later went on to go to New School Actor Studio under James Lipton at the New School. And I auditioned with him to get in and he got in. So I got to audition in front of James Lipton, which is a pretty big deal for a theater actor or an actor in general. And I mean, I didn't have my undergrad. So I was studying with the teachers that taught privately, but not at university level at the university. Anyway, there's a lot of ways there. And I just took my way, you know? So my buddy at home was at community college. It was when I, he... Jeff Dudan (10:43.252) Right. Casey Webb (10:52.942) He encouraged me to audition for this play at the community college in the area where I grew up, mom. It's a Brookdale Community College. And it's like the two -year school for Rutgers, Monmouth University, a bunch of other schools, and Seton Hall, you know, all these Jersey schools. It's a two -year school for that. So I auditioned for the first time, cold read. Basically you take a piece of paper. This is actually an audition I have to do later, but, and you read it cold. and you perform it on a stage in front of your peers that are auditioning for maybe the same role and I failed. It was the hardest thing. Jeff Dudan (11:27.22) So how much time do they give you when they hand the piece of paper to you? Do you read it from the paper or do you have to memorize it real quick and then do it? Casey Webb (11:34.702) It's a little bit of both. You got to, you know, like it's, it's, it's part, um, owning some of it. What can you do with this? Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's cold for a reason because it's not hot enough for you to have spent time with it or put any emotion behind it. So it put me in a position where I had to just rely on just instinct and gut. And, and that led to me not getting any roles in that play, but I did step into that, the next class that semester, which is all improv and then that changed my life. Jeff Dudan (11:37.108) Okay. Jeff Dudan (11:40.628) Like here, what can you do with this? Yeah, here, what can you do with this? All right. Casey Webb (12:03.726) as far as I was concerned. Because then that's what I realized, like, that's what this is what I want to do. This is my next challenge. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And, and, yeah, I never, yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:14.164) How much of improv is systematized? Because I'm fascinated by the concept of it, and all I watch is comedy, man. That's it. And so if you're in Second City or if you watch the Farley documentary, that kind of stuff, how much training? Is there just systems? Casey Webb (12:23.886) Yeah. Is that why I'm here? Do you find me funny? You froze, Jeff. Where's Jeff? Try to experiment. Sure. Jeff Dudan (12:41.108) and processes that you use that help get you to the next joke, to the next line, to carry it forward. I imagine there is, but like to me, it doesn't, it would be hard to, it would be hard for me to make up like how that process works. I'd be interested to hear you talk about it. Improv Training for Real Life: Listening, Reacting & Hosting on the Fly Casey Webb (13:01.07) It's a lot of play and it's all listening. So it's listening and reacting and upping the ante. And there's a, you know, you'll probably hear it, maybe you've heard it, there's this yes end element. Cause as soon as you say no to something, you cut off all conversation. So like, I've never, you know, leading into Man Vs Food, I never hosted a TV show, a show on TV, but I have hosted live stuff, you know, and with improv. Jeff Dudan (13:12.66) Right? Jeff Dudan (13:16.564) It's over. Casey Webb (13:27.758) experience and not just practice like how to get the Carnegie Hall practice practice practice right so with interviews it was the same thing I use these tools that I learned as a young person who failed on a cold read on a stage how to listen you're actively listening because if you're thinking about the next thing you're going to say while you're performing of course there's a bit of that but like you're you have to be listening to what what's being said to you in order to react to that and take from that mind from that and then use it. and to up the ante or create another story or, you know, or, you know, take us along the road. Like you're both walking this path. You and your other characters could be two, three, four, five of the people that you're improvising within a group. And just to give you an idea, like with Man vs Food, I'm talking to strangers about food. I know what I need to say. I know what I want them to say. I have to lead them there to say it. So we're mining for sound bites to give you an idea of like what I was doing when I was a young person was basically active listening. And I, my opinion, the greatest gift you can give anyone is your full attention. I'm listening to you. I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm not thinking about the next thing I'm going to say. Though I'm excited and I want to add to what you're saying, I need to take a deep breath and actually absorb what you're saying and then let that information wash over me and then proceed and have that dialogue. You know? Um, so it's really, it's really about listening and being open to play and not saying no. It's like, yes, end your life, you know? And it's funny because that happened to me and there was a point in my life where I was like, I hate bartending, but I love acting. I'm living in Brooklyn and I'd just broken up with a girlfriend for many years and I was in a weird place and I was like, wait a second, I'm the same person that's bartending, that's acting. And what it was affecting me in the room, because like we used to, believe it or not, we used to go into a studio or an office space and audition. We don't do that anymore. It's now like this, right? It's all, which I miss. So it was affecting my work because I was like in my head about this hating, I just like this duality in life. something snapped. It's like I'm the same person behind the bar having these conversations with these folks and being entertaining or whatever, trying to entertain as I am the same person that would walk into the room auditioning for this job that might help me pay my rent, you know, or, or advance me in my career or, you know, so it was like this literal switch. And then that would, that's what led me to a great deal of success because I got out of my own way. I was listening to my gut, my heart, truthfully, and, um, I didn't say no. The Power of “Yes, And” in Career and Life Decisions Casey Webb (15:52.174) You know, I stopped saying no to myself. No, I don't have enough time. No, I can't do this. I was like, holy crap, this is affecting all of it. Like not just the work, but my whole life, you know, I was closing myself off by saying no. So with improv, you're just saying, yes, you're advancing the thing. So when I say yes, end your life, it's that's what I'm actually doing that. You know, I, that's what got me down here. You know, I was like, I got to drive, like I could have said no a million times and never drove to drove down to a woman said, but I did because I knew like, The juice would be worth the squeeze. The nine hours in the car would be worth all of it. And it was, of course, I'm like on the Chesapeake cooking steaks with my dog. It was amazing. You know, just cause I said yes, you know, if I said no, I'd be home in the cold wondering what the hell was going on down here. This crawfish boil. So. Jeff Dudan (16:38.42) Yeah, look, everybody needs an adventure in life and the more you can have, the better your life is gonna be. We end up right where we are in life based on the decisions that we make and the talk in our head that we listen to that put walls up around us. And I think just saying yes to, defaulting to yes is a powerful tool to get you where you wanna go. And then I think United is similar and it's obviously smaller, but. Casey Webb (16:42.958) Yes. Amen. Jeff Dudan (17:07.06) you know, with this podcast, I look back at the first ones that I did and I was like, I could tell my body language, I was nervous and I was, I had scripted questions and you know, and, and, and then at the end of the day, I think I was, I just, and then what I, what I realized was if I'm smiling and the guest is smiling and we're having a good time, then like, that's about as good as you can get because people can hear smiles. Casey Webb (17:17.614) Were you like this? Were you like this? Were you like this? I mean, I would be. Jeff Dudan (17:34.068) And if you're having fun and you're going, you know, you might not get to everything you wanted to get to, but who cares? You know, have a good time with it. And, and then, you know, people, people seem to resonate with that. So you, again, you gotta, you can't, can't take yourself too seriously. Get out of your own way. Don't be fearful. And by the way, none of this is fatal. Like you don't get the, you don't get the part. Okay. Yeah. Casey Webb (17:39.502) Okay. Casey Webb (17:55.15) No, no, no. That's part of the job. You know, like I learned very early on, like not to tell anyone that I had any audition for anything because when you do, I was like, yeah, mom, dad, I got auditioned for this TV show. And then like a week later, do you get it? No. And you would say that a lot because there's a lot more times you're saying, no, I didn't get it to the yes, I did get it. So that got cut off very quickly. And you know, with the yes thing, like you say yes to it, you could decide to say no to it. Jeff Dudan (18:15.156) Yeah. Casey Webb (18:21.806) eventually once you've sussed it out, but don't rule it out until you know more about what that thing you're knowing, not N -O -I -N -G. So yeah, like just if you start with yes, you're open, you're opening the thing up. When you start with no, there's no possibility, you just end it. It ends the conversation. So that's how I see it. I'm a very visual person and visual learner. So, like I could, in my mind's eye, and my father kind of lent that to me. He passed this little, um, torch of like, uh, just the visualization torch, let's call it, you know, and that's helped me every day, you know, when I get caught up here, cause it's a motor, right? It's like, it's your gut and your heart is really, you have to listen to that, that little person inside. Some people call it the angels. Some people call it your inner child, whatever that voice be and whatever you call it, really trusting in that, because then you can put it up here and then put it to work, right? Cause it's just a machine, you know, that we get caught up in. the cogs and the wheels of it all sometimes and becoming quiet is the point. And that's what he was doing for me. So my father's a very much he was he did pass a couple years ago, but he meditated, you know, for years that he taught me, you know, he brought me to a place that introduced transcendental meditation and meditation is a big part of that too. That's meditation is also prayer. It you know, it's a lot of things, you know, and for a lot of different people, but becoming still helps, you know, the the uncertain waters, you know, like it helps you navigate through things a lot easier when you're calm, you know, quiet and you're available to receive, you know. Jeff Dudan (20:00.436) I spent four hours last weekend with a business partner and he brought up this, and it's time we hadn't really spent together out of the office. It was on a weekend. We just went and sat around his pool on the lake and might've had a couple of cocktails, but he's in this training. He said, you know, I'm learning to sit in awareness. Casey Webb (20:16.494) Sure. Jeff Dudan (20:23.38) And he described it as, you know, I'm in this situation and something's going not well and I'm tending to get upset about it. But if I just sit in awareness and say, all right, what is this situation? What is the universe trying to tell me with this situation? Where are my opportunities to learn? I can take it as a slight, I can take it as a problem or a mistake, but in reality, if I just sit in awareness and I... I get objective, I get extra -spective, I get outside myself and I look at this objectively. What am I learning here? And I'll tell you what, man, I've found that to be a powerful little three words. Just when I'm, my head's, when everything's spinning, I got everything going on, just sit in awareness for a minute. And I have worked on meditating, but man, it's hard. Yeah. Casey Webb (21:13.23) It's work, you know, it's not easy and it never will be easy. It's just one of those things where you have to make time and carve out time to become still because as soon as you hit the ground in the morning, it's like, you know, things are moving. So it's really the time when you wake up, you know, I have a thing like get up. It doesn't always happen, but when you wake up, get up, you know, make your bed and then start your day. Cause you'll never get into a made bed faster than you would in an unmade bed. You know, if your bed's unmade, you're gonna crawl back into bed. If your bed is made, and then, you know, my dog is often in there, so I'm like, get out so I can make the bed so we can start the day, you know? But yeah, when you're in stillness, when you're quiet, and you're in that awareness that you speak of, you're able to receive things. You're able to see things without judgment. Just like walking meditations is very similar to this, is you're just taking a walk. You're not judging anything. You're not calling out. You're not speaking. You're just receiving the color, the light. You're just letting it wash over you. And... the things that come up when that happens, it's like, it's just clearer. Things are just clearer. You're seeing more by not judging or like having them, you know, like thinking about all your problems in that moment when you're actively listening and being still and quiet. All this stuff washes over you, just especially in nature. I mean, I lived near Prospect Park in Brooklyn in New York City. And to me, everything outside of your small apartment, in my case, is your backyard is and that was all the New York City. So I was able to retreat there often because I grew up in the suburbs. We camped my whole life as kids. I thought I was going to go outdoor mountain rescue, fire jumper, all these crazy things before I was led my way to acting. But I've I've I've always sought out nature because I know it's just I mean, it's it's it's there for us. You know, it's like especially living in a city for most of my adult life. It's one of those things where it's telling you to become quiet and listen. You know, so you can have your wits about you if there's, you know, wild animals or like impending branches or what have you, you know, it's like, it's a, when you realize how lucky we are, you know, it's a, or when you realize how lucky you are, there's so much to get, you know, with very little giving. It's just like this, all these beautiful things, you know, in nature that gives us. Caring for Dad During COVID: Cooking, Connection, and Closure Jeff Dudan (23:31.828) Yeah. Hey, I'm sorry to hear about your dad. It sounds like he made a big impact in your life. Casey Webb (23:35.022) Oh, thanks. Yeah, thank you for saying so. You know, I was lucky enough, as the story goes, we finished filming in Florida in the Keys, in Key West. This is like BC before COVID, right? And right after we were finished filming, coincidentally, South Beach Wine and Food Festival was going off and I wasn't working it, but it's a very, it's all the pros from Food Network are doing demos and it's a really great event. and it's right on the beach in South Beach. And I went just to go see some people that I knew, people in the industry and just decompress and quite honestly digest. Cause I think I had to eat like a giant key lime pie or something the day before. And I got back to New Jersey and we just moved my daddy sold his place. He moved into this winter rental and he was looking to buy or maybe rent. I get sick. Like, and that was like ground zero for apparently for me for COVID. I got that then, you know, I got sick, let's say. And well, in the short, I get better. I have a trip planned to Costa Rica and I go to Costa Rica, was it March 16th and March 20th, the whole world shuts down. So I find myself in Costa Rica. I want to stay for three months because there was nothing going on in New York city. It was just like, friends are like, stay, cause it's hell here. My brother was taking care of my parents. Everyone was cool. So I stayed there. The network and the production company were figured out. I got a 10 episode gig called Best Places to Pig Out and I had my microphone and my stuff there too, because I had to do some episodes of Man Vs. Who, do the voiceover, because we do voiceover for the show. So I was like, oh my God, I'm in freaking paradise, you know? And then this is a long story long about my dad. But after three months, it was like, I was there with friends and it was time to go. And it's like when paradise can become purgatory, because I started listening. Casey Webb (25:34.222) my mind was just over. I had to get back to work. I had to do something because I just, I was almost felt guilty. Went back home and, um, we moved my dad into this beautiful building and, uh, he just aged a lot. And I was like, I, I gotta make a move here. So I was literally blowing up an air mattress in his place and putting it back, you know, before he woke up cooking. And so if we didn't have that time off, um, cause we would went right back into production and I'm, gone, you know, it's like 10 days on 10 days off and more or less and when we're in production. So I had to spend like over a year with my dad before he got sick. And then he passed never had COVID but he got he wanted a little bit of cancer, a lot of treatment. And he's just an old Irish guy who's been bet that that it's a tough thing to go through that part of it because it's you want it to work but it doesn't seem to ever work, you know, for those of you who are older folks to just their immune system is. Jeff Dudan (26:11.7) That's great. Casey Webb (26:31.438) is not as strong, but I had to spend the beauty of that. I wouldn't have not, I wouldn't have had that time to spend with him if the world didn't shut down quite honestly. So some people have had terrible experiences and some others not. And mine was pretty incredible. We fought like brothers, you know, cause we just did. But I got to cook for him every day, multiple meals. And, and, um, that was, that's, that was really special. And then since then, um, he, he wanted to be cremated and, uh, awesome. He had taken care of all of it, you know, and, and he was a volunteer fireman for many years in our town and like, like whatever fun they paid into took care of all of it. Like everything was taken care of. Like my brother and I didn't have to do anything. And it was like, wow, this is cause that gives a very stressful time talking to friends that had similar experiences with their parents. And so he, I have these ashes and my brother's like, all right, what do you, you take them? I'm like, he's not very sentimental, you know? And I was like, all right, so I'm going to take them with me. I took them to Thailand, I took them to Costa Rica, I took them to New Orleans. I took... Jeff Dudan (27:32.436) Awesome. How many times did he get tested at the airport? Casey Webb (27:39.022) Uh, no, it's funny because I had them. I didn't have the whole bag. I took enough for Thailand. It took enough for Costa Rica. I took enough for, you know, jazz Fest in New Orleans. I took them to, I took them to Ireland. Um, Jeff Dudan (27:45.172) That's right. Yeah. There's not little bits of him in blue vials across the airports of the world. Casey Webb (27:55.15) nose and like a plastic bag rolled up and I just put it in my carry on. I fly a lot. So truthfully, they're looking for, you know, they're looking for, you know, uh, bombs and, and lots of heroin, I guess. I don't know, you know, right. They see they're like, Hey, you're the guy. No, I hope not. I, you know, maybe, uh, yeah, I mean that that's funny. Cause I meet a lot of, you know, TSA folks who are just great. There's they're, um, Jeff Dudan (27:59.86) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:06.58) Look, they know who we are now. They know who you are. You're not on a list. Casey Webb (28:22.51) you know, they're like doing their job and all of a sudden like, Oh, wait, you're the guy. Yeah, you know, some of my greatest conversations were in airports because it's like, Oh, well, because you're all stuck in the same place. And, and to me, you know, I found success later in life or success found me however you look at it. And people stopped me in airport and then like, we're talking and they're like, they're like, look at their watch like, we got to go. Oh, all right. Like they leave me before I leave them usually, you know, I'm like, All right, I guess you got to go, you know. It's just funny to me because Jeff Dudan (28:25.844) Yeah. Casey Webb (28:52.174) They are ones say hi to me, but I'm the one who doesn't want to believe, you know, uh, cause oftentimes I'm like in my head and I don't want to necessarily be there thinking about all the things I gotta do, what I didn't do. I could have done this better. And then it's like, Oh wait, like you're, you're, you're like these little, you know, people that I don't call them angels or whatever they are. You know, they're just people that come into your life. And it's like, I want to make time for them, you know, cause kids watch the show, couples watch the show, older folks, what just like families and people. There all kinds of me watch the show. So I have all the time in the world if you have time for me, you know. Jeff Dudan (29:27.06) That is much appreciated, I'm sure. Yeah, I lost my dad in the beginning of COVID, so I couldn't go see him because it was right when everything shut down and he was in bad health. And my older brother did get there and kind of get in right there at the end. But the year before he passed, I had sold the business in 2019. So the year before he passed, I made it a point four times to fly to Chicago. Casey Webb (29:36.462) Yeah. Casey Webb (29:42.126) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (29:53.268) take him out of town for three days. He'd never had a massage in his life, so we went up to Lake Geneva and got him a haircut, got him a massage, went to the restaurant, and just sat there and talked for two or three days. Sometimes my brothers would show up or whoever, but I am so thankful I did that. Because I had moved away and we hadn't been together very much for the previous 10 years. Casey Webb (29:59.694) It's amazing! Yeah. Jeff Dudan (30:21.108) I was just like, man, this is it's now or never and took the time to do it. And then sure enough, you know, COVID came the next year and that was, that was the end of it. And he didn't die from COVID, but you know, it certainly made it more difficult to handle everything. Cause it was like right in the beginning of it and everybody was really freaking out. And then, uh, Yeah, so he was cremated too, but my favorite joke, my dad was hilarious. Like he would appreciate, I wouldn't tell this joke if he didn't appreciate it, but he was just so funny and he was so nice and so kind and so funny, little soft, you know, kind of like maybe you said about your dad, like he could have probably stood up for himself a little more, but so like I'll serve my kids friends like this crispy chicken we get from the fresh market and it's great. And it's got this really thick breading on it. I'll be like. Casey Webb (30:49.87) Yeah. Casey Webb (30:55.918) Yeah, same. Grief and Growth: Jeff & Casey Reflect on Losing Their Dads Jeff Dudan (31:10.516) Yeah, you guys like oh, this is great. I'm like, well, it's my dad's recipe But enjoy it because the urns almost empty But I don't know that's just that he would have appreciated that would have been his type of joke but and then I took I We live in the urn and then I took his ashes up to Canada where he used to take me fishing as a boy and I Casey Webb (31:18.382) Oh my god! Casey Webb (31:30.254) Well, we live and earn, don't we? We live and earn. Jeff Dudan (31:40.276) spread them a lot, spread them a little bit in the lake. So yeah, I mean, it's, I miss them. You know, it's funny that connection we have with our father, as young boys, it's pretty cool. Casey Webb (31:43.374) Amazing. Yeah. Casey Webb (31:53.07) Can I share something with you? I had a friend, I didn't see it yesterday, but I'm on this text feed with all my buddies where I say, you know, hashtag go bucks. And we lost another dad recently and yesterday actually, and big golfer Irish guy, you know, just, just a total character. But like, I wrote this, I like woke up and I was reading what friends are writing. And I was like, you know, we had a long day yesterday, crawfish boy out in the sun, you know, this band played, it was quite incredible. And, um, We were definitely in our cups as they say, right? And I was sitting there, I was just kind of like tearing up reading what my friends are writing. Cause we're all at this age, like I don't have kids, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get married. I haven't been married yet. You know, just parents divorced. I chose work and yada, yada, yada. But I, you know, I have friends that have kids, I have a lot of friends that have kids. I don't, I don't have any, but I have a small dog I treat like my kid. He's in the, he's in the corner over there, but um, If I could share this with you, just like, I don't know where it came from. And sometimes this stuff just kind of appears. It just kind of channels through you. I very much believe that things channel through you from somewhere, what be it, you know, wherever. But a friend of mine had written something about heroes and legends and like there are heroes, heroes die, but legends, you know, are here forever. And our friend's dad, Jim, Jim, big Jim O 'Brien. Jeff Dudan (32:49.908) Yeah. Casey Webb (33:13.198) He was one of those guys. Like all our fathers were in their own right. But I write in my mind as I'm reading, I see our fathers, brothers, mentors that have passed as statues on pillars in some hall of remembrance. This way I can visit them. Casey Webb (33:38.734) This way I can visit them when I need to. It really makes me proud to know you guys and the mighty men that raised us all to live in power until it's time to rest in peace. Love you boys. Jeff Dudan (33:51.092) Beautiful. That's awesome. Casey Webb (33:56.462) Yeah, I miss him too. I have conversations with him, like my funny little dog, he's the quirkiest little thing. He reminds me of my Dex, my dad loved him so much, that sort of thing. And when he was sick, I was working out through my workouts and some of those, that stuff helps tremendously. Jeff Dudan (33:59.38) Yeah, yeah. Casey Webb (34:21.614) I do a lot of like CrossFit style stuff, high impact yoga. Like I just, you know, I'm in the water as much as I can and in the right season. But it was always like when he was sick, it was like, do it for dad, do it for dad, do it for dad. So it's like, it got me out of my head and then back into my body. And it was like, it's cause some people, you know, they kiss it up to God, you know, athletes, they do it to God or whatever. It looks as a peers or they're giving God the credit, you know? And I think there's something about that in performance. especially physical performance where you're able to kind of detach and it's bigger than all of us. And that's kind of my relationship with the visualization part, sitting down and getting my mind right and bringing myself to that place. So I'm prepared to be present and be in the moment and do my job, because like, especially in performance or acting, they just want you to show up and do your best. And I learned that by the process of not getting the job. by not getting, I got so much more because I was able to correct and tweak and make changes to, so I would get the job, you know? And just a quick crazy story. I used to have a beard and it was graying, you know? And I was like, and some auditions, cause I have a younger look, so I would, no, not at all. I'm embracing it. I mean, look at this thing. It's like a neck beard. Jeff Dudan (35:43.7) Not that there's anything wrong with that. It happens. It happens to the best of us. Casey Webb (35:50.254) Um, totally. It's part of the process, but I still have a full head of red hair, right? So I was, I was like for auditions, I was starting to color it. I was like, Jesus, I'm done doing this. Like I don't want to, I don't, it's, you know, I started doing that. I was like, I want to be as transparent as possible. So I shaved the beard for this cop show was Brooklyn nine nine nine, whatever that great funny show. I didn't get that job, but I shaved the beard off and I was like, Oh, I got this new look. I look like my dad, but 30 years younger mustache, fiery red hair. Jeff Dudan (35:54.484) Yeah. Casey Webb (36:19.662) And I tell you the truth, I got every job after that. And it was six jobs in a row. And like a few of them were commercials. One of them was in Panama, the country. And then the last one was Man vs Food. Well, I actually got Man vs Food before I got the Panama commercial, which was that's a whole other story. Like, I lost my passport while I was there. I was supposed to fly out that day. I had to go to get do a police report to get go to the consulate to get a new one. And then I had a I was flying out on Monday, it's Good Friday on Friday, and like the whole country shuts down on Good Friday. So like I had to do this in a day. I didn't have any money in my bank account, my buddy, they paid us in cash. And I had Jeff Dudan (37:01.492) Was this for the audition or for the show? For Man vs Food? Casey Webb (37:04.558) So I already got the show. But this is this commercial that I did in Panama. And I'm in Panama, it was this German real estate company. It's a pretty funny commercial because it's like, don't be like these guys. It's like Wolf of Wall Street, we replicated Wolf of Wall Street in a two minute commercial, cheaper to film it in Panama, it looks like Miami. I drove a Lamborghini had a Cartier watch wearing suits, we destroyed this like this office space was hundreds of extras where it was crackers, helicopter, it was Jeff Dudan (37:07.284) Okay. Right. Casey Webb (37:33.934) bananas and it's such a beautiful country. Yeah, like they I imagine they dubbed it in German and English but it was like it's like we were speaking English in the commercial and it's German real estate company it's like at the end like the doors kick in we're having this crazy party champagne everywhere there's like clothes are off it was like literally 100 extras and we're just going nuts everyone's soaking wet they're shooting hundred -dollar bills out of this cannon and confetti gold confetti and then it's like Jeff Dudan (37:36.916) And it was in English, it was an English speaking commercial. From Panama to Milwaukee: Behind the Scenes of Man vs. Food Casey Webb (38:03.918) record scratch is like, as if the cops are coming in, like the feds are coming in to end it all. And then it's like cuts to like a white screen. It's like, it's like, well, invest. It's like, basically, don't be an American, you know, it's like, well, invest, we kind of sold out a little bit. But it was hilarious, you know, like, I'm gonna pull smoking a cigar with this, like, amazing looking woman next to me that I can never get, you know, it's like, and like, on the top of this rooftop, you know, it was just, but like, I got caught there, I was almost not gonna leave the country, I had a date with my before like a first date with a girl that I want, I'm dating for a long time. That's Saturday, you know, so, and then Monday I was flying out to Milwaukee to shoot the first installment of Man Vs Food and like, so like my life was so incredible and so like it could have ended, you know, I could have like, you know, if I didn't make it back, I was screwed basically. And so the only ticket left was like, I paid cash for it, I remember, cause they paid us in cash, like just a wad of money to do this commercial and um. Jeff Dudan (38:52.884) Right. Casey Webb (39:01.998) I flew first class and I laid down the whole way and I ate ice cream and they'll never fly first class if you if you're never gonna if you're not always gonna fly first class never fly first class because once you go first class you can't go back it's tough especially when you're a bigger guy I'm like sitting next to other big guys and like coach and like get out of here you know anyway it's obnoxious but that's how I feel Jeff Dudan (39:05.972) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (39:17.524) Yeah. Casey Webb (39:28.174) Oh, but yeah, I made it home, thank God. And like, I got to go to Milwaukee to do this first episode. And we were filming the intro to the show too. So we went to, we were in Chicago and like we shot there too. And it was, it was crazy. Cause we filmed, we had to film the opener of the show and we had to create like challenges. So we went to places that I didn't necessarily eat a challenge, but we created challenges in that first season to, you know, we just didn't have. Jeff Dudan (39:53.076) right. Casey Webb (39:56.046) There was not enough time for me to eat all that food, but we made the time to create the opener, which is really, you know, heart -hitting. And so. Jeff Dudan (40:03.668) Okay, so are you saying that there wasn't always a challenge that kind of was interesting to you guys, so you had to create them at restaurants or just for the opener? Casey Webb (40:10.19) No, oh, well, for the opener, just to get the visual of like these giant steaks and things to give, you know, like we created that, you know, cause the show was off the air for five years. So it ended in 2012, the show didn't come back to 2017. Charles Nordlander, who was executive at the time at Food Network was the one who basically resuscitated and said, it's time, you know, it's time to either bring Adam back or Adam Richman. Jeff Dudan (40:17.204) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Casey Webb (40:39.214) or get a new host. And yeah, so they went up, I guess he didn't have any interest. And then so they cast for it. So you mentioned Andrew Zimmern, who was recently on the show. I met him, how I met him, I met him, well, I met him in first class. He had no idea who I was on our way to Minneapolis for, well, for him, I guess it was for the Super Bowl, because he was having this huge party. And we filmed, yeah, he lives there now, yeah. Jeff Dudan (40:56.084) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:04.18) Yeah, he lived there. Yeah, he lives there. Yeah. Casey Webb (41:08.43) He we were doing two episodes. We did Minneapolis, St. Paul. We did Minneapolis on the same week during Superbowl. It was bananas. I did like a ton of press. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, totally. And we met on the plane and introduced myself and he's like, Oh, you got to come to this party. Cause his executive Charles Nordlander was my executive. And then I was like, Hey, uh, do members who said, Oh, you got to come to the party. This is a funny story. So I go to the party and I was doing press all day. Cause we had that day off. It was in between. Jeff Dudan (41:14.452) Okay. And were you flying out of New York? Flying out of New York? Okay. Yeah. So he spends, he's a lot, he's in New York a lot. Yeah. Casey Webb (41:38.286) doing the two episodes of Man Vs Food. Shooting an episode of Man Vs Food is three days of filming. So each restaurant gets a day and we do three restaurants. The third day is the challenge day and at the end of that hour, the last hour of that shooting is the challenge. Whatever it be, hot or huge. So anyway, I had, we're shooting. Jeff Dudan (41:54.516) on the third day or on every day. Casey Webb (41:57.262) On the third day, there's a challenge. So it's three restaurants each episode. One restaurant is a challenge and that's at the third day. And when that hour is over, when we're done, the cameras go down, lights go down and then like the guys are in the car, like ready to go. Like it's like, we're out, you know? And it's like, yeah, I'm dragging my leg to get into the car to go sleep on a hot rock somewhere, like a giant iguana to just digest, you know? And so I go to this party with Charles and like we did a bunch of press, we did. Jeff Dudan (41:59.252) Okay, right. Jeff Dudan (42:12.052) And you're heading to the emergency room. Exactly. Casey Webb (42:26.734) Um, one of the, uh, Dan Patrick show I got to do out there, which was hilarious. I got to, I wrestled one of his guy. Yeah, it was good. He's great. I, I'm a huge fan of his and, uh, they brought me on the show like several times, which is once I think we start doing some more episodes, I'll probably be back on there to see those guys. Maybe wrestle Paulie again. Uh, did you see the takedown? Did you see that part? Did you see me wrestle Paulie? It was in the Minneapolis. Oh yeah. Look it up. It's pretty great. Um, Jeff Dudan (42:31.124) I saw that one. That was a good interview. Yeah, it was a real good. Jeff Dudan (42:49.876) No, I didn't see it. Alright. Casey Webb (42:53.774) Well, Dan was like, Oh, so you wrestled in high school is like, yeah. And he's like, are you gonna wrestle Paulie? I was like, you want me to wrestle Paulie? Like my brother long time ago is like, you don't you don't you don't slap box either because he boxed he boxed and kickbox and he's like, you don't do you just don't do that. Either you fight or you don't fight. Okay. And so Dan was like a coach to me, you know, like I treated in that moment, he was my coach and I was like, you want me to I was like, okay, and so I just picked him up and I slammed Paulie to the ground and in a Hawaiian shirt and I could feel the breath leave his body. I thought I killed him. I swear to God, I thought I killed him. But I mean, I'm like 250 pounds of just dead weight, bones, and mass on top of this guy. And he was like, he wanted to do it. He was like, all right, let's go. And so we did it. It's worth looking it up. So I'll send it to you. So we go to this party, me and Charles Nordlander. And it's Andrew Zimmern's party. He was opening up his... Jeff Dudan (43:24.788) It's just... Jeff Dudan (43:41.716) All right. Casey Webb (43:50.19) restaurant, it was before he opened the restaurant, like Sweet Cricket, I forget it was Asian Fusion style restaurant that he was opening up. So the place is packed and I'm looking around like, oh my God, like all these people are from William Morris Endeavor. 75 % of all people in food, hosts, chefs, what have you, a lot of them are with William Morris Endeavor. I'm not with William Morris Endeavor, I'm with CAA. So I look around and I'm like, holy crap. I had to say no to that group of people because I, I'll tell you the story. So I'm on the road filming Man Vs Food and I'm with one agency and my dad's like, yeah, there's a voicemail, a radio show, keeps calling and leaving a voicemail at his house, my childhood home number, which is now debunked or defunct 842 -8487. I had it since I was a kid. And, um, And I go and I go to his house, I get off the road, I go to his house, I hit the answer machine. And it's like, Hey, this is Johnny Johnny from WME, which is William Morris Endeavor. So William Morris Endeavor was calling my dad's house looking for me to set an appointment for me to go talk to them in their offices and see if I wanted them to be my agency. I was like, Dad, you realize? I was like, I forget it. Like the second biggest one of two of the biggest eight at the time agencies, you know, it's like, holy crap. And CAA came knocking at the same time. So, I'm at this party with Charles Norwood Lander. I see Andrew's name. I go say hello to him and like thank him. And then I'm looking around the room, like all these people are from William Morrison Devere or they're, they're represented by. And I also see, well, I still have never met to this day. I see Adam Richmond who was in the wings and yeah, we still haven't met. So, it was just, I was just like, wow, I'm in the lions then right now. Like seriously, I was like, I'm really uncomfortable. Jeff Dudan (45:34.644) Yeah. Casey Webb (45:38.606) But then I just put on a face, like, oh, hey, how's it going? Oh, yeah, CIA's great. It's not fatal. And I did, and I did. I was arm in arm with my executive. This guy, he travels with Andrew, right? He's traveling with me. I had to put my defenses up a little bit, but it was fun. It was an incredible week of, I love that town. If you've ever spent time there, I'm sure you're being from Chicago. You've been to Minneapolis, St. Paul? Yeah. Jeff Dudan (45:38.708) See what? Jeff Dudan (45:43.444) It's not fatal. Walk in there like you own it. Not fatal. Yeah. Inside the Industry: Food Network, Bobby Flay & Agency Showdowns Jeff Dudan (46:04.212) Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's great. Casey Webb (46:06.862) And I got to see the Super Bowl. Last minute, I got a ticket. I don't know how it happened. Someone said it was in the works and I got to see the game too. So that was probably the greatest filming in its entirety. It was just an incredible week. I haven't been to a Super Bowl since, but just because of timing. I would love to go back and do that again. But it was the first time I rooted for Philly ever, because I'm from New Jersey. We're Giants fans. So it was like, yeah. Anyway. Where were we? Jeff Dudan (46:38.772) Man, we were getting, just getting into the, we're 46 minutes in and Man vs. Food comes up. So it's, well, yeah, 100%, 100%. So, but I, you've been on Bobby Flay also. Casey Webb (46:43.502) Oh, yes. Well, you know, it's I've done other things, you know. Casey Webb (46:59.31) Yeah, I did, you know, like in the, in the, in the mix of things in the first through several seasons, they throw you into the mix because it's now Warner Discovery owns everything. Um, you know, food network, cooking channel. I was a guest host. I was a guest host. So they bring in three judges and then they bring in two guests hosts. Jeff Dudan (47:08.244) Yeah. Were you a judge on there? Were you a... Okay. Okay, yeah, you were one of the two guest hosts. I love Man vs. Food. I watched a gazillion episodes. I love Bobby Flay, Andrew Zimmer. And I've gotten into Robert Irvine a little bit. Yeah. Hey, do you know Mark Tarbell? Out of Arizona? No, okay. Casey Webb (47:22.35) Yeah. Casey Webb (47:26.51) Oh good. Yeah, Bobby's great. Casey Webb (47:32.462) He's intense. He's like a circus. He's intense. Not personally, no. Jeff Dudan (47:41.14) just met him in Arizona just a few weeks ago. Casey Webb (47:43.598) Well, we, wait, did I, wait, did we film with Mark? Did I? Jeff Dudan (47:48.82) Yeah, he said he's been out of it a little bit because he's got a couple of kids he's raising, but he's getting ready to get back into it. But yeah, and so I'm interested to know your, do you have a culinary background? I know you've worked in restaurants, but do you have a chef background at all? Casey Webb (47:55.854) Um, yeah, I've met Mark. I don't know Mark personally. Yeah. Casey Webb (48:07.598) So very much like my acting pursuits, I started washing dishes at 14 because you could then or no one really said anything in a small town. Child labor laws didn't exist in the small town of New Jersey. And that led me like being a dishwasher in any place, you really see the nuts and bolts of things. And because if you slow down, if you get backed up, you're screwed. Everything slows down. And like I would marvel at the like because there were it. Jeff Dudan (48:15.156) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:29.876) Right. Casey Webb (48:34.862) I'm surprised there isn't a series that's about the pizza delivery and pizza place because it's just hilarious. The characters that drove, you know, that delivered pizza, the sub guys versus the pizza guys, you know, they're all different characters. And like the pizza guy, like, you know, he was he's probably a convict and that's okay, you know, like, but he had it rolled up sleeve with cigarettes in it. It reminded me of Uncle Headband, like Fu Manchu mustache and like, you know, he was tight tattoos like I I love this guy, you know, this guy's bad ass, you know, he's like, he's just embodied toughness and he's like, just making pizza flawlessly. And I was like enamored by the people in it. And like, I learned then like, anytime you work in any restaurant scenario, there's always gonna be food, right? Like you're never gonna go hungry, you know, and you always have a little bit of money in your pocket. And so that was my entrance into culinary. And then I was, I had a bit of a, I guess, behavioral problem in grammar school. So I went up to this. Jeff Dudan (49:19.316) Right. Casey Webb (49:32.046) other school for a couple years. I think I even mentioned I was acting out before I started acting. And at that school, there was it was a lot of vocational stuff. And you kind of it was a point system. So it was like, if you focus your energy, and this is kind of where my dad stepped in, and my parents split up at the time, and, and the visualization, the focusing thing, and like, I was able to narrow my focus. And like, they were like, you know, we had to see a therapist and like, he has ADD, my dad's like, okay. Jeff Dudan (49:32.532) I can't, I find that very hard to believe. Casey Webb (50:01.326) You're not putting my kid on drugs. And so like, uh, never was medicated for any of that stuff. And it's okay if you are just, he just decided not to do that. I'm thankful that he didn't. He gave me other tools to work on. And, um, so it did vocational culinary basic, basic stuff, like not how to, how not to burn your house down, how not to cut your hand off, you know, that kind of stuff. And, and that progressed. So I had vocational culinary there and that led me into kitchens actually working in kitchens and like Bourdain's great at this. He's like, don't go to culinary school. He's like, go out and work. do that because once you're, I was just listening four hours of driving on the second half of my, my route to, um, medium raw, which is a really great read and or listen. Um, and he talks about that. He's like, you're going to be $40 ,000, even though he went to CIA and a lot of my friends with the CIA colonial Institute of America, which is like the best, you know, next to French culinary, which is now, um, uh, yeah. So I, I went, I worked in kitchens and, um, I got opportunities to move up within kitchens and. Jeff Dudan (50:41.876) Yeah. Casey Webb (51:00.718) And then like I was moving into New York city to pursue acting. And I realized like, you're, there's more money in the front of the house. And that was a bit of a character. So I went to the front of the house, started bartending. Well, I started, I would bus boy, food runner, expediter. And then you, you eventually work your way up to bartending. Like that's, you, we wait tables before you bartend typically they're not going to story behind the bar. So I worked every area and then even to management I've never owned. Um, Jeff Dudan (51:11.444) Yeah. Casey Webb (51:30.03) So I didn't go to conventional culinary school. I just, I learned in kitchens and got opportunities to do so. And, um, yeah, so I'm not a chef, a chef leads kitchens. I mean, people call me that, but it's like, I'm not a chef, but, um, well, you asked me if there's anything I wanted to talk about. There's a show that we're actually pitching, which is called Stage, which is essentially, I like to affectionately, um, describe it as dirty jobs with microbeets food. And it's working your way through each of these roles in the restaurant business that shine a light on how. Jeff Dudan (51:34.484) Got it. Jeff Dudan (51:54.356) Okay. Casey Webb (51:59.918) difficult, you know, and how necessary these roles are and be it the dishwasher at the burner den to the hot dog person at Yankee Stadium, you know, who's like that's you have to start you have to and staging is essentially a free internship that you would go work in a kitchen for nothing and learn skills from that chef and then maybe get hired. And so I for me, it's like I didn't have an opportunity to go current go to culinary school nor did I have an opportunity. to, it was a financial thing to go to a conservatory for acting. I paid my way to train and do my thing, whether it be improv, sketch, stand up, I just went and did it, you know? And... Stage: Casey’s Next Show Honors Restaurant Workers Everywhere Jeff Dudan (52:39.092) Look, man, that's a brilliant idea for a show. I can see it. Like, I can see, like, because, so when I was 12 and 13 years old, there's a lot of similarities in our lives. I was acting out as well. And so when I was 12 and 13 years old, I was working Friday and Saturday nights, four till 1 a .m. in a Mexican restaurant in Chicago. And I started, you'd go in there and, yeah, and they would, so we'd spend the first hour. Casey Webb (52:42.062) Thanks. Casey Webb (52:52.046) No. Casey Webb (53:02.317) Por que no? Why not? You know? Jeff Dudan (53:08.244) and we would be folding napkins into triangles and doing setups and things like that. And then they would bring out plates of enchiladas and the entire staff would eat together. And then, and then it would open up around five o 'clock and you know, it would just be, you'd just be crushing till 11 or 12 o 'clock at night. So I started as a bus boy. Then I moved into the kitchen and I did appetizers. So I was like, I don't know what it, what the position would have been, but like I would do the appetizers and stuff like that and move. Casey Webb (53:16.782) Amazing. Jeff Dudan (53:37.108) plate, whatever they told me to do back there. And then I also ended up behind a bar wearing a little black vest at 13 years old lighting people's cigarettes. So I don't know what that says. But there's a there's a lot of stuff. There's a there's a lot of stuff that happens in the back of the house that is I mean, if you think if you think kitchen confidential is bad, I mean, you know, get outside the chef stuff right into all the other support people. I mean, Casey Webb (53:45.838) Yeah, Chicago, right? Casey Webb (53:54.926) Oh yeah. Casey Webb (54:02.414) Sure. Jeff Dudan (54:04.308) you know, it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting how far you go with that because, you know, sometimes if people see what happens in the kitchen, they might not eat there. Casey Webb (54:14.222) Right. And then, you know, a lot of people haven't read Kitchen Confidential and, you know, I recommend you do, you know, because it's not only is a great read, it gives you a bird's eye view. It gives you, no, it gives you a fly in the wall. Hopefully not. Because there are flies on those walls. An intro to, you know, to kitchens and how things are run from Anthony's perspective, which is I read that it was like, oh, OK, like, you know, anyone that has worked in restaurant business can relate to some degree. And he's just. He's just a, he was and is to me just a kind of a superhero in the industry. And yeah, it was like, it was like a Bible, you know, at one point I was like, okay, you know, we're not alone, you know. Jeff Dudan (54:55.156) Yeah. Did he narrate medium raw himself? Was it his voice? All right. Look, I can't get enough. I still to this day cannot get enough of that guy. Casey Webb (55:00.814) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, and he's relentless, but he's honest about it. I feel like, and about himself too, and he really opens up. They're like vignettes, each chapter is like a deep dive into something specific. I'm looking forward to the other half of it on my way home. I waited, I stopped listening to, I'm like a total true crime degenerate. All I do is listen to true crime stuff for whatever reason. I'm just really fascinated by human behavior, whether it be, this way I can see it coming. Jeff Dudan (55:11.06) Yeah. Casey Webb (55:35.726) You know, it's like, oh, that guy's, you know, you should watch over that person. But yeah, it's worth a read or and or listen. It's in to hear him speak it. It's like it resonates that much more instead of me thinking of his voice in my head when I read it. It's just nice to hear his voice, you know. And yeah, culinary, I, you know, yeah, he's told Poe and like he talks about his relationship with Food Network and he's basically they let everybody go, you know, Emeril and him and they're like a new regime came in and. Jeff Dudan (55:54.036) He was a poet. Casey Webb (56:04.334) That was the best thing that could ever happen to him because then he became the journalist. I think that he was always meant to be because of that, because he went to other platforms, you know? And so, which is, and it's funny because we were with, he was on travel channel first, as I remember. And so were we with Man Vs Food the first two seasons. And we, it was like the wild west. I could say anything, which was amazing. A lot of that stuff. I grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons. Funny enough, Warner Brothers now owns, it's Warner and Discovery. And just, you know, the subtleties of things, you know, the innuendo and like letting, you know, letting things, people say the craziest things and like, and working off of that. I love my job for many reasons. You know, I don't like the eating part, at least the humongous and the hot stuff, but everything else is pretty amazing. So it's, yeah, anyway, it's a good read. What was I gonna say? Oh. Jeff Dudan (56:58.228) Well, I'll tell you what, yes sir. Casey Webb (56:59.854) The real real quick, the the the stage thing, it's not picked up yet. So we're still pitching it. So if you know anybody or a network that really wants to see me very much like Casey and Man vs. Food, Lumix is way through every position in the restaurant business, you know, over and over again. And with with hopefully with as much humor as Mike Rowe does on Dirty Jobs, because I really see it like that. And I love Mike Rowe for what he does. He's just brilliant at that. And Jeff Dudan (57:07.028) Okay. Jeff Dudan (57:26.548) Yeah. Casey Webb (57:28.526) showcasing what people do as far as hard work or the dirty jobs that people don't want to think about or do. It's like there was this other show that we had this idea for and it was American Trade, which is very much of the same thing. It's the things that are still made in this country and like just made here, you know, by people that live here, no matter where they're from, you know, like, you know, we're all immigrants at one point, you know, so it's a, it was just a beautiful foray into that world. But anyway, Staj, yeah, if you know anybody, let me know. Jeff Dudan (57:45.108) Right. Jeff Dudan (57:57.556) So is your vision to have the truth cam and the cameras behind the camera? Because the brilliant thing about Dirty Jobs was the fact that they had somebody that was always rolling. And if he wanted to do the camera take, he could always, they were filming it, but then he always had the camera he could turn to and just say the most ridiculous thing. And it was like. Casey Webb (57:57.998) You Casey Webb (58:08.494) Oh yeah! Casey Webb (58:14.222) Sure. Casey Webb (58:18.542) Yeah, I really, I feel like there's things missed. Some of the things I've said in situations on Man Vs Food are ridiculous and just because of the person I'm talking to, not just because of me. Like I said, things channel through us. It's in the moment and it's like, man, it didn't make it. Because it's only 22 minutes. So there's only so much that get put in and they still have to make a show. So yes, definitely. And I hope it's on some sort of streamer that we could say whatever we want really to really show and show and tell. Jeff Dudan (58:39.252) That's right. Jeff Dudan (58:46.964) Yeah. Casey Webb (58:48.494) you know, not just, you know, show, you know, and I think that therein lies the brilliance, you know, to really, to dig deep into that stuff and really get dirty, you know, cause it is a, it's, it's a dirty job. All of it, the restaurant business, you know, it's like, um, but you know, I wouldn't change any of it. You know, like I, I, uh, yeah, some of my, my, my closest people in the world are restaurant folk from, you know, top to bottom all over the place. So. Jeff Dudan (59:00.564) Yeah, it is. Jeff Dudan (59:13.3) Well, I for one appreciate Man Vs Food. You're incredible on the show. I watch it all the time and appreciate what you do there. Last question for you today, Casey. If you had one sentence to make an impact to speak into somebody's life based on your experience, what would that be? Casey Webb (59:17.454) Oh, thank you. Casey Webb (59:22.478) Thank you. Oh, uh -oh. Casey Webb (59:33.486) I have it written at my desk and it says focus on the work. And it's, um, that can mean, uh, cause often, oftentimes we get like caught up and we've talked about this in this past hour plus, or however long we've been talking, but it's when, you know, if you just focus on the work, I really feel everything else will be there, whatever that work is and just get out of your head and physically take action, take the action to do the work and, and, uh, you know, trust in that and breathe through it. Jeff Dudan (59:38.612) focus on the work. Casey Webb (01:00:02.83) You know, so focus on the work. That's something I tell myself every day. Jeff Dudan (01:00:07.7) Casey, this has been awesome. Thanks for being on. Casey Webb (01:00:09.998) Thank you. I appreciate you. And let's do this again. All right. Jeff Dudan (01:00:13.972) Yeah, 100%. Casey Webb with Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Casey Webb (01:00:20.91) Thanks guys. 
Brief Summary In this value-packed episode of On the Homefront, Jeff Dudan interviews Kevin Short, founder of Clayton Capital Partners and the author of Sell Your Business for an Outrageous Price. With over 45 years of M&A experience, Kevin shares war stories, pricing psychology, negotiation strategies, and practical wisdom for business owners looking to maximize their exits. This episode is a must-listen masterclass in running a competitive sale process, understanding buyer behavior, and avoiding costly mistakes. Key Takeaways You Only Need One Buyer, But You Need 150 to Find Them : Kevin’s proven process starts with 10,000 prospects and filters down to 15 serious offers to generate bidding pressure. Outrageous Prices Are Real—but Only With the Right Process : Strategic buyers sometimes pay double the average EBITDA multiple if the deal solves a big enough problem for them. Your Competitive Advantage May Be Hidden : It's not always your product—sometimes it's your location, team, or how you fit into the buyer’s existing business puzzle. The Willingness to Walk Away is Crucial : Sellers must be trained to maintain leverage, stay quiet, and let their advisors control the narrative. Terms Matter More Than Headline Price : Earnouts, rep & warranty insurance, IP structuring, and holdbacks can make or break your outcome. Choosing the Right Advisor Is Mission-Critical : Past client references, industry trust, and battlefield-tested negotiation skill matter more than a slick suit or fee structure. Featured Quote “Sellers are not professional sellers. Buyers are professional buyers. That’s why you have to level the field with process, preparation, and representation.” TRANSCRIPT Who Is Kevin Short? 45 Years of M&A Experience Explained Jeff Dudan (00:03.776) Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden and we are on the home front. And today we have a guest that I've been trying to get on for quite some time because of the impact that they made in my journey and what I learned from their book, Sell Your Business for an Outrageous Price. Welcome Kevin Short. Kevin Short (00:22.222) Thanks, Jeff. Excited to be here. Jeff Dudan (00:25.208) Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So I've been looking forward to this. Kevin, can you give the listeners a little short synopsis of your background? Kevin Short (00:35.074) Yeah, absolutely. Grew up in St. Louis, which is where I'm located still. Came out of school, went into the financial advisory business for about 10 years. And during that time, clients, local clients that wanted to acquire businesses, had me go out and do that for them. And so that's where I began to learn the M&A path for I'd call entrepreneurially owned company. So. The companies I've learned how to do deals with are anywhere from 10 million to 200 million. And my practice is all over North America. So we're an investment banking practice. All we do is M&A. All we do is privately held companies that have decided to sell. Jeff Dudan (01:22.068) And was your background in accounting or finance? What were you trained in originally? Okay. Kevin Short (01:26.378) Yep, finance. Yep, St. Louis University, finance. Jeff Dudan (01:31.68) Yeah, well, my brother, he's got a son who's a pitcher at NC State University. And he told me when he was young, he said, if you love your kid, you'll teach them to bat left, throw right. And then I've added, and learn finance. So I've added that on. You know, it's the money. It's the science of making money with money. Kevin Short (01:44.302) Hahaha! Kevin Short (01:47.634) Yeah, that's exactly right. Kevin Short (01:53.77) Yeah, absolutely. It's a fascinating time. It's very challenging every day. A lot of creativity is important. Negotiating is important. Salesmanship is important. Jeff Dudan (02:05.188) Yeah, and you've really seen the rise of private equity throughout your career. Can you speak a little bit about that? Rise of Private Equity and Why You Must Run a Competitive Sale Kevin Short (02:11.07) Yes, I started 45 years ago doing deals and private equity was nowhere to be found. They were there, but they were very small. Today, we track 4500 private equity groups and we market our deals to them because we never know where the right buyer is going to come from. We will slice and dice the database because there are some private equity groups that are more on point than others. And then of course, we go out to the Kevin Short (02:40.578) The deals we have, you know, it's not like you're selling IBM to GE where everybody knows who the buyer and the seller is. We have companies that most people haven't heard of, so we've got to find the buyers and get them to the table. So in our process with private equity, with strategic, private equity is by far the largest number of respondents to our different marketing efforts. But the A&A... we close about 80% of our deals with private equity. When we go to market, we will market to 150 folks will raise their hand, sign an NDA and say, we wanna look at your deal. So that's one of our advantages is we put in the hard work to make sure we have plenty of qualified buyers at the table because when you go to ask for offers, which is a big part of the process, if we do not put a selling price, as you know from reading the book. We ask them for offers. You better have a lot of people there at the table because many of them don't want to participate in an auction or they don't want to pay the price. But if you have plenty there, at the end of the day, you only need one buyer. And so that's what we do. You start with 150. We start with close to 10,000 prospects. 150 will raise their hand and say yes. I'll sign an NDA. That 150 melts down to about 50. And that 50 turns into about 15 offers when we ask for them. That's the process. Jeff’s Franchise Exit: 120+ Offers, 10 Finalists, 2 at the Finish Line Jeff Dudan (04:15.9) That's my experience as well. We were represented by Boxwood, Pat Gallaher. Really, they've been exceptional inside of the franchise space over the last five years. I think AdvanaClean, my company, was their second deal in the space. Did a great job. I think we had 121, what would be, indications of interest. And then I think 35, maybe, LOIs. And I think we had 10. Ten came, we put ten in for management meetings, and we ended up with two at the end of the day that were right down to the end there, so. Kevin Short (04:51.826) Yeah, that's an excellent auction result. Jeff Dudan (04:55.808) Yeah, yeah, it really was exceptionally well done. We had a good product. There was people looking. I've shared some of the wisdom in here and I pulled the book back out and I found all my old highlights in it. And again, it's sell your business for an outrageous price. If people are out there thinking about selling their business, it's a highly recommend because the book is so... easy to read and understand. It doesn't get into the technical aspect of finance. But it really, I mean, it'll give you some diligence lists and things like that. But what it really gives you is an understanding of what the process needs to look like. So you're a seller and you're unsophisticated. You've never sold a company before. There's a real chance that you can get taken advantage of inside of that process. And there was four things and I've... I've changed it a little bit over time, but now I got right back to it, looking back in the book again. But there's four things that you recommend as pillars of a good deal and a good process. One is that you need to have a competitive advantage. I've said you've got to have a competitive advantage that you can articulate, that you can prove, that makes sense. The second thing is you've got to find the buyers, which means ultimately you've got to run a competitive process. Four Must-Haves for Selling a Business at Maximum Value so that you can find enough buyers of interest so that you can find the best buyer inside of that. Number three, you've got to have a seller who, and this is the way I've said it, is who will keep their mouth shut and who will be willing to walk away. I mean, even inside of our deal, and we were clearly represented by an investment banker, I was getting calls on the back door, people trying to. you know, get in touch with me and see where I was, maybe emotionally around the business, or, you know, just trying to, you know, break, you know, subvert the process. And so really, the seller has to, has to maybe just watch the process happen and then be, people have to believe that the seller's gonna be willing to walk away. Because if you don't have that, then you're really putting your representation at a disadvantage in their negotiation. Jeff Dudan (07:12.992) If they know you're not gonna walk away, then I've just cut the legs out from under you if you're advising us. And then the fourth thing is, is you've gotta have proper representation. You've gotta have a great advisor that's done this before, has relationships. I would even go farther as to say what I've learned in the last five years is somebody that the industry trusts, that when they do the diligence or quality of earnings and they put the SIM together, Kevin Short (07:13.302) Yeah. Kevin Short (07:19.202) Correct. Jeff Dudan (07:40.844) and it's all out there that you're a reputable company, they know you've done your homework and that you're gonna be able to defend at the end of the day what you put in that SIM. So. Kevin Short (07:50.41) Yeah, that's an excellent, all those points are dead on, of course. Uh, the buyers have to be able to check out the investment banker and they've got to be legit. If they're not, they don't even play because that, that becomes too expensive for them. But you're right on. And what started the journey, Jeff, going back to one of your earlier questions, it's been 15 years ago that I had a company that I took to market and a steel service center. And the only. We had several buyers that came to the table. They were bidding around a five multiple. And that's what I was expecting. One buyer offered a 10 multiple. I thought they'd made a mistake. I did not mention that to them. And we kept moving forward and we closed the deal. And I ran into the CEO about six months later on a golf course. And by this time, I assumed he had figured out that he paid twice what he needed to. and he's holding a driver in his hand. I thought, oh, this could be nasty. And he I went up to ask the pet, tell me how it's going. He said, it's unbelievable. He said, you know, we close that one plant that was losing a lot of money. We have rid of the union. We did this. We did that. All the things they knew they were going to do. I did not know as a seller rep. I did not know any of that. He did. The buyer always knows what they're going to do. And that's part of the process for me to assume that I know what this is worth to a buyer. Jeff Dudan (08:53.452) I'm going to go ahead and close the video. Kevin Short (09:20.35) is a critical mistake. You have to assume nothing. You have to assume that the buyer knows what you're doing, you give them the data, you then have to work your process to get them to go to the highest level they can. So today, that's what our process is built around, how to find buyers that will pay two times or more the average EBITDA, the average multiple in that industry. So in your industry, EBITDA was probably quite a bit less than you got. you found the right buyer that was willing to pay more. So that's the magic. We were all trained in the investment banking business that you go for an average EBDA because nobody's going to pay you more. Why would a sophisticated buyer pay you more? The answer is if they have to, they will do it. The “Outrageous Price” Deal That Sparked the Book Jeff Dudan (10:08.912) Yeah, in our process, all business owners generally that have a business of size are going to get inbound solicitations from potential buyers, strategics. And over the years leading up to my sale, I had gone through the process with very large industry players, sophisticated players. And I... Engage the process, you know Not that seriously, but hey if I can give some information and figure out what somebody's willing to give me and I worked really hard with one inbound buyer and Ultimately, you know it came down to it and they made me this offer And I know I know they felt good about it But I when I was sitting with the ceo and he made the offer I could see his eyebrows went up and he really wasn't like It's almost like, is he gonna take me seriously on this offer? And then less than 14 months later, I sold my business for five times what that offer was by running that process. Kevin Short (11:16.61) Right, exactly. But you did the critical part. You read the buyer. You knew, because we do it over and over again. I will explain it often to clients. I might make my money, I would earn my money, in about a 10 or 20 second bite. If you saw the eyebrows, you've earned your money. That's where you made your money, right there. You knew he wasn't serious. You knew that was not his top number. Jeff Dudan (11:23.553) Yeah. Kevin Short (11:46.626) So you're right on, you're right on. Jeff Dudan (11:46.832) That's right. Yeah, that's right. And then, you know, and of course, we weren't running the process. So there was nobody else. So and they knew that. There's buyers. You know, everybody tries to make money when they buy something. OK. Kevin Short (11:53.611) Right. Kevin Short (11:59.338) They're professional buyers. This is what they do for a living. Sellers are not professional sellers. It's a big difference. Jeff Dudan (12:05.172) That's absolutely right. Yeah. So going down these pillars, competitive advantage. You know, if you're kind of in a me too business, what would be an example of a competitive advantage that somebody might not even know that they had, or if it doesn't exist, then is it more difficult to get two times the average EBITDA multiple? Why Competitive Advantage Depends on the Buyer’s Blind Spot Kevin Short (12:31.814) It is because the competitive advantage changes. The competitive advantage to one buyer may be very different to another buyer. We sold a company that was in the fresh produce processing business. So truckloads of lettuce would show up every day on one side of the building, and it would move through the building and be washed and sliced and diced. Nothing magic about that, right? It's a plain Jane business. Jeff Dudan (12:41.218) Oh. Kevin Short (13:00.13) What we found was a buyer who was very big in the industry, but their coverage was the perimeter of the US. So there's this big donut hole in the middle. So we went to the buyer and said, we have somebody that fits right into your donut hole. We are willing to sell for a seven multiple, which is what the industry multiple was. So we're not asking for anything more, except. we're going to multiply the amount of EVDA you're going to make by eliminating all that deadheading going back and forth to the middle of the country, all that wear and tear on trucks, all the new business you're going to make up and pick up because you're going through the middle of the country. And our estimate was we had to build a model that said that our EVDA was going to double because of these changes. And so we're not asking for a higher multiple, but we doubled the EVDA, which then doubled the price. So we got there through a different way, but that wouldn't have applied to almost anybody else. This was a very unusual situation. So their competitive advantage for this buyer was very different than the rest of the industry. Jeff Dudan (14:10.924) Well, that's exceptionally well done because typically, or at least what people have tried to tell me is that the efficiencies go to the buyer. So if, right? I mean, so, but if, yeah. Kevin Short (14:22.57) They tried that. Yeah, they tried. They tried that. But think about that backwards. They weren't going to get these efficiencies with anybody else. So that was that was our advantage. If they wanted those efficiencies, they had to buy us. Jeff Dudan (14:33.348) That's right. Jeff Dudan (14:38.496) Yeah, so really it's like a big puzzle when you're going out to the marketplace and, you know, taking what you have against all the different strategic buyers, even P.E. backed or not, and trying to find the one that's going to get the biggest lift immediately by integrating the company. Kevin Short (14:58.87) Absolutely. We sold an IT company. They were building software for prisons and jails and court systems. And we held an auction, 10 offers. They grouped around a five and one PE group offered 11. And again, we didn't point that out. And we closed the deal. How One PE Buyer Paid Double Because of an Internal Problem Jeff Dudan (15:24.464) Thank you. Kevin Short (15:27.438) come to find out they had bought another similar company six months before but much larger and they had all kinds of trouble and our client was going to fix those troubles. Our client, they fit together so well that the PE group said look we know we paid too much but it didn't matter because it was fixing a multi hundred million dollar problem we had. That's exactly what happened. See again I would not have known that unless I could have read the buyer's mind. Jeff Dudan (15:54.872) right. So we've talked about competitive advantage here. We've also touched on process earlier. That's kind of what we opened with. I wanna get to the seller behavior. And the way that you said it is, you gotta have a seller who's willing to walk. How does that manifest in behavior or inside of a process? How did they know? How do you communicate to a potential buyer who may be re-contracting that? this seller is ready to walk. Kevin Short (16:28.438) Well, because they generally don't believe that when you say it. So part of what we have to do is train the seller. We call it, when a seller gets so excited, their eyes get big, eyebrows go up. They may puddle out. They get up from their chair, there's a big puddle in their chair from all the excitement. So if we have a seller like that, we have What Makes a Great Seller? Trainability, Discipline, and Silence Jeff Dudan (16:32.281) Right. Kevin Short (16:58.338) their access to the buyers. That's job one. Job two is we train them like crazy. Because at some point they're gonna meet that buyer. We have to train them to be able to impress and convince that they're going to walk away, that their advantages are truth. And don't be counting your chickens. We had a seller, you would love this guy, bigger than life. He was in the hazardous waste business. He's hauling away all the sharp containers from hospitals. And that business goes for about a four or five multiple. He had gotten an offer from the big dog in the industry, the biggest dog in the industry. It was, I didn't say that. That's exactly who it was. Jeff Dudan (17:38.564) probably stare a cycle, but you didn't say it, I did. You didn't say it, I did, but I know they rolled up, I know they rolled up like 30 businesses in like seven years or something. Kevin Short (17:49.994) Well, so they know this story because they've heard me say it at different conventions. They don't like it. So they offered our client a four multiple of a one and a half million dollar EBDA. Okay, six million bucks. Client came, but they walked away at the 11th hour. We never knew why. So he hires me 11, 12 months later, tells me the story. So we spent two weeks in my office brainstorming on a whiteboard. Jeff Dudan (17:55.426) Ha ha Kevin Short (18:18.682) Why in the world were they here in the first place? He was awfully small. And we came up with some theories and those theories became the premise of our marketing effort. So we had a premise that we thought that he was so good at marketing that he had wrapped up St. Louis market, but he hadn't expanded. You know, imagine his skill sets in New York or Philly or Chicago. So we went, the good news is, in the hazardous waste business, the good news is when you pull a permit to open up a location, It's public information. So we went to those cities exactly and pulled permits that we were going to open a facility there. He gets a call within a day. You know, Regis, what in the hell are you doing? You're going to hurt yourself. You don't know what you're doing. If Regis, we had scripted everything. Tell them, look, we're not for sale anymore. Cause they said, why don't we come down to St. Louis and talk about buying you again? He said, I'm not for sale. He said, but if you're willing to sell some of your locations, we can talk about it. So this threw him completely off balance. And I said, all right, hang up the phone, let's go quiet. In the meantime, we pulled some more permits to other cities. And they said to him, how are you gonna do this? He says, I have a private equity partner, I have an investment banker, we're going to grow like crazy. Well, they were the big dog in all the markets. For him to grow, the market share, the market itself wasn't growing, he was taking share away from them. So they knew. And they... knew his skill set. So they called back two weeks later. They called me this time. And they said, we want to buy your client. I said, no, thank you. I hung up. Now, this is a guy who puddles out on a regular basis. And I had to keep calling him and saying, Regis, they call. I told him to get lost. He said, I hope you know what you're doing. I said, me too. So they call again in two weeks. And I said, well, let me save you some time. We believe this business is worth, let's see, about a 20 multiple of the EBDA. So we were talking about low $20 million. And they said, you're crazy. I said, okay, thank you, goodbye. Hung up. I never hung up on somebody so many times in my life. They called back the next day and said, all right, we're not gonna pay you $22, $23 million, but we could pay you $14. I said, no, thank you, and hung up. Now, I have a problem. The Hazardous Waste Deal That Jumped from $6M to $20M Kevin Short (20:46.846) I've got to call Regis who needed the money a lot and tell him it is offered 14. He goes, hey, that's amazing. I said, well, I hung up. He goes, what? I said, yeah, they'll call. They'll call back. They call back an hour and a half later. They said, well, we'll pay you 18. I said, no, thanks. I said, save me the trouble here. If you hit 20, we'll do the deal. I don't want to keep hanging up on you. He said, all right, we'll do the deal. So the next problem was we had to go through due diligence. You know, if they're going to spend $20 million for a company that's worth $6 million, they want to make sure they're getting something for their money. And I prepared Regis, I said, Regis, this game is far from over. They're going to try to walk away and call your bluff several times. And they did. We kept walking away. And gluten the day of closing, which is what they did to him the last time, because we knew that was coming. So we said, no, thank you. And they called back in an hour and a half and closed the deal. He was so excited. He's still living large. off the closing. He calls me on a regular basis as he drives by my office in his Bentley. He said, I just got a new Bentley. Thank you. So it's a great story. Great guy. He was a good seller. He studied hard. He came in here one day with six suits. He said, pick the one that's going to make the right impression. So he was really into making the impression and studying his script. Jeff Dudan (21:54.436) Love it. Kevin Short (22:13.11) But you have a client that has to take, you got to have an investment banker that believes, that he believes in because it's going to challenge his logic. And so they have to believe it. I've had attorney, you have to have attorney on board, either will stay quiet or believe in the process. I've had attorneys say to the buyer, I don't know why you're talking about 11 multiple, this business, you could get it for six. I'm like, the hell are you doing? I called a client, told him he fired the attorney, of course. Jeff Dudan (22:13.53) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (22:42.841) Yeah. Kevin Short (22:43.126) But people just don't believe that people, that buyers will pay twice as much for the same business, same EVDA, as everybody else is paying half price. So you learn a lot. You learn a lot doing deals. Jeff Dudan (22:57.328) That's the ultimate game of chicken. And in my experience with the investment bankers I worked with, in my deal, I know when the money was, I know when they earned their money and it was right at the end. And I did a testimonial for these guys and I was just like, you gotta have somebody that's gonna be able to stand tall in that pocket. Kevin Short (22:59.506) It is. Kevin Short (23:15.485) Exactly right. Jeff Dudan (23:23.348) at the fourth quarter on the 10 yard line going in. And it has to happen because, you know, there was a couple of pullbacks there. And he ended up getting me like, I have just an extra several million dollars for something that was already included in the deal, but they didn't understand that it was. And I heard him quote it. He quoted it to him and I'm like, well, that's art. And he's just calm and... Kevin Short (23:43.983) Right. What you do with Jeff. Jeff Dudan (23:52.076) you know, Tom Brady like, so it was awesome. Kevin Short (23:55.355) Right. All the mistakes they make like that, well, we didn't understand that. It's always in the same direction against the seller. They never make mistakes the other way in overpaying. So it's fascinating. Picking the Right Investment Banker: Ignore the Suit, Ask Their Clients Jeff Dudan (24:06.548) Yeah, fascinating. So if you were going to advise somebody how to pick an advisor, an investment banker, what are the couple of things that somebody should consider? Kevin Short (24:17.218) Well, as I say often, be careful because investment bankers all buy their suits in the same place, have the same haircut, they look sharp, look professional, they speak the language. None of that matters. You've got to talk to their past clients and tell them how it actually went. How did it go when that 300-pound lineman was breathing down Brady's neck? Did he stand tall or did he bail? So the clients know that. Jeff Dudan (24:30.48) Yeah. Kevin Short (24:46.198) So you've got to have documented proof that they can do this. And there really are not very many people that can do it. There's a lot of investment bankers in the world that get paid very well because it's a very profitable industry, but there aren't very many people that do it well. So you've got to find the one that does it well. Jeff Dudan (25:05.368) Yeah, and you can't really be that fee sensitive. Everybody, all the good ones have a very similar model. But when I had that single inbound offer, I was working with somebody who was a tax advisor, but they were also a business broker. And I would happen to be meeting with him. I said, well, this is what this company offered. And he knew what my financials were. He goes, that's a pretty good deal. That's about what we would get you. And I like, but I already knew what I thought market was. because other people that had sold. And so I knew that it was way short and that I was gonna ultimately go and run an auction. But again, if this was my trusted person and they told me that that's what it was worth and I went with it, then I would have ended up with 20% of what I ultimately ended up with. And things would be really, really different. Kevin Short (25:55.089) Yeah, yeah. Your intuition was very good. Jeff Dudan (26:19.062) Yeah, and Jeff Dudan (26:25.216) associates working on deals. Well, I mean, I've got, you know, my son's a finance and econ major. He works with me now. My daughter's a first year law student in NYU. Her boyfriend's working in investment banking in New York. He's working on deals, right? So there's junior people that are doing the work. But I would also suggest that people should know who's the quarterback on my deal. And if you take too small of a deal to too big of a firm, Kevin Short (26:42.59) Absolutely. Kevin Short (26:48.15) Yep. Jeff Dudan (26:52.62) you might not get the talent on your deal that you need. Kevin Short (26:56.842) You don't want you're exactly right. You don't want to settle for low talent. You want the highest level talent who has the experience that you need and do not settle. Price vs. Terms: Why “All Cash” Isn't Always All That Jeff Dudan (27:07.34) Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I do trainings occasionally for franchisors. And on the second day, I open up, I bring in my deal binder, which is about 15 inches of paperwork, maybe in four or five different binders. And I slam it down on the table. And I say, I said, this is the paperwork. Kevin Short (27:08.851) expensive. Jeff Dudan (27:37.004) from when I sold my company. And I ask him this open-ended question, what do you think is more important, price or terms? Kevin Short (27:47.466) Right. It's terms. Terms. You get the biggest price in the world if you never collect it. Jeff Dudan (27:47.692) I'll ask, and I'll ask you. Jeff Dudan (27:55.928) Yeah. Tell me, tell us what you mean by that. Kevin Short (28:01.814) Well, they could wrap you up in earnouts and all kinds of weak notes for a big price and you'll never see the money. So you want the big price and you want excellent terms. You gotta have both. But the terms, the terms gotta be there. All the non-competes, all the intellectual property ownership, because we carve our deals out. It may be better for you to keep the intellectual property as a seller and sell that later. There's all different ways to skin a cat, but you've gotta have somebody who understands all that. Jeff Dudan (28:17.007) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:34.136) Yeah, so if you have all your IP in a separate company and you've been charging 1% lease to the company for it or something like that, and maybe you put that... I know a guy who has a 4,000 unit chain in one of the franchising here and I was talking to him and he took all their IP and their trademarks and it's a place where... It's a well-known place that cuts hair and he put... all their IP into a separate company and they lease it back to the franchise or and that's in his trust for his kids. So it's, you know, yeah. Kevin Short (29:11.21) Yep, that's smart. In case it doesn't work out, he can start up a different company the next day using an IP, because they will have blown the non-competes by not paying him. So that is very smart on his part. Jeff Dudan (29:24.608) Yeah, yeah, so sharp, sharp guy there. The other thing is like what kind of a basket, how reps and warranties insurance is a big thing. You sign off on all these representations and all these warranties and it's 50 pages of things that there's gotta be all kinds of little gotchas in there. You do it with the best of intent, to the best of your ability, but then will the buyer pay for. Insurance that if something does come up that was a violation of a rep or warranty that you made that it first goes to insurance And you know, that's important how much hold back how much of a basket how long? And are there any financial markers that have to be hit for you to get the rest of your money? I mean Um, I know I have a horror story here And i'll share it because people need to know Had a friend they had a contracting business They were in business with family. It wasn't really working out. They had started, some of the family had created the misalignment by creating a compatible but separate business without all of the original shareholders in it. So they were looking to sell and cash out of the original business. And I mean, it was only a $15 million deal or something like that. But it was negotiated over a very long protracted period of time. and there was only 30 or 40 percent of the money down and the rest of it was on an earn out. And the day after closing, the acquiring company filed a massive lawsuit challenging all the reps and warranties on the deal. And it devastated this guy. And they spent all they spent more than half the money that they had gotten up front in legal bills over the next two or three years, trying to work it out. And ultimately they didn't get. Kevin Short (31:07.722) Well, well. Jeff Dudan (31:21.568) I don't think they ever got anything more out of it. So that's the worst story I've ever heard. And come to find out after the fact that as they investigated it, they were able to find people. This was a pattern of behavior from this buyer. But they tie everybody up with gag orders. So you can't find anything about it online or whatever. So. Kevin Short (31:42.954) That's sad, that's sad because the entrepreneurs worked their whole life to build these companies. Jeff Dudan (31:48.268) Yeah, and I mean, possession is 9 tenths of the law. So if you would have got all your money up front and maybe a million dollars in escrow, then okay, they can argue over that million, but you got the majority of your money and you walked away with it, and then now they've got to come get it. So that was. Kevin Short (31:50.582) Yeah. Yep. Deal Killers at the 10-Yard Line: Surprises, Employees, and FBI Agents Kevin Short (32:05.258) Yeah, to your point, you don't want to be chief with your attorney. You want the best M&A attorney you can find. And to your point, the referent warranty insurance has decreased the escrows from 10% to 5%, and that often the amount of cash in escrows are around 1% because you have referent warranty insurance. So the buyer is protected. It's good. It's money well spent. Jeff Dudan (32:10.893) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (32:26.732) Yeah. Yeah, not cheap, but again, on the terms, you put it in the stipulations that the buyer has to pay it. Kevin Short (32:36.886) Yep, yep, exactly right. Jeff Dudan (32:38.976) Yeah, and then they're not arguing with you. It's probably easier too. They just make a claim. They get their money. You're not litigating over it, that kind of stuff. Kevin Short (32:46.59) Yeah, in the insurance companies, you'd be in the middle. So they know they don't have a rookie defending the claim. They've got a sophisticated insurance company defending the claim. Jeff Dudan (32:59.256) So you're in a deal and you're driving down, you're on the 10 yard line, you're going in. At that point, what are some of the more common things that kill a deal? Kevin Short (33:13.206) I would say things that pop out of due diligence that the seller didn't tell anybody, including us. That's a biggie. Sellers believe they're going to get away with it and they don't. We are very aggressive about keeping it quiet because the other thing that happens on the 10-yard line is key employees get wind of it and they either come in and try to hold the seller hostage. I understand you're going to get rich next week at a closing. Jeff Dudan (33:20.969) Oh. Jeff Dudan (33:35.919) Yeah. Kevin Short (33:42.57) I want $10 million or I'm walking out the door today. I've had that happen. We use stay bonuses a lot to make sure the key employees stay during the process. But I would say surprises and due diligence are the number one thing we worry about at the 10 yard line. Jeff Dudan (33:45.614) Right. Jeff Dudan (33:53.583) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (34:02.756) So it could be a payable or a liability that they conveniently forgot to tell you about. It could be a legal thing, a claim that was in their past or something like that. Diligence is pretty thorough nowadays, especially in our industry. There's been so many deals inside of franchising that there's specialty firms. If you just hire the right three or four specialty firms, they're gonna go through all the franchise agreements. They're gonna call every franchisee. They're gonna talk to them. They're gonna... Kevin Short (34:14.826) Absolutely. this. Jeff Dudan (34:32.2) They're just gonna dig, right? So. Kevin Short (34:36.458) And there's the unexpected, the surprises. We had a company that was manufacturing military-grade equipment, and we were within a week of closing, and a client called me and said, bad news. Last night, the FBI hired our China sales representative. He was selling secrets to China. And that, of course, blew up the deal. You could not have predicted that in a million years. Now we got it back on track and closed it. Jeff Dudan (34:57.886) Mm. Writing the Book: 5 Years, 25,000+ Copies, Now a M&A Textbook Jeff Dudan (35:02.841) No. Kevin Short (35:05.634) But it was really a curveball at that point. Jeff Dudan (35:08.94) Yeah. So Kevin, when did you write this book? And was it written for anybody in particular? I mean, obviously, it's a great tool for business owners like myself to read and to get a little familiar with the process. It's also a great marketing tool for you, because you are definitely an authority inside of this space. You know, when? did you decide to write this book and what was the catalyst that triggered you to do it? Kevin Short (35:42.11) Yeah, going even further back than I said earlier, I had written it with a ghostwriter and we wrote it over a year and it was terrible. I just couldn't get onto paper what I was trying to say. It's hard to explain why somebody would pay twice the average price, the average multiple. So I finally found an editor. Jeff Dudan (36:06.189) Yeah, right. Kevin Short (36:10.494) And she and I would talk every Monday morning for two hours. And then she'd spend a week putting it on paper. And then we would review the next Monday. And this went on for five years. And it, oh yeah, it's, we, because we were, it was such an abstract concept. And our publisher, Amicomp out of New York, they did a worldwide search trying to find who had written a book about this subject. And surprisingly, nobody had. Jeff Dudan (36:21.68) Oh my goodness. Kevin Short (36:39.626) So it wasn't even a guide to use. How do you talk about this kind of pricing? So that, it was written for owners. Those were my clients, but it's become a textbook. It's used a lot in seminars all over the country. And advisors buy it quite a bit. We're about to go to our fourth printing because advisors are buying them up to give to their clients. They want their clients to sell so they can manage their money. So all those markets we didn't really expect. We sold about 25,000 copies. People bought it in Barnes and Noble in Vancouver to get on a plane in two days and come down and visit me. Crazy, crazy stories. But that was the whole goal. We didn't know where it was going to go. We just felt like if people were to read it, that they would get it. And they do. Jeff Dudan (37:38.816) I've recommended it to so many people and have borrowed from the insights as I coach people on how they need to think about what it looks like at the end. More just trying to slow people down and just say, look, hey, I got a call. I'm an owner in a men's clothing business. And it's... Kevin Short (38:05.827) Whoops, whoops. Jeff Dudan (38:07.712) It's no, it's good. It's a franchise. It's, you know, trunk shows and all kind of that. It's a really Kevin Short (38:09.408) Was it? Okay, good. Kevin Short (38:17.214) They stayed current. Good. Jeff Dudan (38:19.064) Yeah, it's a really, really cool business. Great product, good service, still kind of at startup phase, but a lot of people are jumping on board with it. And lo and behold, we put a suit on an athlete that wins a national award, and that commercial comes out, and now all of a sudden, there's a multi-billionaire reaching out saying, I want to invest in the business. And... Kevin Short (38:47.388) Smart. Jeff Dudan (38:48.436) And he's, but he's engaging one-on-one with the founder. And I'm just like, hey, this is a sophisticated group of people that you're dealing with, an entire team of finance people. I said, you know, if you're serious about taking on this, and I mean, they were, you know, there'll be an investment, right, if the deal goes through, but I mean, don't think for a minute that there's not gonna be claws for people to claw up. you know, above 51% or, you know, whatever the game of it is, or you're going to have to hit markers on it. So I kind of use the, you know, I use your book to say, look, you know, read this, look at this, look at these chapters. And you know, when you need to be, you need to be very thoughtful about, you know, trying to thinking that you can negotiate with somebody that's made billions and billions of dollars buying and selling companies. Kevin Short (39:46.522) That's a good thing. So sellers, you know, these entrepreneurs that we all know and love, they've made their living by their wits, right? They're very good at selling, they're very good at reading people. They think it applies to this process. It does not. Selling, you know, I-beams for skyscrapers does not equate to selling a business to Blackstone. So you have to accept that you're overmatched in bringing professional help. Kevin Short (40:42.946) Yeah, I didn't get it. Mine says we're still recording. Okay, we can do that. Okay. No, no, of course not. Kevin Short (40:55.171) Okay. Kevin Short (41:53.517) I can. Can you hear me? Kevin Short (42:00.616) Hello, hello. Kevin Short (42:42.779) How's that? Kevin Short (42:46.81) Can you hear me now? Kevin Short (42:51.174) Hello, hello. Jeff Dudan (42:51.386) Yeah, it's so crazy. I didn't even have to hit the record button, but I can't hear him. So see if you can hear him on your... I know you can hear me because he just refreshed. Jeff Dudan (43:04.984) It's so strange. It just started recording itself. Jeff Dudan (43:11.076) Kevin, do I got you? OK, yes, sir, thank you. There, I don't know. That hasn't happened for a while. We used to have that, where it would stop. But we're recording, and we're going, and Jim, we'll edit this right together. What was my question? Where were we? Where do we leave off here? We were talking about. Kevin Short (43:11.13) Hello? Yep, can you hear me? Kevin Short (43:33.498) the value of the advisors, not doing this on your own, no matter how good of a salesman you think you are. Jeff Dudan (43:35.668) Yeah. Not doing it on your own. Yeah, yeah. And we were talking about your book. OK, how it was used and all of that. Awesome. All right. Jeff Dudan (43:51.372) Kevin, what's the most creative deal name that you ever assigned to one of your deals? Kevin Short (43:57.054) We don't do that. That's funny you say that. We just put numbers on them. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:00.772) Oh really? So when you call somebody it's not project seaside or project airplane or jet. Kevin Short (44:06.202) No, no, we just did do, you know, we did do one recently for the first time. The client wanted to use a name instead of a number, but we use numbers so we can keep track of all of them more easily. Jeff Dudan (44:17.96) Well, sure, it's yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, all right, well, so much for that theory. I have that theory. Kevin Short (44:20.502) over time. That's funny. Kevin Short (44:27.653) Right. Jeff Dudan (44:33.664) So one of the things that you do, how much are you working doing investment banking? And then I also would love to talk a little bit about your radio show. Kevin Short (44:43.474) The radio show, this one, so we did a podcast for a couple years. Did two, two years of podcasts, about a hundred episodes. And then KMOX came to me and said, what do you think about being involved in the show? So I joined them as a sponsor first. And I sat in the studio doing recording and watched, and then just became an on air host, co-host. with a legitimate Radial personality in the stainless market and so I'm there asking questions. So that's that is all You know, we're going I say bigger time this year with the show but we've been doing this for probably four or five years and lots of Video and podcast over the years a lot of speeches So we learned how to market probably 15 years ago and learned that there was never enough marketing. There's cheesy marketing, so we avoided that. But if you're putting out a good product and you're building good lists, there's never enough because you never know when that next lead's gonna come from. And the marketing is what's fueled our business. In the book, the book really was, put us on the map. The Business of Family Business: Kevin’s Radio Show on KMOX Jeff Dudan (46:11.092) Yeah, 100%. The show is The Business of Family Business. It airs on KMOX, which is 1120am throughout the Midwest. It's a pretty strong signal. And based right there in St. Louis, what day and time are you on? Kevin Short (46:25.894) Saturdays at 2 o'clock. Jeff Dudan (46:28.008) Okay, is it an hour? Man, how fun is that? And you've got the same co-host every time? Kevin Short (46:29.614) It's an hour. Yes. Oh, it is. Yep. And I get to meet crazy people. I love business owners. I always have. And I really have a lot of respect for them. Jeff Dudan (46:46.916) Is it like a Dave Ramsey thing where you're just constantly taking calls? Kevin Short (46:51.202) No, we don't take calls at all. We actually record ahead of time. We've talked about that. Can we get enough listeners that we could do a live show? As of right now, we don't do that. Jeff Dudan (46:54.621) Okay. Jeff Dudan (47:04.96) I started doing a navigating entrepreneurship webinar once a month, six in the evening, Eastern time. It comes out of our Facebook group and navigating entrepreneurship on our Facebook group. We got a lot of, it started small and now we've got more people showing up. It's the closest thing that I could do right now to a radio show where you've got interaction with an audience and people popping questions in there and things like that. I find it to be a lot of fun. It lights me up. It's, I mean, we had everything from, we had a guy who's an international board director and was the CEO of a huge company that sold for maybe $500 million and he pops in there, right? And then I got another guy that's a yoga instructor. And. Kevin Short (47:53.019) Right. I've had the same experience. But you have to love entrepreneurs because they're not perfect. You're not perfect, but they are very talented at what they do. Jeff Dudan (47:58.593) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:02.412) Well, what's interesting is they're engaging with one another and respecting one another and solving, you know, everybody has similar problems regardless of the scale of the business. So it was really, really interesting to see who shows up on that. But then I would love to do a live radio show or even record it or something like that. Kevin Short (48:21.262) Oh, it's interesting. It's, it's, it's fun. People over town here on their car radios and call me and say, I heard it. Uh, but you know, these entrepreneurs, as you and I have figured out, they all have a very different form of genius. And that's what's put them on the map. It made all their money. Jeff Dudan (48:36.435) Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (48:40.212) Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And you spent a lot of time, it looks like, with charities in and around children. Philanthropy and Education: $200M Raised for Students in St. Louis Kevin Short (48:47.618) I do educating children. In St. Louis, we have a race issue. And my solution to it, going back 30 years, was to try to develop schools that would lift these kids up out of poverty. And so I teamed up with the local archdiocese, and because they had the schools and the teachers and they had empty desks, and so we found donors, the big corporate donors in town, to provide the... tuition. So we launched that formerly 15 years ago and raised about $200 million over that 15 years and educated about 5,000 kids a year, which in St. Louis was a lot of the kids in poverty. And it was a grand slam. And those kids went on to college. And so we tracked all of them. And there's a national program for this called the Children's Scholarship Fund out of New York. that I'm on the board of and have been for a long time. And so I learned a lot from these programs around the country. But we were very, very lucky to have the board members, the staff and the donors, they were willing to support the cause. It was unbelievable. And to me, it was, since I've been in business for myself for a very long time, I don't have all that corporate training that the IBM guys do or the Goldman Sachs guys. I learned my training in the not-for-profit world. Jeff Dudan (50:12.341) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (50:17.3) Yeah, the same here. I've, it's been a long, long time since I worked for somebody. And all of my professional development I've had to pay for and learn through, you know, not failures, but, you know, I'm learning, but 100%. And, you know, we're passionate about Kevin Short (50:22.735) Right. Kevin Short (50:33.397) A chapter, they were chapters. Jeff Dudan (50:39.432) similar things. So we've partnered with Ben and Candy Carson and the Carson Scholars Foundation and Homefront Brands is building reading rooms across the country in schools in partnership with them and also participating in their Carson Scholars program where they give thousand dollar scholarships out and you can the kids can win them year after year after year. The money's put into an interest bearing account and then whenever they go off to school the kids get the money to use towards their education, tuition, books, or whatever it is. But as importantly as that is the events that they have where these kids who may not have had the opportunity to ever participate in something like that, they get to come to a banquet, they get an award, they get to be around other people, I mean, internship opportunities and all that kind of stuff. You know, and we like to say, there's the manufacturing analogy that says the earlier in a process that you can... repair a defect the cheaper it is to the overall production process. And it's kind of the same thing with children, the more that we can pour into them early. And we actually have a collaboration now that I think of it that was brought to me last week where they're looking for us at Homefront brands to build content that's targeted towards teens that are entrepreneurial, but is going to be safe for the kids. parents can comfortably go and say, you can send your kids here and there's gonna be guests and there's gonna be content for them that they can learn about business or about leadership or these types of things. And you don't have to worry that it's, people are gonna be swearing on it or there's gonna be other stuff that maybe they might not want their kids to be, they already consume enough of other places. So yeah, so I'm excited about that collaboration. Kevin Short (52:28.568) Right, right. Congratulations, that's a lot of hard work. Jeff Dudan (52:33.928) Yeah, yeah, it'll be good. But you know, we're kind of over that target already. I mean, it's not that big of a diversion for us to create that little channel of content there. And we've got great guests like you and other people that are coming on. So we're very excited about that. And we'll pursue that. Kevin Short (52:54.542) It's amazing what people will do. It's amazing what people will do to help others. You just got to show them the path. Jeff Dudan (52:58.612) Oh, that's what it's all about. It really is. All right. Well, this has been amazing, Kevin. I really, really appreciate you jumping on with us today. And again, I want to thank you because what I was able. I mean, I just on a whim, I said, I need a book that's going to teach me how I need to think about selling my business. This name popped up. Outrageous Price is attractive to anybody who's looking to sell. And so I just clicked. buy on Amazon and it really helped inform my thinking in a time when I needed it the most. So I appreciate that. Yeah, 100%. How can people get in touch with you today if you choose for them to or where would you point them to consume more of your content? Final Advice: Don’t Give Up. You Might Be Closer Than You Think Kevin Short (53:31.203) That's exciting. I'm glad it worked. Kevin Short (53:46.287) Yep, Clay You can reach me by phone, by email, and there's a lot of content that we keep up to date. There's other websites. So the outrageous word promoted a lot of marketing. So there's ThinkOutrageous.com. So we've had a good time with all that. So, but Clay dot com is the easiest and fastest way to reach me. Jeff Dudan (54:19.113) outs and spelled just like it sounds, C-L-A-Y-T-O-N, capitalpartners.com. And last question, if you had one sentence to make an impact in someone else's life, what's your go-to? Kevin Short (54:36.686) Don't give up. It's not about the fanciest degree or the fanciest anything. It's about understand yourself, spend time figuring that out, and then don't give up because it will happen. But many people give up on the 90th yard line and if they'd just gone a little bit further, they would have won. So don't give up. That would be my life story is just by persevering. Jeff Dudan (55:07.328) Words to live by with Kevin Short. I'm Jeff Duden and you have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Kevin. Kevin Short (55:17.179) Thanks, Jeff. That was excellent. Good job. All right. Thank you. Jeff Dudan (55:18.752) Yeah, man. Cheers. Hang on.
Brief Summary In this episode of On the Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Stephanie Postles, founder and CEO of the Mission, a modern media company producing high-impact podcasts for Fortune 500 brands. From humble beginnings on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to working at Google and building a podcast empire, Stephanie shares her journey, insights on sustainable media, the future of storytelling, and her bold plans to transform kids' content, comedy, and more. It’s a masterclass in entrepreneurial grit, creativity, and purpose-driven media. Key Takeaways Early Hustle Creates Future Leaders : Stephanie’s childhood side hustles and DIY education in investing helped shape her unconventional career path. Google Recruited Her for Her Side Projects, Not Her Résumé : Her entrepreneurial experiments caught Google’s attention more than her finance career ever did. Media Must Be Owned, Not Rented : After Medium shut down her monetization, Stephanie committed to never building on borrowed platforms again. Podcasts Built for Brands, Not by Them : The Mission creates and owns its own shows while securing aligned sponsors—ensuring creative control and brand integrity. Internal Talent Is Strategic : Most hosts at Mission are employees, not influencers, allowing the company to maintain control, consistency, and culture. Kids Content Is Next : Stephanie is passionate about building value-based storytelling platforms for kids that go beyond screens and junk content. Featured Quote “You are 100% responsible, 100% of the time. Everything around you is being created by your thoughts, your actions, and the energy you’re putting into them.” TRANSCRIPT From Raking Yards to Rolling Silverware: Stephanie’s Scrappy Childhood Stephanie Postles (00:00.109) locally so it doesn't normally matter if it misses a few beats. Jeff Dudan (00:02.414) now. Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden. We are on the home front today with Stephanie Postles. Welcome Stephanie. Stephanie Postles (00:12.397) Thank you. Thanks for having me. Jeff Dudan (00:14.542) Yeah, very excited that you're here today. I had the opportunity to meet you over the last couple of months and learned about your podcasts and your interesting take on the podcast industry and how you've built a really powerful business off a really interesting business model. Before we get into all that, would you care to take us back a little bit and tell us who is Stephanie Postles? Stephanie Postles (00:42.189) Yeah, who am I? It's such a good question. So maybe I'll go, yeah. I mean, I'm like, wow, where do I even start? When I was four, who am I? Yeah, I'm like, that's still a question I'm constantly figuring out. Who am I today versus yesterday? But if I maybe go back to younger days, earlier days, you know, back in Maryland is where I grew up, Eastern shore of Maryland. And I grew up in a very scrappy household where, Jeff Dudan (00:45.71) Is it? Is it really? It's the one we have. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (01:10.957) It was known that you go and you do what it takes to get what you need, to get what you wanted. And so from very early on, like age seven, I just remember raking neighbors yards, doing really random things for people, putting some little stickers on the mailboxes for our neighborhood. I mean, anything that myself and I have a twin sister and brother could do. We were out there hustling, hustling all of our older neighbors to just give us a dollar to rake their yard for like two hours. And so that was kind of the early days of just. doing what it took, learning a lot. Got into the restaurant industry at 14, rolling silverware for about eight hours a day during the summers, just all day, outback steakhouse rolling silverware. And that was at 14, definitely highly illegal. Now when I look back, I'm like, pretty sure I know why I was getting paid cash now. And when I say sign no paperwork to get into that place and red lobster too, I was like, just in the back, just rolling silverware for so long. Jeff Dudan (01:51.854) at 14. Jeff Dudan (01:59.182) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:06.542) Nice. Stephanie Postles (02:07.437) But that was kind of the moment when I realized I don't like hourly pay. This doesn't work for me. I'm like working so long, so many hours, and it doesn't feel like I have a way to compound this quick enough to get where I want to go. And I knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted to get off the Eastern shore of Maryland. I wanted to expand my horizons. I just didn't see a way out really. I mean, my family was not wealthy growing up. Um, but what I did have was a really smart dad who was brilliant when it came to finances. lost a shit ton of money in the stock market though. So I also watched that too, where I'm like, he's really smart and whoa, over -hedged and lost everything. And it took, I mean, fast forward to today, I still don't know if he ever really climbed out of what had happened back then, but he taught me a lot about finances and he offered to open up a custodial trading account for me when I was 14. And he showed me how to read different stocks and how to think about diversifying. And for every hundred dollars I would put in, he would put in a couple of dollars too, just to kind of incentivize me to like put some money in your E -Trade account and just play around. And that was when I started seeing that there was a way out in different ways. Maybe it was going to be investing. Maybe it was going to be starting my own company. I didn't know what it was going to do, but it just couldn't be an hourly thing. So that was my aha moment. Stayed in the restaurant industry for a while because then I realized bartending could make you outsized returns for your investment of hours. So did that and yeah, I was like, this is actually pretty good now that I'm not on the hourly wage system. You know, I can use this personality for something and get paid. And then it got to 21. I had a finance degree at that point. I got out of college in three and a half years. Um, and I got an investment finance degree just because I was like, I don't want to invest other people's money, but I want to know how to do it myself. Um, and that was when I realized, I don't know if degrees really matter that much because I actually learned more just investing my own money. Why Hourly Pay Wasn’t an Option: Early Lessons in Value Creation Jeff Dudan (03:30.638) That's right. Stephanie Postles (03:57.869) in my custodial E -Trade account than I did going through and learning the technicalities of, you know, how to do math by hand, which I'm like, this is dumb. I don't know how to do this and I don't really want to, but got out of school, um, got recruited by Fannie Mae, got to get into the whole mortgage space after all of that had crashed. So it was a really interesting boot camp to jump in, learn what the housing crisis was about, see how many people were underwater and then rotated through different finance and economics groups, um, for about two years. Jeff Dudan (04:26.83) So was that maybe 2009 you were in that? 2011, okay. So we were clawing our way out of it. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (04:29.261) That was 2011. Yeah, but it was still. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the numbers were still, at least when I went in there, I was like, Whoa, I didn't even know this was still a thing. And it definitely was. There was just so, I mean, there was so much data to look at. And that was when I started realizing, like, if you have access to data like this, you really can create a lot. You can create a lot of, I mean, we were writing housing reports. I was so new and young, but because I had this power of data all around me and I was learning how to use SQL code to pull it, I felt super like powerful on top of the world. I can do anything if I have a lot of data and I can. Jeff Dudan (04:43.086) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (05:03.693) tell people a story around this data because most people don't know, you know, maybe how much in fees they're paying just to see if they actually own their land or how, you know, what should your debt to income ratio be? And what did it look like back in 2007? So super interesting. But then I started looking around one day and this was what I thought I always wanted. Every day I manifested where I got. Every day I would wake up in Maryland, in my parents' home and I'm like, one day I will be in Washington, DC and I will be in a white walled building with people in suits and it's gonna be so impressive and I'm gonna be so fancy. And then I remember looking up one day and I'm like, oh shit, I just got myself into this. I thought my way into this scenario and I put myself exactly where I imagined every single day without realizing it until a couple of years in where I'm like, I really don't like this. I don't like corporate. I don't like corporate finance. I don't like economics. Jeff Dudan (05:56.11) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (05:59.469) And I don't like, like being so far detached from the consumer where it's like, you don't even know who you're serving really. And so that was my first moment realizing one, the power of your mind. And I got myself into this now I need to figure it out. Um, and thankfully the universe came in and provided and Google reached out and recruited me. And that was where it kind of like many, many things changed. Um, but. Data, Finance, and Realizing She Manifested a Job She Didn’t Want Jeff Dudan (06:23.918) Were you a big reader growing up? I mean, I would think you would have to be. Stephanie Postles (06:27.213) Yeah. Yeah. I definitely read a lot of books, a lot of business books. Um, so the one part I kind of left off was that from about maybe senior year of high school, all the way up through Fannie Mae, I was always tinkering on things. And I was always thinking, how do I build a company? How do I build a product? How do I drop ship? I was looking into things that probably most 14 year old girls were not looking into. And I knew that because I had my twin sister reading the exact opposite from me. I would look over and she'd be reading these really sad, like teen drama girls dying from cancer, cancer when they're 15. And I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, we're so opposite and we're twins. And I'm over here reading, you know, how to create a brand that lasts a lifetime or something. So definitely read a lot. My parent, my mom took us to the library quite often. We could get, you know, any books we wanted. And yeah, so I was always tinkering. Jeff Dudan (06:54.126) Right. Jeff Dudan (07:12.174) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (07:21.07) Who was the entrepreneur that you saw? Because generally, so an early entrepreneurial experience is almost always an indicator of future entrepreneurial success. People that are thinking that way and always trying to maximize their time and scrap for a buck. When you find successful people, you go back and that's what you find. But generally, they were exposed to somebody. Was your dad an entrepreneur? Was it somebody else that you knew? Breaking Free: The Power of Location, Mindset, and Leaving Home Stephanie Postles (07:49.805) No. Jeff Dudan (07:50.67) that you knew or the other side of it is you just needed money. Like that was mine. Like I needed money. Stephanie Postles (07:56.205) I think I just, yeah, I needed money because my parents couldn't pay for us. My mom was a teacher. And then we had a family of five and my dad didn't have a job a lot of my life. I mean, he was a stay at home dad for a while after the stock market stuff and then in and out of jobs, but really he didn't have one until today. Still he's at home. So I think I just saw to me like a scarcity mindset. Jeff Dudan (08:00.43) Okay. Jeff Dudan (08:13.454) Okay. Stephanie Postles (08:24.621) And then what it looks like to be confined in a salary and how I would see people around me wanting this, these big visions of like, I want this, I'm going to have a boat. I want like a condo in Ocean City. I mean, big visions, but even me when I was younger being like, well, if you don't change something drastically in your life and make some humongous decision that's outside of the path you're on, there is no way you're going to get there. Like there is no amount of interest that you're going to save or even a certain percent on the stock market that will get you there most likely. And so. That's, I think it was more of the need of like, okay, I can't do that. And it was just seeing what I didn't want. And I didn't have anyone around me. My grandfather was in finance. My grandmother was a teacher. The rest of my family's in Germany and other places. And I think it was more just the need for, I want to be able to make money. Jeff Dudan (09:11.694) I remember, and I don't know where it came from, but having a real fear of being trapped. And so taking, when I looked at, when I graduated college, I didn't take one job interview because I thought about it and I'm like, oh, I remember here's Ernie and Julio Gallo. They were recruiting on campus. They wanted to interview me and you know, it's like, well, you know, in the job and I read the job description, I'm like, well, you can be a wine distributor so I can go around to. Stephanie Postles (09:17.805) Yeah, yeah. Stephanie Postles (09:26.381) Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (09:34.413) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (09:41.614) do whatever they do with their wine to put it in the stores and whatever. And I'm just like, yeah, but if I do that, then I'm trapped. And I'm trapped inside of that. So I think I've spent early in my career, in my first life, it was the avoidance of being trapped. And how that's manifested with me is I react negatively to leverage. I don't like, now I be very careful to put myself in situations where I lose my leverage. Stephanie Postles (09:48.045) Mm. Stephanie Postles (10:03.981) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (10:11.566) And sometimes when I've gotten situations where I've lost leverage, that's where I've lost money. So I don't know. But yeah, we're unemployable, Stephanie, is actually what we are. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (10:11.597) Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (10:15.725) Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (10:23.245) I know. Yeah. I think I felt trapped too, but in a different way, I was trapped to the Eastern shore of Maryland where I was like, just looking around and no one ever left and no one in my family ever left. Everyone just stayed there. And I saw how a mindset can get trapped in a location of just how easy it is to not know what you don't know. And so just be like, okay, I have a finance degree. I'm going to go and work at a bank. That's the Jeff Dudan (10:31.95) Okay. Stephanie Postles (10:49.293) or at the hospital, like that's the two best options for having a finance degree in my hometown. And just knowing that no one leaves and you stay with your family and here's my mom, like she wants us nearby and your grandkids, like it was just such a culture to stay there. And I just didn't know any different. But I had a feeling if I just got out for a little bit, I always thought if I go to DC, I'll come back. I'll come back to home and I'll just go and test it. I just want to try it. But then once I did that, then I kind of realized, oh no way, I cannot go. Jeff Dudan (11:13.326) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (11:19.213) back somewhere where it feels like any of my ideas were, yeah, squashed by anyone. I was really around because they just couldn't imagine things that I was talking about. And then when I went out to California and started working at Google, then I'm like, oh my gosh, I really didn't know what I didn't know. I mean, I, you just, the more you move around, the more you try, the more you experiment, the more you realize like how limited your mindset is and how small you're thinking until you just go and, I mean, to me, try things that are riskier, which now it sounds like you don't want to go too risky. I'm like, Jeff Dudan (11:29.454) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (11:48.845) I just want to try it all. I want to live my life and try everything. And even if it fails me in a big way, sometimes I'm pretty confident I can recover. I can get out of it eventually. Jeff Dudan (11:57.678) Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Google was recruiting and was it one of the puzzles where they put it up on a billboard and you have to, and only the smartest people can figure it out or did they tap you on the shoulder? Stephanie Postles (12:08.877) No, no. Yeah. So they tapped me on the shoulder, but they did not tap me on the shoulder for my corporate history. They, on my LinkedIn, I had listed a couple apps that I had built, an iPad magazine I had written, some books I had published. I had all these side projects of things that I had launched over the many years and they reached out and they were like, we have a couple of jobs we want to interview for. And when I got there, I realized they didn't even ask me once about Fannie Mae. They didn't even care any bit about my technicalities of finance. They were just like, we do have these jobs here, but we actually really just like all these startup projects that you've been doing. So tell us about those. And so that's when I also realized, yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:50.094) Yeah, smart creatives. Yeah, yeah. So like, I don't know how Google works, the book, I've referenced it several times, but basically built their entire company on smart creative, understanding how to identify those people and that just putting them in and giving them a lot of latitude to be great and to create. Was that your, that was your experience? Stephanie Postles (12:59.789) Mm -hmm. From Google Recruit to Chaos-Loving Operator: Her Career at Google Stephanie Postles (13:05.517) Yep. And that's what they did. Yeah. And I'm sure I know it's not that for everyone, but when I came out, I interviewed for about five different teams and I got offers from all five, four of them, and they were finance offers, but four of them felt very much like I was going to become a part of a system. It was YouTube, it was ads, it was, you know, they're very well -known brands who were already built up. And so it felt like I was going to be going in there, just being a part of the financial system to report to Sundar. One of them though, felt complete opposite. It was a group called GEO and it was Maps, Street View, Google Earth. It was a whole mix of groups and they had never really had a finance person. They had a billion dollar P &L. And so when I was interviewing, it was very much like, well, we don't really know what you're going to do. So like, if you can come in and just like help tell us what to do, but then also we need you help over here and we need you to probably come to Japan and figure out the Street View cards there. And can you help us acquire this satellite company and - It was just all over the place. And I was like, yes, this is my style. I don't love structure. I don't like someone coming in and being like, here's your 10 things to do. And then you're done. I want chaos. I like chaos. That's where it's fun. Where I get to come in, build the systems, build the structure, and then get pulled into different things where I'm expanding my excitement into virtual reality. And then it does something very different in Google brain. So I took that offer and had the best time there. I mean, it was so much fun and so much chaos and. I saw what it looked like to really work under a really great manager. And it also made me realize how terrible my manager was at Fannie Mae back in the day where I was like, and it's good to have both. I was so grateful. I'm like, I didn't know. But then when I had a really good one who the one I was working for at Google, I mean, she would put me, I mean, there were no levels. There was no hierarchy. It was just like, here's Steph, go present this to the CEO. You want to do that with the budget? Okay. I mean, there was so much freedom to make the choices I want. And then. And I just didn't realize who I was working for in corporate finance back in the day versus how it could work if you really have a manager who stands for you and, you know, wants to promote you many, many times. Jeff Dudan (15:16.718) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (15:22.926) You know, as a couple, both of us building companies and I'm just, I'm the autonomy guy. Like I'm not a great manager, right? In terms of the blocking and the tackling. Well, part of it is definitely, I've never had a job. So, no, no, I had lots of jobs, but not like a real job. You know, like a perfect, like an adult, I've never had an adult job. Yeah, I've never worked in corporate. Stephanie Postles (15:40.845) You've never had a job? Like not even one job? Stephanie Postles (15:46.509) Yeah, yeah. Like corporate. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (15:51.758) So I didn't, so I had to go out and get all of the training and stuff and all that methodologies, but, you know, you know, voracious reader, lots of professional training, lots of all through the years and all that stuff, just from, you know, the organizations and things like that, that you go to. But I still always come back to, if you want to have great people and you want to have A players, you've got, you can't define, the boundaries in which they're gonna run around and do it. I mean, you use your culture and your values to set the fence. So you give people a big yard in which to run around. You make sure that there's a clear mission, clear goals. Everybody knows like who, what we're really trying to accomplish, who the customer is, keep them front and center. You know, we build franchise brands and everything we do is keeping the franchisees at the center of everything that we do and every decision that we make. Because that's gonna keep you, that's going to keep you on track as to what's most important. But then, you know, as we build, we get all kinds of different managers that come from all kinds of different backgrounds and people want to put systems and constraints and these types of things in there. And, you know, really great people love to operate in a scrum or a small team to create things, to be brilliant, to test and fit, to see if it works. And, you know, if you over, if you over manage, and you over -checklist things, then that tends to be just what people do. Now, we also run a call center. So you gotta show up at this time. That's much more structured. So getting the right level of autonomy based on the team and based on the goals and the responsibilities of that area is critically important. But I've read How Google Works more than once. I highlighted it. I keep going back to it because, Stephanie Postles (17:20.973) Mm -hmm. You got to have a checklist for a call center. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:45.102) That's the kind of company that I'd want to work at. That's the kind of company that I'd want to build. And, you know, I believe one day they'll be very successful. Stephanie Postles (17:53.517) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I hope so. I mean, I don't know with all this stuff coming out right now. I'm like, Ooh, looking a little bad, looking a little scary with how fast the market's developing. So to be a big company right now, I hope they figure it out because they were really fun. And I mean, the smartest people in the world that I was working next to every day where I'm like, this is such a treat. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:56.686) I'm not there. Jeff Dudan (18:03.534) They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (18:11.502) 100%, 100%. Awesome, so how long were you there and how did that run its course for you? Stephanie Postles (18:20.557) Yeah, I was there for four years or so. Um, and after about two years, I started getting a little bored because I had a process built. I was like, okay, this is how we run the finances for this group is how y 'all get the budgets. It's how we do experimental projects. And so then my manager was like, well, let's put you over here. Let's try and promote you into this group. And so we tried and we tried to move me around in different ways. Um, but in the meantime, I started mission. Jeff Dudan (18:24.59) Okay. Medium, Monetization, and the Birth of Mission as a Media Company Stephanie Postles (18:50.445) Mission started though, as a very small side project on a platform called Medium. And I started it with my ex -husband, now ex -husband, but back then it was just a blogging platform where we were just submitting our stories to our, you know, our Medium publication. And we were trying to pull other people into the writing of it as well. And so we were reaching out to all these writers like, Hey, would you want to come and submit your story here? We saw a really great story you posted here. Can we put it on our publication? And so it was really just this very scrappy act of we wanted to tell the stories we wanted to tell. I wanted to tell the stories of these executives that I was sitting next to at Google and some of the trends that were happening in Silicon Valley. And then also just stories that I thought were really interesting that needed to be told. And we wanted to promote other people's work that we liked as well. So that's how that started. It was super slow on the side. A lot of working on the morning, working on it throughout the day, the evening, trying to just pull people into the vision of like, you should write for us for free. And give us your content and we'll put in our publication that one day we'll have a lot of views. It doesn't right now, but I think it will one day. So that was how it started. Um, and then over time it actually did grow and it became the top publication on medium. It had millions of people viewing our publication every month. We had hundreds and hundreds of some of the best writers who were. Actively pursuing us because they knew if they put their article in our publication, they were going to, going to get a lot of views on it. And so it started just taking up a lot of time and we thought. We should monetize this because right now I have no incentives to be working with all these writers who are texting me all day and begging me to approve their content and edit it and asking me about metrics and why they are something. I mean, it's just so much time. And so we thought we should get a sponsor for this publication because there's so many millions of people coming and reading our content. Why not? I think that's how this works in this world. If you have a big audience, you should get a sponsor. And so we struck up a couple of very, very small ad deals, just banner ads. And we put these banners on the publication and very soon after the medium team who was on their own, trying to create their own publications and they were competing with us and they were trying to get our writers to go to them. And they were trying to write similar content. So it was kind of already was feeling a little bit weird where I was like, don't you want this? Like, don't you want us to have people coming here? And now you have these competing publications that of course you're going to win. This is your platform. You know, the rules, you can change the rules whenever you want, but. Jeff Dudan (21:14.574) Right. Stephanie Postles (21:16.749) We kept building, we put these banner ads on and then soon after about two weeks later, Medium was like, you can't do that. You guys are not allowed to run any ads on your, any of your stories and we're building an ad platform and you have to run through us. And that's the only way it can work. At that point, we didn't have any of our readers contact information, emails. I mean, we really didn't even know who we were really talking to. We just knew it was a lot of people. And that was kind of the aha moment of we don't want to build anything on someone else's platform. Like we don't want to be. I mean, they can just change the rules anytime they want and it's their platform. And then you're shit out of luck. And you're like, okay, I just kind of built a business on someone else's platform. And now, you know, I can't do anything with any of this. And so that was back in 2017 and podcasting was still pretty new back then. Um, but we saw the potential and one of the stories that we had written on this media and publication was called the story. And it was telling the unknown backstory of people who changed the world. And we would keep their identity hidden until the climax. So very hero's journey, but we did it for a reason because we saw that a lot of people in the Bay area were very pessimistic towards people who were literally changing the world. They were like, Oh F Elon Musk. Oh, that person's stupid. And like, we're like, man, I feel like this person did a lot before what you see now. So maybe if we just tell you the story in a human centric way, without telling you who they are, you'll have a little more respect towards what these people are doing. And so. Jeff Dudan (22:18.702) Oh, yeah. Jeff Dudan (22:35.438) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (22:42.926) Yeah, some objectivity there, right? You know, like, okay, I'm judging it on the merits of the fact pattern that I'm reading. And when you get to the end of it, and I'll tell you what, Mike Rose podcast, he had little bits on there, like the 15 minute things, but like he had a podcast and he would do the exact same thing. And at the end, it was always some like hook about, and that's, you know, that's how Pringles were made or something, you know. Stephanie Postles (22:44.717) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (22:49.421) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (22:54.253) Yeah, yeah, dirty jobs. Okay. Stephanie Postles (23:08.749) Yep. Yep. Jeff Dudan (23:09.486) And it was all but like it was you never knew where it was going in the story and you couldn't click away because you had to hear the end now that you were invested in it. So what a brilliant strategy. Stephanie Postles (23:15.629) Mm -hmm. Yep. Yeah. So this format's definitely not new. I mean, I think there was a radio show in this exact format a long time ago that did really well as well. Um, but yeah, this one, it was just super fun. And we got to tell so many stories and looking to so many people's backgrounds that, you know, a lot of them, I just didn't know about and didn't know all the stuff they had done to get where they were. And so that medium pub or that story really took off. Um, the whole, all of them did. And that was when we saw like, man, this could do really well if it had audio, if it had. something to really pull you into the story. And so we took this format and essentially pitched it to Salesforce because they were already in our network. We already had someone connected there and we just pitched it to them and said, Hey, do you want to sponsor this show? And so that's how the company mission really turned into a media company was because of realizing like we have a great story here. It's already doing well in written format and we think we can turn this into a podcast as well. And so. How to Build a Podcast That Brands Want to Sponsor (Without Selling Out) Jeff Dudan (24:16.814) Yeah, so it's podcasting in reverse. It's, yeah, finding a sponsor who would be the perfect fit for the show that you want to produce and then building the show for the sponsor. Stephanie Postles (24:19.789) Yeah, for that one it was. Yep. Stephanie Postles (24:31.885) Yeah, we don't build it for the sponsor though. So they can always sponsor our stuff, but it's not theirs, which is very intentional. But yeah, for almost all of our shows since, and now fast forward to today, we've built 33 different podcasts. And we call them shows because they're also all in video like this. They've got video clips and all that. But fast forward to today, we do, before we ever build a show, we also already have a sponsor probably lined up for it. But Mission, it's still a Mission -owned show. We're hosting it. Jeff Dudan (24:35.758) Okay. Stephanie Postles (25:01.389) We're growing it, producing it, distributing it. And then we've got these big sponsors like Salesforce or New York stock exchange. They're sponsoring these shows because it's aligned with what they want to do. So it is a bit different of a model. Um, and like I said, it was very intentional because I saw what media was turning into on medium and has always been that way of just race to the bottom, you know, get as many views, as many clicks as you can fear -based. And I just didn't want to operate in that model. So I thought, how can we. Like, how can this be sustainable? How can we do this long -term? How can we actually partner in a way that isn't just more, more, more, but quality, reach the right audiences, get the right guests on, have good content, and just create a sustainable company instead of one that probably will be competing with the gimlets and the wonderies who are all just trying to get more eyeballs on them on everything. Jeff Dudan (25:53.07) What is your strategy around talent? Stephanie Postles (25:57.165) Yeah, you mean like the hosts of the show, the shows? Yeah, so it's an interesting question. Well, look, you're already one, you're already a famous host. Oh man, I knew there was an ulterior motive. Always, yep, at the end. So most of our hosts are mission employees. I do this because I'm unsure and I never wanna say, Jeff Dudan (25:59.47) Yes. And how can I be one? How can I be one? Now this is just an audition for you. The Truth About Managing Talent in Media Companies Jeff Dudan (26:11.374) Yeah, there always is. There's always an ask. Stephanie Postles (26:25.453) never and I, my, most of my strong opinions are very weakly held and so they can always change if I get better information, but I'm not sure if I want to deal with talent, really someone who, you know, there's so many creators out there, amazing ones, but they want what they want and they're the star of the show. And that's great. If you're already getting millions of views and you've got your audience, like, Keep doing it and then get the brands who want to reach the consumers, get the B2C brands who are selling the socks and the meandis like perfect. But if that's not you already and you don't have that, and then you want to be, you know, a host for instance, I just think it can get tricky around making sure that mission, my company's happy, the host is happy, and then the sponsor's happy. And there's so many people to keep happy. And I find that if someone is like, I'm the talent. It can turn into a bidding war. It can turn into, okay, well, even though mission, this is your show. Now I've got this captive audience and it's, you know, this is my thing. And I mean, you've seen many podcasts hosts run up the price of like continuing a podcast. And so that was also just a game that I didn't really want to play. And I do hire hosts, um, outside of, uh, my employees sometimes if I create a show and we have a sponsor and I'm looking around and I'm like, man, I really don't have someone on our team who. Jeff Dudan (27:18.67) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (27:32.526) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (27:45.005) is the subject matter expert about that. And so, for example, Experts of Experience is a show that we have and it's around customer success, customer experience. And I was looking around, I'm like, I don't know anyone on my team who can really speak well to that, which most other topics, I'll say you can. I've hosted a commerce show, I've hosted a marketing show, most other things you can learn pretty quickly just by interviewing 20 people. And all of a sudden you're like, okay, like for e -commerce, I'm like, I can talk to you about supply chain and logistics and all the things now just from. researching, getting on some newsletters and then interviewing. But some things I think you might want to be a bit more of an expert in, especially for bringing on the Fortune 500 to get onto a show as guests. Like that's who you're gonna be talking to. And so for that show, I was like, we need to find a different host outside of the mission team. And so we found an amazing one who was recommended to me, which I also think is very helpful when your friends are sending people to you, because they're like, you know who Steph likes, we know what she's looking for. Jeff Dudan (28:24.558) Okay. Stephanie Postles (28:40.045) Um, and finding someone who this could really benefit them. So it's a win -win. It's not someone who is desiring to be the talent and the influencer or anything like that. It's someone who, you know, they are in customer success, customer experience. They maybe want to start a newsletter. They do some consulting work. Um, and this is a great opportunity for them and us. So I try and find win -win scenarios like that where it is, um, it's just a win -win and it's not someone holding power over the other. Jeff Dudan (29:07.15) You make an excellent point and I just want to double click on it for the audience because it went by really fast. And it has to do with when you're building a business, where do you allow yourself to be middled? Like where are the opportunities of failure for you? Because, so I'm big on collaborations. When we were there, when we were together, we were at an event and there was sessions on collaborations and collaborations are great because everybody's sharing their expense. Stephanie Postles (29:35.533) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (29:35.63) in a way to build a project. And okay, that's great. But at the same point, if you don't have control over it, now there's different leverage points inside of that project inside of that deal. And then like you did on medium, you built this great property, and you spent all this time and energy and skill and expertise to pull that together. But at the end of the day, you didn't have control over it. So you decided you had to go another direction. So by having How to Avoid Being “Middled” in Business and Protect Your IP Stephanie Postles (30:01.069) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (30:05.518) control over who the hosts are, you know, you just can't be middled and you can't be leveraged by something. So, but guess what? You have to pay those people. So, you know, the bigger budget you have or the more risk you're willing to take, you can definitely shift the risk in your direction and, you know, minimize it and things like that. So for people that are building a business, those are decisions that you make every day. And sometimes it's not at startup. Stephanie Postles (30:24.621) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (30:34.99) because you do whatever you can to spin the wheel and get the business going. But then as you grow your business, you're going to be faced with these things. And I see it a lot in technology. I see it a lot with marketing vendors. Hey, we have this incredible platform and it does everything. And we'll just drive all the leads and we'll do that. I said, well, okay, what about the data? Well, that's going to be on our platform. I said, well then. you know, how do we disengage, how do we break up and how do we get our data? Oh, well, we're going to have all the data. And, you know, so there's no build, you just start right now, but just realize long term value, 84 % of the value of transactions today are in the IP and in the data. So, you know, if you abdicate your data, which is probably the wrong word, somebody can look that up. Stephanie Postles (31:07.149) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (31:27.758) If you let somebody else own all your data, then you've really devalued your business. So I just want to, it's really interesting to me that you came to the decision to employ all of your talent. And because the other side of it is I was thinking, I was actually thinking it was going to go the other way, because I was thinking about the analogy of reality TV. You know, I've done some reality TV. Stephanie Postles (31:41.773) Yeah, yeah. Stephanie Postles (31:49.037) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (31:51.982) And it was amazing. It only costs about a million dollars to produce an episode of Undercover Boss, where an episode of Friends, it's $10 million, and it's all in talent. So it's the same production cost, but so the reality TV is so pervasive because there's no cost for the talent. People just do it for free. They'll do it for their 15 minutes of fame. For whatever reason, they want to do it. Stephanie Postles (31:59.373) Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (32:05.453) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (32:13.613) Yep. Jeff Dudan (32:18.862) And podcasting's a lot the same way. I mean, we're just regular people, but trying to build a platform. So anyway, interesting, but sorry for the digression there, but I just found that to be a really thoughtful strategy that you employed there. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (32:38.477) Thanks. Yeah, it was very, very helpful for sure. And yeah, you just see how when your employees get the choice also to work on things that maybe they might feel they're not even qualified to do. And they're like, I mean, I remember a couple of people I hired. They were just like, wait, you're going to put me in front of Fortune 500 chief marketing officers. Why? I don't even know marketing. I'm like, you don't need to know marketing marketing. You just need to like know how to pull out a good story and know what things to drill in on. Jeff Dudan (32:51.662) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (33:06.765) You just have to be curious and be smart. Like go read some newsletters. You'll figure it out. But I mean, it doesn't, for most of these shows, it doesn't take someone who is an expert. And actually when someone is an expert in the space, then they're just going to do all the talking. And I'm like, that's not what I want. Like if you're, if you're too much of an expert and you're like, well, I've been a CMO for 50 years, who's probably going to run the conversation. So I'm like, I would rather have someone who, you know, is actually a little bit more of a newbie and ask the questions that everyone wants to know anyways. And. Jeff Dudan (33:28.302) That's right. Stephanie Postles (33:34.925) Yeah. If you can be a heartfelt person who just wants to bring out a good story, you can interview almost everyone. Um, I will say our one show that that does not work for us. It visionaries where we interviewed chief technology officers and chief information officers. So very technical it people. And thankfully I did have someone on my team who has a background. He used to be a CIO at this big company. And so he had the background, but that's one where I'm like, just being loving and heart centered doesn't work for like that group. You really actually have to know it, but. For the most part, many people can host if they're just curious. Jeff Dudan (34:08.75) Yeah, it makes sense. So what was your breakout podcast? Stephanie Postles (34:13.069) So, I mean, right now of all the years, I'd say the one that I'm hosting Mission Daily is probably our breakout one. That one gets about a million to 2 million downloads a month. So that one's our top performer, but I will say most of our shows, we don't just want more. We don't just want more downloads because our shows are focused on a niche audience. They're focused on having the chief marketing officer listen to it or the customer experience officer. So a lot of our shows, we don't want... Jeff Dudan (34:19.502) Okay. Okay. Stephanie Postles (34:41.549) a million downloads on it because we're actually probably not reaching the right people. If we're getting that big of an audience on a C level marketing show. And so most of our shows, we don't view it that way. We might view the, like the success for those shows as who were the guests that came on? Like, Oh, we just had today, the CMO of Sotheby's come on. Like that's a pretty big company and that's a great person to have on and to share their knowledge. And they've never really done a podcast before. Like those are the metrics for success for some of those shows. Um, But then mission daily is much more entrepreneurial focused. I mean, I talk about so many contrarian things sometimes on there. I think of course it's going to draw a bigger audience because I'll talk about almost going bankrupt, getting divorced when I'm pregnant, building mission backup, crypto, psychedelics. I mean, I talk about so many things that are a little more click worthy where people, yeah, they just want to listen to that more. It's just a bigger audience. So that one does do well. Jeff Dudan (35:33.422) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:40.526) Most shows that I've seen fall into categories of either educate, entertain, or even inspire. When you're looking at a show, most of yours are going to fall in the educate category. Stephanie Postles (35:45.645) Mm -hmm. Oh, yeah. Yep. Stephanie Postles (35:55.341) Well, do you remember when I pulled out my notes about this too, where I was like, that was like the vision of mission is inspire, educate and entertain in that order. Yeah. Where we both were like, what? We both have the same vision statement for our companies. Jeff Dudan (36:03.054) Oh, that's right. Yes, that's right. Jeff Dudan (36:08.686) Yeah, and you asked me, said, well, what does the show do? I said, well, we educate, entertain, and inspire. And you pulled it, and you had it on your paper. That was so, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (36:12.941) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, I'd say a lot of our shows, we want to do all of that. Um, yeah. So it's in that order though, for us inspire, educate and entertain, but a lot of the content we're like, just because it's executive, you know, executives being featured, doesn't mean it has to be lame. It can still be fun. Um, and interesting and exciting and how you can cut these clips up can be fun. So I think you can do it with all kinds of content. Everything is just how you structure a story and how you can relate to that person. Jeff Dudan (36:36.046) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (36:46.253) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (36:46.99) So what makes a good guest for Mission Daily? Stephanie Postles (36:50.381) So for Mission Daily, I sometimes have guests on there. It used to be very guest -driven. And then we kind of shifted away from it, but guest -driven as in it'd be the people that, like authors like Annie Jacobs would come on or Marissa Mayer came on. So it was like higher profile people in the Bay area where it's like, those people were very exciting to have on back then when we started this show. And then over time, it just... Jeff Dudan (36:56.494) Oh. Jeff Dudan (37:06.126) Sure. Jeff Dudan (37:15.534) Okay. Stephanie Postles (37:20.237) To me, I'm like, those conversations weren't always the most interesting. Sometimes they were, but sometimes if someone was a brand name, they came on, you're like, eh, you're a little too like PR focused talking and that's not fun for me. So, yeah. So it shifted a bit away from that where now if I have someone on, they're probably my friend. They're probably someone that I think is just doing fun things. And, um, yeah, I want to bring more attention to what they're doing. So that's. Jeff Dudan (37:30.766) Yeah, little too careful. Stephanie Postles (37:48.077) kind of what's happening now. So right now it's mostly just me and then my COO at the company who he's been at Mission for a long time. He has seen Mission through so many ups and downs and we have a very great dynamic because he's so opposite from me. I'm like woo spiritual, like doing things over here and he is very like logical, just not woo at all. And so it's an interesting dynamic because we're always on such opposite ends of the spectrum when we go through just different topics. Jeff Dudan (38:08.686) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:16.686) Interesting. So what's going on with Coachella this year? Tickets are available. Have you heard that? Stephanie Postles (38:20.749) No, I don't, I've never been to Coachella. So what's up with Coachella? I feel like that's what younger people go to, right? Jeff Dudan (38:24.974) Okay. Well, I would have thought well, that's why I thought you'd have been there Stephanie Postles (38:31.085) No, I go to Burning Man. Burning Man is a yes, but Coachella just feels like, I mean, I'm sure it's cool. I don't know, but yeah, I would probably keep going to Burning Man instead. Jeff Dudan (38:33.55) Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah, I'll... Yeah, absolutely. Are you going this year? Nice. OK, I think we talked about that too, actually. Yeah. So, well, awesome. So your vision for the podcast going forward, what's the next iteration on this? Have you thought about how to grow it? I mean, obviously, it's doing very well. Stephanie Postles (38:44.397) Mm -hmm. Yeah, that'll be my third year. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Jeff Dudan (39:08.686) It's gotta be very rewarding financially and otherwise. What's next for you? What She’d Do If She Sold Everything Tomorrow Stephanie Postles (39:15.021) Yeah. So next is, I mean, continuing. I know, right. I did actually, someone called me out there like, wait, are you just bored because mission's working now? Because they're like, you seem like you were having a lot more fun when your company was almost bankrupt and you were getting a lot more exciting out of like excitement out of saving it. And they're like, and now it's stable and you're talking about moving on. So for mission, I mean, I am still so excited about bringing more like B2B enterprise, SaaS companies. Jeff Dudan (39:16.622) Cause you're bored by now. I know you're bored by now with this. You've been doing this too long. Jeff Dudan (39:29.262) Oh. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (39:42.381) into sponsorship of our model because our model admission is so different than any other podcast. And so just bringing more tech companies into it to show them how to really use media strategically and how to actually get an ROI on media. So I still love that space. We have more new sponsors coming on than we have before and really fun ones and great ones that I'm super excited to work with, which is I think a very big shift this year is anyone I work with gets to be fun. I get to like the team, I get to like the product, and I get to like the partnership, which was not always the case. And there's been a client in the past that we actually had just be like, we're not working together anymore. And that's a new thing for me. And so this year, just finding really innovative, amazing SaaS companies who want to tap into the sponsorship model. And then... Jeff Dudan (40:30.702) Yeah. Why are people like that, Stephanie? Why are people like that? You know? Like, I want... Stephanie Postles (40:37.197) I don't know. And I think when you're an entrepreneur, you just say yes in the early days because you're like, well, I have team members and I've got payroll and I have things to do and I just have to pay my bills. And you say yes. And then six months later, you're like, God, this person's annoying. Like, why? Why am I letting them pay me pretty small amounts at this point? Jeff Dudan (40:49.294) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (40:53.87) I don't know why people like it's being hard to work with makes the work harder. And it's it really does. And it's it you know, I don't get it. I do pick and choose a lot who and some of the networks that I know you go to and that I'm involved with, man, it just seems like these are really high level people. They set a financial bar where if you want to work with me, I just hired somebody and. Stephanie Postles (40:59.789) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (41:23.726) great marketing mind. And literally he said, it's a $25 ,000 rate card. And then he wouldn't tell me with any detail what he was gonna do. He wouldn't like, and then so I just said, well, give me some references. So I call these references, like this is the best person ever. They've 10x to my business, just do everything that they say. It's so great. And I really had some great conversations with this person and I liked them, but he had just decided he didn't wanna fight over money. Stephanie Postles (41:35.501) Yeah, uh -uh, that doesn't work for me. Stephanie Postles (41:47.629) Mm -hmm. Okay. Stephanie Postles (41:53.069) Mmm. That's good. Jeff Dudan (41:53.358) and he knew that he was good and he knew that his reputation and his references. So I just paid it. And then we had our first call and it was the greatest thing ever. I'm like, this is the most brilliant marketing mind I've talked to. And he says, that's included. I said, well, tell me how this is gonna work. No, we're doing it all. We're doing it all, we're gonna handle it. It's only gonna take this long. We've already got started on it. Stephanie Postles (41:59.661) Hahaha Stephanie Postles (42:06.893) Okay. Jeff Dudan (42:21.774) And it was just, it was the best experience, but like the $25 ,000 was a qualifier so that he didn't have to work with people that he didn't want to work with. And he didn't have to jump through hoops trying to sell it. And I think kind of the higher up you go into things, you know, you're going to find people out there that take that position. And I, you know, I just find it really interesting, but man, I do, I just want to work with people that are up to something, going somewhere creative. They're cool. They have good perspectives and um, Stephanie Postles (42:26.797) Mm -hmm. That's good. Stephanie Postles (42:47.757) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (42:50.766) And they're out there. You just you just have to. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (42:52.077) Yep. You just gotta take, it takes a while to learn that. I mean, I think, and you can't demand those things upfront. Like you have to work with shitty clients, some like in the beginning to then figure that out. And like, that's something where I'm like, man, started this company in 2017. And as of like this year, I'm finally like, no, now I can demand that I want to work with cool people. It took that many years of really taking what I had to, to build a company. And I think, so you have to be a certain. Jeff Dudan (43:01.582) You do. Stephanie Postles (43:19.405) space in your life and with referrals like he has and a background to be like, okay, now I've elevated and I don't need to actually prove myself because my referrals will speak for me. So that's pretty baller. He sounds great. Jeff Dudan (43:31.79) So if somebody came in and bought the whole thing from you today, of course, you've got a young family, but you were completely free to go and do anything that you wanted to do and you had no more, they didn't even want you involved at the company anymore. Where would your feet be in three to six months? Stephanie Postles (43:57.389) Well, I mean, I actually think about this often, because I think it's a good thing to think about. It would probably be doing something similar to the things I'm doing now around these new shows I'm launching. So we have all this business tech content, executive content, founder content. That's been our network for, you know, since we started. But this year we had a goal to launch 10 new shows in Q1. And these 10 new shows were not business tech or any of that. They were... Jeff Dudan (44:02.35) It is. Stephanie Postles (44:26.861) very outside of that space. They were around spiritual concepts or one's called like sacred echoes. And it's highlighting these spiritual sites around the world and what's happening there, just showing like the unification of experiences of what's happening in Russia is happening in Sedona, it's happening in here. And so these things I didn't care about 10 years ago, but then after many different experiences and having kids and all this kind of stuff, fast forward today, I care about a lot of different stuff. And so, that kind of content we're putting out. We have a show coming out on Shipwrecks. I've got kids content coming out, which I have four kids. So looking at the media space for kids is like appalling to me. And my kids don't do screens. And so it'd be good for them to listen to good stories with good intentions behind them. So just launching new shows and probably getting into comedy and some reality TV, which now that I know that you did that, I might talk to you, but just trying new things in media, because I do think... From Comedy to Kids Content: The Future of Mission Media Jeff Dudan (45:03.118) Yeah. Stephanie Postles (45:24.973) media has the power to impact and influence generations to come in such a great way if you have good intention behind it. And so that's what I would still do just, and I'm doing in a different way. Even if I had all the money right now and mission was fully taken care of, I'd be like, okay, what new things can I launch that will change the world? Jeff Dudan (45:39.118) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (45:46.702) Well, so what's beautiful about that answer is you're already doing it. Stephanie Postles (45:50.413) Yeah. But it's because I was asking myself that question a year ago, two years ago, um, because building a company is not always, you know, like it's not probably where you can make the most money always. And so I think it's good to step back and check of like, is this still worth it? There was many times where I'm like, I could just jump back to my job at Google and make more money right now and have a way easier life working nine to five than I am right now worrying about X, Y, and Z. Jeff Dudan (45:52.078) Yeah, that's awesome. Jeff Dudan (46:06.094) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (46:15.854) right? Stephanie Postles (46:20.109) And so there was so many times of me thinking of like, okay, would I want to do that? Cause you know, that's a lot easier. And yeah, asking myself that question and being like, okay, I still would do this on the side though. I would go back and I'd work at Google and then I would start doing this on the side again. And then I'd be back here again. So it's definitely not the money that's driving this always. Um, and you know, it's nice, but it's a good question to ask yourself. Jeff Dudan (46:44.558) I'm interested in the kids content. We were just asked to do a collaboration with a charity and a pretty notorious popular figure. They've got about 15 million followers on different platforms and things have a pretty good name. And they were interested in doing content, entrepreneurial content, but focused towards children. So they wanted to say, you know, they have these foundations and a lot of they do a lot of stuff around children. They said, we want a safe place. Stephanie Postles (46:58.669) Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (47:07.021) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (47:14.35) to be able to send people to, to build so that they're, you know, young people can get entrepreneurial content, but it's going to be, you know, clean and you know, what they would want to see. And so we've got, you know, this on the Homefront podcast here. And I thought, Hey, we can build a whole of a library of content in that way. I mean, it would just, for me, for us, it would be easy because it's the direction the horse is already going. And it would just be getting the right guests on and then making sure that. Stephanie Postles (47:25.453) So good. Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (47:40.717) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (47:43.918) the content and which is, you know, my background is in coaching, lots of kid stuff, man, just all about that. So it's very, it's an interest that I have, something that I'm interested in. And I hope we can pull the project together because I think it would be great. And also I think we'd be bringing in a lot of viewers into something like that. So. Stephanie Postles (47:47.245) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Stephanie Postles (48:04.941) Yep. I mean, the market's there. I've looked at the numbers and I see the need and I mean, it depends on the age group, but I mean, that kids project, um, ours is that missionkidsapp .com. And that's where it's showing all the different kids stories that we want to tell. But I mean, depending on the age group, there's really nothing for ages like five to eight or so, which is such an important milestone. And like that time of life is so influential before age seven. Jeff Dudan (48:12.206) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:20.974) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:28.014) Okay. Stephanie Postles (48:34.349) And so if you have stories that are in a way that kids can understand what the characters that they get to know and love, and you're learning about grit and resiliency and entrepreneurship and long -term thinking and compound interests, I mean, if you're learning about these things through a story, that's what changes the world. Stories are the things that spread through generations. So I love that. Let me know how we can help with that too, because that's something I'm super passionate about. Yeah, for sure. Jeff Dudan (48:40.398) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:00.238) All right. Well, all those things. Those are some unpopular topics for kids you just mentioned, but very, very important. Very important. Yeah. Well, take it or leave it. Click away if you must. And the comedy angle, are you a frustrated standup? Stephanie Postles (49:05.293) yep I know. yeah oh well. yeah I know yeah yeah. Stephanie Postles (49:22.477) So this actually comes because so many of my friends, they're just like, Stephanie, you are so ridiculous and funny. And like, why don't you do more of that? And my mind feels like it's a constant circus of like, just immature. That's what she said jokes, even when I'm like talking to executives, I'm like, I need to hold back from the ridiculousness of my mind. And so I started thinking more about this and just thinking of like, man, comedy is one of the highest forms of intelligence, I think, if you know what you're doing. Jeff Dudan (49:50.734) It is. Yeah. Stephanie Postles (49:51.725) Like to me, I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen Joe Rogan, I'm here in Austin. So I saw him and I'm like, he's got a lot of truth in there, a lot of messages and people aren't offended mostly because it's through humor. Same thing with South Park, same thing with Silicon Valley, don't look up, Book of Mormon. Like these all have interesting messages in them. And to me, that's how you spread awareness of things without overly triggering people. You'll still trigger people because... Jeff Dudan (50:12.206) Yes. Stephanie Postles (50:18.829) and many people will get triggered just by you saying hello. So it's not about that, but it allows for a message to spread and the right people will look further into it. And so that's why I think it's a very powerful medium and I really want to get into it. And I just think it'd be fun. Like just, why not? Jeff Dudan (50:21.934) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (50:33.422) Yeah, I've got that eye too and it gets me in trouble because I think everything's funny. Like, I mean, we, yeah, I mean, it's just everything I look at is just like, oh man, I got the joke right away. I mean, but you know, you can't when you're in business, you gotta, you gotta pick your shots. Have you been to the Comedy Mothership? Have you? I'm coming out. That's gonna be, yeah, I haven't picked the date, but I'm just, I'm coming. I gotta be there. I've got a friend who's been, Stephanie Postles (50:38.125) Me too. Me too. Yep. Yep. Stephanie Postles (50:52.269) yeah yep yeah Oh, are you. Jeff Dudan (51:03.31) going out there and hanging out a little bit. So I'm probably gonna hook up with him and go out and do a trip out there, but I'll let you know. Stephanie Postles (51:05.485) Okay. Tell me. Yeah, I'll definitely come. You just have to make sure Joe is actually at the comedy club. Cause a lot of times it's like Joe and friends and then it's just his friends. And I'm like, no, I actually want Joe. Yeah. Okay. Jeff Dudan (51:16.558) Yeah, you know what, that'd be okay. I want to see his club and see what he's built there. I'm sure there'll be good acts and all that kind of stuff. If we can inside scoop and figure out when he's going to be there, that would be great. Well, look, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you coming on. Had so much fun talking to you. I'm so glad we got a chance to meet this year. Stephanie Postles (51:26.029) Yeah, they are. They are. Stephanie Postles (51:40.013) Same. Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me on and yeah, well have to do it on mission daily sometime, by the way, bring you on my show. Jeff Dudan (51:42.542) Yeah, 100%. Last question. Hey, well, look, I wasn't going to ask, but okay, how about next Tuesday? So last question for you, Stephanie, if you had one sentence to speak and make an impact into somebody's life, what would that be? Stephanie Postles (51:49.677) We'll get you bugged. Stephanie Postles (52:05.197) Wow, that's a really big question. Probably that... Let me think about this one. Stephanie Postles (52:17.229) It would probably be. Stephanie Postles (52:22.381) understanding the power of your thoughts and just realizing how your thoughts are creating your reality and how when you start seeing that and you realize that you are a hundred percent responsible, a hundred percent of the time, everything around you is being created by you and your thoughts and your actions and your energy that you're putting towards those thoughts. I think your life can change. And there is one book that I recommend for that as well, that is super old called the game of life and how to play it by Florence Goebel Shin. She wrote this book in 1925 and her concepts are so interesting around this, around what's showing up in your life. And it's like, this is life. How do you actually play this game? It's a mix of spiritual and religion in a way that is grounded. And I actually could get through it because I'm not a super religious person. I didn't grow up in the churches. I didn't, you know, so this was a helpful book to bring it all together. Um, but that's a good one to start that if I were to go back, I would have started reading that because. that would have helped me realize why I ended up at Fannie Mae. Jeff Dudan (53:24.11) Perfectly said and Stephanie, thank you so much for being on. Stephanie Postles (53:29.613) Thanks for having me, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (53:31.278) Yep. This has been Stephanie Postles. I am Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.
Brief Summary In this deeply human and refreshingly honest episode, Jeff Dudan sits down with storyteller, producer, and leadership thinker Joe Boyd. From growing up in Appalachian Kentucky to pastoring in Vegas, pivoting to comedy and acting, producing indie films, and eventually leading Leadercast through a major reinvention, Joe shares a journey rich in transformation. Now stepping into his next chapter with Called for Adventure, he unpacks how failure, humor, and self-reflection have shaped his purpose—and how they can help others find theirs. Key Takeaways Reinvention Is a Recurring Theme : Joe’s career path—from pastor to Vegas comedian to film producer to leadership platform CEO—demonstrates that reinvention isn’t failure, it’s evolution. Your Calling Often Emerges from Pain : Joe believes that the things that hurt us most are often the keys to what we’re meant to do—and that our failures can become our superpowers. Events Should Be Marketing Tools, Not End Goals : Joe explains how Leadercast moved from being an annual event to a full-year leadership learning platform—and how events should feed broader ecosystems. The Age of Performance Is Exhausting Us : Social media is turning everyone into performers. Joe argues for authenticity, curiosity, and the ability to step off the stage to find peace. The Second Half of Life Is Where Meaning Grows : Joe’s new venture, Called for Adventure, is aimed at helping people—especially Gen X—reconnect with purpose in the second act of their lives. Everyone You Meet Might Be Suffering : Joe’s reminder to treat people with grace reflects his pastoral roots and deep human empathy. Featured Quot e “Almost every day you interact with s omeone that’s having the worst week of their life—but they won’t tell you. So assume it’s everyone.” TRANSCRIPT Joe Boyd’s Wild Ride: From Kentucky Roots to Vegas Chapels Jeff Dudan (00:03.535) Joe Boyd, welcome to On the Homefront. Joe Boyd (00:07.694) Thanks for having me, excited to chat with you. Jeff Dudan (00:09.935) Yeah, so great you're on. Been consuming your content for a while. And I know that the leader cast has been a huge success for you and you've got something new going on. But man, let's get to know you a little bit. So who is Joe Boyd and where does he come from? Joe Boyd (00:29.006) Uh, uh, the nice broad question. I, uh, I'm from, uh, I'm an Appalachian kid. I grew up, uh, was born in actually Boyd County, which is my last name in Kentucky. Uh, but, but not related, uh, uh, came from about 13 generations of very poor people. Um, and, uh, when I was 12 years old, my, my dad got, got a promotion. We moved to Columbus, Ohio, which felt like Manhattan because it was so different than Kentucky. Uh, so I, I went to high school there. Jeff Dudan (00:40.175) Okay. Joe Boyd (00:59.182) I was a church kid, total kind of church nerd and thought, knew I wanted to be a preacher since I was like eight years old and went to seminary to pursue that. And, you know, along the way sort of realized that my belief system that I was discovering as a person growing up was a little different than my religious heritage. So that created some tension in my life. So I worked through that stuff early on at the church. And then, had a career path that most people think is pretty crazy. So I went to Vegas and worked at a church and then stopped doing that and started doing improv comedy with the second city. Jeff Dudan (01:37.391) All right, were you doing weddings at one of those chapels in Vegas, or was it... Weekends and evenings, maybe? Joe Boyd (01:45.486) I was at an actual real church, but I do have a wedding chapel story. I got the only job I've ever been fired from. I don't think I've ever said this on a podcast, uh, was the wedding chapel. Uh, I got fired. I was the backup, uh, officiant at the Luxor wedding chapel in Vegas. Uh, so I would do like two or three weddings a day and they'd always be like nine AM noon and like 1130 PM. So they're all over the place. It was before, uh, iPhone. So I was bad with the calendar. Jeff Dudan (02:00.303) All right, hot take. Joe Boyd (02:24.27) I totally blanked one. Some poor couple didn't get married because I didn't show up and then I got fired the next day. So my wedding chapel career was about 10 days long. Jeff Dudan (02:33.295) Hey, look, half of them don't work out anyway, so you didn't. That's exactly right, exactly right. Well, that's awesome. So we dug out a new Factoid on Joe Boyd today. So awesome. So you're in Vegas and pastoring a church and doing a side gig, and then you went into acting or improv. Joe Boyd (02:35.982) Yeah, saving some time. Joe Boyd (02:43.31) Yeah. Joe Boyd (02:56.622) Yes, improv. So I was about in my late 20s, I was really having a crisis of faith in many ways, which is hard, which almost everyone does in their 20s if they think a lot about it, but I would happen to be leading a church, so it was awkward. And I was doing, my wife signed me up actually for improv classes with the Second City to kind of help me because I was depressed. And I confessed to her, like I... I say I always wanted to be a pastor growing up, but my secret was that I wanted to be on that Saturday Night Live. That's really what I wanted. But it never sounded as noble. So I didn't tell a lot of people that growing up, but she knew. And so she got me, you know, Second City and the Groundlings were the two sort of training centers that most SNL people come from. And nobody was expecting me to make it a career. It was just going to be fun. But I took to it pretty quickly. And within about nine months of training, I was an understudy in that Second City show. And then... I worked in a show called Tony and Tina's Wedding for three years, which is an improvised show in Vegas. And yeah, kind of overnight, went from working at the church to being a full -time comedic actor. Jeff Dudan (04:08.335) So you were married during this time. Joe Boyd (04:11.118) I was, I got married super young. We're about to celebrate our 30th anniversary. So we got married at 20 and 21. So, and my line about that is that my wife's been married to four different men with the same social security number. So she's a good woman because I've morphed a lot. She's changed of course too, but especially early on, I was not the same guy she married five, six years in. Jeff Dudan (04:15.471) Congratulations. Jeff Dudan (04:37.167) Look, it's probably a good thing because you got to keep it fresh. So if you just change yourself out every seven years, that's probably a good deal. But think about it, though. I know a good number of pastors, and that's a high demand career. You're always on call, there's fellowship, there's deaths, there's crisis. So those people work really long hours. They're never called in when, well, if they do a wedding, that's great. But generally, Joe Boyd (04:41.07) Right. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (05:04.111) there's something going on there so it takes a toll on people and I know there's been quite a few failed marriages as a result of the call and the demands of that job and then of course if you're on the strip you're probably working nights those were night shows would do one or two shows a night. Two. Joe Boyd (05:17.486) Yeah, yeah. I did one show a night of six nights a week. And the show actually ran every, it was never dark, it ran seven nights a week, but everybody got a day off, we traded roles. So yeah, but it, I mean, it was great. Apart from the kids were little and I missed bedtime. But I was home until two or three in the afternoon every day and then got home around 11 or before midnight. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (05:42.319) Yeah, if you had to do an open mic right now, how much you got? Joe Boyd (05:46.83) Well, I didn't do a ton of standup, so I can answer that two ways, either zero or as long as you want me to go, so, because I'm an improviser, so if I had to stand up, if I had to do standup right now, I'd just start asking the audience questions and go for it. I think I have the skillset to be an okay standup comedian. I tried it for a little bit, but I found it super depressing actually. It wasn't good for me, my mental health, and it's an interesting kind of. Jeff Dudan (05:53.519) Ha ha ha. Joe Boyd (06:15.438) I don't know, it was kind of a dark lifestyle. I don't know, it just didn't work for me. Whereas improv, you know, it's more like who's line is it anyway or something like that. So you're there with a team. And so it's kind of fun to totally bomb with your friends on stage. It's pretty awful by yourself. But yeah, I could probably fake it better than most people walking down the street, but not as good as an actual comedian. Jeff Dudan (06:25.615) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (06:37.615) Yeah, most of those improv skits, man, if it doesn't work, that's even funnier. Joe Boyd (06:43.502) Yeah, yeah, right. And a B plus feels like an A plus because people know you made it up. So it's great. Jeff Dudan (06:47.823) I mean. Jeff Dudan (06:52.271) That's right, awesome. Well, so you went through that phase and then how did you transition from there into leadership and that career? From Second City to Soap Operas: Comedy as Therapy Joe Boyd (07:06.446) Yeah, it took quite a few more turns to get to that. But I, so I was doing that in Vegas and then, you know, started, I got an agent in LA, it's about a four hour drive. So then I started auditioning a lot. So I was doing my shows and then trying to make it as a, improv people call it a straight actor. It just means like, we don't think we're real actors, but we can pretend to be. So I was getting commercials and soap opera roles and sitcom roles and things like that. So eventually we decided to move to LA to kind of give the real acting deal a shot and. Jeff Dudan (07:09.199) Okay. Joe Boyd (07:35.406) Spent three years walking into rooms every day that people that were just better looking than me, but looked a lot like me. Like that's what auditioning is. Did that, I think I went on over 400 auditions in three years. Learned a lot about rejection and failure and how a lot of it's out of your control. But landed some okay gigs. Started producing a movie, because I wanted to kind of show what I could do really as an actor, but. It was an improvised mockumentary, like Christopher Guest style movie, if you're familiar with any of those. It was called Hitting the Nuts, it's a poker movie. And so that was the first film I produced and realized, I think if I was gonna stay in LA, I had more chops really as a producer than an actor. And kind of had the realization I don't think I wanted. I didn't wanna do that in LA at the time. So in a full circle sort of, coming home moment, came back to Ohio where we started, got a, tried the church job thing again, got a job as a teaching pastor at a large church, and it went really great for about three or four years until I realized, ah, it's still not for me. And ironically had produced that, kind of rated -ard poker movie on the side while I was being a preacher again, which was a fun thing to navigate. And that opened the door to producing some more movies, so. ended up producing movies here in Cincinnati where I ended up. Actually, it was a little easier here than out in LA and made four or five feature films that had various levels of success. Started production company, left the church job, started production company with my friends and ran that company for 10 years. And it eventually did a lot more sort of corporate video marketing videos for Procter & Gamble here in Cincinnati and Kroger company. So a lot of places like that. Leadercast was one of our clients. for about 10 years. And so during COVID, the owner of LeaderCast asked me to step in and run that company. And ultimately that's how I became involved with LeaderCast. It's hard to tell that story any shorter than I just did, but that's what got us here today. Jeff Dudan (09:49.647) Now here's my takeaway. You have an incredible wife. She's a pain. That's a that's a that's a lot of change. And you know it you have at least some level of explanation you have to do when you're getting ready to make a career change. So you know good on you. You can sell. So so so but the production. Well. Joe Boyd (09:52.846) I told you. Joe Boyd (09:58.382) Yeah. Joe Boyd (10:06.446) Yeah. Yeah. Joe Boyd (10:14.638) It's not like I was killing it anywhere, right? It's like I'm gonna try something else that might or might not work. We'll see what happens. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (10:19.919) Well, you know what? It's seasons of life, man. It's so great to have. I'm in many entrepreneurs. We're all the same. It's you. The variety and the newness of something is something that we seek. And I've had four or five lives within a life and they've all been great. They've all been time appropriate. And, you know, now I'm just in this one for right now. But no, very cool. Amazing story. Joe Boyd (10:28.814) Yeah. Joe Boyd (10:42.35) Right. Yeah. From Film Producer to Faith Leader… Again Jeff Dudan (10:48.687) And the production background as it relates to something like leader cast which was very high production value is and Is that why that was such a good fit for you? But I guess you had been they had been a client for a while So you you knew the ins and outs of the show? Joe Boyd (10:51.886) Thank you. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, you're not supposed to have favorite clients, but they're one of my favorites. I just really resonated with the message that they had. And in some ways, you know, my church life was always in bigger churches, like churches with five, 6 ,000 members. And I was used to kind of that weekly kind of presentation in a big stage and leader cast. Jeff Dudan (11:09.231) All right. Joe Boyd (11:25.902) is that's kind of the engine that drove that machine was a yearly event like that. So it just felt really in my skill set, combining what I knew from church and also what I learned as a production. And it was coming out of COVID very much a startup and I'm an entrepreneur. I mean, it'd been around 20 years, but it had to be reborn. So that's kind of what I signed up for. And it was hard. It's a struggle. We got it in a good place now, but it was a great company with a great legacy. 22 years started by John Maxwell way back in the day in Atlanta. And the business model needed completely changed. It needed changed before COVID, but COVID kind of almost killed it. And so it took a lot. It took like the height of my ability to sort of lead to get it where it was. And... Jeff Dudan (12:02.031) Okay. How Joe Boyd Took the Helm at Leadercast Joe Boyd (12:19.822) To continue with our theme two weeks ago, I stepped down as CEO at LeaderCast. So I ran it actively for two and a half years. My hope was always to be able to step down really as soon as I could and handed it over to a team that's way more qualified than me now to run that kind of company. But I felt like I probably had it in me to turn it around and get it where it needed to go. And I think I did it, but it was a struggle. And now I'm at a season in my life where really, although, I haven't actually actively started a brand new thing for 13 years because the production company sort of morphed into Learcast. So I'm actually pretty excited right now to start something new. Jeff Dudan (13:02.959) I love to chat about that. One or two questions on LeaderCast. The scope of offerings there, I know it's an event, but is it also masterminds, classes, programs, materials, other things like that? Joe Boyd (13:18.958) Yeah, it's basically an online leadership learning portal now. So the events are still our sort of engine that drives us, but the big transition was taking it from an event company to a 24 -7, 365 leadership development platform. So that's what we've done with it. So, you know, it's a lot of companies, organizations, government entities will buy seats for their folks and you'll be able to go in. Jeff Dudan (13:23.439) Okay. Joe Boyd (13:47.694) You get the art events for free if you're part of the subscription service, but you also get a ton of classes, kind of like masterclass around leadership from some really well -known and smart folks, and lots of other sort of self -directed leadership videos and content that you can use. Jeff Dudan (14:06.639) Got it. Awesome. And you're moving into a new season of life. I get the sense, Joe, that you've got a real heart for people. It seems to be kind of a thread. Yeah, well, I mean, well, yeah, but if you want to enter, my experience is that people that want to entertain, people that want to be in front of the group have something to say and they want to have people to say it to. Joe Boyd (14:18.862) I think I do. Yeah, I do. I'm an introvert, but I do. Weirdly, but yeah. Introducing Called for Adventure: A Community for the Second Act Jeff Dudan (14:35.599) So now you're moving into this new venture called Cald for Adventure. What's that about? Joe Boyd (14:43.662) Good question. Like a good improviser, I started it 13 days ago. So it's a, I did a vision. Yeah, I did a vision exercise back in August last year. That was a, that I had done stuff like this before, but I've been putting off doing this because I knew I was, I knew that I really was not in the right place career wise. Jeff Dudan (14:48.143) Okay, awesome. Well then we called you at the right time. Joe Boyd (15:08.782) Um, and I was kind of afraid to do it, but I did it and it was basically a riding exercise to see where you want to go in three to five years. And I, I was shocked what came out of it in some ways. Like it totally makes sense now, but, uh, what I wanted to do is help people find their unique calling in the world and, uh, take that, you know, a big heroes journey and kind of Joseph Campbell, uh, fan and nerd and this idea of crossing the threshold and receiving a call from adventure and playing a little bit of the role of mentor in that hero's journey. When, when. Jeff Dudan (15:28.111) Yeah. Joe Boyd (15:38.03) Every time in a great story, every time the hero is presented with a call, they always deny it. They're scared. They say no. And usually a mentor comes along and says, no, you got this. And they usually give them a sword or some super power to use. So I fancy myself, I guess, not that I'm super smart, but I'm old now. So 51, I just turned 50. Oh, it's my birthday today. Happy birthday to me. Thank you. I appreciate it. 51. Jeff Dudan (16:01.871) Happy birthday. How is it? 51. Nice. Joe Boyd (16:06.542) Yeah. So, you know, I feel like I've got, uh, I'm at a pretty, I'm at that great age where I'm, um, I'm old, but not old yet. You know what I mean? Like I got some energy still in the tank. Um, and a lot of, a lot of failures in life lessons. So called for adventure .com right now is basically a daily blog that I'm doing and collecting folks that are really interested in finding their calling. This summer we'll start doing, uh, in -person workshops, uh, that I've been sort of. piloting, figuring out to help people kind of go away for a weekend and come out kind of knowing what's next for them. And so, but I said since day one, you know, I'm not going to pretend like I'm not an improviser. Like there's a basic direction we're heading. There's a clear like north star that I'm going to help people find their unique calling and live a grand adventure. But in terms of business plan, we're making that a little, making it up a little bit as we go with the people that want to be a part of it. Jeff Dudan (17:02.223) Who do you expect is going to resonate with the program? Why Gen X Still Matters—and Needs a Mission Joe Boyd (17:06.894) You know, that was the, uh, I had a hunch it might be people about my age. Uh, and, uh, when I was talking about it with my marketing savvy friends before I launched it, they said, who are you going to target? You should target, you know, millennials and, and Jen wine, uh, cause they, they're younger. They really need to know what to do with their lives. I was like, I can see how this would appeal to them, but I also feel like, you know, first of all, nobody targets Gen X for anything. Cause we don't exist evidently. Uh, people have completely forgotten about us, which is what they predicted. But we're about the same age. When our parents were this age, there were two bestselling books. One was The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and the other was a book called Halftime by Bob Buford. And they were both about for boomers entering their 50s. It was kind of, it was that time that they started to ask, what's life all about? What's my purpose? I got a lot of time left, hopefully. And I feel like I would like to kind of play that role for my generation a little bit. I don't need to be the only one, but I feel there's a place for me. to kind of help people say, okay, you know, and of course everyone's life stage is different, but a lot of us that chose to have kids in our twenties, they're getting, they're starting to leave the house and they're saying we could live to be 120. I don't know if I can, but you know, some of us still got 70 years left. We should probably figure out what to do with those years, right? And how about at least the next 20, at least the next 20 we should figure out. But. Jeff Dudan (18:26.255) Yeah, I'm I feel like my I'm watching reruns all the time now, I don't know about another 50 or 70 years of this I It would have to get it would have to get really interesting Joe. Oh bad Joe Boyd (18:37.422) I hear you man. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what fires me up. It's helping. And, you know, so far it's only been a couple of weeks, but just the folks that have connected, had about 500 people connect, sign up to be a part of it with no marketing or anything, just kind of word of mouth. So I'm pretty happy about that. And just kind of, I said going in, I don't care how many people are a part of it. Let's just find like -minded folks and start to figure it out together. And it really wanted to grow into a community, not just kind of an online platform. Jeff Dudan (18:47.919) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (18:53.359) Okay. Jeff Dudan (19:13.903) What kind of unique challenges do people have today that maybe in your time as a pastor has really changed? Everyone talks about, of course, social media, the internet. We have a disrespectful culture now where people have moved from online into in -person to be overtly disrespectful, and it seems to be. More so than it used to be, especially when I grew up. I mean, it was, I mean, you didn't talk back to parents. You didn't do that kind of stuff. So, you know, there's a lot of work to do here in the space that you're talking about. What types of things are you detecting today that were maybe a little bit different than in your leadership roles of churches that you were dealing with? Everyone’s Performing: Social Media, Shame, and the Lost Art of Presence Joe Boyd (20:11.15) Yeah, you know what, I mean what comes to mind first is like I don't... I feel like everything's more performative. And it does tie in, I think, to social media, or that we're constantly trying to capture moments, especially ourselves in our best light. And that's very normal. Like, if our parents had social media, they would have done the same thing. It's very human. I think there's an intersection with... Jeff Dudan (20:20.815) Mm. Joe Boyd (20:45.262) the technology we have now and our human instinct to have people want to like us and see us in our best light, that is sort of making everyone a bit of a performer in a 24 seven away. And that as a performer myself, like I know you can't live on stage all the time, like, and it'll destroy you. And then you, you live, you know, for approval and likes. And one of the things, Jeff Dudan (21:04.847) Yeah. Joe Boyd (21:12.526) I just did a, my blog today was 51 things I believe are 51. And the first one was, I know one of these is wrong, I just don't know which one. That's the first thing I believe. But, you know, one of them was that nobody is thinking about you as much as you think they are. Like, and the other thing is that's a good thing. You know, people will say, like, you know, I forgot to say a happy birthday to so and so, so I'm afraid to talk to them. They don't know. Like, and if they do, then what a weird friend to have that would be mad about that. Like, I just think there's like, I think we are constantly assuming because of the world we live in that everyone, the people wake up in the morning, look at their phone and say, what's Joe doing today? But, but they don't, they don't like, and I think they're, I think maybe I don't want to age you, but when we were growing up, we still had those insecurities. I did. Uh, but it, it was in real time and it was with real face to face. Jeff Dudan (21:54.639) Right. Jeff Dudan (22:08.111) Yeah. Joe Boyd (22:09.678) And that was still hard enough to deal with. So I feel like the other thing I would say is we talk a lot, and we should, we talk a lot about kids growing up this way and how detrimental it is, but my parents are that way. They're in their seventies. Like it's, we're all that way now. It's not just kids. And so I think we need to like, it's going to take discipline at some level to use the do not disturb on our iPhone and to go on a walk. You know what I mean? Jeff Dudan (22:35.695) Well, yeah, man. And like, I just wrote down a few comments and, you know, and part of it is, I think we used to be more present because we didn't have a choice. I mean, it was like when you're out, you don't have a phone. and you're out, your parents can't get you unless they start calling around people's house looking for you. You're with the group you're with. As Dion Sanders said at our conference, he's like, be where your feet are. Be present. And I think he hits on that because so many people aren't, man. You're looking at your phone, you're with, you see it all the time. I see it in my family, man. There'll be times I'll look around, we're sitting in the same room together, everybody's looking at their phone. It's like, hey, Joe Boyd (23:06.83) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (23:21.583) And for me, I don't have a big friend group like everybody I know is here. So I don't have to look at my phone. They're all in the room. Anybody anybody who's going to text me or Snapchat me is sitting on the couch right now. But and then I saw something on the Internet today or maybe my wife was sharing it with me last night. But yeah, she was listening to a podcast and there was a study that said kids that grew up being outdoors. Joe Boyd (23:26.862) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (23:49.327) were remarkably happier than the kids that didn't. And I think the inference is that the kids that were outdoors had less time that they were just going from screen to screen to screen, and they were actually out there. And they had developed a little bit more patience. Not everything's going to happen right now. I'm in a hunting stand, or I'm fishing, or I'm doing some of these other outdoor activities. And they become a little bit more resilient, or they're... You know, like for me, even at my advanced age, and I'm older than you a little bit, but I have the same problems with social media that I'm not immune to it. And I'm constantly going down the rabbit hole and saying, you know, that was just 30 minutes that I just absolutely wasted. And now my brain's tired and I should know better than that type thing. But we're all susceptible to it. Joe Boyd (24:42.958) Yeah, and it also doesn't do a lot of good to like, I don't know, to pile on, we're all addicted to it at some level. So it's, when you're struggling with an addiction, you don't love it when there's someone in your life constantly telling you to stop. You gotta figure it out on your own, right? So I think one of the other things I wrote today is I just think curiosity solves a lot of problems. And it - Jeff Dudan (24:52.559) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (25:01.551) That's right. Joe Boyd (25:12.782) So when you feel like something needs to change instead of telling yourself or others around you, we need to, instead of saying, okay, we're not gonna use our phones from seven to nine PM every night. And then the kids are just upset with you for two years. Let's ask questions with the kids if they're old enough to process about what do you all think we could do without our phones? What would be fun for you? Like really trying to approach things from curiosity versus. we should be doing this or we shouldn't be doing that. Because in my experience, nothing makes people want to do things more than when you tell them they shouldn't do it. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (25:48.527) Oh, 100%. Yeah. I'll tell you, I went to Seinfeld in New York, and he was at the Beacon Theater, and it was a gift, and I went with my wife. And here's a 69 -year -old guy. There was a warm -up act. She was good. She was a popular comedian, and she did well. And before she even got off the stage, he came sprinting out there. at 69 years old, grabbed the mic stand, swung it around his head, put it down like a matador, and just commenced to just crush for like an hour. But the first thing that he did was everybody, because he's one of the few comedians, big time comedians, that doesn't make you put your phone in the bag. So now you go to a show and it's, you know, Chappelle and all, you know, it's like, hey, you put your phone in the bag. Joe Boyd (26:44.302) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (26:45.679) They don't want their bits getting out there so that people don't feel cheated when they come to see them. They'll put the crowd work out there online, but they won't put whatever their bits are right now. And so all these phones are up. And he's like, sure, go ahead, take a picture. He goes, you and your phones, you're never where you are. Here's what you're doing. You're going to take this video, you're going to miss my show, you're going to take this video, you're going to send it to somebody, and they're going to say, nice. Joe Boyd (26:53.166) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (27:15.951) He goes, and then the first time you're going to get to watch the show is eight years from now when it comes up in your memories. And then that's when you're going to get to watch the joke. And it was like everybody's phone just like he shamed them into putting their phones down. And I don't think I saw another phone up for the entire show. I put mine away and I would like I felt like I'm not going to pick it up and get a picture because and we sat there and had the best time just being present and knowing that we weren't going to have a recording of it. Joe Boyd (27:22.03) All right. Yeah. Shame, yeah. Joe Boyd (27:37.998) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (27:46.031) or any of it. It was about 30 % stuff I'd heard before, but about, you know, the rest of it seemed relatively new, but it was really interesting. It was such a mature way to handle it, and it's probably why he's the best. Joe Boyd (27:54.733) Yeah. Joe Boyd (28:00.685) Yeah, very smart of him, quite calculated. He's kind of a neurotic freak, but in a good way, I think. I actually don't mind. We saw Bruno Mars in Vegas a couple months ago and they took our phones. And he did a song called, I Took Your Phones Away. That's how he started the concert with the song that he wrote. And it's actually kind of nice. I was like, oh, because I was holding it. So I knew no one was using it. Jeff Dudan (28:03.407) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:08.527) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:13.647) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:19.279) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:23.919) Yeah. Joe Boyd (28:27.374) but uh... it was kind of nice to like i mean you want is at home that i can walk like a lot of some Jeff Dudan (28:27.375) That's right. Five Years From Now: Joe’s Vision for Life and Leadership Jeff Dudan (28:32.527) Yeah, yeah. So play it forward for me five years for you, Joe. You took time to write the vision. Can you give us a little bit of insight into what's in it? Joe Boyd (28:43.598) I did. Joe Boyd (28:48.014) Sure. It was five years, so four and a half years from now. I was doing three things. I was launched this called for adventure and that was my main sort of career outlet. And it was primarily doing these workshops around the world, doing some keynote speaking with it and then helping folks online find their calling and making a living with that. My wife's a travel agent. So... about a third of my time was spent traveling with her. She gets all the, she's going to Hawaii tomorrow, I'm not. So part of my dream is to have a job where, right, I get to go on about 30 % of the trips right now. She does great. So she gets, and she turns things down. So she could be gone 20 weeks a year on free trips. And so I'm like, I want a job where I can do that or don't have to work all the time. So I'm. Jeff Dudan (29:25.455) Well, that's a happy birthday for you, sir. Jeff Dudan (29:34.991) Mm. Jeff Dudan (29:40.495) Yeah. Joe Boyd (29:46.318) In five years, I'll be traveling with her more. And then my, uh, the thing, so the, the visioning exercise that I did, you write for 20 minutes without taking your hand off the page. About as if it is five years in the future. I learned it from a man named Ari Winesweg, who's actually going to speak at, at leader cast this year. Um, so it was a, towards the last word where my hand started to cramp like 10 minutes, 15 minutes in. And I was like, I don't have anything else to say. And what was interesting as I, uh, The last things I wrote was about producing a comedy show in Vegas and moving back there, at least having a place there. So according to my vision statement in five years, I'm getting ready to put up a comedy show in Vegas. Let's see how it goes. Jeff Dudan (30:31.823) Oh man, that would be outstanding. You know, events, there was a lot of consternation about events, about trade shows during COVID. Everything moved online and people said this is just the way it's gonna be from now on. But my experience is that trade shows and events are just making a strong comeback right now. Do you, what have you seen with LeaderCast? I know that you just stepped down as the CEO, but what's been the trends? And then I'm really interested, anything that you could share if somebody was out there wanting to put events on, like what's the funnel to get somebody connected? Is it pitch the event first and then you get people into the programs or? You know, how do people enter that environment? Like, what's the entry point for people inside of an ecosystem like LeaderCast? The Truth About Events: Building Ecosystems, Not Just Crowds Joe Boyd (31:36.75) Yeah, I mean, first of all, trade shows are back for sure. Lederkess is not a trade show. There's always, you know, the, I guess there's the cynical part of me a little bit that's like, you know, on the company dime, we get to go to somewhere warm and sell our stuff and listen to a few people. And it's not bad. That's the way the world works. And I've enjoyed a trade show myself from time to time. But part of what makes the economy of a trade show work is that it's really networking. Jeff Dudan (31:44.047) Right, right. Jeff Dudan (31:58.639) Sure. Joe Boyd (32:05.742) and cross selling, right? That's a huge part of it. Leadercast was never that. It was just a leader cast. It was just a leadership event that the like revolutionary thing about leader cast 20 years ago was it was simulcast all over the world. So we did this big event in Atlanta with 5 ,000 people in an arena. And then at one point we had almost a thousand what we called host sites around the world that would show it at the same time. So 20 years ago, it was kind of a big deal to be able to pull all that off. Satellite. Jeff Dudan (32:32.431) Yeah. And that was when Maxwell, was Maxwell involved with it at that point in time? Joe Boyd (32:37.71) He started the first year or two, then my buddy Jeremy Kubitschek took it over and he's the one that really built it out. He's with Giant Worldwide now. Jeremy's a great guy. But, but so the original pitch of Leadercast worked, worked great until it kind of didn't, which was going to like smaller chambers of commerce, more rural areas and other places and saying, look, you can't afford to have Peyton Manning and you know, Seth Godin and whoever on your stage, you know, that. Jeff Dudan (32:41.999) Okay. Joe Boyd (33:06.478) There were years, LeaderCast probably spent half a million dollars on honorary. So the pitch was you'll never get these people to come to your Chamber of Commerce in Iowa, but you can have them live on video. And then really LeaderCast started these little, a lot of chambers. There was like franchises. So they would actually make a little bit of money at it. They would license it from us, put it up in their community. People pay 30 bucks ticket to come see it, that kind of thing. And it was really working great that way. Jeff Dudan (33:31.855) Sure. Joe Boyd (33:34.318) 2016, 17, then started to decline a little. And I think in our world, what really shifted was we still have some folks that do that. They love it. It works for them. It's great for them. But a lot of other people saying, look, we were doing like, before COVID, we were doing eight to 12 events a year and Leadercast was one of them. And we're trimming that down to three or four. Like that we were doing too many. So it's not that in those, in that chamber world, a lot of them were hearing back. It's just we don't want to have a full -time person to do all these events. We're just going to do a few So for us what what what we and the other thing that shifted for us is we start having a lot more private we say private but like companies and organizations That wanted to license our content just to show to their people they weren't trying to make money off of it or do their own event You know NASA's one of our biggest clients Home Depot Marathon oil like They just want to show it to their 5 ,000 people and so we Jeff Dudan (34:09.583) Got it. Joe Boyd (34:34.254) We started to see that these companies still like the idea of it feeling like an event, but they kind of do want people to be able to watch it at their desk or at home. So for us, that's what shifted. But it had started to shift just in the culture pre -COVID and then COVID sort of really changed it. I would say, I don't even know if I answered your question, but that's where we're with LeaderCast. But for folks that want to just do events, You know, I just think that you need to know why and generally the best events, usually the event itself is not where you're looking to get the bottom line ROI, right? So you might do a big event, but you have, it feeds something else. I think it's pretty hard to do like a huge leadership event unless you have. Jeff Dudan (35:19.279) Right. Joe Boyd (35:27.79) someone like a Mark Cuban or someone behind it, like some face that you can draw in, like Dave Ramsey does his pretty well, I'm sure. That guy makes money all the time. But I would say it can fall into the money pit category if you just want to put on something really cool and get people there. It's a lot like when I was producing movies, actually. They used to say you should have at least equal your production budget for marketing. So a lot of people would make an independent movie for $5 million and then have no money for marketing. Nobody's ever going to see it. Jeff Dudan (35:37.039) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:57.103) Mm. Joe Boyd (35:57.934) So I think there are some similarities there. But I love the X2 conference in Utah. And that whole thing is just a leader to get folks interested in their product, which it's totally filling because I can't remember the name of the product right now. The one that does surveys for... I'll think about it in a minute. So anyway, that's a lot of rambling. But that's how I would think about... Jeff Dudan (36:17.967) Ha ha ha. Joe Boyd (36:27.022) event stuff and you know it's obviously concerts are back, comedy's back, all this stuff's back. But I think in the business world, some of it's a little different than the entertainment stuff. For whatever reason, just feels that way to me. It's not all the business conferences didn't come back. It's a little harder sledding. Jeff Dudan (36:33.775) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (36:48.111) Yeah, I'm thinking about it the same way as you. So I've got a business partner that does trade shows, but their real get is leads, people that might want to get into a business. And I don't know the economics of it, but I assume it's a loss leader. And there's heavy marketing around it. You want to get people walking through. You got education going on there. So you want to stack the value. So there's all kinds of seminars going on all the time. That's well -publicized. you can get in there, you know, how to get an SBA loan, how to do this, how to do, you know, just all the different topics that people might be thinking about are happening two or three at a time in different breakout rooms around the floor and stuff like that. And then there's other people that I know that are moving, doing a lot of acquisitions in different industries. And I mean, they give away a lot of content to get these businesses in their orbit. Joe Boyd (37:40.334) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (37:46.031) and just to be able to spend two or three days with them. And maybe it's only two or 300 people in the room, but that might represent 100 target companies that they might want to partner with or something like that. So I think to your point, an event is not the objective. An event is a sales tool. And yeah, yeah, it's marketing spend. However, for me, Joe Boyd (38:09.582) It's a marketing spend. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:15.823) I'm I'm very susceptible to those environments because that's really where you get deep your full when I go to something like that, man I'm fully engaged. I feel like I'm getting value and You know even with all the business I've done I'm like well I'll be lucky if I can get to talk to these people that you know are up on the stage or you know having You know sharing their experiences and whatnot. So yeah, it's an it's an interesting time for all the technology and this kind of goes to where Joe Boyd (38:23.086) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:44.591) I just answered a question for somebody that came in on one of our feeds and I don't even know what it was, but I did, we had a podcast on AI and the question was, what are the jobs in the future and the careers that you're gonna hire salaried people, that companies are continue to hire salaried employees for versus what's gonna get eliminated with AI? And I really don't know from a, the perspective of saying which, I mean, I know that AI is doing a lot of coding, it's creating a lot of copy, it's writing a lot of content, it's launching campaigns, and it's doing all this kind of stuff. That being said, if you don't look at it, sometimes it doesn't make that much sense. It's not, you know, it's not, you know, a machine still doesn't have the ability to say, this is an interesting hook. It says this clips the right length, the right amount of people are talking. Joe Boyd (39:33.966) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Dudan (39:43.758) I heard these words, but the clip you look at it and it's like, well, as a human, I'm not at least been interested in what that thing kicked out. But if you go all the way back to Google and how Google built their company, and there's a great book called How Google Works, and smart creatives. So as we go forward in this world, people not that have the answers, but people that can ask the better questions are going to be the ones that. Joe Boyd (39:58.894) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (40:13.679) are of high value and then it gets right back down to we're tribal people. So getting face to face with people, hanging out with people, people that are warm and they can smile, they can build relationships. Like those are the types of skills that are gonna come back and be, I think, of the highest order of importance. Because a lot of this other stuff that you used to have to spend a year coding a program, like you ask the right question now, it'll spit it out for you. You know, build me Tetris in code and here it comes. So it's interesting. And I think for a lot of people, and then because of there's all different personality types and learning styles out there, people that, I mean, it really can create a lot of, I think confusion or angst about what people should do with their living, especially now. And I think that's why I get so many questions about that. You get these young... Joe Boyd (40:46.478) Right. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:11.855) 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds. It seems to be a particular amount of people that actually get my book discernment because it's kind of targeted towards them or, you know, consuming our content and they're questioning. They're trying to figure out like, okay, you're an older guy. You've been around a little bit. Like tell me where to go and what to do and where to focus. And, you know, I'm not really sure that I have the right answer all the time for them. Joe Boyd (41:41.838) You probably don't, nobody does. But you know, I... Jeff Dudan (41:41.967) which I guess is no, no, I don't, which. Joe Boyd (41:48.206) So, you know, I, well, I hate to keep going back to my list today, but one of them was AI is going to destroy us or it's not, I don't know. That's one of the things I believe. Like, it was just so early, like we don't, it's like, it's like you're, I mean, it's like the internet being born. No one could actually predict, of course, we know it's gonna disrupt our lives. We know that for sure. We know it's gonna bring opportunity and we know it's going to, automate things that are going to take jobs away. We know that for sure. That's what always happens when we, that's what there aren't a lot of wagon wheel salesmen anymore because of Henry Ford. So like we know that's going to happen. So I think there's some like common sense things. Like I don't know if I'd send my kid into get a coding degree right now, but I also think we, you know, I'm still pretty big fan of like pursuing your, your passion. Jeff Dudan (42:28.303) That's right. Joe Boyd (42:45.294) Um, and there will, I think there will always be a way to do that. Um, I think paralysis would be the weird, the thing that I would worry about with younger folks is that they, they don't do anything cause they don't know where it's going because when none of us knew where it was going ever, you know, those of us, I think, I think about like things like COVID obviously, and then like 9 -11 folks our age, you know, none on September 10th, uh, everything's normal and then one thing happens that really directly affects a lot of people but not most of us and then it our whole world has changed forever so we're all it's always we believe in a myth of like predictability right and so AI is just one of those things that's showing us no you can't predict it but you got to keep going keep marching can't be stagnant. Jeff Dudan (43:41.135) Yeah, oh man Ray Dalio have you ever seen his 28 minute video called on principles the little Caricature thing so if you go to YouTube and you google Ray Dalio principles, there's this 28 minute video I watched it the year I sold my businessman. I watched it like 50 times It's the greatest 28 minutes by the way. He's pretty sharp made a few bucks and he it He talks about you know the mistake that he made is that he in making and bankrupting his company early basically was because he didn't look far enough back into the patterns. And if he only would have looked back far enough, he would have seen that the pattern was there, but he didn't look far enough back. And people's biggest mistake that they make is believing that the immediate future is going to be some small variation on the immediate past. And that's like, I see that so clearly now and I think that way. And it's like, well, you know, we can spend all this money because we're just gonna make more. And it's always gonna, I said, there's no guarantee that what's been happening or happened to you once is going to happen again. And, you know, so the, you know, this, you know, people, and of course we wanna get comfortable. We don't like things that change that much, but the rate of change that we've learned to accept since really 2007 when all the fangs came out and phones and all of this kind of stuff. But it's potentially accelerating and at an accelerating rate here. And I think to your point, what I really like about Call for Adventure is that it puts... Joe Boyd (45:27.598) Oh. Jeff Dudan (45:37.199) sense of purpose into people's minds regardless of what the universe gives them and I've said to my kids over and over again I've said to anybody who asked me everybody needs an adventure in life I had one you had several including working at a chapel in Vegas I mean like that's such a great story Joe Boyd (45:59.854) Yeah, getting fired. Jeff Dudan (46:04.527) Right and uh, and like how many people can claim? That that they did that and what'd you learn and what are the people you met? I can't even imagine some of the couples that came in what they're You know their stories and did you did you talk to them and ask them? Like what do you want me to talk about or was it pretty much just? Joe Boyd (46:20.686) That was such a weird gig. It was 50, they did four weddings an hour. So you could do, there's 15 minute weddings and they'd choose if they wanted religious or secular and off you go. And that was it. That was a weird job. I might've purposely subconsciously got fired. Cause I don't know if I could have done it for very long. But yeah, I mean, I think the... Jeff Dudan (46:35.023) Nice. Jeff Dudan (46:44.911) Yeah. Pain, Purpose, and Porch-Worthy Wisdom Joe Boyd (46:49.102) One of the things I do deeply believe is that it's our failure and the pain that we go through that actually is what informs our life call, which is part of why it's a little easier for me to work with folks that have had some measure of pain and failure. Because I think looking back on it, that... There's something about having gone through that that shapes us in a specific way that's unique to us, that then propels us to do something about it into the world. And I think if we don't do something about it with our positive instincts, we will end up doing things about it in a negative way. So for me, when I talk about being called for adventure, it's a lot of work, some work in what you've done well in your life. You need to take that into account. But it's a lot of work and especially the repetitive sort of failures in your life and the things that you've had to learn the hard way, you know, for many people creates a passion to help other folks through that sort of thing. And so the, you know, I'm a pretty simple guy in that sense of I think we're here to help each other along and that we actually in the second half of our life, whatever that is, where most of our meaning actually comes from. I was offered my dream job several times throughout my life, five years after I wanted it. And I turned it down half the time. I was like, eh. So there's something about ambition that gets you to a point of realizing, kind of like it's a little meaningless, a lot of the stuff we chase after. That's very Ecclesiastes to go back on my biblical roots. Everything's a chasing after the wind, right? But that's such a beautiful day when you realize that because in our own insignificance we start to build back a significant role for ourselves to kind of help people along so I Sound like a pastor again. I guess that's what I'm doing. I'm just a secular pastor at this point Jeff Dudan (48:51.279) Well, so I mean, it's, yeah, well, look, it's a little bit about letting go to regain a toehold again in a better place. Joe Boyd (49:00.91) Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing more, always talk about failure gives you humility and wisdom. And it's actually the only, it's the only way to get it. If you've met anyone that feels like they've never failed, they probably have, but they feel like it. You don't want to be friends with them, they're the worst. They have no, like no humility, no wisdom. They've just been successful their whole life. The people you want, when you sit on the porch with, or when you're an old man, on your rocking chair, sitting on the porch, Jeff Dudan (49:08.655) Yeah. Joe Boyd (49:30.638) You want to be the one that the neighborhood kids want to come up to and talk to because A, you got stories, but B, you're approachable because you've learned that these kids are worth my time, right? And then, and you're humble. You don't want to be like hiding in your private jet. You can have one, but you want to be accessible to the world. So that I want to create a bunch of folks that have that kind of spirit about them or help them become that. Jeff Dudan (49:41.807) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (49:47.855) now. Jeff Dudan (50:00.079) Joe, that's awesome. I'm excited for your new venture. How can people get in touch with you? Joe Boyd (50:07.63) I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, Joe Boyd, and then calledforeadventure .com right now. It's just a link to my sub stack. So you can sign up for free. There's an option to pay. That's just to kind of be supportive. You get everything for free. So if you go to calledforeadventure .com, give me your email address and I will appropriately bother you about 9 a .m. Eastern every work day. With something. All right. Jeff Dudan (50:31.247) Nice, outstanding. And if Joe, last question, if you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life and make an impact, what would that be? I know you just did 51 of them. Joe Boyd (50:46.798) do. Jeff Dudan (50:48.815) Pick a good one. Joe Boyd (50:57.39) Try not to make it a rant. Jeff Dudan (51:01.007) Go for it. Joe Boyd (51:03.054) Almost every day you interact with someone that's having the worst week of their life, but they won't tell you. So assume it's everyone. Jeff Dudan (51:12.015) That is beautiful. I love that. Yeah. Joe Boyd (51:13.518) Yeah, it's about grace. It's about treating, treat everyone the way you would want to be treated on your worst day. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (51:24.559) Love it. Well said. This has been Joe Boyd with Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Joe. Joe Boyd (51:36.366) Thanks, man. Not a brute. Appreciate all the time. Jeff Dudan (51:38.767) Yeah, man.
Brief Summary In this fast-paced, future-focused episode, Jeff Dudan talks with Cody Schneider, the founder of Swell AI, about how artificial intelligence is completely transforming content marketing, local search, and the future of media. From running print-on-demand side hustles to helping companies scale digital content with AI workflows, Cody shares the real-world tools and strategies companies need to stay relevant in 2025 and beyond. Key Takeaways AI is changing marketing faster than most businesses realize : Companies clinging to outdated strategies risk becoming irrelevant as consumer behavior shifts to social-first, AI-filtered discovery. Swell AI automates content repurposing at scale : Cody’s platform turns long-form video, audio, and podcast content into SEO blog posts, newsletters, social clips, and more—all in one workflow. Gen Z is searching on TikTok, not Google : Younger audiences trust content from creators over Google Maps and websites, signaling a major shift in how businesses must position themselves online. The future of SEO is AI ranking, not just backlinks : Tools like Perplexity AI are indexing trust based on total digital footprint, not traditional ranking factors. Volume beats perfection in content distribution : Cody shares how some clients run 30+ TikTok and Instagram accounts to test and amplify viral clips across platforms. AI models trained on top-performing content will replace generic content generation : Future tools will source only from viral, high-performing content to improve relevance and engagement. Featured Quote “Find a skill you can learn online, sell it online, and scale it. That’s the foundation of building something real.” — Cody Schneider TRANSCRIPT AI Marketing Trends with Cody Schneider Jeff Dudan (00:02.766) Welcome everybody to the home front. I am Jeff Duden and I'm here with Cody Schneider today and we are super excited to learn about AI digital marketing and some of this fast dynamic changes that are going on right now across all sectors of business. And Cody's got an incredible background he's going to share with us. Welcome Cody. Cody Schneider (00:25.326) Jeff, thanks for having me, man. Super excited to be here, so. Jeff Dudan (00:28.334) Yeah, awesome. Thanks for being on. Cody, we always like to start. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, kind of where you grew up and who Cody Schneider is? Cody Schneider (00:38.734) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm from the Northwest originally from the small town up in North Idaho called Coeur d 'Alene. It's about two hours from the Canadian border. Yeah, spent a lot of time there and then a little bit of time in Denver, Colorado during high school, but that's kind of the origin. Grew up in an entrepreneurial household. There was no real way that I was going to escape that. Both parents were just kind of profiteers. I don't know. That's the only way I really know how to describe it. My dad did kind of like just logistics for forever. So brokering a lot of like international like products into my mom was in the medical space. So yeah, I've had real jobs and have also probably had way more not real jobs throughout my career. But the big thing that I'm doing now and kind of building is in this AI like media space. But before that, I worked in the e -comm world. did a lot of stuff there in like programmatic SEO. So basically what that is, is building out like hundreds of thousands of landing pages for these like large brands. And then also worked in a, or at a B2B digital marketing agency where we worked with like manufacturing goods companies. So think about like people that manufacture like doors, windows, wood products, anything for like home building. That was kind of our target customer. And what I did there was help them. transition from like traditional media and traditional marketing into digital marketing and really did all their digital strategy stuff. And then that, I don't know how it led into working for like early stage startups. So I ended up out in San Francisco working for a company called Rupa Health. We ended up, or I was employee six there and ended up helping take them from a $20 million valuation to $110 million valuation in about six months. Uh, one of the things we did there was basically just like spin up this massive media arm. So like podcasts, live classes, chopping that up in the clips, distributing in the cross social channels, writing blog posts, et cetera. You know, you, you name it, we probably did it. Um, and then building out the team and kind of infrastructure and the workflows and processes around that. So that's kind of what I'm obsessed with is I see where the market's going for like most companies is they have to create some type of. From Screen Printing to B2B SaaS: Cody’s Entrepreneurial Journey Cody Schneider (02:56.046) digital media component of their business if they want to stay relevant. And so we're really looking at and exploring, you know, how are companies doing that? What are the tools they're using and what really what are the workflows that they're building and the processes they're building based off of those tools. So yeah, happy to dive deeper on any of that, but that's kind of the high level. So. Jeff Dudan (03:16.046) When you were growing up, what were your platforms of choice? Cody Schneider (03:18.574) Yeah. Yeah. So I learned graphic design pretty young. Um, I had this, uh, art teacher who taught me how to screen print t -shirts. Uh, and then from that, I took a Photoshop illustrator class and then I was just basically hawking bootleg band t -shirts and anything else that people wanted to buy, like throughout the school and then kind of built up notoriety, uh, within that. Um, and you know, for me, it was like this like aha moment. I remember I sold this, like, it was like a, uh, roller hockey club, like 25 shirts. And I bought them at Michael's for, I think it was like, you know, at the time, like 25 bucks. Um, and then, uh, yeah, like ended up selling it to him for like a couple of grand or something. And I was like, this is a no brainer. Like, why wouldn't I do this all day long? Um, so yeah, that, that actually is how I ended up in e -commerce. I got into the print on demand world really early. So I was doing graphic design work, figure out how to do data analytics on these platforms like Etsy. Um, and what I mean by that is basically signed. Jeff Dudan (04:02.798) Yeah. Cody Schneider (04:14.574) like finding best -selling products that were on those platforms and then creating, uh, like similar products based off of what was performing well, and then using these, uh, outsourced companies to print, uh, and ship and do all kinds of the production of, uh, those goods. Um, but yeah, that was kind of the, my origin into all of this was really that I, for a lot of people, I feel like it's the same. They like sell sweatshirts or t -shirts, and then somehow they end up in B2B software, which is the most ridiculous thing, but. Jeff Dudan (04:43.662) Yeah, well, look, it goes a couple of ways. So when I was growing up, all of our side hustles were, you know, we pressure washing or service type businesses, washing cars, things like that. And then my kids, as they grew up on Etsy, I got a kid, you know, 3D printing aftermarket RC car parts and selling them on Etsy and, you know, seeing what cars are coming out. And then before the manufacturer could make all the accessories, they would design some. Cody Schneider (05:02.798) Love it. Jeff Dudan (05:12.398) on some CAD software and then print it and then people would come and buy it. And, you know, it's a lot of parents are saying, looking at what their kids are doing online, but man, it's these side hustles turn into real material advantages, especially when it comes to demand generation, understanding how to just make money on the internet and do these types of things. So I'd like to talk a little bit about AI and Cody Schneider (05:28.558) 100%. Jeff Dudan (05:42.03) You know, I've been traveling a lot lately and I've been going to different masterminds and different groups. And I've just come to believe that marketing is changing faster than anybody really understands in terms of how customers are acquired, how the customer journey is automated, how content's produced, where it's placed, how awareness for things. is being generated in consumers' minds, even though they might have not thought they were a buyer and suggested it. It's really psychological. It's really powerful. Where is your head with that? I mean, how fast... If I'm a business and I've been marketing the same way for the last 10 years, but I've been making incremental changes in my business. I'm going to do a blog. Maybe I can add a podcast. I still have a diversity of lead sources. I'm advertising on these different platforms. I think a lot of that's going to change really, really fast for huge swaths of the economy. What's your view on that? TikTok vs Google: Why Gen Z Searches Differently Cody Schneider (06:46.798) Yeah, I mean, I think it's redefining like any base technology changes the constraints, right? And like, this is a base technology. It's just like what mobile did to like how people discover things previously. Like traditionally, before we had the iPhone and the phone in everybody's pocket, it was like you would do a search on desktop and what you needed to do was way different than, you know, when mobile happened. The same thing is happening here. I think the biggest, like what I'm... I'm a data junkie, right? So like, I'm just looking at like the trends that are naturally happening and adjusting based on that. So like some of the things that we're seeing, especially when it comes to like local or small businesses or service businesses that are in specific geographies is a majority of people are starting to use social is the way that they find those businesses because they don't trust Google maps. They don't trust like Google. Um, if you look at like the data on Gen Z in particular, a majority of their searches start on like Tik TOK or Instagram. to find companies that are in their geography, especially when it's like anything that's food, service companies related, it's like that's the origin of their search and then maybe they go to another place to find contact information, et cetera. So just thinking about that and that adds a larger shift in the mindset of the consumer. And it kind of makes sense, right? There's so much spam that exists in these traditional channels, like looking at Google. Like, again, I started in the SEO world, like majority of searches that are related to like HVAC companies, is some guy in the middle of nowhere Arkansas that has 50 different websites that he ranks for like all these tier two cities across the US, right? So he's just like, capturing leads and then selling those to like local HVAC companies. In contrast, I think people are starting to understand that. They're dissatisfied with that experience. And what they're looking for is more of a human connection that has a face. So if, you know, here's Sarah and she is like, you should go to this restaurant. I had an unbelievable experience. You know, it's in Denver, Colorado, blah, blah, blah. She shows you like the food and the ambiance and that like you're here's this person that is like, you can directly connect to that. If you have a bad experience, you're like, Oh, well, I don't trust Sarah anymore. Not some, you know, person behind a website that I have no idea who they are. So I think that's just like consumer preferences are changing. Jeff Dudan (08:38.99) That's right. Automate 50% of Your Workflow in 72 Hours with AI Cody Schneider (09:07.63) I really depends on the, the industry that you're in. Like if you're in B2B in particular, like we're just seeing podcasting be this unbelievable, like distribution mechanism for these companies, because you can have the founder of the company or the CEO of the company, you know, one hour a week, they sit down and they talk with an industry expert about a topic that they know their customer is going to find interesting and relevant. And like, that's all the mental energy they have to expand. or expend and then they take, we take that long form piece of content. You chop it up into clips for social. You make blog posts based off of the insights, the key takeaways, you write social posts for LinkedIn and Twitter and wherever else your target customer is. And suddenly like your entire, your marketing team has all of the marketing content that they need for an entire week. Right. And so I think that like those, these things are how we're seeing kind of the market change, but it really just depends on like the industry that you're in. Are you local? Like, are you national? Are you selling B2B? Is a long sale cycles? Is it short? Is it, um, you know, purchasing decision that we could talk about, like kind of all of those different ways that we're seeing these AI tools use. The biggest thing that I would say, just to kind of frame this conversation is like for a lot of companies that we talk to, they're like, Oh, I'm going to change my whole, like, you know, internal workflow and redesign. You know, it's like this almost like massive adoption and like, we're just like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Like, first off, like, what are you doing right now? What can we automate away? And a lot of the times like 50 % of a company's workflow can be automated away with these AI tools. So, okay, sweet. That can be spun up in three days and in 72 hours, you just automated away, you know, 50 % of this like time consuming task. And so that can be a massively just like instant, you know, impactful thing that these companies can do. And so anyways, I always try to kind of preface this as like, that's like a great jumping point for these conversations around this stuff. So. Jeff Dudan (11:01.358) You mentioned TikTok and Instagram. What's your experience on Snap? Cody Schneider (11:08.142) Yeah, snap. My problem with snap, um, is like, it's not like personally, it's not used as a search engine is the biggest thing we've seen really great results on the ad side. Um, in particular, uh, like, I mean, just incredibly cheap advertising. There's actually really cheap advertising on Twitter right now. It's kind of a cesspool, but like you can get just like, I mean, we've seen some ads that we've ran on Twitter get like 0 .0001 cent clicks. Uh, Jeff Dudan (11:21.39) Right. Cody Schneider (11:37.774) to the site, right? And it's like, the traffic is like not super targeted, but like, I can't get, you know, for, I can get a thousand people to go to a website for like one cent basically is the idea. Like that's like mind blowing, right? Um, so with Snap, I think about that, like a lot of the times it's like, the challenge is that the demographics of the, of the site are, uh, not as robust as these other places. Like I can get a really broad spectrum of people on Instagram, on Tik TOK they've got, you know, Uh, from a psychographic and a demographic standpoint, it's a way broader. Um, but I honestly love to learn, like, if you guys are experiencing, like seeing some success on snap, I think the biggest thing I've seen it be a really good at is like lead Jen for like internet money, like how to make like, you know, start your first business, that type of thing. Um, I have some friends that they ran a show on snap and it was like, literally they just interviewed, interviewed like people about their companies. And then it was like into a training program for them. But yeah, just kind of. Jeff Dudan (12:20.206) That's right. Cody Schneider (12:36.846) sharing what I know. Jeff Dudan (12:37.742) Yeah, I was in an event last week and a big YouTuber was there, a couple big YouTubers were there and they were talking about Snap and that it's one of the easiest places right now where they're making a lot of money on their content. Yeah. Cody Schneider (12:52.27) Totally, totally. I know their RPM is super high, like the payout that they're getting to the creators, cause they're trying to secure them away from, I mean, everybody's playing this game, right? It's like, why is like Elon Musk courting Mr. Beast to come on Twitter and like post to shows there. Like he's giving him these exclusive advertising rights. And like the reason for that is because they're realizing like, if we don't have these mega creators on platform and aren't paying them these high RPMs, like we just don't have. Jeff Dudan (12:57.358) Mm -hmm. That's right. Cody Schneider (13:20.398) the staying power with our user base. So. Jeff Dudan (13:23.694) Yeah, for sure. Another thing that was interesting to me, who would you think the third largest search engine is? Cody Schneider (13:33.102) man, I would say Pinterest just off the top of my head, but yeah, totally. I a hundred percent see that. I mean, it's where people go, like you start in two places to buy products, right? Especially if it's like your transactional activity, like it's Google or Amazon, right? Um, we always looked at Pinterest. I did some work in another space. Uh, and people, that's where they like plan future purchases. So it's kind of this like, you know, up the funnel from like that. I'm not trying to make this purchase decision immediately. Jeff Dudan (13:36.974) Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon Is the #3 Search Engine: What It Means for Content Creators Cody Schneider (14:01.838) But the Amazon totally makes sense. I think that's super interesting. Actually, I know that a majority of ad spend dollars have gone away from Google shopping ads to their my friend works for like one of the major Amazon like marketing consulting agencies. And she's like, we're every year we just get like 20 % more of the budget that they have allotted for like paid ad spend is being dedicated to Amazon in particular. So Jeff Dudan (14:02.542) Right. Jeff Dudan (14:06.318) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (14:27.406) Yeah, yeah, I think so. What was said was you go to Amazon and put in a search for something that you want to create a product around and then don't go to the five star reviews, go to the two and three star reviews because those are the reviews that are going to tell you what people didn't get from the product that they bought. So it'll identify the gaps in the market just by saying, hey, you know, I wish it would have had. more of this or I wish I would have had more of that. And then you can target a product to those users right there. So just interesting stuff, man. It's all out there if you, you know, so much more. I don't know if you ever read the book, How Google Works. But it was how basically, you know, how they built Google. And they identified very early that they needed creatives. And so like just massive numbers of high level creatives there. Cody Schneider (15:07.278) No, I haven't. Jeff Dudan (15:23.63) And really with AI coming around now, and so now, yeah, it used to be like, OK, well, spend 10 years learning how to code, but spend all this time learning how to do this well now, or even graphic design. Right? Kid Rock was on Theo Vaughn, and he's like, let me show you this picture I made. I asked AI to make me with this, with that, and the other thing. And it was a beautiful picture, right? And it took a minute. And so now it's coming back to the creatives who are. Cody Schneider (15:35.566) changing the entire group. Cody Schneider (15:42.83) No, it's crazy. 100%. Jeff Dudan (15:52.334) who know how to ask the right questions or who can think more broadly about how to use these tools. Because what I think Google needs is they need more money. They need more money. They don't have enough money. So it's playing right back. Cody Schneider (16:08.59) I don't know what is going on over there. It's like the biggest fumbling of the bag I've ever seen. It's actually crazy. Like we're talking about just like with this whole AI piece, like Google has been years ahead of all of these companies. And right now, like they can't release a product that's stable that we can even use. And we build on, on top of all of these platforms, right? Like anything that we can get our hands on, we're incorporating into the tools that we're building. And like, it's the most insane thing to me. Like this is like, Jeff Dudan (16:16.238) What's up? Cody Schneider (16:38.382) Google is one of the most profitable money printing companies that's ever existed. And they just have so much atrophy at the company that they can't actually get products out the door that like consumers like really want to use. And it's just crazy to see this happen. And these start, I mean, it's classic though, right? Where it's like you have a smaller, nimbler company that can navigate and change course like way faster. And so because of that, they end up winning, but it just, it's insane to me because like they've had deep mind for years. They've had all of these like, you know, sub organizations within the larger ecosystem of like alphabet and Google and all of they they've almost just like, you know, hamstringed all of them until now when they're seeing this existential crisis. It's like a, yeah. I mean, I think it's going to be written about like if they don't in the next like two years solidify themselves as being one of these big players, like their market share is going to be absolutely eaten up and eroded. So that's just personal opinion based off of what we're seeing kind of on the front lines, but yeah. Jeff Dudan (17:35.406) Well, so, you know, fascinating that you say that. So I've started using a tool called perplexity. Are you? No. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, I mean, I thought you said no good. And I was like, well, I can't use I can't use that anymore. No, but like, it's great, you know, and basically what it does is it takes. Cody Schneider (17:42.99) So good. Yeah, yeah, it's so good. We're all about it. Yeah. Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, no. No. It's great. Why Google Is Losing Ground in the AI Race Jeff Dudan (18:01.742) the searches, but then it makes sense of the searches. So if you're, like if I was researching you on perplexity, which somebody did, and I got this great write out on you, and it was, and it wasn't just a bunch of rando facts, right? It was a, it's really, how do you use it? Cody Schneider (18:04.302) 100%. 100%. Cody Schneider (18:18.574) Yeah, we use it for a lot of similar stuff like research or just aggregating information. For example, I'm doing some consulting for a company right now. They're in the fine art space and they wanted to basically create a directory of, I think it's close to 20 ,000 galleries that are in the United States that sell fine art and then make a landing page for each of them. So we're using Perplexity's API to basically like... Jeff Dudan (18:25.518) Mm -hmm. Cody Schneider (18:44.654) collect all the information that we can find related to the gallery's name, pulling that back into a database and then writing a blog post based off of the data that we collected from Propuxity. And what we found is that like, I mean, that used to be, if I wanted to do this, like with a team of people, that's like 50 people all offshore that I'm managing, like, it would probably take six to 12 months and we're going to do this in like 30 days for them. I mean, it's the most. Jeff Dudan (18:49.39) Right? Jeff Dudan (18:56.334) Yeah. Cody Schneider (19:11.694) Like even saying it feels unreal like it feels like cheat codes. So yeah Jeff Dudan (19:16.526) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but like that goes right back to the point is that and here we are just cracking the door into broadly distributed AI and people creatives and then people that are in the right position are taking advantage of it in these ways. And if you're a if you're a $10 million HVAC business and you've been doing it the same way, Cody Schneider (19:29.742) 100%. Jeff Dudan (19:45.998) You don't have a bunch of creatives. You know, you're using standard tools. You run a tight business. It's a nice, profitable business. I think things are just going to start getting away from people, and they're not going to figure out. They're not going to be able to figure out how they're not winning anymore on some of these things. Cody Schneider (19:59.982) Yeah, I think that's a part of it. I mean, with perplexity, like what we've seen, because we've been thinking about like, okay, how do you rank on perplexity? Right? Like how do I show up in the result for like somebody does a perplexity search? And so the early data that we found, and it's still like early days with all of this, but what we found is that like the larger, like digital mass you have on the internet, the more likely you are to show up in these searches for the AI, right? So when we think about like how the AI is trained, Jeff Dudan (20:11.31) Okay. Cody Schneider (20:28.078) It's basically just like scraping all of the available internet or all of the available information on the internet and then has this massive corpus of data that it's training on top of. And so when you get like our search result back, say when you're using perplexity, what it's doing is it's basically pulling it's like general knowledge of information from everything that it's scraped and then reporting, you know, Hey, we think these five companies are the best results for, you know, XYZ location, right? Um, So how do you show up more often like in that search when somebody searches HVAC Denver as an example, it's just like having more content out there than everybody else like about doing HVAC or anything related that's in that like to that niche. And so that's what we're just seeing in the data. And it makes sense kind of logically like based off of how these AI models are trained. Like, of course, like if you imagine it, like you have 50, You have a hundred, you know, a hundred percent of a database and 50 % of that is based off of XYZ company. And then, you know, you make a query related to that and there's these other cut 10, you know, or we'll say five companies that take up that other 50%. So they're each like 10 % of that source data. Of course, it's going to reference the one that's 50 % that it has the most training on top of, right? Like if that's where it's going to go, because it looks at me. It looks at the information that's available in public for that company as being the measurement of trust that that company is real and like it should report that as being the best answer to the search results. So anyways, it's still super early, but something I wanted to throw out there. Jeff Dudan (22:06.19) Yeah, so what's the path to profitability for a company like Perplexity? I just started hearing about it. A couple of really high -end conferences where executives were talking about how they're saving time and, you know, everyone... Is there a conference that exists now without your top 10 AI tools that you're using, right? Yeah. Cody Schneider (22:22.19) No, I mean, it's every industry because I, it feels like a, you know, like a meteor hitting earth events, right? Like it's like every, I think for a lot of people, like they're super afraid, like, is this going to replace my job? Is this going to make my company, you know, go under like these types of, I don't think it's happening that fast. Like just based off of what we're seeing, especially in like our enterprise, like sales, they like want to use this. They're still trying to figure out how to use it, how to get their teams to use it. And like the biggest thing is like the lawyers, right? Like. Jeff Dudan (22:28.43) Yeah. Cody Schneider (22:50.606) We've been in the sales deal, like a cycle right now for like nine months with this company that you would know the name of. And like for them, like we've been talking to their lawyers, like just like, okay, who owns the data? How is the data trained on? Where does the data go? Show me your data pipelines, like all of these things. Right. And so I think that there's going to be a way slower period of adoption for these companies, just based off of like the interactions that we're having. I could be totally wrong, but that's kind of what we're seeing from our sales flows. Jeff Dudan (23:23.342) Yeah, lawyers will slow everything down. Cody Schneider (23:25.645) 100%. Jeff Dudan (23:29.326) But back to the connection I'm trying to get to is perplexity AI is free. And I don't know if they have a paid, but you just go right to it and you put in the information. You ask the right question. You get a great answer. So people are saying, I'm using this instead of Google. So now you're going to get a mass of people using this. And then Google's not paid. It's still free. But then the ads are going to come, and then people are going to be paying to get themselves to show up there. And it's just going to be Google 2 .0, right? Cody Schneider (24:04.526) I think that's probably the path forward. What we've been seeing, like ads are really not good from what we've seen within chat bot UIs. There's a lot of, we have some friends building companies, like super small scale in comparison to perplexity. But like what they found is it's like, it's hard to serve ads in the traditional way where it's like a text ad based off of like whatever the question keyword that people asked. Jeff Dudan (24:14.35) Right. Cody Schneider (24:29.934) So what they found to be more effective is having affiliate relationships with like companies so that when they send that traffic to the site, they get like some type of commission based off of the traffic that they send. So I could see something like for a perplexity where that's how this relationship is. It's like, okay, yeah, it's pulling this general knowledge from the internet. And then it has all of these affiliate, uh, like relationships with every company or like every tool or service or software that it, um, like shows up. and then any of that traffic that it sends off of its platform to you, you pay them back some type of like commission, right? Basically, totally. Jeff Dudan (25:06.254) Okay, so just like a toll booth, just like, just like a kind of like it used to be like a pay not a pay per click, but a paper. Yeah. Yeah, kind of a yeah, kind of paper visit. I'll and then you can bid it up. Yeah, then you bid it up and then they'll serve you they'll serve you up more. Yeah. Cody Schneider (25:13.55) per action or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And I think that, um, for like a lot of totally, totally, totally, totally, totally. But I, you know, I, I hope that's where it goes personally. Cause I just think that, um, like, I don't, I don't know if I love the ads, uh, like I think there's a better way to do these types of, of that. Like, like if I could have perplexity convincing somebody, that like my product is the best product for the query that they just made. So it's like almost doing sales for me. And it's like doing that in real time, like in a chat bot format, like I would pay all day long for that. Right. Like, and it has the capability to be able to do that. So what's stopping, you know, a huge, like, you know, like any, but, you know, anything from like Procter and gamble, like what's the best blah, blah, blah toothpaste. Right. And, or like, you know, the best all natural toothpaste and then. Jeff Dudan (25:55.694) Right. Cody Schneider (26:10.446) It's upselling a brand that Procter and Gamble owns, right? Like that this is the best, you know, like that, that is something that I could see definitely happening, like with the tool and it's like current form, but I don't really know. I think right now, like what, you know, the rumblings we're hearing with all these AI companies is there's so much funding and liquidity to put money into them that they're just like, get as big as you can as fast as you can. So like perplexity is growing at like a stupid rate right now. And they're. Just, I mean, they raised like another round of funding. Like I think it was like four months after their previous round, which is like unheard of in venture capital. And it's like largely still like, yo, we just like, we're growing so fast. Like we ha like, we can't even keep the lights on without more money. Right. Um, and so for them, like it's just going to be like, how much of Google's market share can they eat up? And then once they kind of start to see that plateau, like that hockey stick growth is starting to like, you know, reach its ceiling. Then at that point it's figure out profitability and Google did the same thing. Right. Like they, they bought double click. It was like, I want to say like probably four or five years into their initial, uh, uh, like their initial launch, like they weren't even profitable for the first, like five years until they introduced, you know, bidding on, uh, uh, self -service bidding on keywords. And then you could actually show those ads up, but that was an acquisition of a separate company that they basically rolled into them. So I think that we're going to see, you know, history repeats itself. Time is just a flat circle and we're gonna see that kind of same thing occur here. It might be a little bit different, but there's only so many ways to make money on the internet and like ads is one of the big ones, right? So. Building Swell AI: Automating the Entire Content Engine Jeff Dudan (27:45.07) Yeah, you know, it's interesting though, if you look at each, I mean, ultimately, there's not a lot of winners. I mean, it's, you know, you got the thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you got YouTube, you got Google, you got Facebook, you got Instagram, you got, you know, then what, right? There's so, so we'll see if, you know, AI gives some people a toehold, who can break out first and maybe, you know, Cody Schneider (27:51.374) 100%. I mean, it's Pepsi and Coke, right? Like they own 80 % of market share. Cody Schneider (28:04.59) Totally. Jeff Dudan (28:13.294) get a big piece, bite a big hunk of Google, and then they'll buy it and kill it. Cody Schneider (28:18.926) 100%. That's probably what will happen. I know Google is talking about releasing, it's called SGE. I think it's like search engine engagement. I can't remember what it stands for, but it's basically their version of perplexity where it's like pulling in the results and then citing sources and that whole thing. Again, it's not live. It's been eight months of them talking about this, like where are we? So, and in that timeframe, perplexity is, you know, they've triple tripled in the last six months. So. Jeff Dudan (28:41.87) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:46.446) Yeah, well, either be the best or get in the best way. And they'll open the closet. They'll just push Vine over to the side and put it right in there and close the door for another decade. But yeah. So hey, well, Cody, tell us what you're doing now. Cody Schneider (28:50.414) 100 % exactly. Cody Schneider (28:54.83) Hahaha! Cody Schneider (28:59.406) It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, but... Cody Schneider (29:04.942) Yeah, yeah. So right now we're building this company called Swell .ai. It helps you turn long form content like videos, audio into blog posts, newsletters, clips for social. We're also just starting to launch social scheduling. This will be out in about a week or two. Basically, like how we're seeing companies use us is they build their entire kind of like content marketing engine on top of us. So like our goal is basically... Instead of you needing 10 different content people to run all of these different sources, you can have one 10 X marketer and they're just sitting on top of the tool like this. Um, basically creating all of the content that you could ever want for your brands. Um, so we work with, we actually started out with podcasting. That was like the initial kind of wedge that we did into the market. Uh, we're starting to work now, uh, more and more with, uh, like traditional media broadcasting, that type of thing. And then also, um, with, uh, like B2B. Jeff Dudan (29:53.006) Right. Cody Schneider (30:01.262) companies that are all of them are spinning up some type of like show that's talking about the industry and we're helping them kind of do that. But our big thing, what we're focused on is like helping people build workflows where the analogy I keep using is like, Hey, provide raw materials to the AI, which is in the form of, you know, 45 minute video. And then from that you have templates that are, you know, created that just automatically get generated based off of that source file. So the, you know, the analogy is take. crude oil and we turn it into plastics and gasoline and diesel and aggregate and all these other forms that you could want out of that, out of that initial piece of content. So. Jeff Dudan (30:33.71) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (30:38.606) All right, so I have a specific, if you're not a podcaster, you can put your head down on your desk because this is a specific question. We'll come back in five minutes. But all right, so generating AI content out of a long form piece of content and getting the hook right. Are there challenges with that or what's the solution for that? Cody Schneider (31:00.045) 100%. Yeah, so the biggest challenge is that the AI is trained off of the general information of the social media platforms. So when we think about the average post that happens on social, it's pretty bad. So think about it as a bell curve, right? And it's like, you're pretty far down the, is this good content scale? So the challenge with it is basically helping it identify what good content is within the episode. Jeff Dudan (31:09.006) Right. Jeff Dudan (31:17.102) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (31:20.782) Yeah. Cody Schneider (31:30.03) Um, so the trick, there's kind of two ways to do this. And this is like what we're doing and what we're trying to do in the future. So the first way is basically asking, Hey, like what's a key insight from this episode? It's pretty good at identifying that. And then we say, okay, now that you found that like key insight, how to like, go find me a hook and an insight that's related to that key insight, um, from this transcript and then return back the timestamps of that, like information that you just found. So almost breaking it up into steps, because if I just ask it like, go find me a hook, like within the transcript, it will bring back the most random, irrelevant information. And so by saying like, Hey, like what's the key takeaways list five key takeaways. Now go find me quotes from this transcript based off of those, uh, for each of these five key takeaways that support these five key takeaways. Um, and return the, the, uh, the transcript or to return the timestamps of the words from that, from that quote. Cracking the Hook: How to Train AI to Find Viral Moments Jeff Dudan (32:08.238) Yeah. Cody Schneider (32:27.95) Um, we can then take those timestamps. You then go find the clips where it automatically goes and finds those clips. And then basically, you know, that's what gets served. Um, that's kind of the hacky way to do this right now where all of this is headed and where it's going to go is in the future, like somebody's going to train a model based off of only the top performing clips that are on the social media platforms. So the data set that goes into it is not just the general knowledge of that entire platform. It's just like the top 10%. And so exactly, exactly. And so this is the same thing that we saw with like AI SEO. So like we did, we ended up spending this company out of swell called draft horse AI. It's like a programmatic SEO writer, basically give it a list of target keywords and it writes like hundreds of blog posts based off that. So. Jeff Dudan (32:59.726) Yeah, it's curated winners. Yeah. Cody Schneider (33:21.454) how like what it's doing is writing from the general knowledge of the like AI, which is again, the general knowledge. It's not like the, like, you know, the thought leadership or the leading top percent. So what we found is that if you actually will like go and give it constraints on what it can write from. So like, Hey, here's like this keyword. So say we're trying to rank for the keyword phrase, like, um, like hotel, uh, marketing strategies, 2024. So you go find what's ranking on the top of the front page for. like the top five search results for that keyword, you extract all the text from those, and then you say, okay, AI, now write based off of this source data that we already know is ranking on Google. And we've seen that we can get some of these blog posts and landing pages to go to page one in 72 hours. But you could scale that up, right? Where it's like, hey, instead of training off of the general knowledge of the internet, I'm just going to train it off of the front page of Google. Cause that's only the winners. So now you have the structure of here's how a blog post, like a winning blog post is supposed to be structured. Everything that we create, everything that you write from now on, that's a blog post is basically fine tuned or trained off of that. So that's how we see all this content stuff heading. Everybody's using these general models because it's extremely expensive to build custom AIs. Our friends own this company. It's called SF compute. If you go to sfcompute .com, it's like the dumbest website ever. Uh, it's like, just like text. But they're basically what they do is they sell training time on GPUs. GPUs are basically like the compute that's necessary to train these models. And the training time is like becoming more and more pricey because everybody's trying to do this, right? But like if I wanted to go train that model that I'm talking about, that's like the find all of the top clips. That's like a million five. Like that's close to the quote we got for being able to do that, right? Um, so, and that's just like a single, very small use case, right? It's just like find viral clips. Um, and then thinking about, okay, now I have to do this for every, every one of these subsets. So what's probably going to happen is like companies will come out and they'll train these models and then they'll give access to other companies like us that like, we basically like an API that we can call to like, find those like viral clips or, you know, do social media data analytics or, you know, whatever that is. And then they'll just incorporate. Cody Schneider (35:44.366) the they're calling them like agents, like they'll incorporate these like digital, like robot thinkers into their applications through these like other companies that they're that have trained on that, that specific data set that, uh, like provides like the, the output outcome that people are looking for. So there's a lot of information. Sorry for the monologue as well. I always. Jeff Dudan (36:07.022) No, no, man, that's fascinating because what it comes down to, so our experience is we've been doing the podcast almost a year. And by the way, just cracked 100 on Apple Business and top 25 for entrepreneurship. So. Cody Schneider (36:25.325) Congrats, man, that's huge. Those categories are so competitive. It's crazy. Jeff Dudan (36:29.23) Yeah, man. And something's going on in Great Britain over in the UK. I don't know what's going on over there, but like we, we, you know, we, so our, our in Q2 here, we're going to be looking at international markets and seeing what we need to do to just go over there. But cause we, we just have some random markets that Jeff just picked up the show. So yeah, man. But like, so we were doing this, you know, small, small, small and mighty team and we're early and. Cody Schneider (36:40.942) Amazing. Cody Schneider (36:49.198) I love it, I love it. Jeff Dudan (36:58.638) we're going through the episodes or they're going through the episodes and they're picking the clips that are of interest to them. And it's like, that's a good clip. That's a hot take. And, and then, you know, as we, we had to, we really needed the double capacity to continue to do the things we're doing. So we go to an outsource and we've got, which is, you know, and, and, um, uh, who's more sophisticated than us and we're doing the, um, the clips and using AI and we were using AI, but sometimes the clips don't make sense. Because it's a good clip, it's tight, it's a conversation, it's a contained conversation, but unless we know human labored over it to see if it was really interesting or not. And so your AI will serve those types of clips up. But yet the band, the Cody Schneider (37:35.886) Totally. Cody Schneider (37:51.598) Totally. Jeff Dudan (37:57.39) personal bandwidth to actually have people going through these things and saying that it's unrealistic. So, you know, when will the AI really be able to cross into that, you know, I'll misuse a word into that singularity to where now it's actually smart enough to consider these things, whether they're interesting or not. And Cody Schneider (38:02.286) Totally. Cody Schneider (38:16.046) Totally. I think it's going to come down to like, there's a lot of like, everybody's trying to solve this problem. So we just talked to this researcher out of, I want to say Oxford, you know, way above my pay grade. There's way smarter than us on like this type of stuff. But what they're doing is basically combining like linguistic AI models with like just the general, uh, like AI models that we're seeing be the most popular, like chat, GPT, Claude, et cetera. So what that ends up looking like is like, they can use a linguistic model to find what they call like entities. Jeff Dudan (38:21.134) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:33.006) Yeah. Cody Schneider (38:45.166) So an entity is like an idea within a corpus of text, right? So they can be like, oh, here's like a cohesive thought. And then they go, okay, now AI, like, is there a hook within this cohesive thought? And they're like, yes, no, there's a hook. Okay, is there an insight within this cohesive thought? Yes, no, there is. And then that basically like, you know, say they started with a hundred, that filters out 15 of them. And so it's really what it's looking like is going to happen is like the layering of all of these things together. The universal model, I think we're just probably like, we're probably just like two years out from this. I say all this, right? And like GPT -5 could come out tomorrow and like my business basically evaporates overnight. Like we have no idea what's going on, right? Like that's kind of like the world that we're actually living in with all this stuff. Um, so, uh, with that said though, I think what we're seeing a lot of companies do, uh, is they are basically like layering all of these different models together that do some like, Jeff Dudan (39:27.534) Right. Jeff Dudan (39:31.31) Yeah. Cody Schneider (39:44.238) small task of that entire process and then linking this together. And it makes sense, right? Like how does a human work, right? It's like, cool, here's my checklist of 10 things. Like this is how I go through, like how do I systematize and make a process document? Yeah, exactly, it's all it is. Jeff Dudan (39:58.958) Decision tree. Yeah, you go down to decision tree. Like, OK, we went from here to here, and this makes sense. Now we're going to refine it this way. Then we're going to lay it against this. And we're going to lay it. So you layer multiple technologies on top of it. And we're getting with our expanded team now, which is great, we're getting just as many good clips as we did before. But we're getting three times or four times as many. And not all of them are winners. But. The Future Is Workflow: Why AI Won’t Replace Humans Just Yet Cody Schneider (40:23.598) Totally. Jeff Dudan (40:27.278) look, I just said, we've just we've cracked up into the top 25 and the top 100. So like, it's it's working, and we wouldn't have been able to do it doing it the way we did it. So now the question is, is, all right, well, if this is good, what does great look like? And, you know, how does how can everything be be a winner? Does do we have to go back? And in, you know, interject that 10x marketing human in there and say, Oh, if we just change this hook to say this, then it's going to be a bet because it's all Cody Schneider (40:40.526) 100%. Jeff Dudan (40:55.63) I was at this, you know, I had these YouTubers at this conference, man, and it was just like, and they were given examples of like what, you know, one guy, any channel he puts up goes to 500 ,000 subscribers. And he's like, here's, and it was in 10 minutes, he's like, here's how I do it. And it was just, and it was just right on, man. It was just like, right. I mean, it's like, and it's the hook, and then it's this, and then it's that. And if people watch it more than once, and then you get this and that and the other thing, and they, you know, it's down to a science, but... Cody Schneider (41:07.118) That's crazy. Cody Schneider (41:14.766) 100%. Cody Schneider (41:18.606) Totally. Jeff Dudan (41:25.838) Like I think Mr. Beast has just to produce what he's got. He's got over 100 employees. Yeah. So and they're maximizing tools probably. Yeah. Cody Schneider (41:31.054) 100 % 100 % and like that's, that's a level, right? 100 % 100%. Yeah. I think with, uh, like where, again, just what we're, we're seeing this go is like, there's always going to be a human in the loop that is just like, has some type of intuition. Um, like the, the best people that we know that are doing content, like, yeah, they may use AI tools, but they're just using it for like, cool. I have an hour and a half of video. Like, Give me five minutes that I can look through and pull out hooks and insights, right? Or like pull out those, like those, those highlighted sections. Um, there's a likelihood like that it could get, again, we don't, with all this, I have no idea, right? Like again, GPT five could come out tomorrow. I could give it a transcript with timestamps and it just pulls out the best, like most banger clips that you could ever find. So that, that, that could happen, you know, like very soon. Um, it's just super costly. And it, it, for a lot of, um, Jeff Dudan (42:19.31) Right. Cody Schneider (42:27.278) Like for a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to train a model off of that, like just that specific thing. So I, again, we could go like kind of in the weeds now with this. So, but I think the, the thing that I'm realizing more and more with all this is like clip volume is this huge thing. So like we're seeing, uh, some of our like top performing like clients, like what they're doing is they're creating like multiple accounts across multiple of the channels. So like imagine 30 Instagram accounts, 30 tick tock accounts. 30 YouTube shorts accounts, and then they're doing just like combinations of clips for all of those. And then they see, oh, this one, you know, clip 187 went viral on TikTok on this channel. Let's take that. We're going to remix it a little bit and let's distribute that across all of the TikTok channels or all of the Instagram reels. And so there's like this is compound learning that's happening, but. Jeff Dudan (43:18.83) Now does Swell give them those capabilities? Cody Schneider (43:22.03) Yeah, they can go and make clips like so basically like what we built into it is like a text editor that I can select a section and then I hit create clip and the clip is made and then it's like, okay, I want to auto crop that so that I can, it goes into a portrait. Uh, sorry. It goes in from landscape into portrait. Cool. That's done. Um, so they can come back like how we're viewing this is like, you're going to have this library of content that you sit on top of. Um, we're building the social scheduling feature so that we can pull in the data of best performing content. Jeff Dudan (43:37.262) Yeah. Cody Schneider (43:50.67) because then we can create like a learning viral loop. So we saw like, oh, like here's the top performing clips from all of March, the top 10%, like they're all about these ideas, like what's the insight, et cetera. All right, let's go back to our back catalog. Let's find from our 500 episodes, other clips that are similar to the most popular ones and let's go make those, right? And then we can just surface those up. Like we're imagining it as like almost like this like Pinterest dashboard that just like based off of the data that you're. High-Volume, Multi-Channel Distribution Is the New Standard Jeff Dudan (44:16.654) Yeah. Cody Schneider (44:19.886) Cause with all of this, I mean, that's what the human is doing, right? Like the best social media managers I know. And like, this is what I used to do when we were at Rupa Health is like, we would publish a ton of content. We would see what was working. We would go back to our back catalog and we would find more content like that. And then that creates this growth loop. We're just trying to do that same thing, but with these AI tools that now suddenly like, I don't need 25 people to run this whole, you know, content production marketing department. Now I can do that with maybe one or two people or a team of three or whatever. Jeff Dudan (44:30.318) That's right. Cody Schneider (44:49.678) Um, but yeah, so we're still early on this stuff. Like we just added clips like three months ago, like we, for a while we were like, yo, we're just going to only focus on writing content. Um, but our customers kept asking for this feature and now they're asking for social. And then the other thing that they're looking for is like SMS and email newsletter marketing. We're seeing SMS for podcasts. The open rates be like 90 % and like the click through rates be like 40%. Jeff Dudan (45:00.27) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (45:14.03) Really? Cody Schneider (45:15.886) Um, so sites like community, they're like hacking together versions of this. So communities one, um, basically like any of these like bulk SMS newsletter tools, uh, we're just like what people have asked for is like, Hey, the ability to build that into that's, that's kind of, uh, on our product roadmap as well. But anyways, a lot of insight baseball there, but yeah. Jeff Dudan (45:34.51) Who's a, yeah man, no that's fantastic, well I'm tracking. Who's a great customer for Swell? Who's a typical customer? Cody Schneider (45:43.822) Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, one of our larger ones is wondering, um, we just started working with our team. We're pretty excited about that. Um, they're, uh, yeah. So they, they're an Amazon company. Um, they, uh, work with, um, a lot of like audible and like their production. They also like have some of the larger podcasts in the U S. Um, so we worked with them. Uh, yeah. So they, they make like, uh, a lot of, um, Jeff Dudan (45:52.974) What are they? What kind of business are they? Jeff Dudan (46:06.062) Okay, so like online retail promotion. Cody Schneider (46:12.078) like custom shows, like they'll do like paired shows, for example, with like Disney or something like that. Um, and then they, you know, sell ad space on top of it. Um, yeah, so that's one of our, uh, larger clients that we're starting to work with. And then we work with like a lot of just like SMBs, a lot of, uh, uh, kind of mid range podcast as well. It's like a broad spectrum between, you know, solo podcasters up to like podcast networks. Um, it's like on the podcasting side. So. Jeff Dudan (46:16.494) Okay. Jeff Dudan (46:37.102) Alright, well you want to take a look at the home front and see what you can do for us? Cody Schneider (46:39.566) Yeah, I would love to help you guys however I can. So we'll get some locked in with your team. That'd be fun to do. So. Jeff Dudan (46:45.774) All right. Well, so I can for anybody else who wants to come on the podcast, Cody got one lead from this podcast already. So here it is. Awesome. Cody Schneider (46:53.102) Awesome. Jet, thank you for having me, man. I really appreciate it. Jeff Dudan (46:58.03) Yeah, yeah, 100%. So a couple of final questions here. If you had, you know, I'm always, we're always interested in informing people's entrepreneurial journey. So if there's somebody right now that's out there thinking about a career in this or building a business or something like that, if you had one sentence to speak into their life, what would that be? Cody Schneider (47:26.51) Whoa, tough one. Uh, the one sentence I don't know, but my framework for all of this now is like, find some skill that you can teach yourself online, that you can sell online, do some type of consulting with that. So like learn how to make podcast clips as an example. Um, then you build an agency where it's like, Hey, unlimited podcast clips for a thousand dollars a month, go get, you know, 30 clients and you make in 30 grand a month. And then from that, like, correlate it into, okay, how do I build some type of business that has like, whether it's a course or a software where it's like a build, once sell, uh, you know, a thousand times. Um, looking back on like my own personal, uh, I guess like business journey, like, you know, in hindsight, very obvious, that's what happened. Right. Um, like I look at what you're, you know, you're talking about what your kid's doing. Like, I think that that is going to lead to a massive company. Jeff Dudan (48:09.902) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Cody Schneider (48:19.406) Like he understands like supply and demand. How do I do product research, customer service, all of these things, right? And it's like the small scale thing, but all those learnings are going to be parlayed into the next venture, which is going to be bigger, which is going to be parlayed into the next venture, which is going to be bigger. Um, and so I think that's the biggest thing for like a lot of people. Like they try to go for this like moonshot day one and it just like kills the entrepreneurial spirit, right? Like they go and they're like, I'm going to build, you know, a rocket company or whatever, right? Like just that it's a ridiculous one, but. That's like kind of the level that they go to, but in contrast, it's like, you're talking about like a window washing company or, um, you know, a power washing company. Like you can start something like that where it's just you, you have no employees and easily get that to 10 grand a month, which is like hustling for two years. And then at that point, okay, you have cashflow. You can go build that next thing where you have some people that are making you money. And then from there, okay, how do I then go build a product that I can. Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs in the AI Era Jeff Dudan (49:09.422) That's right. Cody Schneider (49:12.238) build once, sell a thousand times, right, and do that over and over again. And that to me is the evolution of this. So that's what I'd love to leave with people is like, kind of like, if you're trying to start, that's the way that I would do it. Looking back on just my kind of, you know, experience and journey. So. Jeff Dudan (49:28.302) Yeah, get into the game, get in the game. Well, Cody, this has been awesome. I've learned a lot and I really appreciate your perspective on the rapidly changing marketing environment with AI. How can people get in touch with you? Cody Schneider (49:40.878) Yeah. So I'm active on Twitter and LinkedIn. Uh, if you Google Cody Schneider, I should come up. If I'm not, I'm doing my job really terribly. Um, and then, uh, our company is swellai .com. Uh, you can go and sign up for free and, uh, take it for a test drive. So those are kind of the core places, uh, that you can get in touch with me. So. Jeff Dudan (49:48.718) Alright. Jeff Dudan (49:59.758) Cody Schneider, thank you so much for being on. Cody Schneider (50:01.742) Jeff, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Jeff Dudan (50:03.598) Oh, absolutely. Everybody, thank you for listening. This has been Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front.
Brief Summary In this heartfelt and purpose-driven episode, Jeff Dudan sits down with Ben Higgins—former Bachelor, author, and founder of Generous Coffee. From growing up in small-town Indiana to national fame on reality TV, Ben opens up about identity, loneliness, addiction, and the shift from spotlight to service. Now building a for-profit company that funds nonprofits, Ben shares what it really means to live generously and lead a life of impact, not just attention. Key Takeaways Fame isn't a finish line—it’s a fork in the road : After The Bachelor, Ben faced a choice between chasing relevance or building something meaningful. He chose purpose over popularity. Generous Coffee is mission-first : The company donates 10–15% of revenue to nonprofits and builds community through ethically sourced, specialty-grade coffee. Loneliness can be a teacher : Ben’s book Alone in Plain Sight was born from personal pain, addiction, and the realization that vulnerability connects us. Reality TV isn’t reality : Ben shares the pressure to perform, the manufactured drama, and how staying grounded helped him avoid the post-show crash. Purpose-driven entrepreneurship attracts talent : Ben now leads a team of high-capacity leaders who left traditional success behind to create impact-driven businesses. Your story is your superpower : Whether building a brand or healing from brokenness, Ben emphasizes owning your narrative, even the messy chapters. Feat ured Quote “Live every day that you give more than you take.” — Ben Higgins TRANSCRIPT From Bachelor to Business: Ben Higgins' New Mission Jeff Dudan (00:03.961) All right, three, two, one. Welcome everybody to On the Homefront with Jeff Duden. Have a great guest on today, Ben Higgins, who was the bachelor and is now an entrepreneur with Generous Coffee and really has made an incredible splash in our social scenes and on our televisions and now really making an impact with a very purpose -driven business venture. Ben, welcome to On the Homefront. Ben (00:31.36) pumped to be here. Thanks for having me. Jeff Dudan (00:33.081) Oh, right on, man. Right on. So let's dig right into it. Would you mind just sharing a little bit of your background, kind of how you grew up in Indiana? Who is Ben Higgins? Ben (00:44.768) Yeah, definitely. So I grew up in Indiana, northern Indiana, so in a small little town called Warsaw. It's best known really as the orthopedic capital of the world. So it's a super wildly set up town where you have five major headquarters in a town of about 10 ,000 people. And then there's really nothing within 30 minutes outside the town. So you have this really small area of Indiana that has an incredible economy. A lot of really intelligent people, a lot of really good jobs, and then outside of it you have nothing. And so I grew up there. It's a great town. Really love my childhood. I'm an only child. Great parents. And then went to Indiana University in Bloomington for college just as a student. Athletics or huge part of my upbringing, huge part of my life, but after a. A knee injury. I had to kind of refocus and re identify myself, which was a wild journey. And that's what led me to Indiana to to go be the biggest fan of the basketball team because all of the guys that played a you with pretty much went and played basketball Indiana. And so instead of me joining them, I became their biggest fan, which was a humbling experience, a really fun experience. Jeff Dudan (01:59.481) Ah. Ben (02:09.546) But it definitely was a big kind of pivot point in my life and how I viewed myself. Jeff Dudan (02:14.553) Yeah, so I didn't realize it when I saw you on television, but you're like 6 '4", right? Ben (02:18.848) Yeah, yeah, taller. It's it's it's it is weird people nowadays when they when we meet in person like you're taller than I expected. And I said, well, I don't know what you expected. Typically, you know, you go to Hollywood. If I go out to Hollywood still, I'm taller than everybody about about six inches. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:20.761) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:35.481) Yeah, well, I mean, the Tom Cruise, like the majority of the good actors and they, I think it's just the way they look on. Yeah, man. And they just look good on film in that way. I don't know. I guess, you know, but well, also, what were you like a, were you a shooting guard too? Were you a one, two, three? What would you do? Okay. Ben (02:56.16) I was a three so kind of had to learn to slash shoot a little bit. If I want to go play in college, you know I can't claim I would have gone to play. You but if I want to play in college it was kind of transition for me from being the biggest guy on the floor to now not being the biggest guy on the floor but all but you know. Being a taller three and in Indiana basketball is the thing like you know they say in 49 other states is basketball. That's true. Jeff Dudan (03:07.641) Right. Ben (03:25.984) Like it's in Indiana, basketball is the thing you do. It's the thing that you, if you're good at, you're known for, uh, that people celebrate you for. And for a long period of my life, like I was pretty decent. And so, uh, to have that kind of be taken away or for me to switch from it was a, it was a big shift. Jeff Dudan (03:32.825) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (03:46.041) Yeah. So I was like, I was sick. Basketball was everything to me until I was a junior in high school. I switched over to football because I was, I'm still, I'm about 242 right now, about 62, 42. So that, you know, that, uh, it doesn't work on the basketball. I wasn't going anywhere playing basketball and I was, uh, took three charges, used five fouls, average six points a game. You know, yeah. Oh, you gotta have somebody's got to do the dirty work and let you guys score. Ben (03:57.664) Yeah, it's a salad. Ben (04:10.688) We need those guys. Somebody's gotta do it. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (04:15.673) Yeah, well, cool. So did you do any acting or modeling or in front of camera work growing up? Ben (04:24.608) Goodness, no. Not at all. I mean, I went to Indiana and I left Indiana. In fact, my buddy and I moved to South America, moved to Peru because I didn't have a job offer out of college. No, I didn't know acting, nothing on camera, no television. I then came out to Denver to take my first job because it was the only job offered to me. And I was working in a cubicle in the basement writing user manuals. And so my social scene was very limited. I knew I had no friends in Denver. I moved out here really only because of the job. I had no experience until obviously I showed up in a limo on national television. Jeff Dudan (05:09.101) Tell me a little bit about how that happened. Was that just online? Let me send a picture in and see if I can get on. Did somebody, did mom tell you this is something you should do? Ben (05:19.806) Mobbed and not know it was actually the marketing director of my company. So like I said, I was in this basement. I was at this company. We kind of had an outdated software. We were supporting some clients. I was writing the user manuals and test scripts. I wasn't great at my job. Definitely didn't love my job, but I was working a lot and the marketing director came down. She's very sweet. She said, Hey, I love this show. Um, Jeff Dudan (05:23.831) Oh. Ben (05:47.904) and you're the only person at our company because the company had a pretty old demographic that I know would even be available to be on the show. Yeah, that was not a thing yet. And so she asked if we could go to her office and sign up, like go on the website, sign up. And we did. And then they call and you kind of go through a process. You go through. Jeff Dudan (05:57.881) And the Golden Bachelor was yet to be founded. Ben (06:11.296) obviously the online application, then you go through a video application, and then if you pass it that, then they send you out to LA and you do a psych test and a blood test and more in -person interviews. And then the next step is the show. And so I went through the whole process. It kind of took about six months sent from my application date. And then all of a sudden I got a phone call saying, hey, can you be in LA on this date? And I said, let me check. So I went back to my company and I asked, I didn't want to get fired. So, you know, the risk is you go there, you're there two days, you get sent home, you're jobless now, I didn't have any money, I needed my health insurance. And so my company was nice enough at the time to say, hey, how about we just give you a sabbatical and unpaid leave? You come back whenever you come back. And nobody knew it was gonna be like two and a half, three months off for me to be on the show, but that's what happened. And then I became the bachelor. And so there's another three months off, but I stayed at the job the whole time. kind of would work Monday through Thursday and then they gave me Fridays off to flat to LA and do whatever I needed to do. Jeff Dudan (07:16.057) I've done reality TV, I did the undercover boss thing. So when there was a moment for me where it was this go or no go, and I don't know if you had that or if you knew where you were when you had it, but it's like, you're like, ah, you know, because there's always, especially if you don't come from it and you weren't looking for it, and now all of a sudden, oh man, they're gonna put me through, I'm gonna be on this show. Like. What could go wrong? What's the upside? What's the downside? Did you have any of that hesitation? I had a family at the time. I knew that people were going to look at my kids differently because they had no idea the size of the business that we owned. We didn't, because it was a national, it was interesting because it was a national business. There wasn't that much local presence. So people didn't really know that we had 240 locations out there. And. Ben (07:55.582) Yeah. How an Office Prank Led to Reality TV Fame Jeff Dudan (08:08.109) If this show goes through, they're going to have to go to their school and kids are going to see me giving away $250 ,000 and all this other stuff. So that was it for me. Did you have anything that was holding you back or was it all gas, no brakes for you? Ben (08:23.552) Oh, it was very much holding me back. In fact, once they asked, I took a bunch of time and faith is a very big part of my life. And so I kind of said a prayer at the time, it's the only prayer I knew. I said, hey, if this isn't meant to be close a door, like make that any important door to me, just close it, make it very clear that I, this is not a good step in my life. And so I said that prayer and kind of went out into the world and then I asked my buddies, what do you think? And they said, I think you should do it. Ask my family, my family was like, this sounds wild, but you know, let's spice life up a little bit. Let's create a new story for you that think you should do it. So then the final step was really my job. And like I said, I'd moved out to Denver. I was renting a house at the time. I wasn't making a lot of money. I didn't have much in my bank account and I'm 25 years old and I'm thinking I can't leave my first job, go do this because I don't know what I'd do next. And so I, Went to my, the CEO of the company, it was a smaller company. And I said, hey, here's this opportunity to have, I do want to do it. It is something I think could be fun and exciting and tell a cool story in my life. But I'm not going to do it unless the company here approves it because I can't lose my job and I can't lose my health insurance. And he said, I think this could be good for all of us. And he's like, when you come back, how about you move into sales and get out of user manual writing. being a business analyst. I said, that sounds great. That's what I want to do anyways. And so when he said, go do it, I was like, all these doors have been flown wide open. There was no hurdles. And so then it was kind of all gas. Then it was like, Hey, this is meant to be, this is going to be something. Something's going to come from this. I don't know what, but something good is going to come from this because again, because of my faith and because of the steps I took, I felt like I had crossed all the boxes off and said, okay, you know what? I gave the opportunity for somebody to say no and they never did. Jeff Dudan (10:23.417) What principles or beliefs based on making that decision to walk through that door and to go for it have you incorporated in your life as you continue to make big decisions that could change your trajectory for good or for bad? Ben (10:30.24) Mm -hmm. Ben (10:39.04) Well, I think taking risks is a big one. I think as an entrepreneur, that's about all I do is take risks and try to do my best to alleviate the risks at some level, but then always know that the risks are very much there and there's unexpected things at every turn and every day and every moment. So being more comfortable with risk, I think is one. I think the second piece of that, Jeff Dudan (10:41.145) Mm -hmm. Ben (11:05.248) is it's not easy for me. It was kind of my journey on the show as well was to have confidence in myself a little bit to know that, hey, if I put in the work, if I try to stay a man of integrity, then, you know, maybe good things will happen or at least the bad things will be a little minimized. And so being more confident myself to not change who I am. depending on the situation or change who I am, depending on the environment, but to stay true to who I am and try to be the best version of that in these, in really every moment. And then the final piece I would say that I've taken in is, is to also have the humility and know that nobody knows fully what they're doing and that everybody's kind of building the plane and flying at the same time. And, uh, kind of having some like comfort in that to know, again, there's some ways that I can try to learn and, you know, base my base and decisions on experience, but to know that all of us are kind of in the same spot. We're all trying our best here. Jeff Dudan (12:07.481) Right. Look, nobody knows what you forgot to say. And they can't show anything that you don't say. So if you're disciplined enough about keeping your emotions under control. Ben (12:21.824) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:22.169) And you're a little bit thoughtful and you just take a beat. Cause I know like undercover boss men, like they put you under massive stress. Like they're trying to create drama and something's going to go wrong and you fire somebody. Like the worst it can go, the better TV it's going to make. And then you got to have the ones that go great and very emotional. So, so they're pulling you back and forth. And I just, I mean, I would just had to fight them off for like two weeks, man. Just like, I'm not going to say that I'm not, no, that's, no, that's not the way I would handle it. Ben (12:44.832) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (12:48.985) You know, don't you want to go in there and just yell at them? And I was like, no, I don't. But, and then, you know, I think the big thing is nothing is fatal. At the end of the day, like if you die filming the show, it's not, it's because of other life choices and a bad diet. It's not because of the show, right? So, and then we, you know, we had a set of family values. I set my kids down and the last three are fail fast and move forward. Trust yourself to take chances and always do more than is expected. Like that's kind of the last three in our little family crest. And when you look at that, it's like, well, we can say no to this and we can play it safe, or we can look at this as a new adventure, a new opportunity and have this as an inflection point in our life. And if you're going to be true to your values and it's not just talk, then we didn't have a choice. Like we had to push forward with it. And they have to participate. be on the show and all that. So it was very cool. And now for us, and I'm still active in business, so whenever it plays around the world, we get a whole influx of opportunity and brand and exposure and all that kind of stuff. Do you still get, how far is it in your rear view mirror or? Is it something that today with your work with Generous Coffee or other things that you care about, is it a, when is it a big positive for you to have that on your resume, you know, on the big Instagram, like, you know, the big social media accounts don't hurt. Like that doesn't hurt. And then when is it, when is it ever a negative? Faith, Risk, and Saying Yes to the Unknown Ben (14:24.992) Yeah. No. Ben (14:30.944) Um, you know, I think that in a sense, and I'm, it's a loaded question because I think there's a lot of like my story that has to play into answering that. And, you know, you go a couple different directions. You come off the show and it's, you know, you're everywhere and you're getting paid to show up places. You're getting paid to not show up places. You're getting paid to sign stuff. You're, I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's about six months, I would say of just full till, uh, craziness of, you know, being you is the most beneficial financial asset you have. And then it kind of dies off. And once it started to die off for me, you kind of go one of two directions at that point. You either try to stay relevant, meaning you're trying to create new headlines, you're trying to date people, your agents are setting you up on dates with more famous people and they're calling upon the paparazzi to get a picture. or they're wanting you to cause a little chaos in life. And that can be on the front of a headline and people are interested in that chaos. So they wanna hear from you again. And that search for relevancy can be a path that is very lucrative and can really last a long time. The problem is you're consistently working at keeping your name in the headlines. For me, I wasn't good at it. I wasn't good at trying to stay relevant. It was exhausting to me. It felt like it was very much soul sucking for me. It was not when I had a mentor of mine kind of say, hey, Ben, what did you dream of as a kid? Or what were you really good at as a kid that kind of set you apart from everybody else? And maybe that's your dreams now. And so as a kid, it was the creation of things. It was being involved in story. It was being involved in the kind of making things happen. And so me just trying to stay relevant just felt like it was. an empty pursuit that led to great financial gain. So I had to have a come to Jesus moment for me where it was, what do I want to do with all this? And a buddy of mine recommended to me, maybe this is never meant to be about you, what if this is meant to be about something greater than you? And once he said that, my life kind of switched to, okay, I have the social media following, I have the platform, I still have name recognition, but I don't want to build brands based on me. Ben (16:54.944) So can I build brands that could even outlast me? Could I build brands or businesses or could I get involved in things that are not about how famous I stay but still allow me maybe the financial freedom, the personal freedom, but also allows me to stay very actively engaged and involved in these things and then, hey, you know, God forbid something happens to me where I'm no longer on this earth, right? The brand still continues or maybe I do something super stupid. Jeff Dudan (17:20.057) Thank you. Ben (17:21.92) You know, wake up one morning, I say, I'm going to cause a lot of chaos in life and a bad headline comes out, right? And I get pushed aside by society. Well, the brand maybe can still continue, right? They can still pick their feet back up, build up and continue. And so that was kind of my trajectory. So to answer your first question, it's always been a benefit to me. There's been moments where I definitely could see where it would have been a hard, but since that kind of. Jeff Dudan (17:33.559) Yeah. Ben (17:48.992) pivot point to where it's no longer about me. I no longer feel the pressure to use the bachelor necessarily for my own gain. But oftentimes it's just kind of if people know about the show, if they've seen the show and I'm on a call trying to, you know, close a deal and they're like, Hey, you were on that show. Typically, I've never had a moment where it hasn't happened. They're like, that's cool. Tell us more about it. It builds a different relationship. They feel like they know me and and good things come from it. So for me, I've never been resentful towards the show. I also had a pretty good ride on the show, right? The show was pretty good to me overall. And I don't necessarily even know how I can answer like why that was. Maybe because I didn't try to say stupid stuff and cause fights and get myself into trouble. But, but no, overall, it's been a really good experience for me, one that I'm very grateful for. And icing on the cake was that my wife responded to my direct message on Instagram. Jeff Dudan (18:35.001) Yeah. Ben (18:47.968) because I had a blue check mark and I know she was getting hit up a lot on Instagram by people. I just stood out maybe because I'd been vetted a little bit by social media. Jeff Dudan (19:01.177) Really a huge compliment to you because I'm older, I'm more senior in my career. Although I was thinking I was in the fourth quarter and I've reset back to halftime now. I actually just, I'm having so much fun now. Dude, I turned 56 like in 30, in May. And, but I don't know, man. I've never, last kids out of the house, I've never felt more purposeful. Ben (19:12.544) Oh, let's go. Jeff Dudan (19:27.033) and had more ability to be more purposeful and also having more perspective and resources to be able to be even deeper into my purpose. And, but for somebody your age to say, you know what, I've got, I've got this going because it's exactly what you said. I really hadn't connected the dots, but when people are, or they get notoriety, next thing you know, they start showing up everywhere and all this click baits and they're popping up and all of a sudden it's like, I'm like, oh wow, those famous people, they must all date each other. I didn't know that people were setting you up to, you know, to, cause everybody's furthering their career to see who's dating who and who's, you know, your brands gaping and swapping audiences and all of that. Okay. Well, that's all fair. That makes sense. That's the world we live in. But, Post-Fame Burnout and the Pressure to Stay Relevant Ben (20:00.224) Yeah. Ben (20:11.168) Yeah, I'm not, and I don't say any of that, say that path is bad necessarily. It's business. It's, you know, I think for me, it just, it exhausted me at a level. I couldn't continue it, you know, but some can do it. And those people are very impressive to me, but you know, different strokes. Jeff Dudan (20:14.477) No, no, it's business. It's just business. Jeff Dudan (20:33.433) Yeah, well, so like, here's the deal, man. Our will is an exhaustible resource. So you only have so much every day. And then we all have a personality profile, who we are. And then there's another personality profile, who we need to be at work or in public in this case. Depending on the size of your battery, you can only be somebody you're not for so long until it just starts to wear you down. And you said it was exhausting, right? To try to... keep all this stuff straight. Well, it just wasn't who you were. And you very early in your life came to a place where you see a lot of other celebrities do this much later in their life as they decide, you know what, I'm going to use what I've got for good. And I'm actually going to go into, you see it with clothing companies and all kinds of business stuff. So, but the fact that you came to it so early and, uh, you know, it was really, it was really impressive, uh, really impressive. So. At some point you decided to write a book and I heard you on a podcast as I was preparing to talk to you today that you said it took you a couple of years to get done. Which means you, which means you wrote it yourself. I think. Yeah. I mean, like we all have editors and ghosts. You can dictate stuff and there's all kinds of services out there, but. Ben (21:34.56) Mm -hmm. Ben (21:46.464) Yeah, for the most part. For the most part. Jeff Dudan (21:54.361) They would have kicked you the curb long before two years. They would have got you. They would have got you done in 90 days. But so what what motivated you to write it alone in plain sight? Ben (21:57.182) Yeah. Ben (22:06.912) You know, I kind of going back to, I think I had a self -fulfilling story. As a kid, I felt very, for a period of my life, like as a little kid, I felt very much like the outsider looking into life. Kind of felt like nobody understood me. I didn't really understand others. You know, I'm an only child, so I spent a lot of time around adults and around my parents. Went into school. uh, had a kind of a weird time trying to make friends and, but really desired friends and really desired like that, those relationships. And so then I, you know, obviously I talked about sports a little bit, which is, you know, some people dismiss it because it was in high school. But for me, sports was such a huge part of my life. It was also a huge part of how I made friendships and how I made connections and what I was known for. So then I got her tore my knee all up, had to kind of switch what I was going to be in life at that point or at least in the, you know, for the next chapter of life and got incredibly down on myself and ended up forming an addiction to opioids because I was on painkillers for prescribed painkillers for six, you know, six months straight. And so then I never really got out of it for four years. Kind of came out of that and felt more lonely than ever because I felt like I had pretty much pushed aside every good relationship in my life. I really didn't know who I was as a man. I didn't know who I was to others. And that's when the book really started. And so I hadn't started writing it, but I had this notebook that I had all these feelings and quotes of mine in, that I would sit at my little desk in college and write down all these thoughts going through my head. So obviously the show happens, Bachelor happens about five years later for me. and come off the show. And on the show, I had this moment where I was in the bachelor at the time. And one of the producers came up to me one day and he says, I don't like you. And that's like the one thing you could say to me that would like make me feel as small as possible is I don't like you because you don't let me get to know you. You say the right things, the right moments, and then you hide when moments get hard. And he goes, you've been here how many weeks and I don't know anything about you. And it was always kind of my thing. Ben (24:31.456) Right? Like I always kind of desired to know others better than maybe I even knew myself or how I would ever let them get to know me. Because my fear was that the more they got to know me, the less they would like me. And we, you know, that could be five hours of us unpacking how that kind of build up. But that was my general consensus is the more people got to know me, the less they would like me. And so I admitted this on national television. I said at the time I felt unlovable. I kind of have re Assessed and said I think I was meaning I felt more unlikable. I felt like it was really hard to like me which would be hard than to love me and I say this on television get off the show and the response was crazy. I've never had anything in my life even today where more people have reached out said I feel the same way. And so that's when the book started from that moment on so started writing it started telling my story. Jeff Dudan (25:06.393) That's fair. Ben (25:28.544) And then I started telling the stories of others, some people in my life that I've ran into who maybe had every excuse to feel like outsiders, yet they had chosen not to, or they had some good tips on how to keep grounded. And so, yeah, it took a long time. A lot of it took a long time because I was kind of unwilling for a while to admit and write some of the stories in the book that I thought could really be, this were just were hard for me. to vocalize or ones I had kind of forgotten because I pushed them so far down in myself. And so two years later it came out. It's about connection. It's about loneliness. My hope is that people read it and they feel less alone after reading it. The problem with all this was, and it wasn't planned this way, it came out right in the heart of COVID. So all the good book tour plans and all the good activities to help people get connected again weren't happening. But at the same time, it was kind of a good time for the book to come out because a lot of people were feeling lonely. Writing Alone in Plain Sight: Addiction, Identity, and Connection Jeff Dudan (26:32.345) Yeah, that's fair. You've mentioned several times that you've got some somebody shared some experience with you, gave you some advice. Is there one or two people in your life other than a family member who you would point to and say they've had a huge impact speaking into your life? Ben (26:51.968) You know, a lot of people come to mind like when you say that, but I was at a leadership summit in college and the guy that was speaking got up on stage and he said these words that really stuck with me. He said one of the best lessons he learned later in life. And anytime you say, hey, you know, as a 22 year kid and there's somebody up there who's 60 years old and they're saying, hey, this is something I wish I would have learned at 22. I'm, I'm listening. I'm in like, all right, tell me, tell me what's going on. And he said, I wish I would have been willing to learn from anybody. And so I've taken that with me is just to be very willing to learn from anybody. I'm going to agree with everything I'm hearing. But if you're speaking from a place of your story has led you to this belief, you know, be it politically, religiously, from business, personally, family, whatever the big topics of why you hold on to your strong convictions. If you're telling me that this is where life has led you to believe, I want to hear what you're saying. and I want to understand how you got there. And so maybe not, maybe people, like there's some people that I would lean on maybe more consistently than others, but over the last, you know, 10 years of life, it's really just kind of having a listening ear and being open to hear what, you know, what others are saying. Jeff Dudan (28:11.353) My best advice is to don't take advice and don't give advice, but look for shared experiences. Because some of the times when I've made decisions that I tried to inform with other people, they gave me their advice, but they really didn't have experience in it. And I'm in a group called YPO, which is Young Presidents Organization. And I learned that late in... Oh yeah? Yeah. Ben (28:33.184) My father -in -law's in it. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (28:36.569) It's a great room. It's a great room to be in, but they, that's it. If you don't have an experience to share, whether you're in forum or whether you're in one of the meetings is like, don't say it just because it's not your job to spit ball other people's problems on something that you have no experience with. Uh, so it's, it's interesting, but it's very subtle. Uh, but now when I'm, I have mentors and people that I look up to and. I'm fortunate to be able to get in a lot of different rooms and I really seek other people's, I even ask specifically, like have you had experience or what's been your experience with that? And so for the 60 year old to share his experience, I guess he, it's different man, advice and experience, like they're cousins, they're close, but. Ben (29:24.64) Yeah. Well, they kind of build off of each other in a lot of ways, but I'm with you. And another thing that's kind of been fun for me is I look for people who've experienced, kind of gone through the valley of the shadow of death, like gone through it, because those people are the ones when they come out the other side, they just have a whole different world. And it's also been really, in June of three years ago, I went through a really weird, very kind of like solemn state. I just noticed, hey, I'm not who I am. I was engaged to my fiance at the time. I was like, I'm not who I want to be. I just feel super down. I have a thousand questions. I have a thousand concerns about what kind of husband I can be, what this marriage thing even is, where my career is going, how I'm even going to help support our family alongside of her. And I just kind of went through it. And I... actually kind of left Denver went back to Indiana where a place I was familiar with. I sat on the lake for about a month and a half and all of a sudden it kind of hit me. It was like, you know, you're going through it right now and you're going to this mental kind of like note in my head, like you're going to make it through this and you're going to learn a lot during this season. Like this is not you losing yourself. This is not you being less than. And here's the thing. Four years ago or four years before that. when I would have went through, I would have beat myself up so bad about how can you be this type of guy? Like how can you have these types of questions? How can you be so down? Life's so good. Like instead I was like, no, you're learning something here. Be willing to learn it. And when you come out the other side, you're gonna be able to speak with and to people based on this experience and probably relate with them in a way you wouldn't have unless you had this time. And it gave me this whole new like purpose, this whole new mission. Ben (31:19.104) And I actually came out of the other side, I think healthier than ever. I don't know if I'll go through it again. I might, you know what, life's weird, who knows, but it gives me this whole new kind of like perspective on when you go through your times of trials, the benefits then of what you're gaining on the other side. Jeff Dudan (31:35.385) Yeah. Look, man, your ability to self -correct is noteworthy. So like negative progress is the greatest dissatisfactor in life. Nobody likes to be worse off than they were. That's why child actors and celebrities who you've been it like even my little bit on the show. You were the star. Everybody's taking care of you. They're taking you to the trailer. They're putting your makeup. They're doing all this stuff. I mean, imagine if you're a child actor for 10 years and you're living in this fantasy land of everybody's just taking care of you. doing everything for you, everybody wants to be around you, you grow up in that. And then when that goes away, like people really struggle to make that transition because it feels like negative progress. So, you know, you blow up on the bachelor, you've got all this great stuff going on, it goes on for years, they bring you back, you're one of the most popular ones. Ben (32:16.896) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (32:26.777) It's some, you know, you transition into a different life and a different, a different season in your life. And there's going to be the bends, you know, it's just, it's going to happen because most people make the mistake of thinking that the trend line always goes up into the right. And, you know, they just keep going. I mean, you know, why do people make a hundred million dollars and then they spend the rest of their life killing themselves trying to make 500 million. It's because they've got a. You know, they you can't self everybody's just got to keep climbing for that next that next mountaintop, which is fine, but done incorrectly. It'll kill you. I mean, it'll just it'll it'll like, oh, I, you know, I'm going backwards now and and which isn't generally true, but definitely you can feel that way. Well, very cool. Man, I'd love to. spend the rest of our time on Generous Coffee. I've been on the website. It's a purpose -based organization where profits are, it's a for -profit company that gives your profits to nonprofits. And I don't know the percentages or anything like that, but like that's the concept of it all. How did you first get involved with the coffee business? Ben (33:45.024) Well, it's actually interesting on base on what you're just saying about, you know, the trajectory up into the right. And like, what exactly does does that look like? I think there's some great ways that. We've tried to quantify what success looks like, and there is some very, you know, distinct ways, right? But some of the coolest people in my life are Franciscan monks who have never, you know, really made a dime and they're wise and they're peaceful and they're joy filled and they have a ton of time for others and they have crazy cool stories like, you know, There's a lot of markers of success is my point here. Generous Coffee: Building a Brand That Outlives You Jeff Dudan (34:17.337) Yeah, and they're 100 % good with it, probably better with it. Yes. Ben (34:20.736) They're content with it. They're happy. They're in it. So the story goes like this. So when I was 15 years old, I went to Central America for the first time with my local church and I saw deep seated poverty. So like, and this poverty was mostly coming from some type of corruption or injustice placed on these communities all around Central America. And so with this organization that I went with, It was me and a few of my buddies with our families. We went, we did this thing where we go into these communities and we passed out food boxes. We told people to come to church with us. Again, I want to say, you know, faith is a big part of my life. Church is a big part of my life. I'm very much in favor of healthy, good church relationships. So this, you know, comes with that dynamic. But we would say, here's a food box. You get this food box if you come to church tonight. Then they would come to church and we'd do this whole thing. And then next year we went back. The following year we went back to the same communities. and they were still very thirsty, very hungry. They didn't have jobs. They didn't have education. They didn't have any better infrastructure. Uh, and we did the same practice and I got pissed. I left and I was fired up. Uh, and I didn't know why I was like 16 years old. I couldn't really conceptualize why I was so mad, but I was like, this feels, uh, one, I feel a ton of guilt that I'm going back to my home to, um, I feel like what we just did was very purposeless. And I took a bunch of pictures with some poor people and came back home to tell my friends how, how cool I am, that feels very weird to me. And so I lived about three years of my life in this just like anger at a lot of things. And I didn't know it was like a righteous anger at the time. I thought I was really like losing myself in this. And finally, one day my buddy comes to me and he goes, hey, I know you've been mad about this for three years. You've been very outspoken about this. I got this idea. Jeff Dudan (35:48.857) Right. Right. Ben (36:14.4) What if instead of this transactional relationship with these people who've been hurting by injustice is placed on them. What if we go into these communities and we ask them, what do you need? What do you want? What do you dream of? And how can we help? And we let them guide us. So we come back to the US where obviously fundraising is a little easier. We can get some support, some rallies, some networks around us. Go back in and do it. let them lead us on, hey, if they want jobs for women, let's figure out what jobs their women can do and let's help them build these businesses. Or if they want clean water, let's help them pay for a clean water tank, right? But they're owning this thing. And we started the organization and it's awesome. I mean, it still exists today. It's great. It's not like super unfamiliar to new modern age missions work. Like the 80s, 90s, 2000s kind of like transactional come, do this and get saved kind of idea is no longer as popular as it was back then. So this whole kind of partnership idea is now common. People aren't shocked by this anymore. But it was new back then. The problem was we were all in our 20s and resources for donations were limited. We could only tap into our parents, grandparents and friends so often and our friends are all poor. So like Jeff Dudan (37:29.241) Yeah, and you gotta save them to sell them the Cutco knives. Ben (37:32.16) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we so went on the show, kind of fast forward, still involved in the organization, ended up joined the board of another nonprofit called Project Hope. Project Hope is one of the top 10 largest nonprofits right now in the U .S. So it's huge. So I'm on this dynamic where I'm on the board of a organization fighting to stay alive. And another one that's, you know, blessing endowments and doing massive, massive medical like hospitals. And so I came back, kind of had that moment where I talked about where I was like, this thing has to be for, I have to do something greater than myself, something that's not built on me. What if we started a business because I love business. I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose my touch on skill sets that, you know, helped me stay involved in business because I don't know how long this bachelor thing is going to go or how long my fame is going to pay for pay for me. So what if we start a business that's for profit? Uh, the executive team and the ownerships agree to never be repaid from it, to never take a salary from it. And then we donate 100 % of our profits to nonprofits so that we can become a sustainable fundraising source for those organizations that are doing great work, but just having a hard time figuring out where to tap into. And... So I said it, you know, to kind of go on what you're just saying. One of the cool things I found when we started generous. So to date we donated close to $200 ,000. We're sit seven years in. We're trying to grow our business. We're about 70 % wholesale kind of promo corporate gifting wholesale accounts and 30 % retail. But one of the cool things we found was as I, as we launched generous and I kind of ran it myself for two years, then all of a sudden we had these people. Like my co -owner now who was 30 years old the CEO of this huge insurance crop insurance company and He kind of goes at 40. He's like I'm kind of done. I don't know what to do next Right, but he's financially set perfect person right comes into generous whole new You know complex business to try to figure out and run but the benefits for him are not financial what they are is story and impact Ben (39:54.684) And the benefits of this is beautiful for him because he lived a lot of his life saying, I just need to make the next hundred million. I need to make the next hundred million. And all of a sudden that wasn't working for him anymore. And he didn't know where to turn. So now he turns to generous and he says, let's let's rock and roll here. Like, let's build something that is is creates a better story. So we're able to donate anywhere between 10 and 15 percent of our revenue. So outside of, you know, once we pay for everything else. larger volume years we can get to 15 % lower volume years we haven't dipped below 10 % yet. That's the numbers, the percentages of what is actually being able to be given. Jeff Dudan (40:33.145) And is it mostly online sales? Ben (40:35.904) Yeah, yeah, mostly online. I mean, we have some boutiques and like some some smaller box stores that sell generous. The problem with us is because of our donation model, we can't really get into the large retailers because of the margins that are already cut. But, you know, those smaller like local towns and homes and then are, you know, really here over the last year and a half, it has been more of the branded merch. Jeff Dudan (40:49.657) Right. How the Coffee Model Works: Profits, Partnerships, and Purpose Ben (41:02.752) partnerships that have really helped us, you know, take the next step. Jeff Dudan (41:06.553) Nice. And where's the roastery and where do you get the beans? Ben (41:10.656) We get the beans from all over. So that we're specialty grade coffee. So we get smaller lot coffee. So this coffee will be from anywhere from Africa to Mexico, South America, Central America, all over for beans. And then we roast in War Sandia in my hometown. In fact, in May, we have a building right now that's never been open to the public. So we bought this old warehouse, put a roaster in there. We have some offices from some of our employees. And. Jeff Dudan (41:19.257) Okay. Ben (41:38.496) We've always package shipped, done everything out of there. Well, we just bought a new building that will open in May that's going to be open to the public. It's going to have a little counseling center in there. It's going to have a place where people can hang out and, you know, drink coffee, not necessarily a coffee shop, but just more of a chill area where you can work from there. And then we'll roast in the back. And it's a super cool 1890s building that we've renovated over the last six months that I hope because. just becomes this kind of like really proud moment for the small community. And then also just a really good like kind of location for people to gather and connect. Jeff Dudan (42:16.313) My mind is going crazy with partnership opportunities for this business. And I know I have a friend who has a pretty big addiction related charity and I know they do lots of things and you know. Fundraisers things for people to do things for people to sell things for people to package. I don't know. I don't know where you are. I was on the website. I saw you had a lot of partners partnerships and affiliations, but I really wasn't able to discern what each one did or what they meant. Uh, have you explored that with generous to say, Hey, let's, let's partner up with another, you know, maybe a nonprofit and then be able to further the brand and further the agenda that way. Ben (42:57.6) Yeah, so just for anybody listening out there that maybe is curious about how they could work with generous if you're interested, I would love to kind of explain how we're set up. So right now our partnerships come through a program that we call highlight hope. So if you get on our website, you'll see these highlight hope bags, which is probably what you're talking about. And every quarter we pick four new nonprofits and these nonprofits then design their own bag. So these these bags that you'll see. are designed by the nonprofit. It tells their story on the back. There's a QR code at the bottom that links to their website. And then it's our retail back. So it's what you would buy if you got on a website and subscribe to Generous Coffee. If you went to a store and bought Generous Coffee, these would be the bags that Generous are selling right now that we're known for. And then when you buy a bag, you're kind of voting with your dollar. And so you can just to be, you know, Uh, conservative here, you could know that 10 % of your purchase of that bag is going to go directly to the nonprofit that you chose. So you can choose what nonprofit you want. So it's kind of, you know, if a nonprofit sells a hundred thousand bags of coffee in that quarter, well, that's a lot of money going their way, right? If they only sell 25, 500 bags of coffee that quarter, not as much money going their way, but they get to kind of use that then for their fundraising. They get to go out and buy it at wholesale and go resell it, you know, in their shops or whatever with corporations. Um, Jeff Dudan (44:06.169) Sure. Ben (44:20.512) It's really cool. So like we just did a program with Capital One, where Capital One put us in their headquarters for a month's period of time. And then one of their employees actually helped is helping run this organization out of Haiti that you would see in our highlight hope campaign. And they bought this coffee and then we designed kind of a storytelling around it. It was like, hey, buy the purchase of Capital One. This money is going to be going to this organization. And so there's some employee engagement in there. And there's also some employee satisfaction where like my company cares about getting back even down to the, you know, cup of coffee we drink. And then also finally we do co -labeling and white labeling. So if like, uh, you'd see on our website right now, like Brian Peterson, realty out of Warsaw, right? Every time somebody buys a new house, he has his own bag. Generous isn't even mentioned on it. We package, we ship it. He gives it to his new, uh, purchasers. Jeff Dudan (45:13.401) Nice. Ben (45:16.512) But then on the back end, there's still money being donated because he's buying the coffee from us. So there's a bunch of different ways that we try to give back and that we partner with nonprofits to try to highlight what they're doing. We've just found it more successful recently to do it through maybe the more for -profit space where for -profit businesses or churches are saying, hey, we're serving 3 ,000 cups of coffee a day. Might as well buy your coffee. Then we can give it to this organization. Jeff Dudan (45:39.257) That's right. Yeah. Sustainability, packaging and all of that. When I looked on the website, stuff looks sustainable. Obviously the branding is done extremely well. Is that also part of it or is it just, I mean, is there any sustainable options? And here's the reason I ask. So my daughter's got an internship with a big firm in New York, one of the biggest. accounting, investment, consulting, whatever. And they have a Starbucks in their space in New York that's free to the employees. Okay, well, what if that were a generous coffee thing? And that's more work, it's outside the model, somebody's gotta pay for all that. But companies have these sustainability goals. And certainly from the optics perspective. You know, so I mean, you know, that's that's logistics. That's all of that. I mean, Starbucks does a really nice job with, you know, they they I think they're going to be very successful one day. Let me just put it that way. But one day they'll they'll finally get it right as I as I sit here with my my Trenta that I'm pouring into my speakable future mug. But. Impact Over Optics: Focusing on People, Not Packaging Ben (46:50.208) One day they're going to figure it out. Ben (46:58.688) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (47:03.361) Now, just because my New Year's resolution was two cups of coffee a day. So that's one. I only count that as one. I was like 20, dude. So now I get 230 ounces. Ben (47:08.64) is yet up or down from where you were at. of this. You need to be generous. You'd be our biggest purchaser at this point. Yeah, we you know, we're actually we're doing this really cool thing right now. We're doing them in high schools. So we're launching coffee shops, cafes and high schools where the students are going to run this business. We're going to provide them, obviously, with the stuff they need, but then they get to kind of do this, run the shop, figure out the books. Jeff Dudan (47:16.857) Well, I'm going to as soon as I get, oh jeez. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (47:31.905) Okay. Ben (47:42.048) pay their teams, order all their essentials, make sure their quality is good. I think it's, I actually, I didn't even think about this five years ago, but this is one of the coolest things to me is the idea that in high school I could have been working and running my own business and learning that whole thing. I think it's such an incredible education. I think it also is gonna get so many unique people really fired up about going to school. Jeff Dudan (48:00.185) Right. Ben (48:11.68) Like, oh, I got to show up to school, you know, an hour early today because I got a package, you know, this coffee because it's going out to our teachers. Coffee shops are hard. We've entered into a few of them. I would love to get back into them given the right circumstance. You asked about sustainability. There is sustainability options. So like our brown bags obviously are recyclable. Our bags right now that we saw on retail aren't exactly. Probably I couldn't brag and be like, yes, these are the. Jeff Dudan (48:13.975) Yeah. Ben (48:41.504) the healthiest thing for the environment. But one of the interesting pieces to generous that, you we get asked and I hope more and more from other for -profit businesses, kind of how did you design your give back model or, hey, we have this ESG program in our business and these are our goals. Can generous fit in to help us meet some of those or how would you speak into some of these? I always, my only, my number one, not my only advice, my biggest advice is to pick a lane. Jeff Dudan (48:57.559) Mm -hmm. Jeff Dudan (49:03.321) That's right. Ben (49:10.528) And so our lane is humans. It's what broke my heart first. It's what breaks our team's heart. Like when humans are facing injustice, be whatever that is, right? If it's human trafficking, if it's poverty, if it's lack of things, that's what our team fired up about. And so we've chosen humans as our lane. We love animals. We love the environment. My dog's laying at my feet right now. But we're solely focused on what can we do as a business right now with our capacity. to give as much back to the humans who need it. And then, you know, with scale with kind of greater visions with more resources, I'm excited to always look into the future. But right now we're still a small business and we're still trying to do what we can to make ourselves sustainable so that we can, you know, grow into the future. The Future of Generous: Schools, Storytelling, and Shared Impact Jeff Dudan (50:00.633) Well, well done. Great future for Generous Coffee. Love the brand, love the name. You know, I'm a franchise guy, like that's what I do. So, you know, I'm thinking, well, how can I put a double -sided driveway around a little thing? But, you know, I don't think franchise owners would give away all their profit. I think it would be a, you know, if I can connect that dot, man, I'll call you back. But I don't know, we, we, uh. Ben (50:05.28) Thank you. Ben (50:12.576) Do it. I'd love to. That's a tough sell. It's a tough sell. Ben (50:25.792) But if there's anybody out there listening that you know is has their own business or you know wants to do is for gifting or to provide in their offices like I would be not doing my job well if I said please don't reach out to generous I would love to figure out great ways to do it because that's what we're about and it's been fun for us so yeah anybody's interested let me know. GenerousCoffee .com Jeff Dudan (50:34.745) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (50:51.971) All right. Generouscoffee .com. Ben, last question. If you had one sentence to speak into, speak your experience into somebody else's life, what would that be? Final Message from Ben Higgins: A Life of Generosity Ben (51:07.162) Live every day that you give more than you take. Jeff Dudan (51:11.449) I love it. Perfectly said. We'll end on that. How can people get in touch with you other than GenerousCoffee .com? Where would you direct them to get your attention and connect with you? Ben (51:24.24) Higgins .Ben on Instagram is where I stayed most active. And then I do have a website that updates kind of what I'm up to or speaking engagements. It's a very narcissistic website called TheBenHiggins .com because BenHiggins .com was taken. So it's TheBenHiggins .com and you can kind of get updates on business life or kind of what's going on through that too. Jeff Dudan (51:48.057) Yeah, I actually own benhiggins .com. I squat on domains. So if you'd like it, we can talk after the show. But anyway, hey man, Ben, it's been incredible to have you on. Really appreciate your perspective. Enjoyed the conversation very much. All right, and this has been the Homefront with Jeff Duden. We've had Ben Higgins on here. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Ben (51:49.984) Yeah, I'm gonna check about. Ben (51:55.136) Appreciate it, man. Ben (52:03.104) Hey, thanks for having me. This was great. Ben (52:13.344) Jeff.
Brief Summary In this insightful episode of On the Homefront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Liz Elting—entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author of Dream Big and Win. Liz shares her journey from studying languages across the globe to founding TransPerfect, one of the world’s largest language and business solutions companies. Together, they unpack the power of grit, bootstrapping, building a winning culture, overcoming gender bias in business, and how to turn adversity into opportunity. Key Takeaways Bootstrapping builds discipline : Liz scaled TransPerfect to $1.2 billion in revenue without taking VC funding—proving that profitable revenue beats flashy investor pitches. Culture drives retention and innovation : A performance-based, people-first culture helped her retain talent, generate ideas, and maintain alignment across 100+ offices. Women in leadership still face bias : Liz shared personal stories of being mistaken for an assistant despite being the CEO—and why women must speak up and build companies on their terms. Clear roles prevent future conflict : A lack of a shareholder agreement cost Liz $50M in legal fees during her company exit—a cautionary tale for co-founders everywhere. Your brand ≠ your company : Liz emphasizes the importance of building your personal brand alongside your business, because one day, you may exit and need a new identity. Philanthropy fuels purpose after success : Now focused on health, education, and women's advancement, Liz channels her time, capital, and influence into meaningful impact. Featured Quote “Work today like no one else will, so you can live and give tomorrow like no one else can.” — Liz Elting TRANSCRIPT From NYU Dorm to Global CEO: Meet Liz Elting Jeff Dudan (00:02.894) Welcome to the home front. I am Jeff Duden and we are here with Liz Elting. Welcome, Liz. How are you? Liz Elting (00:10.222) I'm doing great, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me. How are you doing? Jeff Dudan (00:14.222) I'm doing outstanding and I'm excited that you're here with us today. I've been pouring through your book, Dream Big and Win, which is an excellent representation of your story, your life, and how you built TransPerfect. I would love for you to tell us a little bit about who is Liz Elting. Liz Elting (00:32.75) Sure, absolutely. Well, let's see, if I go back to the beginning, I won't go on too long about my life, but when I was young, I lived in Westchester in New York, and then when I was eight and nine, I had the opportunity to move to Portugal, which was fabulous. And there I was able to start studying French and Spanish. Then when I was 10, we moved back to the US and... then to Canada. And I lived in Toronto for a number of years. And there, I added Spanish and Latin to my languages. So by the time I graduated from high school, I realized I had loved, loved, loved languages and thought maybe I'd be able to do something related to languages. So that's kind of one piece of me. And I can go on about a lot during my childhood because I do talk about that in the book because it really is where. I kind of developed my values and how I feel about things. And one of, I guess, those things is my parents were wonderful and they really, they focused on learning about the world. And as a result, we lived in those countries I mentioned. And also they taught me I needed to be financially independent. I could not depend on anybody financially except for myself. Not on my parents, not on a man. no one. So that was kind of a key part of how I was brought up. And then as a result, I had a lot of jobs growing up, starting at age 10. And that was really fun. So those are some of what happened during my childhood. And I can elaborate on all of that if you think it would be helpful, but that's kind of, yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:21.39) Well, what did your folks do growing up? What was the business that you were moving around for? Liz Elting (02:25.006) So, yeah, sure, absolutely. So when I was eight, as I said, we moved to Portugal and the reason we were able to do that is my dad had been in first marketing and then advertising and he happened to have a knack for it. He was really good at that, but he also loved all that was international. So, he got the right to open Kentucky Fried Chicken in Portugal. He got the franchise. So, and I know franchises are a big part of you and what you've done, so that's pretty neat, but he got the KFC franchise, so we moved there. But right after we moved there, the Portuguese Communist Revolution broke out. What were the chances of that? That was back in 1974. So, Jeff Dudan (02:57.166) Yeah, that's right. Liz Elting (03:14.286) Unfortunately, it became very difficult to open an American business, a fast food business. They were very anti -American, anti -capitalism. So we ended up having to move from the south of Portugal up to the middle, from the Algarve to right outside of Lisbon. And it was great. It was a wonderful year for me personally, but it became quite dangerous. And after a year, my dad was able to open a few Italian. restaurants and instead of the KFC because he had a joint venture with a Portuguese restaurant company and then we moved back to the US. So he then worked in Grey Advertising for one more year in New York and then was able to be transferred to Grey Canada and that's why we moved to Toronto. So that was my dad. Really wanted to do something very international but also was a marketing guy and very entrepreneurial. My mom was in education. So always had a career. She was a teacher. She was a guidance counselor. She was into special ed, all of that. So that's what my parents did. But they really encouraged independence, as I said. And, you know, wonderful parents really valued education too. So when I was 17, went off to college in the United States and there I ended up majoring in languages. Wasn't sure what I was going to do with languages. I remember I called up my dad and I said, You know, Dad, I love languages. I've studied four languages. Languages are my favorite thing, but what on earth am I going to do with a language major? And I remember he said, Liz, just pursue what you love, pursue your passion, you know, and the rest will take care of itself. So I ended up maturing in languages in college. I did my junior year in Córdoba, Spain, which was amazing. And then I worked in Venezuela, Caracas, right after college. And then when I was 21, I came to New York City, which is where I am today. 37 years later. Jeff Dudan (05:12.238) Now, did you start at NYU for undergrad or did you? Liz Elting (05:17.006) No, so the college that I was going to from the time I was 17 to 21 was Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. And that's where I went and then, you know, did that, that junior year in Spain and worked in Venezuela. So after, so I came to New York City when I was 21 and then had the opportunity as I was passing through New York to Jeff Dudan (05:24.462) Got it. Liz Elting (05:40.142) I actually didn't think I was going to end up here. I thought I would go to Washington, D .C. where I had a good friend who I thought I might live with. She was going to law school. But as I was coming through New York City to visit my sister, actually, who was two years older than I was, lived here at the time, she told me about a translation company. And this was in 1987. So way back in the day. And I thought, oh, I'll call them up and see if they could use someone because then I can combine my love for languages and business. Called them up, ended up getting a job there. I actually was looking for something in sales because I thought I wanted to meet with clients and solve their problems. They didn't have anything, but they had a job in production. So I took that job. I was then able to move over to sales and I stayed at that company three years, absolutely loved it. And then ended up going back to school and getting my MBA from NYU. So that's the NYU connection that you asked about. Jeff Dudan (06:37.102) Yeah, my daughter's there right now. She's a first year law student. Liz Elting (06:41.006) Oh, fabulous law school. Love that. Jeff Dudan (06:43.47) Yeah, so she's a you know, we're we're she's a country mouse. We I'm a Chicago. I grew up in Chicago, but then got married and raised my family here in North Carolina. So, you know, we country she loves the city and we've been going up and visiting and the food's amazing. There's always something to do. And I think we're going to end up spending a lot more time in the city. Really enjoyed it. Liz Elting (07:05.422) Oh, that's wonderful. Well, maybe she'll end up here, right? I will say it's a great place to live. I've been here, as I said, for 37 years. So maybe she'll end up here. Jeff Dudan (07:15.919) Yeah, we'll see. I know at least maybe for a few years, but we'd love to have her back. So you go to NYU, you get a business school, and then after that, you took a job, but for a very short amount of time. Liz Elting (07:19.182) Yeah, that's right. Liz Elting (07:32.494) I did. And you know what, I didn't get into too much and I won't talk about it too much at this point, but that job after college, before business school in the translation industry, it was key in my life. I learned about the industry. I absolutely loved the industry. And that company was about the largest translation company in the world at the time. It was about 90 people. I thought, I love this industry. It's amazing. It's needed, but it can be done better. Jeff Dudan (07:44.974) Okay. Discovering the Translation Industry (and Quitting Finance Fast) Liz Elting (08:02.286) There was a real gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry at the time. So I kept that idea in my head. Then went back to school, went to NYU, as we said, and got my degree in finance and international business. And the reason I chose finance is I thought, well, that's practical. I could have a career and I could make good money. I would be able to take care of myself. And so then, as you said, I tried out. Jeff Dudan (08:02.414) Mm. Liz Elting (08:31.63) a job at another company. I got a job at a company called Peresco, which was the proprietary trading division of a French bank. And I was supposed to be doing equity arbitrage. And it sounded very important and very high level. And I went there and I showed up and I was the only woman in the place. Okay, I thought I can deal with this. I love men. I've been pretty boy crazy my whole life. And so I thought... This is fine, but whenever the phone rang, all the guys would yell, Liz, phone, because I was the woman. And then they'd say, Liz, can you get me coffee? And then I was asked to order supplies. And I realized, wow, this is a pretty sexist atmosphere. Also though, and just as important, I was number crunching and paper pushing, and I wasn't doing what I had loved at the translation company. dealing with translators around the world, meeting with clients, solving their problems. And I thought, I loved that other industry, and I had an idea about how it could be done better. So what am I doing? So after only six weeks, I quit that job and started TransPerfect out of an NYU Business School dorm room. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (09:50.286) Very nice. When you had the idea for the business, did you have an idea of who the customer set was going to be and how you were going to crack into the marketplace? Liz Elting (09:59.47) I did because I had worked at the other company and I had seen that basically all large companies, Fortune 1000 companies, all of the large banks, law firms, ad agencies, everything needed language services. So that's who I wanted to target, the largest companies in the world. And then medium -sized companies and small companies that were going global. So that was the thought. And it's interesting because when I started, as I said, it was out of an NYU Business School dorm room since I had just graduated. And I was used to living like a student, so it worked out well. I had very little money. At the time, I just had a few thousand dollars in the bank, which had been my life savings from all my jobs. Although I did have a boyfriend at the time who I was living with, and he actually was in business school debt. He had $90 ,000 of business school debt. So. We really had no money. Also at the time, what was interesting is there were other translation companies out there. There were 10 ,000 translation companies out there, but they were tiny. They were mom and pops, moms and pops. I thought that's what we can do differently. We can make this a world -class company with the highest level of quality, highest level of service, with offices in every major city around the world, along the lines of a top -tier investment bank. or law firm. And that was the idea with the company. Jeff Dudan (11:29.582) That's great. So you would find a company and they would want to enter a new market and they would have to get all their marketing materials translated or is it negotiating contracts? Was it written translation things or did you have interpreters that would actually go to business meetings with people? What was the scope of services, translation services for your business? Liz Elting (11:50.382) Yeah. Yeah, both those things you just said and everything else in a foreign language. Everything, as you said, from marketing material to legal contracts to oral interpretations, basically anything a client needed in a foreign language. Like for example, if they needed their annual report translated into 30 languages, we would do that. So it was anything and everything, both what they needed for internal use. Jeff Dudan (11:57.582) Okay. Liz Elting (12:21.166) to deal with clients, to deal with a lawsuit, to open offices, and it was oral, it was written, and then it was typesetting, it was cultural consulting, anything and everything related to foreign languages. Jeff Dudan (12:35.214) Got it. And you bootstrapped this business. I read in your book at one point, and I don't know how it ended up, but that you didn't have any venture capital in your business. So, you know, if you hear people like yourself or the people on Shark Tank and they'll say, don't borrow money for your business, use the power of broke, find, you know, don't have all the foosball tables and wine Fridays and all that kind of stuff that you don't need. It was really so popular and with all the tech companies and everything, but just... Be frugal with your money, bootstrap it, maintain control of your business. Were you able to do that all the way through or was there a time after you got it up that you needed to create some leverage or get some funding? Why Profitable Revenue Beats Vanity Funding Liz Elting (13:19.246) So everything you just said is so correct that, you know, I... Oh, sure. No, everything you just said is completely correct. And, you know, I like to say, oh, I get it, I get it. I thought you didn't hear me. But... Jeff Dudan (13:24.558) Oh, can you say that again? Say that again, but just a little slower. Every. Jeff Dudan (13:41.454) No, I appreciate that. I appreciate you being complicit to a goofball like me. Liz Elting (13:46.222) I need to say, but sorry, what I wanted to say is don't confuse being an entrepreneur. I mean, sorry, don't confuse, yes, being an entrepreneur with being an inventor. You don't need to invent something entirely new to be wildly successful. Instead, it's about providing the best service and quality and continually innovating. But as far as your question about funding, yes, absolutely. I meet so many entrepreneurs today and... Jeff Dudan (13:57.55) Mmm. Liz Elting (14:14.574) met some back in the day when I started, but now it seems everybody is going after funding. And what I say is, no, focus on sales. It's sales, sales, sales. I say funding is vanity and profitable revenue is sanity. That's what you need to survive and thrive. Yes. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (14:35.79) I love that. I love that. That's so good. Liz Elting (14:38.798) Thank you. It's so true, because you can go out and spend a ridiculous amount of time getting funding. And then that doesn't guarantee you're going to have revenue. And it doesn't guarantee you're going to have profit. And you're going to have some very unhappy investors if you don't have those two things. So you really need to put that same effort and more into sales, into revenue. So that's what we did. Sales, sales, sales. As far as your question about. Jeff Dudan (15:00.91) But yeah. Liz Elting (15:07.182) Did we ever need funding? We never needed it. But what we did after about seven years in business, and this is because we had our original company TransPerfect, and then we started a sister company called translations .com to focus more on anything in a digital medium, the technology piece of it. And we went out and got some angel investors for that to grow that part of the company more quickly and potentially go public. But this was in the late 90s and the dot com bubble burst. So it wasn't a good time to do that anyway. And then we realized we were having issues between the two companies because sometimes they would want to be selling the same things like enterprise wide solutions that were anything in a foreign language. And if we're dealing with the client, we didn't want to start sending them to the other company. the sister company, the other part of it is the investors didn't want, they had issues with what the original company was doing, but it was set up to do because they wanted to take all of that business for themselves. So it didn't work. So my partner and I then bought out those angel investors and it was more trouble than it was worth. So that was my experience with funding. Jeff Dudan (16:27.822) So I just want to take a little segue here for the listeners because I've had this experience over and over again. Well, I've had it several times. You have a company and it's your main company and then there's some part of it that somebody wants to do but the other people don't want to do. So you create companies, one company that might be dependent or is a service provider to the main company, but you've got different cap tables. And what that means is you've got different ownership groups in the two businesses. And now as the businesses grow, you lose alignment. And it's very dangerous. And it seems like a simple, common sense thing. But I've seen it. First time entrepreneurs, they tended, well, I want to build this business to do the outsource sales for this organization. And we're going to do it this way. Cap table's different. Well, now, you can't really fire that company. but they're doing things, everybody works to their own comp plan, so they're doing things to make profit in that company. It might not be the best thing for the other company, but you've got this mixed partnership ownership group over here, and it really gets very messy. I mean, you know, so I've seen that happen quite a bit. And then I think the other thing that you said that's so important is, look, you know, nail it before you scale it. When you get money too early, Liz Elting (17:39.342) You ready? Jeff Dudan (17:51.438) you have a tendency, now you've got investors and you've got shareholders, plus you can get a little bit sloppy. Oh, if we spend this $100 ,000 on this, maybe it will do this, and maybe you go a little bit too fast, you don't vet it all the way out, you don't pilot it, you don't try it, and you don't work out all the kinks. And that's really where people get in trouble. Too much money too early on an unseasoned entrepreneur that hasn't built something before, they can... They can lose a lot of money that way. Liz Elting (18:22.894) Absolutely. And if you're only working with your own money or the money of the owners, the founders, then you're much more careful with it. And every penny, it goes to, usually what I recommend is the majority, as much as possible, that money should go to sales and marketing to continue to take you to the next level. And then of course, you need to make sure you're delivering a quality product. But after that, you don't need the fancy... Jeff Dudan (18:32.942) That's right. Jeff Dudan (18:43.662) Right. Liz Elting (18:52.398) you know, desks with the airplane wings on them. You don't need the foosball table, you know, as you were saying. You don't need the windbreakers with your logos. Yeah, you don't need those things. Instead, you need a thrifty culture to make sure you can afford, you be frugal with the company's money and make sure you don't run out of cash because the number one reason companies go out of business is they run out of cash. And exactly as you said, if you're working with other people's money, you're not as careful. You're not as frugal. And we did the opposite. And we actually didn't hire people, we didn't hire salespeople until we had the revenue and thereby profit to do it. And we hired salespeople literally one person at a time based on revenue and profit numbers. And that was critical in our scaling. Jeff Dudan (19:22.254) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (19:42.51) I can imagine that a lot of the model for translation .com was recurring or subscription -based stuff, but what about TransPerfect? How much of your business was recurring and then how much of it was project -based revenue where you were bidding on things? Liz Elting (19:56.206) Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, certainly in the early days, it was a lot of project -based work. And as you know, you work hard, you send out your, in our case, it was thousands of hard copy letters and making thousands of phone calls. Now I know people work with emails or LinkedIn messages, but you send out thousands and thousands and thousands to get one project from one client, but then you spoil the client with quality and service. Jeff Dudan (20:03.278) Sure. Liz Elting (20:25.614) and then they are likely to come back with multiple projects and those multiple projects are likely to turn into a relationship. And then of course, there's the repeat business within the company and referrals and then the same referrals outside the company. But back to your question, over time, it became a lot more like contracts, like master service agreements where we would sign a contract with a client for one year or three years or. Jeff Dudan (20:45.102) Yeah. Liz Elting (20:50.862) five years if we're lucky, but it's still, even as time went on, even after we'd been in business 10, 15, 20 years, there was still project -based work, you know, on, as far as everything. And that was okay because we knew it would keep coming if we spoiled the client with quality and service. And we did that. And I think that's such an important piece of the whole thing as well, because as we know, it's something like six to eight times. more expensive to bring in a new client than to retain a current client. So you need to wow the client with quality and service with every project and then they will keep coming back. So it was a combination but over time it became more contracts and subscriptions and that type of thing. Jeff Dudan (21:28.462) Right. Women in Business: Navigating Bias and Building Your Sandbox Jeff Dudan (21:41.07) Well, you wad a lot of clients because the last revenue projections I saw are numbers were about a billion two with TransPerfect. So as a woman -led and woman -founded business growing this fantastic business, what are some of the challenges and maybe some of the opportunities that you discovered along the way that you can share with maybe other women entrepreneurs? And you can thank Jenny Bright for that question. Liz Elting (21:46.926) Yuh. Liz Elting (22:08.558) Okay, thank you, Jenny. Yes, well, as a woman, and some of them relate to being a woman. And, you know, I mentioned part of why I started the company is because I was experiencing sexism in that financial company, that very brief stint there. So I thought, okay, if I can't change that culture, I'm going to create my own. I'm going to, you know, if I can't play in that sandbox, I will create my own sandbox. Jeff Dudan (22:23.47) Right. Liz Elting (22:36.494) And I tried to do that. And I think it's really important to do your best to create that culture. I mean, in the early days, I experienced sexism. What I didn't mention is I did end up starting the company with my boyfriend at the time, who became my fiance. We then broke up after five years. At that point, we had a company. And so... I guess what I'd say about that, but people assumed even though I had studied the four languages, I had lived in five countries, I had worked for three years in the other translation company, and he was a year behind me in business school, so he started a little later, people assumed he was the CEO and I was the assistant. So I experienced that. And then over the years, there was sexism, both, you know, I mean, I saw it, you know, and then I saw some of our employees experiencing it. So I think it's super important. to set up your company so those things don't happen. And it's everything from making sure you have a great family leave plan when people have children. And for men and women, maternity and paternity leave, I think that's super important. I think it's super important as a woman leader or a woman who may go on maternity leave to make sure. you have a good backup, as you should have a good succession plan in place for every position in all times. I think that's super important. As far as what else for women, I think specific to women, I could go on. And I'm not sure how much of that I could do. I mean, I think it's important for women to speak up and not. be silenced. Sometimes men are a little more aggressive, bolder, and women hang back. And I think it's really important for women to be at the table and speak their mind. I think it's very important, both as a woman and as a leader, to make it about results rather than time in the office and who you know. It shouldn't be political. It should be about results. And I think what's so important then is then once you... Jeff Dudan (24:46.477) That's right. Liz Elting (24:51.406) either before you have kids and when you just want your time outside of the office, or when you have kids, you come in in the morning, assuming you're working in an office, you work intensely, you make it about results, and then at the end of the day, you shut down, either your computer or out of the office, and you make it all about your home time, your family time, your personal time, instead of kind of strolling in a little later, stretching out the day, and not. making it about results. And then of course, the same thing on weekends. And I also noticed with women who worked at our company, they didn't want to see women or anyone, really men as well, who were working crazy hours and who were always on email and texting all the time because then they thought, well, I wouldn't want to rise within their company, this company, because if they're doing it, then I'm going to have to do it. So I think that's super important too for the right, you know, for employee morale, for the right culture. Jeff Dudan (25:51.15) Yeah, I mean, work will expand to fill the time available. You know the time that you're the most efficient? 30 minutes when somebody calls and says, I'm dropping by the house in 30 minutes. You will clean your entire house in 10 minutes. Things that have been left laying around. Because everything gets in the closet, the dishes get put in the sink, you run the vacuum cleaner. You know, if you would have, you've been waiting all week to do that stuff and now all of a sudden somebody's gonna come over and you can get that stuff done like. It's, yeah, I mean, a work -life balance is critically important. Be where your feet are, focus on what you're doing, you know, and know, have clear outcomes that everybody's responsible for, and then take that same focus and take it into your personal life and invest it in the people. And so it's refreshing to hear you say that. Where is, what, do you have any involvement with the company today or how did it, how did the story end for TransPerfect with you? The $50M Exit Lesson: Don’t Skip Your Shareholders Agreement Liz Elting (26:48.942) Yeah. So, and that's why, you know, I do like to touch on this issue. So I started it, as I said, with a partner. I do recommend if anyone is starting companies or anyone has a partner to make sure they have a proper shareholders agreement because we didn't. We were boyfriend and girlfriend starting out. And, you know, I thought I want to do this. And he said, I'll do it with you too. But we, as I mentioned, didn't have money. So we didn't hire an attorney. We didn't hire an accountant. And we just incorporated and got going. So we didn't have a proper shareholders agreement. The reason you need that for anyone who doesn't have one, I mean, I think in this day and age, most people know to do that. But to establish roles, responsibilities, decision making, dispute resolution, what happens in the event of death, disability, divorce, and above all, Jeff Dudan (27:17.902) Okay. Liz Elting (27:45.55) If one of you wants to buy the other out or sell, how is the company valued? We didn't have that. So all along the way, we had to keep figuring out, okay, who's in charge of what? How are we going to agree if we don't, you know, who gets their way? And it was tough. So you need it for that reason. And then the other thing is, I don't recommend being 50 -50 owners with a partner. I know some people do it. successfully, but I know many, many, many who don't. And, you know, in retrospect, I think if I could have, I would have been more than 50%, just so I could have been the decision maker. So what happened is after about 20 years, and I can't say we were getting along perfectly before 20 years, because my partner and I, once we broke up, we were boyfriend, girlfriend, then we were engaged, and then after about five years, we broke up. Jeff Dudan (28:12.782) Right. Liz Elting (28:40.686) But neither of us wanted to say goodbye to the company because at that point it was $5 or $10 million in revenue. I guess it was about $10 million and the hardest part was over. So we kept running the company together as ex -fiancés. But after about 20 years, it got very difficult. Our goals, our values, or I guess I'd say, yes, our aspirations, our goals, our values had really gone in different directions. So I could. I mean, it was a crazy story. It was a crazy ending because we didn't have the shareholders agreement. And because one of us was not the decision maker, I ultimately had to litigate. I had to sue. We had a very crazy dramatic situation. I had to spend $50 million in legal fees to exit, which had we had it set up right, I wouldn't have. And that's why I like to really share that lesson that I learned. Jeff Dudan (29:29.422) Wow. Liz Elting (29:39.022) But I ultimately did sell after 26 years in business and so now I am not involved in the company. And it was such a joy. I learned so much. I worked with amazing people, but now I get to do other things that I adore doing. So that's the situation now. Jeff Dudan (30:03.822) Well, I know it was an incredible outcome and $50 million, not a rounding error, not necessarily a rounding error, but not also a permanent impairment of your ability to generate some really incredible wealth out of that deal. So congratulations on that. I know it was a really fantastic outcome, although hard fought to get there. Divorces, you know, they say divorces are like that really expensive, but. Liz Elting (30:09.39) Ha ha! Jeff Dudan (30:32.782) but they also say sometimes they're worth it. Liz Elting (30:35.054) They are and you know, yes, exactly. It needed to be done because when things are not going right, when you're not in agreement with your partner, it's not good for anyone. It's not good for the two of you and it's certainly not good for the kids or the employees. And it was a challenging time for all, but got through it and now, now I get to do all the things I didn't have time to do when I was running the company. So, yeah, it's definitely for the best. Jeff Dudan (30:59.79) So at that moment, I had an exit that was life -changing for us. And not only as selling the business, but also then having 100 % of my options and time and everything open. It's a very difficult time for people because the pressure of performance, your identity, where you go every day, what you do every day, and who you do it with, all of that changes overnight. Liz Elting (31:28.878) Yes. Oh, absolutely, because it was my whole identity. I mean, as you know, when I started, even in the early days when we were only doing a couple million dollars a year, it was my identity and it was a big deal, as you know, to start a company and to make it so you have 10, 15, 20 people, that's such an achievement. It was everything and it was my identity and the employees were my family before I had my... Jeff Dudan (31:29.39) How did that affect you? Liz Elting (31:55.758) you know, own kids, my, you know, my own husband, my own kids, they were my second family ultimately. And I got very close to them. Yes. So then you leave and all of a sudden you are no longer CEO. And, you know, what exactly do you do with your time? I mean, you know, and it felt weird. I, there were days early on when I thought, well, I need to go do this again. I need to go start a company. I need to go buy a company. I need to replicate this somehow. But, um, That didn't last too long. I realized also I wanted to use the resources, what I was able to cash out for and my time and try to give back to all the people or to any of the people who didn't have the opportunity I had had. As I mentioned, I had amazing parents. They were great mentors. They encouraged working from a very young age and they encouraged education. And they made sure. I worked and I had a great education. And so now with my time with my foundation, I help support women and people from marginalized and diverse communities and pay for education, contribute to funding entrepreneurs and then with public health and hunger and gun safety and a lot of things like that. But yes, it was very difficult. And I guess one other thing I'll say, Jeff, because I've learned this. there's the whole branding thing, which I've learned about. And I think I've learned about how we all need our own brand. I've learned it largely because now, you know, I've recently written my book, Dream Big and Win, where I've been sharing the lessons that I learned along the way based on what I did right and the many things I did wrong. And you need your brand. And even if you start your company, your brand cannot be your company. And because all of a sudden, Jeff Dudan (33:49.806) Yes. Liz Elting (33:51.822) me after 21 years, I thought this is my baby, I conceived it, I named it, and then I'm gone. And what's my identity? And what is my legacy? And so you need to always keep that in your mind and work hard on that along the way. And then of course, once you move on. Mentorship, Jack Daly, and Staying Curious After Exit Jeff Dudan (34:11.374) What do you have around your table in terms of mentorship during the time you built the company and then also in that very critical transition time when you were trying to figure out what was next? Liz Elting (34:25.646) I'm sorry, I missed the beginning of what you just said. Jeff Dudan (34:28.59) I said, who did you have around your table? Who might be, from a mentor perspective, people that were with you as you were building the company, and then in that very important transition time when you were trying to figure out what to do next? Liz Elting (34:31.054) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Liz Elting (34:43.342) Yes. Well, certainly as I was building the company, you know, I had my parents that I bounced ideas off of them. And then I met people along the way who were helpful. And I talk about one guy who I met. He was a sales coach that I met when we had about five people at the company and his name is Jack Daly. Do you know him? Jeff Dudan (35:03.246) Yeah, Jack. Jack Daly. Yeah. Well, not well, but yeah, I've seen him speak. I had him speak at a YPO event one time and yeah, he's great. He's great. And I did. I did see that you mentioned him in the book. Liz Elting (35:14.798) Oh! Oh, I did because I, so are you part of YPO? Oh, wonderful. I was as well. So I, but when we had about five people and maybe a million dollars in revenue of that, I heard him speak at a YEO event way back in the day in like 1995. And he was speaking about how to manage sales managers. And I was thinking, we have like five people in this company. I am, and my partner are the sales managers. So. Jeff Dudan (35:20.046) Yeah, I am. Jeff Dudan (35:33.966) Okay. Yeah. Liz Elting (35:47.438) But the point is I listened to him, he was fabulous. And then after that, I brought him back to our company many times, maybe once a year for the next 23 years. We had over 600 full -time salespeople and he would speak to them and jump on tables and he was fabulous. And I think he was certainly a mentor for sales, but just, I thought so many of his attitudes and ideas were great for company culture. And, you know, so I was a big fan of him and he was an introvert. Jeff Dudan (36:19.31) Yeah, I think I wrote like a hundred things I wanted to do in my life at one of his talks or something like that. The more I go around in business groups, the more people know who he is and he's had a big impact in their life. And he's a guy that built several large, large sales organizations. Liz Elting (36:27.534) Yes. Liz Elting (36:45.134) Yes. Jeff Dudan (36:45.39) But then he retired and he started doing Ironmans at what, in his 50s or 60s or something like that. And he's done, I don't know, hundreds of these things now. And he's probably 70s now? Liz Elting (36:47.822) Yes. Yes. Liz Elting (36:58.158) Yes, he's in his 70s and he's, I think, played golf in every state. And I mean, he's done extensive travel. He's doing all kinds of things. And I think he's still getting out there and speaking and motivating salespeople. But yes, the Ironmans are a big part of it as well. So he was a mentor along the way. When I sold, I think I thought back on my parents and how they always gave back and how... Jeff Dudan (37:08.11) Yeah. Liz Elting (37:26.606) they believed in giving back and philanthropy. And they taught us we were lucky. And too much is given. If you are successful, you kind of owe it to the world to give back. I think that was, I kept their values very much in mind. And unfortunately, they're both still alive. So how lucky am I for that? Because they're 88 and almost 86. But the point is, yes, I guess those were some of my mentors along the way. Jeff Dudan (37:39.982) Right. Jeff Dudan (37:47.982) Great. Jeff Dudan (37:56.75) Liz, when did you write the book and who did you write this book for? Why Liz Wrote Dream Big and Win Liz Elting (38:01.998) That's a great question. So I wrote the book because it is the book I wish I had had when I was starting my career, starting my company, and even along the way, the whole 26 years I could have used it. So that's why I wrote it. I tried to make it kind of like a beach read business book, like a fun read, you know, very, you know, a quick read, very kind of vulnerable. Jeff Dudan (38:27.086) Yeah. Liz Elting (38:31.342) authentic, entertaining, and you know because I thought you know that's what I could have used is I always liked reading biographies instead of just how -to books that I thought were a little dry so I tried to make it a little more like that and I wanted to share the lessons based on what I did right and what I did wrong because I thought a lot of business books don't talk about what not to do so I thought that could be as helpful as what to do so um That's why I wrote it. And I really wanted to share my lessons with people who are entrepreneurs, either starting out or seasoned entrepreneurs, and then just people in business in general. I think there's a lot on leadership in the book. And obviously that is a key part of it. If you have the right leadership, if you're leading properly and your team is leading properly and you've created the right culture, the sky's the limit. Jeff Dudan (39:27.214) you pulled it off and it's a highly recommend on my list. It's very approachable. People are tribal. We live in our stories. And it was just for me, if I get into something and it gets too clinical or too tactical and it just, so your book and it just kept kind of pulling me along. So I'd get into it and I'd read and next thing I know I'd find out, oh, okay. So it just. It's a good read, but it has some real practical and tactical things, especially for younger entrepreneurs who are maybe thinking about how they set things up. And of course, some of the things you shared here about just basic stuff, shareholders agreement. The thing that I shared about making sure that your cap tables align between related companies and the problems that that causes, who pays for what? Well, we're paying too much share of the rent and we're paying too much of this. So now you're... Now you're arguing, you're infighting against an affiliated or sister company over cost allocations when really you should just be working on wowing the customer and what does the customer need. So these are some easy early flaws. The problem is people don't know how successful they're going to become. So I can't tell you how many incredible entrepreneurs. I was just with a guy, a friend of mine out in Phoenix, just had a, you know, just a massive company out there. And he started it with a buddy, you know, and after two or three years, he had to get the buddy out because it was clear that they had different aspirations, different goals, different energy levels, different lids, you know, that they were interested in doing. So anyway, highly recommend. Liz Elting (41:13.614) Yes, but I love what you just said because those were the two issues as you know back to when we started that second company, which we didn't even need to do. We could have had it kept it all under one umbrella. We didn't need funding. We were growing it organically. We're internally funding it, but it was a way for my partner and me to divide responsibilities. But had we done that, Jeff Dudan (41:25.934) Right. Liz Elting (41:37.902) If the get -go with the proper shareholders agreement, we wouldn't have done it. But you're right. Those were the two reasons. Because if you have other owners, you know, who's paying for what in their company versus in the other company. And then also, you both are trying to grab the same business. So I love what you said. It's all about wowing the customer instead, because that's what's going to take you to the top. So love what you just said. Absolutely. Yeah, you got it. You nailed it. Liz Elting Foundation: Health, Equality, and Entrepreneurship Jeff Dudan (42:05.326) Thank you. Liz Elting (42:07.822) Um, yeah. Jeff Dudan (42:09.87) So I'm looking across some of your advocacy and some of your charity work here. A lot of it has to do with health, wellness, education, public issues, economic independence. You've got the Elizabeth Elting Foundation that you started in 2018. What do you see as some very current, Liz Elting (42:28.622) Yes. Yes. Jeff Dudan (42:36.558) issues that you're concerned about that you're going to use these vehicles to address. Liz Elting (42:42.734) Well, I'm just trying to get involved in all the different ways I can to help people live longer, healthier, productive lives, making so everybody has the same opportunity I did. So that relates to all these different things. So it's everything from, well, you mentioned the health. So heart disease is the number one killer of women and men. So very involved in heart disease, American Heart Association, cancer, we all know. Jeff Dudan (42:51.726) Mm -hmm. Liz Elting (43:12.526) People have been touched by cancer, so I'm involved in a bunch of different cancer organizations. And the nice thing about that is every day we get one closer to, one day closer to cures with all the different types. So it's well worth the commitment and the money. And then of course, education and entrepreneurship are great equalizers. They make it so everybody can have the same chance. Don't go work in someone else's company and... Jeff Dudan (43:24.462) That's right. Jeff Dudan (43:36.462) That's right. Liz Elting (43:41.454) build their dream, go create your company and build your own is the idea. And you can do that with both education and help entrepreneurship wise, either with lessons or with funding if need be. But I think you and I are both fans of as little funding as possible. And if we go back to that for a minute, I'll just say even getting investors, first of all, then you're not focusing on your own profitable revenue. But also, you can lose control that way. And I know too many horror stories of people who ended up selling equity, and then they ended up getting ejected from, lost control of their company, got ejected from their company when it was their blood, sweat, and tears, their idea. So I think that's important. And then I mentioned hunger. I worked with the food bank and the campaign against hunger. And then, Jeff Dudan (44:15.854) Right. Jeff Dudan (44:24.718) Yeah. Liz Elting (44:39.086) gun safety because obviously we know mass shootings and any shooting, you know, suicides, huge problem, you know, in our country. And then Lift Our Voices, which is Gretchen Carlson's charity that she started so that everybody has their voice within a company. So lots of great organizations. And I'm on the board of a number of them and I'm finding that very interesting. And so, Yes, I mean, it's been a very fun and exciting time, but I'm now through this book launch, I'm getting to go out and talk to people like you, meet smart, motivated, accomplished people like you, and then share my lessons for people who are starting their journeys. And it's been so fulfilling. So I absolutely love it. Jeff Dudan (45:31.854) That's fantastic. And are you speaking, so are you doing a lot of speaking, speaking to groups, are people asking you to come and have talks? Liz Elting (45:39.406) Yes. I mean, fortunately, no, and I'm really loving it. What did I do last week? I mean, yeah, I mean, every week, but yes, I was at Harvard Business School and Boston Founders Forum last week. I've spoken, I'm actually, yeah, I have a few next week at Trinity College where I went undergrad, but spoken at everything from JPMorgan Chase to Bank of America. Jeff Dudan (45:52.91) Okay. How to Build a World-Class Company Culture Liz Elting (46:04.238) UBS to Morgan Stanley to SAP. So lots of fun things. But you know, one of the things I really like to talk about that we haven't discussed is the culture of the company. Because yes, it's first of all, I believe in sales, sales, sales from day one through to the end. And in the early days, it's the phone calls and the letters or the emails and the LinkedIn messages and the trade shows and being all over people. And then as we said, wowing them with service and quality, but then it's creating, making them into raving fans and making it so they keep coming back and keep coming back. But also you need that culture. You need that winning culture and to be an employer of choice in your industry and ideally any industry. So I am such a big believer in that. And I think that gets created by making sure people are clear on their goals, you know, as we were saying, making it about goals and results and then getting out of their way. So it's, hiring the right people, making it clear what's expected, and then not micromanaging. And one of the things I talk about in my book, and I learned this from losing people who were sitting right alongside me, but I didn't know what was important to them. So from that, I literally had a person who quit and said, I quit. And I'm like, wait, we were dealing with each other every day. I thought you were so happy. And they're like, no, I have a better opportunity. So. I learned from that, I need to meet with my people that are reporting to me and our leaders need to as well once a week or once every two weeks, whatever is feasible. Really one -on -one to figure out, well first of all to clearly outline their goals and to make sure they're clear on how they can get to the next level so they know there's opportunity. But then secondly, to find out how they're doing personally, making sure if they're having any issues, they share them and sometimes you have to ask them. Jeff Dudan (47:53.134) Right. Liz Elting (48:02.446) you know, how they're doing, how are you doing? Oh, I'm fine. How are you doing? Oh, I'm okay. How are you really doing? And then you get the good stuff sometimes after three tries. And then if they're sharing it, you're there for them. And that's very important. And then finally, from a business perspective, you know, how are you feeling about things? And, you know, is there, and first of all, I would give my feedback to them, but also, I would ask my favorite question and I would do this in these one -on -one meetings, but I would also do it in employee surveys and exit interviews. I would ask my very favorite question, which is, what would you do differently if you owned the company or if you ran the company or if you ran the department? It really, I thought it was because that is how we got so many of our amazing ideas. And of course, the way to grow and differentiate yourself is innovation and it's how we got. Jeff Dudan (48:44.302) Great question. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:51.694) Mmm. Liz Elting (48:56.718) a lot of our innovations, both whether it was a new product or service or technology we're offering, whether it was everything from when we started offering litigation support services rather than just translation services to law firms. Or that was from an employee. Or when we became ISO certified, that was the idea of an employee. Or when we got our... Jeff Dudan (49:20.622) Okay, yeah. Liz Elting (49:22.702) We offer TransPerfect linguist certification, certifying linguists. That was the idea of an employee. And then sometimes they were things like, why does the 40th floor have an espresso maker and the 39th floor doesn't? Those are other things. But those all create a wonderful culture because it makes it so people feel like they really have say. And then, of course, they get rewarded when they give ideas and they make the company more successful. So I think that's really valuable, those one -on -one conversations and getting the feedback as well through surveys and exit interviews, both for their happiness and for the company's success. Jeff Dudan (50:05.998) Were you a net promoter score company or how did you gauge customers and employee satisfaction? Liz Elting (50:12.366) Oh, wow, yes, constant measuring of it. So in many, many ways, I mean, as far as customer satisfaction, I mean, I mentioned being ISO certified. And when you are, every project gets graded. But then also, we would send out feedback emails after every project. And then we would send out to our clients. Jeff Dudan (50:16.494) Okay. Liz Elting (50:39.822) We would also send out annual surveys to our clients about how we were doing. So we had a whole bunch of ways that we were constantly getting feedback from our client, as I mentioned, with every project, both from them, and then, of course, once a year. And then with our employees also. I mentioned the one -on -one meetings. I mentioned the employee surveys, the exit interviews. And then, along with all of these things, just asking them, speaking in person. event, right? When we had a company event, when we had a bowling event, when we had a VIP client dinner, just saying, how are we doing? What can we do differently? But then we were graded by them as well. Jeff Dudan (51:22.862) So a big part of leadership is accessibility. And as your company grows big, it's more difficult to maintain that. How many employees did you have at your peak? Liz Elting (51:26.702) Mm -hmm. Liz Elting (51:36.718) When I sold, we had over 5 ,000 full -time employees. Yes, all over the world, in over 100 cities. So yes, and that's a great issue you bring up, because as a result, because they were in over 100 cities, we needed to find ways to bring them together. So we would have annual sales meetings. So we would have a North American sales meeting where we'd. Jeff Dudan (51:40.654) Wow. Right. OK. Jeff Dudan (51:54.957) Yes. Liz Elting (52:01.742) bring everyone from the North American offices together. We'd have an EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Asia sales meeting. We'd have the same thing for our production team, a North American one, an EMEA one. We would have senior sales manager meetings. We'd have senior sales production manager meetings. Oh, and then we would have Platinum Club, which was our president's club. You know, for both. We made it, and I think this is a very important point too, we made it so it wasn't just for salespeople, because companies tend to do that, right? They reward the top salespeople, but what happens to production? And I didn't talk about this yet, but it was one of the reasons I wanted to start TransPerfect. At the other company I was at, it was always production versus sales, sales versus production, the way it often is at a company. And I thought, I want to create a company where... They're both on the same team and they're both rewarded. So I think the way we compensated salespeople was a wonderful way to do it because once they started being successful, their commissions never sunsetted. So it was very hard for them to leave the company. And I didn't know of another company, certainly in our industry, that did that. Yeah, so that was very valuable. But then, Jeff Dudan (53:14.382) Right. Jeff Dudan (53:19.31) right. Liz Elting (53:22.67) came up with a comp plan for production where if they were successful and they were keeping their clients happy with recurring revenues and profit, they made a lot more than they would at any other company in our industry. So from a compensation standpoint, it was wonderful. But then of course we needed to do a lot of other things because it's not all about the money. So everything from finding ways to control the hours to the platinum club, as I mentioned, to a Jeff Dudan (53:38.03) It's great. Liz Elting (53:52.334) Oh, company parties. We would have, we would get our people together with company parties and we had them every holiday, you know, every kind of December, January holiday party and over the summer in each of our big cities. And then we would give out about 50 awards. So for the kind of behaviors we wanted, you know, them to continue with. And then lastly, we had wheel spins. We had monthly wheel spins where people who were getting good results would get. Jeff Dudan (54:15.534) Sure. Liz Elting (54:21.998) a spa day or an iPad or whatever it was. So lots of ways to kind of measure people and then acknowledge people for great results. Jeff Dudan (54:33.39) Well, the recognition, even though they win the iPad, the recognition of everybody knowing that they won the iPad because they're a top performer, that, you know, people, that little acknowledgement, it carries people, it makes us all feel so good. Liz Elting (54:36.43) haha Liz Elting (54:46.894) Yes. Yes, you're right. Supposedly, yes, it's three times more valuable to give the recognition in public rather than in private. So whenever it's positive, yes, you do it in public in front of a big audience. And virtually everybody loves that. So you're absolutely right. Great point. Jeff Dudan (54:59.182) That's right. Jeff Dudan (55:08.494) So I know the challenges in an organization that size with communications and making sure that things you're rolling out, new programs, changes to the benefit plans and things like that, you have to be meticulous about communications. At what point during the journey did you hire a communications team or did you or did that fall under marketing? Liz Elting (55:33.582) So you mean as far as things like... Jeff Dudan (55:36.206) Yeah, like any program, any change that you're rolling out, exciting things that are happening in the company, communicating the fact that you're leaving the business, big things, little things, because alignment as your organization grows, it's difficult at every single level. And not over -communicating, not... putting so many emails in somebody's inbox that they become tone deaf and they just stop reading them. We have all, and one of the challenges we have today is there's so many channels. So we have Teams channels, we got monday .com channels, we got email channels, we got text channels, we've got all, so there's all of these different ways for people to communicate. Do you have any tips or advice for people that are building businesses right now? Any gold standards on how you communicate with the organization? in an optimal way. Life After the Exit: Rebuilding Identity and Owning Your Brand Liz Elting (56:33.07) No, that's a great point. I mean, certainly I remember in the early days before we had an HR department, boy, that was tough. But then, of course, we did. And then the marketing communications team also communicated a good amount. But I think it's an excellent question because I remember certainly the time when I left six years ago, there were many, too many emails. But that's kind of... Jeff Dudan (57:01.422) Yes. Liz Elting (57:01.774) way of the world. And to some degree, when your offices are in over 100 cities around the world and people are working with one another in different offices, or certainly the leaders need to communicate with the different offices, there are going to be a lot of emails. So it's a great question. I guess I don't have an excellent answer except I'm a big believer in in -person over email because I felt like Jeff Dudan (57:28.91) Sure. Liz Elting (57:31.406) you know, with the advent of email and now even Zoom, it's just too much. But, I mean, email's the worst. I mean, as far, or texting is the worst. I mean, you need at least to get on Zoom or get on the phone. Because I think people rely too much on email and text, and then we're not having the in -person connection that we need to have. But... I know that's not exactly what you're asking because I'm not sure. I think maybe the answer is at a big company where there are a lot of different channels, maybe having one that you stick to just for the corporate communication to the employees, just so they don't know where, so they have a sense of where to look for it, so they're not getting it from too many different places. is what I think would simplify things, because any way to simplify things would be helpful. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (58:30.542) Yeah. Liz, any political aspirations for you? Liz Elting (58:35.214) I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, I, you know, no, I don't think so. I mean, I really, I think business is wonderful and I think business is helpful in making the world a better place and social entrepreneurs, I think are doing amazing things. I also think philanthropy is doing a great deal. I think as far as the government, I think that's where we're not. Jeff Dudan (58:38.67) That wasn't a no. That wasn't a no. Liz Elting (59:02.574) getting. I mean, it's harder to change things there. So doing it all these other ways for now seems to be working best for me. But I guess you never know. But yeah, that's a great question. Very interesting question. Jeff Dudan (59:07.246) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (59:16.782) It's thankless. It's so tough for these people. And we want the most qualified people to represent our cities and towns and states and all of that stuff. And it's so tough. So I guess that's on top of mine. I just came back from, I spent a couple days in Washington this week with the, so they're building a replica of the White House called the People's House. Liz Elting (59:18.029) Oh, I don't know how they do it. Jeff Dudan (59:44.846) And it's half a mile away from the White House and it's a four story, very big corner building that they are retrofitting. And it's going to have a lot of the rooms of the White House replicated. And it's also going to have like the entryway, but then it's going to be super high tech. It's about an 86 million dollar project. Super high tech. So people from all over the world can come in and it's it's really led by the White House Historical Association, which was founded by. Jackie Kennedy in 1961 because there's all these artifacts that are in the White House. And it's just a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing, regardless of which party and what's going on, the White House is an institution. And, you know, so a new president comes in, there's five desks that they get to choose from, you know, do you want a George Washington's desk? Do you want Abraham, you know, and all of this stuff? And then the artwork, right? They get to pick, but there's one. painting that never moves and it's a beautiful painting of John F. Kennedy and he was painted posthumously and they used his brother as to paint the body model but then the artist said because he's passed they didn't want to paint his eyes so his head is kind of down like this and it's kind of inside the front door of the White House and it's the one painting that just never moves it's not an option but everything else they have they have you know all of these oil paintings and and just all of this incredible rich history of this country. And so they're building this replica thing. But you know, it's so, you know, I was invited to go there as a, you know, as somebody who they're looking to invest in this, in this project. And, you know, it's, it's, and I've, I have the, all of these incredible pictures of the day and going and doing all that and going to the White House and. in all these different rooms, because we had a kind of a private situation going on there after we went to the facility and all that. I don't want to post them. It's like, because it's like, I just don't want to get into that discourse of mixing that. And so it's an interesting tough time. I am talking about it on this podcast, which is going to be heavily listened to, I'm sure. Liz Elting (01:01:49.902) Yeah. Liz Elting (01:02:00.046) Oh. Jeff Dudan (01:02:00.43) But it's interesting, you know, it's an interesting time because it's, I mean, we do care. Like we're home front brands. Like we are about creating financial freedom on Main Street USA, helping families create generational wealth, making sure that, you know, like some of the wealth stays on Main Street with families because businesses, small businesses, 60 % of our GDP. So. When I sold my business, part of my philanthropy or part of my purpose is we got three things really is, but really making sure that we maintain a strong middle class through great businesses that are good for people and that can really undergird all the towns and cities and families so that they do have an opportunity to create a good situation for theirself and anybody that they happen to care about. And then we are passionate about children. So we're building reading rooms in schools across the country in partnership with Carson Scholars. And then we participate in Operation Homefront, helping veterans transition. So those are three good causes that we are, those are things that we think are good for the country. We think those things are good for people. We think it's good for children that don't have libraries in some of these inner city schools to be able to give them some of these resources. Liz Elting (01:03:04.878) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:03:22.286) But there's just so much to do out there and it's not hard to identify the need. And it's just sometimes it seems like we should put some things aside and focus on some of these things that are important that I think everybody can agree upon. So I really appreciate all the, I mean, you've got a massive long list of things that you're doing with your time and your energy and probably your money. Liz Elting (01:03:50.414) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:03:50.51) supporting all of these great causes. So I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate that. Liz Elting (01:03:57.454) No, I appreciate what you're doing, Jeff. That's so interesting that you do that along with everything else you do. And that's very interesting about what you were doing in DC too. And yeah, it seems like what I love about hearing about what you're doing is you're just continually curious. And I talk about that in the book too, right? Because you want to hire people who... Jeff Dudan (01:04:20.59) Yeah. Liz Elting (01:04:26.798) are curious, you want to constantly be curious, and you never, that's how you continue to, how you thrive until the end of time. And I love it. You're just continually doing new things and learning new things and helping people do that. So that's wonderful. Jeff Dudan (01:04:29.646) Oh yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:04:46.702) Well, I tell you, the rate of change is forcing it upon us. I know, I can only imagine what's happening over at TransPerfect with all the AI tools that are getting rolled out right now and how it's just the speed of change. You need to have creatives, you need to have curious people. The tools are just that, they're a tool and they can't do everything for you. I mean, even in doing this podcast and... Liz Elting (01:04:55.342) I knew. Jeff Dudan (01:05:14.734) getting it right, it still takes a human touch. I mean, we can have AI do all kinds of stuff with this interview, but we still have to look at it and say, is that interesting? Is that clip interesting? Is that hook the right hook? Because those tools can get you close, but they can't get you there, all the way there just yet. But I can also imagine too, especially with voice. Liz Elting (01:05:39.182) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:05:44.558) and all of the tools that are available for translation and things like that. And some of the hardware that I've seen coming out now, there's actually a piece of hardware coming out. It's a prototype. I think it's called Rabbit. And it basically ties together all of your apps. So it's like, if you want to, you can literally, now you just have one app instead of all the different apps you've got to open and close. So it... Liz Elting (01:06:11.95) Wow, crap. Jeff Dudan (01:06:13.07) Yeah, right. So it's it's it's somebody that's even said, you're so lazy humans that we're not even going to make a click on Snapchat. We're just going to all you have to say is Snapchat that picture to this group. And, you know, it opens it up and it does all that stuff for you. So there's always going to be ways and, you know, and all of this, you know, business owners today, especially young entrepreneurs that are in their first time. And they've got to sort all this stuff. And I can see how they can get absolutely. Obsessed with all of these different tools and things coming at him so fast and maybe it could even take their eye off the ball a little bit so I We had a guy On the show was that this week or any I think it might have been Monday this week was a busy week But you know, he said well I started this I started the business and we had it going great and it was an AI generated business and he basically said, you know Google or somebody came out with this change and our business was gone overnight. Just because they had created a product to fill a gap that if Apple or Google or Microsoft decides to fill it and give it away for free, then it's, you know, your business is done. So really interesting time. And inside of that, as we'll head towards the, we'll start heading towards the barn here, but inside of that. Liz Elting (01:07:14.286) Ugh. Liz Elting (01:07:26.606) Wow. Jeff Dudan (01:07:36.334) Do you have any words of advice for people that may have been just like you in that NYU dorm room today that are really optimistic, really curious, have great ideas, have all the energy, aren't jaded, they haven't looked up on the internet and seen that all the good ideas are taken, they still think that they can make a difference? Do you have any advice if you were other than buy, dream big and win? What would be the second thing that you would invite them to do? Liz Elting (01:08:00.494) haha Liz Elting (01:08:04.974) Thanks. Well, first of all, I guess, you know, just thinking about all this, I, you know, and I didn't get into this, but growing up, I, like all of us, you know, experienced a lot of diversity. I mean, sorry, adversity, sorry, not a diversity too, actually. I lived in a number of places, met people from diverse groups, but I meant adversity. And I tell some stories about that in my book, you know, and, but the reason I do is because the point is, I mean, I felt so alone. Jeff Dudan (01:08:16.43) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:08:26.318) Yeah. Liz Elting (01:08:32.558) I felt like the underdog, whether it was from this experience or that. But I think it's important to not let those things stop you, whether you're alone and you're the least talented in a number of different areas or you almost, whatever. I mean, a lot of things can go wrong to all of us. So I don't want to make it all about me, but I feel like the underdog. I felt underconfident, I felt shy, but I think it's really important to not do so much of that and do more believing in yourself. You get an idea, don't think you can't do it. Believe in yourself and also don't worry about perfecting it because I see people who spend a lot of time thinking, is it right? Isn't it right? Should I, shouldn't I? They do a whole extensive market analysis. or they just take too long to get going. And to your point, Jeff, then Google or Amazon or whomever is going to take the idea. And I, so just, I guess what I'd say is, you know, don't let anything related to underconfidence, you know, stop you. Don't be a perfectionist about it. Just have your idea, throw yourself in, work harder than everyone else. You know, one of the things I like to say is, Work today like no one else will so you can live and give tomorrow like no one else can. But do it. Throw yourself in. Go all in. Have the grit. And then see where it takes you. And again, all the things we talked about, spoiling the client with quality and service. And if by chance you have to pivot. modify your idea because it doesn't make sense anymore, someone else has taken it, that's okay. You can do that. You've learned from what went wrong and you pivot with the same values, the hard work, the results, the service, the integrity, and you will get there. And I just think that's so important. So yeah, I'd say take the risk. Take the risk because there are other stats out there that there are a lot more people who regret. Liz Elting (01:10:49.966) not taking the risk than taking the risk. There was just an article I read on that. Don't stay unhappy in something you don't love. Go put yourself out there. Take that risk because it's very likely to pay off. And if it doesn't, you learn a few new things, you meet some people, and then you move on to the next thing. Jeff Dudan (01:11:11.95) Perfectly said, we'll end on that. Liz Elting, this has been so much fun and I thank you so much for being on the home front today with us. Liz Elting (01:11:20.11) Oh, thanks so much to you, Jeff. This has been fantastic. I've loved speaking with you. You're fabulous. Jeff Dudan (01:11:25.646) Outstanding. Well, thank you so much. How can people get in touch with you? Where would you direct them? And where can they get the book? Liz Elting (01:11:31.982) Sure. Well, so the book is on Amazon or any other online retailer and also in Barnes & Noble as well. And I'm on social media, all of the platforms, at Liz Elting. Jeff Dudan (01:11:44.206) Awesome. Well, fantastic. Liz, been amazing. Really appreciate you being on today. And this has been Jeff Duden with Liz Elting, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Jeff Dudan (01:11:59.822) All right, just let.
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. Parenting an Athlete: What Teens Really Need to Hear From Their Parents 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? The Business of College Football: NIL Deals, Transfers, and What Fans Get Wrong 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. Notre Dame Brotherhood and Golden Helmet Moments That Changed Everything 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? Dealing With Distractions: Endorsements, Focus, and Self-Awareness as a Leader 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’s Leadership Philosophy and Preparing for an NFL Locker Room 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. One Sentence to Change Someone’s Life: “I’m Proud of You.” 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. 
Brief Summary In this powerful episode of On The Homefront, Jeff Dudan welcomes Fred Reichheld, Bain Fellow and the creator of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) , to talk about what really drives sustainable business success. From behind-the-scenes stories at Chick-fil-A and Enterprise Rent-A-Car to the pitfalls of modern accounting and survey gaming, Fred shares his timeless philosophy: businesses win when they enrich lives—not when they chase spreadsheets. Together, they explore how referrals—not surveys—should be the new gold standard of customer success, and how long-term thinking is the secret behind generational companies. Key Takeaways Customer referrals—not just satisfaction scores—are the true signal of business greatness . Most companies misuse NPS by tying it to bonuses, which destroys data quality and culture. AI should augment genuine intelligence , not replace human wisdom, judgment, or purpose. Public company structures often sabotage long-term thinking , while private, family-owned firms can prioritize legacy over short-term returns. The Golden Rule is measurable —through whether customers come back and bring friends. Exceptional companies like Chick-fil-A and Costco consistently “wow” customers through experience design, culture, and leadership alignment. Featured Quote “We exist to make our customers’ lives better—and we benefit when we do that.” TRANSCRIPT Who Is Fred Reichheld? Creator of Net Promoter Score and Bain Fellow Jeff Dudan (00:03.118) Welcome everybody to On the Homefront with Jeff Duden. We have a special guest today for a variety of reasons and I'm very excited to welcome Fred Reicheld to the podcast today. Welcome, Fred. Fred (00:16.774) Good to be here, Jeff. Thank you. Jeff Dudan (00:19.438) Fred is a long time Bain fellow and is the godfather and inventor of the Net Promoter Score, which is one of the most widely used customer relationship, customer satisfaction tools in existence today. And something that we use here, not only franchisee facing, but we're also aspiring to implement it into everything we do with our consumers. So we appreciate. being the beneficiaries of your work and are excited to unpack it and hear some of your thoughts around it today. I'd like to start, Fred, with just anything you'd care to share, a little bit of color on your background. I know you went to Harvard. Anything that would be interesting about your early career or how you grew up. Fred (01:10.438) Wow, let's see. That's a long time ago. I grew up in a town, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio called Parma and had sort of a nice suburban existence, applied to Harvard and incredibly got accepted. I think I was the first kid from Parma. Parma is not the right side of the tracks, generally speaking. It's not the fancy part of town. So I was amazed and really not. Jeff Dudan (01:13.198) Hahaha. Jeff Dudan (01:36.43) Got it. Fred (01:40.614) prepared for what I ran into at Harvard. But it worked out well and I ended up going to the business school there and joining a company called Bain, which was then a newish consulting firm and has now grown to the point where, gosh, I don't know how many, 15 ,000, there's so many people I can't keep track. I think there are 2 ,000 partners now. around the world. And I've seen that business grow from a small entrepreneurial startup to a world -class organization. By the way, it was the highest rated Glassdoor company this past year. Something that's been the highest a handful of times since Glassdoor started. I think it's the highest rated firm over that entire period. So this notion of treating your employees right is at the core. of entrepreneurial success, but treating them right, of course, doesn't mean spoiling them and trying to make it an unrealistically easy world that you help them succeed. But the truth is they can only be happy and inspired if they are enriching the lives of their customers, helping them succeed. So that the job of leadership in my mind is helping your teams both understand happiness is based on the happiness of their customers and then trying to help. Jeff Dudan (02:57.838) you Fred (03:06.502) them find valuable roles in team structures that let them do that and let them hear that standing ovation as often as possible. Jeff Dudan (03:14.606) When you joined Bain, what department or what was your specialty from a consulting perspective? Fred (03:24.742) Yeah, we were generalists. It was called strategy consulting back then. It looked across the whole business and tried to think about, gee, how can we be the low cost player in what customer set, the ideal structure and ownership structure, all those things coming together. And eventually led to this thought that, gosh, if we're so good at advising people, you know, Jeff Dudan (03:29.324) OK. Fred (03:52.07) Why aren't we principles and own our own businesses? And that led to the formation of Bain Capital, which is now one of the largest private equity organizations and certainly one of the most successful in the world. The two firms are, though they're totally separate now, they learn from each other and I continue to learn. And I think private equity is actually a far better structure for many firms than public. But. Even private equity has many shortcomings that if you structure the ownership the right way and maximize the chance that you're trying to build greatness, not just financial prosperity in the short term, there's so much upside for privately owned companies done right. Jeff Dudan (04:40.366) How much of Bain's leadership style informed your thinking as you started to get the concept of Net Promoter Score? Fred (04:52.678) Well, a lot. I mean, that was my whole career. I joined, I was between years in business school. I joined as a summer intern and I've been there ever since. And this is back in 1977. I think, you know, certainly for my colleagues at Bay and I learned a ton about the practical realities of getting organizations to embrace the facts, the truth, and to take rational action on them. And, you know, effective way. There are just so much silos and infighting and I didn't realize back then how people see the facts that they want to see and will just completely ignore the ones that don't support their self -image or the worldview they want to have. So just the idea of let's get the facts on the table and agree on what implications they have for our priorities and our next steps. That's a huge step forward. The challenge, was there was very little factual evidence around customer happiness. And I came to believe that great organizations, their first goal is to make their customers' lives better. And that happy employees and great financial returns for owners are benefits you get downstream from that core idea. And I came to express it the way Andy Taylor, build enterprise rent -a -car into the leviathan it is today. And it's sort of a miracle when you think about it. A private company, family -owned little car leasing business in St. Louis, Missouri, grows to become the largest car rental company on earth. As a private firm, never had to tap the funny money of Wall Street or just none of those gimmicks. And I said, how'd you do this? It's in the commodity business pretty much. Low growth, low profits. Look at all the bankruptcy, Hertz, Avis, and all the big names. They've struggled. So how did you shoot through this challenge to build this wonderful success, which I think the family is worth tens of billions of dollars today. So it's a success from every dimension. He says, Fred, there's only one way to grow a business. You inspire your frontline teams to treat customers in a way that makes them want to come back for more and bring their friends. And it's that simple. The Real Business of Business: Making Customers Come Back and Bring Friends Fred (07:21.574) And over the years, I came to recognize that GAAP accounting does not measure that process at all. It is completely opaque. So this notion of how much of my business is coming from customers who were with me last year and how many customers are they referring? Those are the center. That's the fundamental driver of business prosperity. And what makes capitalism right? It's an act of service. You know, we exist. Jeff Dudan (07:22.318) Yeah. Fred (07:50.502) to make our customers' lives better and we benefit when we do that. That's pretty high -minded. So from a philosophical point of view, it's good, but it also works. It makes people wealthy. And accounting does its best to not just obfuscate, but actually lead you down a false path. The one that says, no, the purpose of my business is profits, as opposed to the purpose is to help my teams make customers' lives better. Jeff Dudan (08:21.518) And that's a distinction that I've heard you make on multiple interviews as I prepared for this interview and also in your great book, Winning on Purpose, which I've been through. And so, you know, private equity has a way of reducing leadership focus to the spreadsheet. Fred (08:40.71) Thanks. Jeff Dudan (08:41.71) And, but in not every case, but, and I think as a leadership team of one of the fast, we're one of the fastest growing franchise platforms in North America right now. You know, we were, we're making decisions based on what franchisees needs to serve customers well, but we're also being mindful to hit some set of numbers inside of accounting and, and all of that. But you bring examples in the book of Caliber Collision, who was a private equity back to put a leader in place who committed to customer service and basically customer centric thinking. And they grew that business exponentially, 20X, over that period of time. You bring up First Service Corporation, which was a franchise organization, one that I had mentioned to you earlier that we think a lot of were. Fred (09:14.968) Thank you. Jeff Dudan (09:32.024) personally personal friends with the leadership there we look to them for leadership in the franchise space in you know, how they do their business and so it's interesting though because So much of business has to do with the financial results and the reporting and the reporting to the shareholders and I can see how that can get ops, you know How can that be be a distraction from the really the true purpose of the customer? and so when do you see a Is there a certain type of company that has the courage and that has the leadership to commit to the Net Promoter Score, to the customer loyalty, where in other companies it's impossible for them to do based on their structure? Private Equity vs Public Companies: Why Timeframe Matters for Loyalty Fred (10:20.102) Well, I think if the owners are really trying to optimize for this quarter or this year, you get the worst possible results because accounting targets become, they overwhelm human targets of treating people right and making wise choices. And it's even worse in a large company, a global company where it's siloed and everyone's you know, the overall profit and shareholder value has been parsed into lots of little slices. Then you're going toward partial objectives intensely that are very short term in nature. And that's the situation in most public companies today. And it, you know, it's not a happy life. And the performance isn't that good. Now, private equity is a little better. Private equity, instead of having a bunch of fancy business school professors and celebrities on their board of directors who don't understand the business, partners in private equity, they usually know the business pretty well, or if they don't, they get to know it, because that's their life. They can't succeed unless their company succeed. But they tend to have a capitalization structure that focuses them on three years. One, let's say one to three years, whereas... Public companies are more like three months to a year. And three years is not bad. But great companies need a longer timeframe. It takes longer to develop people, to build markets, to innovate. And so I think there's this, not many companies were born out of private equity that became truly great. Calibre has. And I think part of that is leadership. And part of it is the private equity company, there's good, good, and there's better and worse private equity companies. And the leaders who are smart are going to bring investors in who are the right kind of people and have this longer timeframe, who will stay invested in that company long after it goes back into public markets. So they're thinking long term. But all that said, the guys that think the longest term, Jeff Dudan (12:20.782) That's fair. Fred (12:41.77) For me, are either pure privates like Chick -fil -A, or it's family or enterprise rent -a -car, where you have a good family who cares about their reputation more than anything. They're already plenty wealthy. I don't think getting a few more billion dollars is highly, highly relevant. But treating people in a way that makes you proud and making... wise choices that make the world better. That is AI priority. And that's what greatness requires. And as my earlier point, this notion of treating customers so they come back for more and bring their friends being invisible to accounting, we said all of our, and private equity is equally guilty here, mostly they use financial targets as everything. And they don't capture the most essential idea of, Are we making our customers lives better? So much better that they come back for more and refer their friends. Jeff Dudan (13:46.094) Well, if I'm two years into a five -year fund and I make an acquisition and I know that the fund demands that the company's going to have to hit certain markers over a shorter period of time versus I am a generational steward of this asset, it's connected to my family, to my family name. to my children, to my grandchildren, to the community that built it, to our employees who we've been with us the entire time, the decision making has to be completely different. Fred (14:24.806) Yeah, unless you get a truly outstanding human being in a leadership role who's going to figure out how to get the priorities right no matter what the short -term pressures are. But you know, that's why we have so few great businesses today. It's really hard. Jeff Dudan (14:29.934) Mm. Jeff Dudan (14:41.55) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes ex -military people make incredible leaders, Humicall, ex -Marine, Bank of America, these types of people that understand. That's what resonated with me when I read a little bit about that in your book was taking care of the frontline leader, really. And this is, I just got, I'll be honest, I just got slapped in the face with this in our organization. because we are growing so fast and we're opening so many new businesses. I spoke to it in making sure that the people that were engaging with our franchisees were meticulously trained, you know, the Chick -fil -A type consistency. They had the information at their hand to get it to the franchisees. They didn't have to ask and say, I'll get back with you. And, you know, in this small period of time inside of one of our brands, We failed. Now, we do net promoter score every month with our franchise network. So as soon as we began to fail, we heard about it. And we were able to then retool, we've reorganized where these people sit in the organization. I'm personally doing a training and I'm bringing all this, like it doesn't, just because I've been in business for 30, 35 years, I'm not gonna tell you which. This is because I've been in business for a minute and I have all of this training. If we don't get it into the people's hands that need it, then that's no good. But the net promoter score, at least to the extent that we're doing it as well as we understand how to, it fired that early warning shot and said, we're starting to have some problems here. And then we were able to react to it and do whatever it took to get that situation right. So. Fred (16:14.594) Thank Fred (16:20.074) Thank you. How Net Promoter Score Saved Jeff Dudan’s Business Unit From Collapse Jeff Dudan (16:35.704) You know, and I think the score gets a little skewed if you do it every month because, and it's the same group of people, because if they're happy, they're probably not going to weigh in. But if they have something to say, they're definitely going to, you know, score you appropriately and give you the comments. But like, that's what we want. We want to make sure that people have the opportunity to let us know where we're not meeting expectations. Fred (16:53.458) Thank you. Fred (16:58.15) Yeah, one of the most important points I make in this last book, Winning on Purpose, is that the score has been so overemphasized and abused and big franchise chains and hotels and car dealers have linked frontline bonuses, short -term bonuses to the scores they get. It's pretty much destroyed it. everybody from an Uber driver to your hotel is saying, listen, if you can't give me a top box score, you know, it's a 10 or five star or whatever you're using, you know, come talk to me or, or what do I have to do to make sure it's a only a 10 is a passing grade in our car dealership, that kind of stuff. And, and then of course, means that the data is close to useless. Cause you know, if you treat someone who they hate, they just hate it. You know, you'll hear that. So you're, you're wise getting feedback. But I don't think we can link the net promoter philosophy to survey scores much longer. And what I note in Winning on Purpose is with all the digital enhancements and artificial intelligence, there is no excuse for not actually measuring the real behaviors that we're after that are signals that you've enriched a life. And those are, that's repeat purchase, expanded purchase, the back for more, and then referrals. The Problem With NPS Surveys: Incentives, Gaming, and Useless Data people throw up their hands and say, oh, referrals are hard to measure. Yeah, it's a black box. It happens to be the most important black box in business. For example, you know, Certapro painters, you mentioned Charlie Chase, a friend of both of us. I joined the board of directors at Charlie's company at First Service. And I think they were interested because they saw how important Net Promoter could be and number their franchise businesses and others. But Certipro is a classic where people don't paint their house more than, what, every seven years maybe? So why should I go crazy delighting a customer? Because I'm not going to get a bunch more business from that household. I should just do an adequate job, right? And do it productively. Fred (19:19.206) And, but the philosophy is no, every time you go out and paint a house, you want to do such an amazing job that they refer you to at least one of their neighbors or friends. And that's how you get business. Sure. We have to advertise a little and have marketing, but to be honest for our best teams, we need no marketing. They do the marketing through the customer referrals they generate. And, and first service, if you've paid attention. as a public company, it's had total shareholder returns in excess of 20 % per year for 20 or 25 years. It's better than any private equity fund I've ever heard of. And yet they're just, they're built on sort of pro -painters doing commodity businesses in tough slogging markets, you know, fragmented. And how can you turn that into wildly successful returns to the owners? I think because they understand that idea that just like Andy Taylor, we have to build processes and systems in our business that help our teams delight customers and earn referrals. And even there, we don't measure it as well as I hope we will in five years. But as I say, with digital tools, with innovation, I expect survey volume to drop precipitously. Instead, we will be identifying promoters, passives, and detractors based on their repeat purchase and referrals. The Future of Customer Loyalty: Track Referrals, Not Just Surveys Jeff Dudan (20:55.214) without even asking, without even. Fred (20:57.03) You just watch their signals. You know, if you're a tiny business, you can tell by the look on the person's face if you really made their life better. But if you're the owner and you've got a few teams out there, you lose track of that. However, you can watch referral patterns and understand the same truth. And that's where I think smart businesses are headed. Jeff Dudan (21:22.03) Just for clarification around misuse or abuse of the net promoter score, I bought a car one time and I think the salesperson told me five times, it's, you know, we want you to fill out the survey, but whatever you do, fill out number 13. You have to answer number 13 or whatever number. Fred (21:38.086) Yeah. Yeah, how likely you'd recommend this to a friend. That's the net promoter question. And every car brand is fixating on that, whatever question number they have it. Jeff Dudan (21:51.406) So are you saying that when presented with that survey, it needs to be uninfluenced? Fred (21:57.638) Of course. And I'm not even sure we can get truth on surveys anymore, given how badly they've been abused. I if you've got the right culture, you can certainly survey your employees, as long as you're not penalizing and artificially bonusing on it or shooting the witness or the messenger. And your frontline teams, no. They're dealing with customers every day. Don't waste your customers' time. Ask your employees what needs to change for us to earn more referrals. But this tracking of referrals, that's what franchises, that's what owners have to figure out. Tiny business, you know, when they call the owner, right? And you ask, how did you hear of us? And, oh, it was that job. You understand referral flows perfectly as a tiny business. But as you grow, you tend to lose track of that core truth that is the foundation of profitable growth. Jeff Dudan (22:53.09) That's Jeff Dudan (23:02.35) So I've got a chicken or egg question here, and it has to do with the implementation of the customer -centric tool, loyalty tool, and then culture. Have you seen it where you go into an organization, I'm sure that over your career, you've gone into things that would be considered either turnarounds or fixes or let's try to figure out what's going wrong here. And. Ultimately, you're probably going to look at some cultural things that are going to be symptoms of probably focusing on the wrong things, putting people, I mean, as soon as you align people to the wrong incentives, because everybody works to their comp plan. I mean, everybody works to their comp plan. So if you create a comp plan that says just sell the job for the biggest possible dollar, then what happens is, is people don't pay attention to margin. If you say, you know, I need your call handle to be under a minute and 30 seconds, then people are going to be getting horrible customer service on the phone, incomplete answers, unresolved tickets, all of that kind of stuff. So now when you turn an organization to be more, uh, and put the customer at the center of everything and their loyalty and their, and their behaviors, can that have the impact of, uh, improving the culture and turning, turning a business around, you know, in that way? How Enterprise Rent-A-Car Used NPS to Drive Real Employee Accountability Fred (24:26.662) I think the leader has to set the culture and how they structure incentive plans just screams out as one of the most important ways to communicate what I truly value. And I think culture is what you value and it's just different words for the same thing. And I think most comp plans today are ridiculously stupid. They are bringing out the worst in their people because they don't touch back for more and bring your friends. which is the center. Now the reason I saw the opportunity for Net Promoter, I saw Andy Taylor at Enterprise Rent -a -Car with a two question survey about how happy their customers and how likely they were to return. He did it for every one of his branches in a statistically reasonable way and rank ordered all those branches and all the regions and districts and regions. And then he linked it to their career success in a way that's much more intelligent and clever than what car dealers do. Car dealers just rank order the employees or the branches and say, you're in trouble if you're in the bottom decile. He said, you know, these are surveys. People in rural areas tend to score higher or urban areas lower. People with German backgrounds, they're tougher scores. People with Hispanic backgrounds, they're easier with great inflation. I can't link some. bonus. That's ridiculous. People will obsess on these subtle unfairnesses. So it's top half. You have to be in the top half of my branches to be eligible for promotion or eligible for the premier awards that they give at the annual conferences. Now the truth is you should be in the top 10 % if you're really good, but he doesn't, you know, the top half. and the way they measure it, statistical, it's really the top two thirds. You have to be in the top two thirds. And that's the right amount of linkage. It has to count, but not account in some algorithm that's so falsely precise that all it does is bring dishonor to the employee because they have to beg for tens because they work in New York and New York is a tougher scoring market. And I think the way you break out of that, Jeff Dudan (26:50.688) you Fred (26:52.344) is you watch and track referrals. We have a long way to go, but we have to have ways to make someone want to give a referral, not just word of mouth, but here's a token I got and it's linked to the internet. So people are going to be able to track everything, who I am, who you are, but it gives you a warm welcome and it makes me feel good. It's not a bribe that makes me refer you inappropriately, but if I'm going to refer you, I'll at least take this extra step. We have to start tracking those. those processes. Are Social Media Companies Winning at Customer Feedback? Jeff Dudan (27:24.494) In a way, do you feel like social media companies are ahead of the game because they never ask me what I'm thinking of Facebook or what I think of this, but they just serve me back information and offers content based upon my behaviors. So they've basically short -circuited attention and attention management and using the tools like you described. interesting that they've been able to do it so fast and then maybe some of the biggest companies in the world are still asking people with the old -fashioned survey. Fred (28:00.358) The social media has made progress for sure. Amazon ratings, now there's just today there is so much abuse and cheating and gaming of the system. Some expert I read recently said at least half of the reviews on Amazon are bogus. So, you know, and I think I personally find Yelp and some of the more local. Jeff Dudan (28:08.238) Yeah. Fred (28:29.67) companies even less reliable because you got some screaming unhappy person that overweights it and probably stays there until the end of time even though the franchise is sold four times in the interim. So it's just it's it's a step in the right direction. You find them useful as a shopper, somewhat useful and increasingly less useful. But I think what will replace them are the one to one refer. referrers and you know influencers are supposed to be so impressive today. I think that's a fad because it's bribing people to just you know it's just their touts they're not real referrers. Who you trust the most is somebody you know they've got the right you know they've got same kind of purchase criteria you do that you trust their judgment. So one to one I know that person to that person that's where the powers of the future. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Social media was one step in the right direction. Jeff Dudan (29:34.542) I was listening to an AI expert and I also think he was a more of a general people behavioral expert and he was talking about AI and how AI is now, you know, there was a trend where, so if you, you know, my brother always said, if you love your kid, teach them to bat right, bat left and throw right, but. you know, and then I, and then I added, right. And teach them to do finance or code. So, you know, there's, there's these coding and there's finance and these are, these are highly sought after skills. They're very technical and they're manufacturing economic incentive in ways that is outsized to a normal job or things like that. And he said, those are the skills. through AI that are going to be commoditized and the human skills are going to be back as a high priority because people that can sell and talk and do those types of things are because I mean you can have AI now to write your computer program. So what used to take somebody a week in a dark room, you know, and energy drinks now you can if you can speak it into existence, it can be built for you. So it's gonna be an interesting shift in terms of how consumers Really change their behaviors inside of that And for us again, we're we sell at the front door. We sell at the kitchen table We we have to interact with people. Yes, we can make the consumer journey more efficient They can schedule they can book they can get their statements. They can do lots of things. They can they can have a conversation with non -human if we want them to, but like we still run an old -fashioned call center and I know that I think great companies touch people the first time exceptionally well on that first handle and it's human to human. I mean Zappos is obviously people that you know made that first touch memorable and we use a lot of their delivering happiness and how we think about customer service. So... Jeff Dudan (31:56.462) It's an interesting time and it's moving quickly. And I'm fascinated with the concept because we're implementing the surveys all the time. And maybe we'll think differently about that now. Fred’s Take on AI vs GI (Genuine Intelligence) and Human-Centered Innovation Fred (32:07.41) I have mixed feelings on AI. I know it is just incredibly in the news and driving the economy and there's something very important there. But I really prefer GI to AI. I like genuine intelligence more than artificial intelligence. And the best applications of AI, algorithmic machine learning, have been augmenting humans who have genuine intelligence. to do their job better and faster. But delegating wisdom and trade -offs and judgments and moral choices to machines is just, it's just downright dumb. And I think there's way too much of that going on right now. You'll ask a band client, where are all the exciting applications of AI? Jeff Dudan (32:57.6) you Fred (33:03.11) And you cut through the baloney and you find 95 % of it is cost reduction. And, and 5%, five at most 5 % is creatively making our customers life better, you know, creating a wow. And that's where the action is that, you know, the, the, the wonder why is American business amazing compared to any other country? There is this innovation that is focused on wowing customers. Jeff Dudan (33:08.174) Right. Right. Fred (33:33.286) And that does not much these days come out of AI. So that's why I'm watching carefully at how much it really helps us live better lives. Jeff Dudan (33:47.982) I did get a lift out of it just from administrative communication, organizing some things. I mean, writing the year end shareholders report and just having it clean up, clean up some of my grammar. Yes. Yeah. Fred (34:01.83) Right, so you're using it to augment you. That's where I think the great power is. But the instant you take the human with genuine wisdom out of the equation, watch out. Jeff Dudan (34:16.622) Yeah, yeah, we're a Microsoft shop. So we went deep with them and we're actually a 2024 SMB partner for their copilot rollout, which is their AI tool. And yeah, you can have a conversation, move it over to something else, create a PowerPoint and you can do all this in a couple of minutes now, but it's not exactly right. It's like, it's... Fred (34:36.998) you Fred (34:42.992) It had awesome potential to make humans work better. It does not have awesome potential to replace human with judgment jobs. Simple coding, yeah, that's sort of like the guys at the toll booth. Was that a good job collecting a quarter or whatever it was? No, those jobs should go to machines. Jeff Dudan (34:48.054) Yeah. now. Jeff Dudan (35:00.366) That's right. Jeff Dudan (35:06.894) Yeah, good pension, you know, bad, little, little bad air. So you mentioned the golden rule a little bit. And I know you've, you know, enter first service enterprise, USAA, you know, these are just great examples in this book, winning on purpose, which, you know, highly recommend. Fred (35:09.126) Yeah. Fred (35:14.086) you Jeff Dudan (35:35.214) We're going to have our management team read it. Does the golden rule always come from the ultimate leader in the organization? So my brother was the CFO of the Carolina Panthers. They were in a tragic car accident one night in the middle of the night in West Virginia, head on 70 miles an hour. It was just a tough situation. They all survived it. Fred (35:55.206) you Jeff Dudan (36:04.718) Not everybody in the other car did, but he was working for Jerry Richardson, who at the time was the owner of the Carolina Panthers football team. And, you know, when I was able to get in touch with their overnight security guard and let them know what happened, you couldn't have had a more material response from leadership for one of their people. Fred (36:10.328) you you Fred (36:21.702) you Jeff Dudan (36:29.358) sending the plane to pick people up, getting him to the best surgeons, saving his foot, like all this kind of stuff. And he was somebody that spoke. I mean, he never had a, I don't think he ever had a computer. So when I would write him a thank you card, I wrote him a thank you card and it came back to me, the same card. And it was like the number one, we love Mike, number two, and just little things back. So he would get a stack. Fred (36:40.902) you you Jeff Dudan (36:57.934) on his desk and then he would process it with a pen, give it to his assistant and they would process it back. And, you know, I just hear story after story about how he led that organization. He led 400 Hardys. He led some stuff at Walford university. And, you know, the golden rule was constantly spoken about and you could see it in evidence of the way that was a huge family. It was a big business. I don't know, $354 million, whatever an NFL team is at that, you know, whatever. Fred (36:58.054) Yeah. Fred (37:11.768) you you Jeff Dudan (37:27.308) But he led it and it felt like a family. So, you know, what... The Golden Rule in Business: Why Referrals Are the Ultimate KPI Fred (37:31.942) Yeah, the Gulen rules at the center of all great communities and organizations. It's a tricky concept and it is almost impossible to know whether you're living up to that unless you actually have a signal. And the purest signal, at least in business settings, is referral. Because when people experience that, they want to share that with a loved one, which means refer it to a friend or a family member. And so... Focusing on that signal is what net promoters score. When the survey is done well and appropriately, it gives you a very clear sense of how we lift up to the golden rule, made that customer want to come back for more and bring their friends. But I'm repeating myself, but we just can't rely on surveys as heavily as we have in the past, especially given that it is possible to measure back for more and referring friends. if you put your mind to it. I think for a painting company, just what I've experienced, most of the guys on the team are first generation. They have kids that they would love to have go to college someday. And so the referral, the motive, the bonus to get people into a referral system should probably be based on, you know, For referrals, we recognize Jose or whoever's scholarship fund. And it's something meaningful, but it never steps over to a bribe like the, I'll give you free car mats if you give me a 10, that kind of thing. But we just have to shine a light on the referral flows. Jeff Dudan (39:22.542) I mean, one situation when it went bad, and there was a lot of challenges to this, but one of those aggregators, maybe you mentioned them already on the call, where they would aggregate reviews and recommendations, maybe for restaurants and other businesses. And being a customer, there was a very punitive nature to the amount of dollars that you spent with them. And then also the... Fred (39:29.286) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (39:48.84) over focus on the reviews and you had to, so you had to get, you had to pay them dollars and then you had to get reviews. And if you paid them less and you got a negative review, like it was punitive and it would really. Fred (39:59.81) No, it's pay to play. It's ugly. I just have not seen one that I would invest in. And as you can imagine, those kinds of companies would like to co -brand with me with the positive edge of Net Promoter. And I haven't found one that I actually would touch with a 10 -foot pole. Jeff Dudan (40:04.758) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (40:13.454) Sure. Jeff Dudan (40:21.39) Yeah, because it's an outsized reaction to a manufactured response. Because now what happens is you're jumping up and down on your head offering $50 to buy the review that you need. It completely takes the authenticity out of the interaction and out of the feedback. Fred (40:29.318) Yeah. And this is happening in all different parts of the economy. The one I am sensitive to, I sit on the board of a couple of public companies now, and there are these... Jeff Dudan (40:54.958) No. Fred (40:58.624) proxy advisor firms that decide what's important for shareholders and they'll come up with scores on how good this company is and whether you ought to vote with the company on shareholder resolutions. There's no substance to what they're holding people accountable to. It's just... But how do they make their money? They sell consulting services advising you how to manage your PR and processes to get the highest score. And it's like, come on. I think most of the satisfaction shops have fallen into that trap. Here's how we measure it. It's a complicated black box, but we can help you improve your score. Jeff Dudan (41:36.972) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (41:52.91) Yeah. So Net Promoter Score is a great tool for companies that want to pursue greatness instead of just bigness. Are there other tools that you've used in concert with the Net Promoter Score tool that you like, that you've used over the years, or you could recommend to others? How to Link NPS to Financial Performance and Long-Term Growth Fred (42:14.054) Well, I think link it back to financials is the key. You can't just think about your score. If you're using surveys effectively and identifying promoters, passives, and attractors, have your finance guys look at how much growth are you getting directly from your promoters versus passives. There's a linkage to true cash generation. And if you can add in referrals, you'll get the real math. So I think the tool is just understand the linkage between the true economics of your business and the generation of customer promoters, which opens up how much could I afford to invest in delighting a customer? It actually turns out in most businesses, you can invest a lot. If you get that customer coming back for more and referring a bunch of friends, that's a Jeff Dudan (43:08.942) Mm. Fred (43:12.87) big net present value and take half of that excess and reinvest it in something that delights. Let's use artificial intelligence or digital tools to delight customers as opposed to just slant crashing costs down. Jeff Dudan (43:15.182) Right. Jeff Dudan (43:29.198) Have you ever worked with food, any food companies, restaurants? Fred (43:33.496) Yeah, well Chick -fil was one of the early companies that influenced me, so yes. Jeff Dudan (43:38.062) Okay, okay. So, you know, a couple observations. How many times do you see a great restaurant build a great following and then for some reason they change the size. There's a place here, they changed the size of the chicken tenders. So you used to get these big fat chicken tenders and it was great. And then all of a sudden something happened and they were just about half the size and the same price. And all of a sudden the place just... Fred (43:54.354) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:07.182) I mean, slowly just deteriorated. The other example is, which I love, which, well, I probably love a little too much, is Five Guys. And just them putting two and a half times as many fries in the bag as you purchased, it makes you, okay, I spent a lot, like it's expensive to go there, it really is. I mean, that's a high dollar fast food, but. Fred (44:15.654) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (44:35.022) you leave there and you're just like, this is more fries than I can eat. So you're satiated, number one, but number two, you feel like you got over on somebody because did they really realize they poured all these fries in this bag? And I just, I think it's just, I think it's brilliant because it probably cost them 25 cents. Fred (44:48.342) Thank you. Fred (44:53.254) Yeah, the creativity that pays off in business is how can I give them more than they expected and then make sure I get the full benefit of that standing ovation in inspiring my team and in generating referrals to new customers. And that is not where most of the energy goes as a company gets bigger. They think about how can I do this cheaper? How can I meet my profit budget this quarter? And Jeff Dudan (44:59.424) Yes. Fred (45:22.542) that brain that you focus on, how can I delight customers by giving them more than they expect? It's a different process. Jeff Dudan (45:31.118) Yeah, yeah. Any ops or. Fred (45:32.896) One makes us rich, truly rich. You didn't mention in Winning on Purpose, there's a chapter five, talks about my personal investment strategy. Because I measure net promoter or Bain does, I have access to who really has the highest net promoter score in an industry. And when there's a public company at the top of the charts, I invest in them. And over the decade before writing that book, I more than tripled the stock market returns. And I've made many millions of dollars from investing in this philosophy of when you can spot a firm that really is generating a repeat purchase and referral, they have very high net promoter scores, scientifically measured, they're going to generate cashflow far in excess of the mental model that financial analysts and accountants have today. And so this is a big investment opportunity for people at all the scales from the tiniest franchise right up to large public companies. Fred’s Investment Strategy: Buy High NPS Companies and Beat the Market Jeff Dudan (46:36.622) Oh, that's, hey, you know what? That's probably the only metric that people need to consider when they're making investments. Fred (46:46.054) If you're trying to figure out which company to invest in, please read chapter five of winning on purpose. You'll not only get rich, but you'll make the world a better place because more resources will flow to the right places. Jeff Dudan (46:58.862) Anything about Chick -fil -A that might not be just connecting any dots. So yeah, Truett Cathy, incredible leader. We're not open on Sundays, so right off the bat, you're making a values -based decision about this company based on the fact that they want to take care of their employees, and they're not going to be. Fred (47:02.528) Thank you. Fred (47:18.374) Yeah, but let me stop you there. And that is true. And yet Truett told me, you know, I go out to other restaurants and eat on Sunday. I don't have a personal problem with eating out on Sundays. That would be really ridiculous of me to think that by being open on Sunday, I'm less Christian or whatever. He said, I just knew we can't have owner operators running their shop and work seven days a week. They'll kill themselves. So. Jeff Dudan (47:29.004) Okay. Okay. Jeff Dudan (47:47.638) Okay. Fred (47:48.23) If I have them open seven days a week, they're going to hire somebody else who's not as good to do that work. And I don't want to start that process. So I want, I'm going to close the day. I think Sunday is a pretty good day to close because it does signal personal beliefs and I think it will accomplish other things. But you got to think through, did he, you know, did he eat on Sunday? He absolutely did. If he were a good Christian, would he put himself? Jeff Dudan (48:13.646) Of course. Of course. Fred (48:17.926) make others to do stuff that he thought was morally wrong? No. Jeff Dudan (48:22.638) Hahaha And they're one of the most consistent organizations that exists out there. Twice around the building and you look next door and there's nobody in the drive -through and yet you'll still get in that line because it's gonna come out hot, it's gonna come out right, it's gonna be good. Fred (48:36.672) Yeah. Fred (48:46.566) Yeah, and if you, I think they would still agree that certainly this was true in the old days. They just hire better people and then help, and then help those better people be even better. It really is. That's why the owner operator hiring the right people and building a community of workers that helped them even elevate their game beyond what their parents did. That's the game, but. Jeff Dudan (48:52.814) They do. Fred (49:10.982) It was the parents that created that friend. 90 % of it is they're just very thoughtful about who they hire as operators and then help the operators hire the right kind of team members. Jeff Dudan (49:23.15) Yeah, yeah, 100%. Never a bad experience at a Chick -fil -A. Fred (49:28.774) I don't think I've, let's see, I don't, to be honest, I'm so overweight, I never go to anything that looks like fast food, but I still admire it. Yeah, I've never, I mean, the thing that's, it's not the bad experience. The few times I've gone, it's been quite delightful and surprising. So that's where they differentiate themselves. I think there are a lot of factories that have learned how to have very few errors, but not many of them have figured out how. Jeff Dudan (49:46.626) Yeah. Fred (49:57.702) to do that and do these custom delighting experiences. Jeff Dudan (50:03.694) Well, they're the gold standard in selection and we talk about it a lot. I have a personal friend who owns one of the larger ones. They're measured largely by their catering business. So, you know, if they're in a great spot and they have a lot of traffic, that's great. But where they can really blow their business up is through the catering aspect of it, which is sales. But I mean, he was in process for three to five years. Then he finally got approved. And then you have to go work every job for six months in a Chick -fil -A. And then after that, you know, you go home and you wait on the call. I don't know. I probably, you could probably correct me on this, but then he, what he told me, wait on the call. And then they're going to say, here's three locations. These are the ones that are available to you and you got to pick and you got to, you got to take one of them or, you know, everything's for not. So, I mean, that's like, there's. As opposed to a lot of franchise systems where you might get, you know, you meet the people for 66 days. That's our sales process. And then, you know, you do two weeks of training. and then they're out there executing the business, there's just not the same, you know, there's not the same journey of alignment that you're going through. There's, you know, it's just, it's just not that way in a, in a service business. So, um, Fred (51:13.574) I was the speaker at one of their conferences years ago and was riding to the, I guess they had a van would pick up the various people. These were most, it was the operators, the store managers that were coming to this conference. And so I was in a van with a dozen different store operators and I was just listening to conversations. And one guy had been a captain in the air force had gone to, the Air Force Academy, another guy had been a manager on his way to partner at one of the big accounting firms. It's like these guys are actually working in Chick -fil -A restaurants. It's mind -boggling the talent pool that they were drawn from and that continues to be the case. These are really sharp, not just good, you know, friendly, nice little league coaches go to church on. These are... Jeff Dudan (51:56.526) Yeah. Mm -hmm. Fred (52:11.654) capable business people. Jeff Dudan (52:14.222) Yeah, my friend was a high end consultant. He consulted with me for, I paid him a lot of money as a consultant. And this is what he was called to do. And that's what he did. So, yeah, fascinating. Any trends that you're paying attention to right now in terms of consumer behavior or customer journey that smart companies are gonna be taking advantage of? Why Costco Wins: Surprise, Delight, and Consistent In-Store Wows Fred (52:46.502) Boy, I think more stays the same than not. I'm a huge fan of Costco, which is an old school. We have physical stores. Yeah, we have online, but it's not nearly as good as Amazon. If you want to just buy online, go buy at Amazon. But they run the stores so effectively and they only sell stuff. where they know they can actually deliver great value. They don't sell things that where they're me too. And they do delight. They know that at least every third visit, they've got to wow you or you're going to stop bothering going to that store and parking in that inconvenient parking lot and putting up with the hours that aren't quite as convenient as 99 % of the other retailers out there. So I think. Always every business How am I gonna make sure every nth? I don't know if it's third or fifth or tenth, but every time you visit There's got to be a likelihood of something that is a wow and and That's what that's the trend that I think everybody has to have I asked the the fellow Steve Grimshaw who was the CEO of Caliber collision the firm you mentioned that has just been a an astonishing success story in the collision repair business. He said, you know, we even thought about, we have popcorn in most of our stores because people like the smell when they come in. Now, who would think of having a collision repair center, thinking about aromatherapy and all this sophisticated stuff? Well, if you're always asking your teams, Jeff Dudan (54:21.518) Yeah. Yeah. Fred (54:34.31) What can we do to make this a really positive surprise? Not just for our customers, but for our employees. Because you're always searching for that. That's the winning strategy. Jeff Dudan (54:46.99) Well, you know, I'm a YPO guy and we put events on, we pay attention to touching all five senses. So if we go to a hotel and they have a special scent and then what is the visual aspect of it? What are people hearing, touching, tasting? Those are probably missed opportunities. One of my businesses is an infrared sauna. I don't know if you've partaken in any of that, but we have an infrared sauna studio called Beam Light Sauna. in a couple hundred locations right now. And man, it is, there are others in the space that use words like sweat or perspire or, you know, and it just, it kind of gives you this, this, uh, and you know, in the locations I've been, it, you know, it's, it's not a misnomer. It's, it is, it kind of smells a little sweaty in there. Well, when you walk into a beam, like our word is light. So we're beam light sauna. And we chose to own the word light. So everything is bright. Everything smells good. Everything looks clean. I mean, it's almost like you're walking into heaven and it's just, it's, you know, everything's like that. And it's an experience now, basically the same sauna across whatever, but it, you know, but the, the people at the front desk are remarkably better trained and more engaging. They're going to make sure we have a cold peppermint towel. Fred (56:13.894) That's cool. Jeff Dudan (56:13.966) And we've tried different flavors and you know, you could get eucalyptus, but like what it came back down to is like, it doesn't matter that they have choice in it, you know, and most people seem to really pick the peppermint anyway, but like it feels good. And it's so you smell good when it smells good when you walk in, it smells and feels good. You get that touch when you're walking out. And I tell you people, I can't, I own the place and I can't get an appointment. Fred (56:38.022) And good employees want to work in places where they're always searching for ways to make customers smile. So just that process of searching is one of the ways to attract and retain good employees. Jeff Dudan (56:44.43) Sure. Jeff Dudan (56:52.622) Yeah, awesome. Fred, this has been amazing. I can't thank you enough for coming on. Been a fan for a long time and using the NPS, I believe, even though I know we haven't been perfect, it's made a big difference in my business life. So thank you for creating it and building it. Last question for you. If you had one sentence, I think I know where you're gonna go with this. If you had one sentence. to make a difference in somebody's life, what might that be? Fred (57:26.64) I'd have them sit down with winning on purpose book and take a chapter at a time, maybe each week and have your team talk about what the message is and how it squares or doesn't square with what we're doing today. That it's a thoughtful process of living how to live. You know, the golden rule is a complicated, simple question, complicated idea. It's, it just parses that into. pieces that are worthy of conversation. And I think that's how you get a culture focused in the right direction. Jeff Dudan (57:58.19) you Jeff Dudan (58:04.27) Thank you for that and Fred Reichelt, thank you for being on the home front with Jeff Duden and everybody out there. Thank you for listening. Fred (58:12.966) My pleasure.
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.
Michael Fertik on Risk, Reputation, and Raising Entrepreneurial Kids In this captivating On The Homefront episode, Jeff Dudan sits down with Michael Fertik , founder of Reputation.com, AI investor, and venture capitalist behind Heroic Ventures. What begins as a light-hearted conversation turns into a masterclass in resilience, entrepreneurship, and the modern intersection of privacy, reputation, and artificial intelligence. Fertik shares unfiltered insights about growing up on the edge of Manhattan’s gritty Upper West Side, running a candy arbitrage hustle in fourth grade, and eventually launching one of the first online privacy companies. He opens up about his autodidact filmmaker father, Velcro inventions, raising global kids in Paris, and what venture capital really looks like behind the scenes. This episode is a goldmine for anyone building something from nothing — especially founders navigating AI, parenting, risk, and what it means to “have guts” in the modern economy. Key Takeaways Entrepreneurship starts young : Michael’s first business was selling candy to wealthy classmates too afraid to walk to the bodega — a lesson in friction, arbitrage, and the power of demand. Expose your kids early : Blurring the line between work and life helps children think entrepreneurially and develop real-world decision-making skills. AI vs. ML, demystified : Machine learning identifies patterns in data; artificial intelligence goes further, offering insights, completing complex tasks, and asking novel questions humans may miss. Reputation is currency : Fertik pioneered reputation management online, helping individuals and companies regain control in a digital world of big data and misinformation. Venture capital isn’t for everyone : Most businesses don’t need VC funding. Michael breaks down when it makes sense — and why product-market fit is too late for him to invest. “Have guts.” : Fertik’s life advice boils down to two words — the courage to do hard things, whether raising kids, pivoting careers, or launching in uncertain times. Featu red Q uote “The people who find a way are the people who win. Whether it's the bathroom floor at 4 a.m. or a closet, they just find a way.” TRANSCRIPT The Candy Hustle: Michael Fertik’s Entrepreneurial Origin Story Jeff Dudan (00:00.362) before we officially get started. How do you know Jason Greer? Michael Fertik (00:02.442) Okay. Michael Fertik (00:05.769) He used to work for me, but I wouldn't want to talk about it on the record about him, but he's lovely. He's a friend of mine and we used to work together. Jeff Dudan (00:13.662) Yeah, no, I just I was just I know him. Chad has you met Chad his brother? Michael Fertik (00:19.901) No, I've never met Chad. I've met his wife. I've met, I think, three of those five kids. Jeff Dudan (00:23.851) Nyla. Yeah. And then they've got, um, uh, one kid with the, um, the health situation, what was this? Michael Fertik (00:37.869) She has, she's got, she's got some, she's got some. Jeff Dudan (00:41.868) Yeah. Michael Fertik (00:42.165) sort of chronic challenges, I think. But he's a friend of mine. And we used to work together, and now we become friends, yeah. Jeff Dudan (00:47.33) Cool. Nice. Yeah. So I coached with this brother, Chad. I know. I think, I think Jason went to NC State. I think it was a lineman or something. Big guy. Michael Fertik (00:57.569) Yeah, big football family. I think one of his nephew used to play for the local NFL club. But I don't know if that's still true. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:06.302) Yeah, Will, Will Grew. Well, cool. Well, um, Michael Fertik (01:11.539) And he's got a son who plays hockey, pretty seriously hockey, you know. Jeff Dudan (01:15.626) Yeah, I wouldn't Jason. I mean, I've just met him once or twice. So we're not we're not friends or anything like that. But I just I was more close with his brother. Well, cool. Well, Michael, how are you on time today? Okay. And is there anything in particular you're looking to talk more about or promote? Michael Fertik (01:36.685) No, I don't know where your show roles, nothing's off limits for me. I mean, where I can just say live, I'd rather not talk about that. I'm a big boy, I'm happy to do it. But yeah, I'm happy to roll with you. I think you wanna talk about business and so forth, but we can talk about family, we can talk about business, we can talk about religion, we can talk about politics, we can go wherever you want. Jeff Dudan (02:01.294) All right. I tell you, so the show, the theme of the show, so we're one of North America's fastest growing franchise organizations. So a lot of what we do is just like the hero's journey. So I mean, I love to spend five or 10 minutes at the beginning. I know you went to Harvard. I don't know where you grew up. I did run through the reputation economy, although the book didn't come out last year. So. Michael Fertik (02:11.925) Yeah, yeah, that's what I read, yeah. Jeff Dudan (02:29.526) There's probably a lot of stuff in there that a lot of the stuff I saw online you doing was more content over the last couple of years has been more contemporary around heroic ventures and a lot of this interesting stuff with AI and, and scammers and reputation and security and all that. So yeah, that's all interesting. But man, when I, I I'll just kick it off and kick it over to you and talk a little. Michael Fertik (02:45.609) All that, all that, here we go. Michael Fertik (02:52.429) By the way, congratulations on the franchises. I, you know, not a lot of guys from tech as I am talk about franchises. I think I have spent probably myself 40 hours over the last few years, let's say five years researching franchises, getting as close as trying to fund a pal of mine in his hauling, like a garbage hauling franchise business with a view to kind of helping him take over more territories and stuff. I couldn't quite, I didn't feel I had the expertise to make it hunt for myself on paper. But I think that if you're able to make that franchise world work for you, and I'm not an expert, you are, I think it's not just wonderful, it's a good employer, it's good for your community, it's really good as a long-term business. I envy that, and I hope one day. Jeff Dudan (03:30.027) Yeah. Michael Fertik (03:49.101) to be able to get involved in that field because it would be a great way for me to diversify as well for my family. I just haven't been able to manage it yet. Jeff Dudan (03:55.562) Yeah, well, I mean, as you've as you've proven, businesses are a high class asset and not everybody can start, you know, building a national company. So for a lot of people, it's a great way to get involved in entrepreneurship. So we'll kick it off. And then usually. Well, you know, I'll kick it back to you all just, you know, say who is Michael Furtick? And I love you just kind of go back and some people go back and they have some great stories about. Michael Fertik (04:11.041) I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. Jeff Dudan (04:23.298) how they grew up and how they got through college and how they got into their early career, which I think is particularly interesting to people who are looking at being entrepreneurs. We don't really talk that much about franchising. It's just more, it's more of a broad, we're building a broad audience. I mean, we have celebrity chefs, we got Chris Voss, we got Fern Harnesh. I mean, so it's not a franchise show. It's just, you know, it's just really, you know, people with cool stories that can kind of speak into other people's lives and share something that inspires them. So. Michael Fertik (04:35.955) I get it. Jeff Dudan (04:53.686) All right, well, we'll kick it off. Three, two, one. Hey everybody. This is Jeff Dutton and we are on the home front with Michael Furtick. Welcome Michael. Yeah. Coming to us live from Paris. So excited to spend this time with you today. For people that don't know who you are, reputation.com was a big part of, of what you've done and what you've built. Michael Fertik (04:54.531) I'm ready. Michael Fertik (05:03.949) Thank you, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (05:19.106) And now heroic ventures, which is investing in AI robotic machine learning, which I'm interested to know the difference between AI and machine learning. We use them both, but you know, that's a, that's a, that's as much as I know about them. Um, but anyway, Michael would love to learn a little bit about you and how you grew up. So who is Michael Fertek? Michael Fertik (05:32.332) Uh huh. Blueberries, Chickens, and Lessons from Failed Family Businesses Michael Fertik (05:39.897) Thank you, Jeff. I often say that I started my first company when I was 19. I'm now 45. But that's not the entire story. I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I was from a very middle-class family, and I went to a very fancy high school on the Upper East Side. Now, if you're listeners or you go to the Upper East Side, Upper West Side nowadays, you probably might not see a difference. But when I was a kid, those were two very different. parts of New York, the Upper East Side was known as silk stocking. Because it was very fancy, the Upper West Side, there were hookers on my corner. I was growing up in crack vials out there on the street and Jeff Dudan (06:18.87) Well, they're on the Upper East Side too, but it's just a different price point. Michael Fertik (06:22.985) Well, a very different price point and they don't stand on the corner waiting for customers. So now that now they're both very nice neighborhoods and so forth and so on, although New York is facing some recent challenges, as you maybe you know. But there was a filmmaker in the New York 1980s who made some very famous films and won his first famous film, the name of which I'm forgetting. Jeff Dudan (06:27.607) Now you gotta call him. Michael Fertik (06:45.729) The entire premise was there was a kid from basically my street who went to this very famous high school, which was basically the high school I went to, his model of the high school I went to. And like the world got rocked because this guy from the other end of the side of the tracks went there. So anyway, long story short, that was the context in which I grew up. And I grew up a Jewish kid, very liberal household, artists, all the men in my family, even artists for three, four generations, my mom was a shrink. And I grew up in this not great neighborhood and I went to school in this very fancy place and I'd go across the town by bus. And this is where the first business came from. So when I was in fourth grade, when I was in fourth grade, I was, because I grew up in the neighborhood I grew up in, I was comfortable walking down to the avenue. on the kind of the wrong direction, so to speak. This is New York in the early 1980s, okay? So they have a new, the wrong direction and I would go to the bodega and I'd buy some Snickers bars and you know, Tic Tacs or whatever, Starburst, I don't know what have you kind of candy. And I'd pay whatever 10 cents, 50 cents, whatever the price point was, I don't remember. And then I'd come back to the bus stop and I'd sell it to all the rich kids. At a big markup, because they were too nervous to walk down that block and a half to that, it was perfectly safe, it just didn't feel good. They're little kids in New York, and so that was my business. And if I had customers, I made a bunch of loot, you know, like two bucks, three bucks of profit. And if I didn't have customers, I would eat the candy. So I had my own loot of a different kind. That was my first enterprise. And I bet you a lot of people who are listening or who aspire to be full-time entrepreneurs have... that kind of recall today on Instagram or TikTok, you call it a side hustle. That was my only hustle. But they have some kind of trading hustle, right? Where you buy low and sell high. I hope it's not just meme stocks and crypto and so forth. I hope there's actually something that people really want to use in different ways. But that's how a lot of people got started. That's how I got started. And I got started understanding the power of demand, the power of arbitrage, the power of giving people what they want, and how just a little bit of friction. Michael Fertik (09:09.973) walking around the block and being prepared with a dollar in your pocket and overcoming that little bit of friction could provide just enough value. I didn't say it to myself in those terms, of course, I was in fourth grade. But I understood viscerally that providing a little bit of value overcoming a little bit of friction was enough to create a business doesn't mean it's the world's most scalable business, but certainly was enough to create a business. That was when I got the bug. I got the bug to be in business. And if you asked me in junior high school or high school what I wanted to be, I would have said, well, I want to be an ambassador or something like that because I had notions of that and it was still a very wonderful career for people who want to do that. But it turned out that I went to law school, I went to college and all that, but I ended up back in business where I started in fourth grade. Jeff Dudan (09:59.702) Yeah, convenience. People are willing to pay for convenience, even fourth grade rich kids, apparently. Michael Fertik (10:06.125) convenience, safety and pleasure, you know, all those things, right? It's like, hmm, you know, can you get, can you make your own cheeseburger or burger or hot dog, what have you? Yeah, by the way, if you've ever tried to make your own pizza, I mean, it's just like a bad decision. I mean, I don't care what people say. Jeff Dudan (10:10.099) Yeah. Michael Fertik (10:29.513) right? These homemade pizza ovens and these things, they look great and you buy them and try them and whatever else. I'm sure some people had a whole hell of a time with him and one of my best friends built a whole Italian style pizza oven, he made a bunch of money and, and I gotta tell you something, you know, for like 15 bucks, or depending on where you are, eight bucks or 20 bucks, depending where you can get a world class pizza, and they deliver to your house and it's perfect, or you could spend six hours making it and like, what are you thinking? Like this is not a cup or donuts. You ever try to make a donut? Just go to Krispy Kreme. Division of Labor vs. Absolute Dollars: Why Time is the Real Asset Jeff Dudan (10:58.401) Yeah. Michael Fertik (10:58.965) It's great. You know, go to whatever, you know, Dunkin Donuts. It's better. So it's flavor convenience and, and safety. Jeff Dudan (11:05.642) Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's my argument against gardening. I mean, I read, you know, every, so every mother's day, my, my wife wanted a garden because her family grew up on the West side of Charlotte and they were farmers and they had all this stuff and, uh, two experiences. Cause I can say this cause my in-laws don't listen. Um, so I, I was staying with them before we got married and I had my contracting business and I had a seamless gutter. Michael Fertik (11:12.654) Okay. Jeff Dudan (11:34.518) guy who did gutters for $2 a foot and he could run a whole house in three hours or whatever. So we wake up on a Saturday and my father-in-law is like, hey, I've got a section of gutter that we're going to replace. It's on the front of the house. We're going to go to Home Depot. We're going to buy the gutter and then we're going to take it down and we're going to put it back. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, this is going to be a six to eight hour deal. And by the way, to buy the guttering at Home Depot costs the same to have my contractor come out. and furnish it and install it. And I had to do nothing. So basically I said, you know, I'm not paying any rent, but what I'd like to do is I'd like to take care of this. I bought my Saturday back for like $300. And it was, yeah. Michael Fertik (12:14.869) Yep, there you go. It's called it's called the division of labor, which is another word for civilization. Yep. Jeff Dudan (12:20.306) Well, but that's subtle, but significance. See, I mean, like they were not entrepreneurial. So they didn't really put a value. They put absolute, it was absolute dollars where I put the value on my time as to what else I was gonna get done that way, which at that point I was working seven days a week trying to get things moving, but, and then, you know, same thing with gardening. I mean, we're out there, deer's, you know, you let your guard down, the deer come, they eat, you know, you've got 42 hours in this garden and you end up with some wormy zucchini. You know, that looks, I mean, so. Michael Fertik (12:50.785) funny, when my father finally made a little script, he bought a house in Connecticut and he had a green thumb, my dad. And so he made us do a lot of gardening. And so I raised chickens and I sold the eggs to my teachers. And I don't know how we made any money doing that, but we did that. And then I was responsible for the chickens and we had a chicken coop. Jeff Dudan (12:55.788) Yeah. Michael Fertik (13:18.525) And we run rooster and a whole bunch of hens and, you know, proverbial, like cock-of-the-walk kind of story. I'd walk in there to feed the chickens and I had a pail, you know, those old aluminum garbage cans with like the pail cover, like that aluminum cover, like in the cartoons. And this stinking chicken, this rooster, was threatened by my presence and he would attack me every time with his talons. And... This is not a, this is like a, like if you ever actually dealt with a real rooster, these things are violent and dangerous. And I was like, what part, they're nasty and they're really stupid. Okay. And so they don't stop. So I, I started figuring out, I take the pail, I fill my pit, my little bucket of, with the feed. I had to bring it to the chicken coop and I take the cover of this aluminum garbage can and I would bonk him. I'd use it as a shield and he attacked me. I bonk him and this guy would keep attacking me. I keep bonking him, keep, right. And so this was like, Jeff Dudan (13:48.895) Oh, they're nasty. Michael Fertik (14:12.637) inspector Clujo, you know, where Kato comes like a taxi like every time like I walk through there the chicken coop and I fucking bought this guy. And this was the anyway, this was the nature of my upbringing. And I don't know, we didn't make any money. But that was sort of the deal. We had to do chores. And then my dad had a green thumb. So we had blueberries, which are unless you're a professional blueberry grower, blueberry bushes are just a mistake. Okay, just to just to pay you back. I mean, we had crows, we had I don't know all kinds of birds. Jeff Dudan (14:17.597) Yeah. Michael Fertik (14:42.357) We probably got one pound of blueberries every year from like 30 bushes. And then we had apple trees and pear trees. And what you figure out is that without pesticide, you get these like gnarly prehistoric peaches and pears. And so anyway, it was fun, I guess. But, um, you learned a lot. And then my father decided that he was going to be a rose farmer, not just a rose farmer, but a cold weather rose farmer. So he set up in the state of Connecticut, my old dad, film director. Jeff Dudan (14:42.606) You gotta keep the nets on them. Michael Fertik (15:11.617) passionate, romantic soul, artistic sensibility, not a businessman, he imported roses, cold weather roses, meaning hardy roses that sustain the cold weather from Germany, I remember we went to Germany, we went to a bunch of roses, we went to the rose places, we went to buy some roses, you have all of them, we're gonna sell you some roses, we said buy the roses, bring them over the roses, and then turns out in order to import roses, you need a quarantine station, and there were no quarantine stations in the... New England at the time or whatever, because no one wanted to do it because no one was foolish enough. So he opened his own quarantine station. So we had the quarantine station on this, right? So I'm here, like, you know, whatever, 11 years old, 12 years old, helping my father manage the quarantine station, which is nuts. And then he terraced this hill, like, clear-cut it, terraced the hill, installed all the roses, and like, a thousand roses, whatever it was. And then within like two, three years, because he had run out of attention and time. And my older brother who he was hoping would take care of it, take an interest in the roses, didn't. These roses basically died. So I watched my father try this agriculture, this gardening business to make roses, and I watched it just not work. And I was like, okay, guess which business I'm not gonna be in? Roses and chickens and blueberries. That's the answer to that question. Jeff Dudan (16:22.69) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (16:26.366) So would you consider your family or your parents to be entrepreneurial before this? So he was in the film industry. Autodidacts, Oscar Winners, and the Gift of Blurred Work-Life Lines Michael Fertik (16:30.505) extremely entrepreneurial. Yeah, extremely entrepreneurial. My father, I'm going to use a big word, it's a $5 word. So get ready for it. It's auto didact. He was an auto didactic person. And that means that someone who teaches himself things, right? So my father went to college, he went to graduate school, he was not what you call like a stellar student. And I was which is which is the reason I'm making that distinction. But he was definitely an auto didact. And one thing that I learned from my father, which I retain from him And not for my mom, my mom was I think sort of even more talented than my father in certain ways and an exceptional mind, but not an autodidactic personality, not someone who taught herself things. She was someone who learned through programs and through courses and through lessons, which is how a lot of people learn to. But my father was someone who liked to teach himself things and learn through experience and learn through doing and so my father, you know, by hook and by crook, he started in the radio business and then he got invited to do something in commercial advertising and then he films and he wanted to Oscar when he was 35 years old or whatnot. And he was a guy who was extremely entrepreneurial in running his own business, which had four or five employees. The way the film business works is if you're in production, you might have 20, 30, 40, 50 employees. If you're not in production with a certain shoot, you might have one, two, or three core staff, skeleton staff. So, and by the way, he had that office in our house. And so I grew up... just thinking that you don't have like this, you have this sort of porous barrier between work and life. Like his office was right there. I walked through it and go to the kitchen and like someone I'd have lunch with, someone who works on the team. And I just didn't see any particular difference, which is at some advantage and some different disadvantages, but his office was our house. And then he'd go to the studio to shoot the show. And very entrepreneurial guy. I can't say he was, you know, someone, let's say like you probably, like a very good. Jeff Dudan (18:01.131) Right. Michael Fertik (18:24.385) businessman, I can't say that he had a business mind, I can say that he was very entrepreneurial in making things happen for himself. He was an excellent provider for us and our family, but neither my mom nor my father had a business head, let's say. And so that had some long-term consequences for the family and so forth, which is fine, no one should feel sorry for us at all. But I did not grow up in a household where someone was like, yeah, also there's something called a spreadsheet. And also, at the end of the month, it has to add up. I grew up in a house where I was like, well, let's hope it works, or it's gonna work out, or it's all gonna be fine, or let's worry about it later. Which, by the way, is a good strategy for about 10 minutes, but not much longer than that. Right? It's not a plan, right? If you have a financial interest and a financial outcome, you have to have a better plan than that. You can't just wing it. Now, so extraordinarily entrepreneurial person. Jeff Dudan (18:52.768) Right. Jeff Dudan (19:09.899) Right. Michael Fertik (19:21.025) extraordinarily inventive person, extraordinarily creative person. And my mother was very inventive. She's died, my father's still alive. My mother was very inventive, very creative, but also very shy person. She had a lot of inventions she made. She made, I'm gonna give an example, and I don't know if it's gonna be a great example, but it seemed very sensible at the time. My mother got ill towards the end of her life and she was in the hospital and she had, she could sew well. And she had, as one of her many inventions in her life that she devised, she had, she sewed a pair of underwear effectively that you could velcro from the side and attach from the side. And when someone's bedridden, it was easier to kind of attach and detach it from the side. I'm sure in your life, Jeff, through some moment of status, you or someone you know, or someone you know who knows someone, has been bedridden for a time. And you know that it's difficult to take off the underwear, the underclothes, sort of down past the legs and so forth. And so maybe a Velcro mechanism could very much work. By the way, babies do it. Kids, little kids use it, right? That kind of thing. Jeff Dudan (20:27.498) Yeah, it's brilliant actually for those situations. Michael Fertik (20:30.325) So that was my reaction too. I didn't know, I didn't think about it very deeply, but she was so shy and nervous that when I tried to make some polite suggestions about how she might go talk to people in the garment district in New York about how to manufacture it and market it and so forth, she just, I remember she was in our, I don't think I'm saying anything too personal. She's now dead, but she would be very proud of me for telling the story, for being so open. She started to cry. she started to cry standing at the kitchen sink because she was so nervous about the prospect of even talking to one person about this. So that was a limitation that she had. We all have our own limitations. That was hers, one of them. And what I can say is that she was very inventive and my father's very entrepreneurial, but neither of them was, let's say, a business mind. And that's okay, not everyone has to be. But I do think that if you go into business, at some point along the way, you gotta develop that vocabulary somehow. At least some rudimentary understanding. No one's going to ask you to be the best in the world, but you got to do something because at the end of the day, the end of the month, the end of the year, the books have to balance and there's got to be a plan and it's got to make some amount of sense and you can always mess it up, but you want to have a plan. Jeff Dudan (21:42.798) I was having an interesting conversation with my oldest son over the weekend. And we were talking. He said, you know, I've been thinking a lot about my career and where I want to go. And I've really been thinking. He's 26. And we work together. He's a finance and econ guy. So he does our mergers and acquisitions. And he also leads our growth in the franchise development area. So he's really. Michael Fertik (21:56.974) How old is he? Okay, good. Sounds like a responsible guy. Okay. Michael Fertik (22:10.851) Oh wow. Jeff Dudan (22:11.666) He's doing a great job. We work together well. I coached him in tons of sports. So we developed this kind of working relationship where we could, you know, in stressful situations. So those situations had been more. Michael Fertik (22:24.083) Kudos to you both, right? To both of you, right? To both of you, right? Don't you think? Jeff Dudan (22:28.17) Well, him, he's a lot more mature than me. He's had a lot to put up with. He's, I'm an acquired taste, Michael. But he said, he goes, you know, I've been thinking, you know, I could see that. And he played it out almost to 25 years. And I said, you know, it's really interesting, Zach. I said, the things we're doing right now, exactly where we are, what we're doing, the different buckets of assets and attention that we give things. I said, Michael Fertik (22:31.401) Ha! Michael Fertik (22:36.823) Okay. Jeff Dudan (22:58.554) I have a, I can show you that from 20 years ago on a, the, the Steve jobs, you know, for a quadrant thing where I'm going to focus on IP franchising, real estate, uh, you know, and one other thing, uh, you know, some technology or whatever. But I said that if you, uh, you know, and now somehow based on that, we, I've ended up exactly where I wanted to be. Maybe I didn't think I'd get this far. Maybe I thought I'd get farther. But. You know, having the entrepreneurial experience at home where you're walking through the kitchen and you're, you see in this blurry line between it never turns off, they're always thinking about the business or taking a call on a Friday night or doing whatever, that's such a blessing to give your kids, to give them that exposure to thinking that way. Because, you know, maybe, you know, in your dad, he got exactly the life that he dreamed of. in producing this film and he never really developed the let me let me figure out how to make this wildly financially successful let me see I can leverage this let me see I can syndicate whatever it is I mean he was an artist he was a creator he wanted to make great stuff and you know what kudos to him for fulfilling that and ending up but yeah Michael Fertik (24:15.565) Oh, I 100% agree with you. I 100% agree with you. I mean, very few people can make their living as artists and he did. He paid for university college for his kid, like he just did so many things for his kids, you know, private school, just a lot and you know, provided for his family as an artist. And by the way, as an artist who did not make a lot of compromises, so he had opportunities to make a lot more money as a director. And I think as a producer, if he had just decided that he was going to do stuff he didn't. Jeff Dudan (24:20.973) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (24:36.821) Mmm. From Law School to Launch: The Birth of Reputation.com Michael Fertik (24:42.217) not he was opposed to, but just didn't really want to do like, you know, his great passion was classical music. And he made films about classical music with his spare time instead of making, you know, big action packed movies where the big dollars come or music videos where some dollars go right. So he could have he could have, you know, done it, but he always maintained a balance between his, his obligations to family and his own artistic integrity. And by the way, by the way, I think I think you're exactly right. You know, he was one of these rare people like you, it sounds like Jeff Dudan (24:44.674) Yeah. Michael Fertik (25:11.705) who's able to fulfill his life goals. We're almost all of his life goals, let's say. So huge kudos to him. There are a lot of ways to live one's life. And so long as you're doing it according to your vision and plan, it's marvelous. And one more thing I wanna agree with you on. Which is where? Well, no one's perfect. So all I can say is that. Jeff Dudan (25:31.19) This is rare, by the way, but go ahead. Do people agree with me? Michael Fertik (25:40.197) He did you alluded to it, but in case it wasn't in case it wasn't clear, I want to pick up on it. He gave us the gift of work. And he gave us the gift of not drawing a very hard line between something called work and something called life. I think it's fashionable today. I think it's, you know, I get under the Millennials or the Gen Z or whatever. There's a group of people who want to say, look, I want to live to live and I don't want to live to work, which is fine, which is fine. But there's a, it's perfectly fine. But there's a difference in how value systems are articulated. In other words, if you are, there's a line from a country song I like called Buy Dirt and the guy says, do what you love and call it work, you know, which isn't going to be true for everybody. Sometimes they call it work because that's how you get paid. Okay, so wake up, grow up, you're getting paid. That's why I call it work. But But if you're lucky enough to grow up in a household or environment where work is life and life is work, then your need for a break, which is still there, we're all humans, we all need to have time off, we all need to, you know, recharge, decompress and blow steam off, however you do it. We all do it in different ways. But if you're lucky enough to have that combination to find something that you really want to do, it does make it a lot more natural to do it tomorrow morning. to do it tomorrow morning at five in the morning when the rest of family might still be in bed. And my father gave me that gift. He taught me without teaching me. He taught me by showing me that this is how you do it, Michael. And, you know, I don't know how traditional you are or whatever else. I'm a little bit traditional, so I'll say it this way. No, he also taught me that's how a man is supposed to live. Okay, that's how a man is supposed to be responsible towards his family. And there are a lot of people who feel that way about how a woman is supposed to be towards her family. And that's also Jeff Dudan (27:29.026) That's right. Michael Fertik (27:33.657) quite wonderful, but he taught me both things and I am forever grateful for it. And even though he couldn't really run a spreadsheet, okay. So to speak. So what in the scheme of things? So what he was a marvelous dad and a marvelous provider, and he took a lot of responsibility and took responsibility for his entire family very, very well. And, um, one more data point. I was the third child, but I was the first child between my father and my mother. And my father in the 1970s, in a very early precedent in New York state law, got effectively full custody of his two kids, who are my older brother and sister, when that was extremely rare in the law, right? The custodial law and divorce law is still very much sort of in the mom's corner by default as a presumption. And there might be good reasons for that, but there might not be. Jeff Dudan (28:14.446) That's right. Michael Fertik (28:25.173) And certainly back then it was true 50 years ago, let's say 40 years ago. And so here's a guy who took way more responsibility raising two little kids basically by himself than my mother came into his life. And then they had me and taking responsibility for everybody all as an artist, doing it as a working artist. So I have enormous respect for that. And so I'm forever grateful that I had that model that I had to follow. Jeff Dudan (28:50.846) What a great testimony and what great experience that you were provided. People, you go get your haircut and they'll be like, are you going back to work? And I always don't know how to answer that question. It's like, I don't consider, I don't know. I don't consider it work. I have things to do, but it's just a continuation of my life. So I just say yes. That's what I said. Yeah, I'm going back to work. Michael Fertik (29:18.337) Well, you know, but Jeff, you know, Jeff, people, people listening to this podcast or watching it, you know, as visually as it may be broadcast to or who gets to know you, you know, this is the first time you and I have met, but look, you're healthy looking, you got this cool looking studio. I hope people can see it. Visually it's like, looks purple, like it's a, I don't know, like a psychedelic kind of like cool place, like a man cave. You look fit and you look like you're eating well and you look like you're exercising, you look well groomed. Okay, so I'm saying all this because people may not be able to see you. But you might appear to the people who listen to you or just coming into your life as I am the first time after 20 years of getting here, you might appear like you're living on top of a hill, but it's so important to realize that 20 years ago, you're probably doing this, whatever this was, in your bathroom, right? You were doing this on the floor, you were taking phone calls on the floor of your bathroom because your kids were little. By the way, I did it too, right? I took interviews and phone calls at three in the morning. Jeff Dudan (30:09.023) Yeah. Michael Fertik (30:15.453) or out on the street with a baby in my carrier, right? Because I had no office and because there was nowhere to go at three in the morning, that's what you had to do, you had to do it. And so you got yourself here and now you might make it look easy, but the same feeling you had then, which was, well, I'm going to work, sure, I'm going back to do my thing, just happens to be in the bathtub with no water in it while I'm making a phone call at three in the morning to some guy who's a provider, right, a vendor, right? And so... Jeff Dudan (30:40.811) Yes. Michael Fertik (30:43.137) That feeling that you had is now with you still, but that thankless work over decades, I heard you say 20 years, so that's decades, that's two decades, definitionally, that is what got you to this place where you make it look easy and you can wear, like you can kind of feel a little bit, we probably got a makeup guy now, you know? So the point is that, right? Jeff Dudan (31:01.288) No, dude, this isn't my natural complexion actually. I think it's liver function, but you know, a little jaundice, but it's okay. I look at it's color is color. Michael Fertik (31:04.58) Okay, well, God bless. Okay. God bless. Well, whether it's jaundice or whatever it is, you know, you look sharp. And the point is that you're still doing it. And even though you're still doing it and you look like you make it easy, make it look easy now, it's not like you won the lottery. Nobody gets to where you were. Chris Rock, I saw Chris Rock, the comedian, in a documentary. I'm not a big stand-up comic guy, but he's a guy who worked very hard. And about 15 years ago, I remember seeing this, I was flipping through the channels. I saw Chris Rock in a car doing an interview and he said, you know, he says, you know, whoever he's talking to, he says, you know, people think I won the lottery. Do you know how hard I worked to get here? I didn't win the lottery, you know? So you didn't win the lottery, Jeff. You worked your tushy off and your son's working his tushy off and maybe your other family members are too, in order to keep this empire going that you're building. Jeff Dudan (31:48.459) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (31:59.01) Well, I appreciate those comments very much. Uh, my time to your point, I mean, we, I built our first house. It was a small house. We had three small kids. So at four or four 30 in the morning, I would re I would sit on my bathroom floor with my back against the tub. And I would read because that if I went out and turned the lights on and the dog barks, then people are getting up and then I'm in trouble. So I would just, I knew that that's where I went and I would just read, um, good, great and all the things that I needed to you know, like how can I how do I think about building a business and people don't see that. And then Yes, sir. Michael Fertik (32:35.757) So can we just point, can I point something out here? Can I point something out here? So you and I just met about 40 minutes ago, is that correct? We've never talked before in our lives, is that correct? And here I am, I said, I pulled it out of my drawer here, the concept that early in your business building career, you were sitting on the floor of your bathroom. I just said it, and by the way, you just said, yeah, I did that. And I would love your listeners to know how often this exact fact pattern comes up. And maybe your kids were little at the time, is that correct? Right, you had nowhere else to go. Jeff Dudan (32:41.698) That's right. That's correct. Jeff Dudan (32:52.238) 100%. Jeff Dudan (33:03.032) Yes. Michael Fertik (33:05.249) Because you go to the living room, someone's gonna wake up. You go, if you've got a living room, you go to, there's no extra bedroom. Or you go to the, maybe the garage is too cold, okay? Or it's got bugs in it, or whatever it is. So you go to the bathroom. And so, the number of people I know who are very successful today, who took hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of work in their bathroom, sitting next to that tub that you just mentioned, is Legion. And I'm so glad that you just told me that story, because I want you to listen to this and know, some people I know sat in their closets. They sat in their bathrooms. They sat in their garages. They didn't need to make some magical studio in their garage. They just sat wherever they could on the stoop and they got it done. And that's why they're, that's why they are where they are today. Jeff Dudan (33:47.306) Yeah, Stephen King, I think he had a stacked washer and dryer. And I think he pulled it out of there and he put it like a child's desk and a chair in there. And I think that's where he wrote like, Carrie. I mean, he was, they were broke. Like they were, I mean, they, I read all of his, like how Stephen on writing and you know, how, what his process was and, and all of that. I used to read a lot before I had kids. I read a lot of Stephen King, but then after I had kids, I'm like, I don't know. This is a little dark for me with. But yeah, I mean, he literally wrote the stuff in, you know, a four by six closet or whatever it was. And he just sat there, clipping away at it. Michael Fertik (34:26.637) Another writer who comes to mind is a guy named Thomas Wolf, not Tom Wolf, who wrote the right stuff, but Thomas Wolf, who wrote Look Homeward Angel. He was six foot six, and the story goes that he would stand on top of his refrigerator. At the time, they called it, what did they call fridges at the time? They called them whatever, ice boxes, yeah, ice box, thank you, and he would stand next to the ice box and he'd put his paper on top of the ice box and he'd write. Jeff Dudan (34:47.02) Icebox. Michael Fertik (34:54.349) because he was tall enough, like he'd lean over the icebox. Now it's his desk, you know? So, yeah, look, you do what you got. Like the people who tell you they gotta have an office, they can't be productive, you know, people like you find a way. They really do. People like Jeff find a way. Jeff Dudan (35:12.518) Awesome. Well, and last, before we leave this awesome, I guess I forgot we're recording. I'm just really enjoying this conversation with you, Michael. But call me traditional if you want to. But I think a big difference is I do take a huge responsibility in providing, even to the extent that it's not to my, I mean, I'll sacrifice whatever it is for me. to give my wife and kids what they need and also the people closest to you. You know, it's just, I come from a generation where everything we were taught was service. It was just, you need to serve, you need to work hard, you need to, you know, pay attention to what other people need. And I think that served me well. In some ways, I could have definitely been a little sharper early on, maybe a little bit greedier, probably a little bit more thoughtful about, you know, not wanting everyone to be happy or comfortable. I think you can get better outcomes when there's good conflict and healthy conflict. And to your point, you're managing to a specific set of financial or deliverable type outcomes and stuff like that. But the underlying, big part of who I am is just being able to finish impeccably and to make sure that I finish what I started. and take care of people and that kind of thing. And it's certain people will give you $10 for every dollar that you can take from them. And it's worked for me so far. I might not end up as far as I would have, but I think I'm gonna be happy with it. Michael Fertik (36:54.465) Well, it sounds like you are and it sounds like your vocation is your vocation. There's no luckier thing in the world. You know, I know a lot of guys who are really rich are always pissed off and that's not a nice way to be. Yeah. They're just not as rich as the other guy they know. You know what? That's never possible. There's always another guy. Jeff Dudan (37:03.682) Oh, yeah. Jeff Dudan (37:08.086) That's right. Well, invest in Nvidia, that's all I gotta tell ya. Just put some money. Michael Fertik (37:15.357) Oh, no, I can't I get asked about it in video all the time because I, I do a lot in AI. And I don't comment on public stocks, but I do own some Nvidia and thank God so far it's worked for me, but I'm not a public stock investor. I'm not knowledgeable about those things. I can't recommend those things. But, but, but certainly Nvidia is one of the most remarkable companies period just in terms of what they're able to pull off and how they're catalyzing this AI revolution. Incredible. Jeff Dudan (37:41.794) Yeah, really, really well done. Well, Michael, I'd love to move on to your early career and understand how you got from Harvard and what happened between them and what your vision was for reputation.com and what you saw during that time. And then, you know, bring it forward to what's relevant for people today. I mean, you know, we're all competing for attention on the internet. Uh, you walk into places and people, you know, with the big data, people already know who I am, they already know what to sell me, they already know what to charge me, which is more, uh, you know, and, uh, you can just tell by the advertisements that I get, you can tell by the direct mail that I get. So like, you know, how do you think about, um, uh, you know, how people can balance the, the. Michael Fertik (38:20.566) No Michael Fertik (38:26.473) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (38:38.754) Privacy versus free speech aspects of what's going on with big data today. And then reputation.com. What is, what is its role inside of that? AI vs Machine Learning Explained (Finally) Michael Fertik (38:50.165) So we'll cover a lot of ground pretty fast. So I went to college at Harvard. I grew up in New York, I went to college at Harvard. And then I started a company in college that was my first software company. It turned out to be pretty good for some kids, but not an enormous outcome. And then I went to law school. And I went to law school, I went to law school because I grew up in the family I grew up in, which was. a Jewish family with the kind of a sense that my grandfather, my mother's father had been a lawyer and he died when I was six weeks old. And it was like the concept that I had inherited his Neshama. Neshama is the Hebrew word for soul. So you can imagine like, you know, Michael, you have inherited his soul. So you hear that like 200000 times when you're growing up like, wow, I have inherited his soul. Then you're like, fuck, I got to go to law school. Right. So I went to law school. Well, no, it was like, yeah, it was like so. Jeff Dudan (39:37.976) No, no pressure. Michael Fertik (39:42.261) And my parents, you know, I didn't even diligence what law school was. I went to Harvard Law School, it was like a famous law school, and I thought law school was gonna be like, we're gonna talk about philosophy and the Constitution, and it's not, it's a professional school. You gotta learn evidence and corporations and commercial paper and all this stuff. And I was like, this just sucks. That was my feeling about it, not asking you to agree. And so it took me about a year to figure out where I belonged in law school, and I found some professors I loved, and I found a way to make law school something that I liked. And by the way, that is something that I'm teaching my oldest child right now. It's very, very important to me right now is that trying to find the pony, my father called it, find the pony. Finding the thing that's fun and sustains you in the stuff that you've got to accomplish is a incredibly important skill. And in this period of coddling of children, where it's like, you don't feel amazing in the swimming pool? And you don't like doing laps? Just don't. Let's do horseback ride. You don't like to feel amazing doing horseback. Like, okay, let's try it for a year. And then if you still don't like it, let's try something else. Well, let's just, right, find the pony. Learning how to find the pony. And there's always a pony, right? There's always a pony. There's always something you can find. It may not be a big enough pony for you, but find the pony. Find the fun, find the pleasure, find the thing you can get out of it. Because that is, right, so as a general rule, If I am spending, I think this might be of interest to your show, and that's why I'm saying it now. If I'm spending, let's say, of the time in my day that I'm working, if I'm spending 25% of that time, that working time, doing something that I really like doing, that's pretty good. If I'm spending 25% of the time doing something I don't like doing, that's also pretty good. And the middle 50% is somewhere in the middle, right? But if I'm spending more than 25% of my time doing something I don't like time, my work time, in an activity that I love, the actual activity like talking on Zoom or doing interviews or whatever, let's say making it up. Because we're on Zoom and on an interview right now, that's why I'm saying it. If I'm spending much more than 25% of my time for a long period of time on a sustained basis doing something I really like doing, I'm probably doing something wrong because I'm not doing the stuff that's hard for me. So then if I'm spending much more than 25% of my time on the other hand, doing something I don't like doing, Michael Fertik (42:08.269) in terms of the minutes, like emailing another customer, or emailing, recruiting a particular kind of person, or working on marketing collateral, or whatever it is. If I'm spending a lot more than 25% of my time on something like that, then I'm probably doing something that isn't quite right, because I'm probably not doing something that's the best use of me. But it should be about... Jeff Dudan (42:28.118) Yeah, and it wears your battery down. You'll wear your battery down doing things you don't. Your will is an exhaustible resource and when you're doing stuff you hate, you just burn it. Michael Fertik (42:36.693) Right, and then by the way, at some point, if you're doing it right, you might be able to hire or partner with someone who's better suited for that. So that's a good signal. Now 25% is pretty good. One out of every four hours is pretty good. It's not zero, but it's not six out of 12 hours. And by the way, this goes in waves, this goes in waves, but if over an extended period of time you find yourself doing something that's out of whack with that rough percentage, you might wanna reconsider it. That's my percentage. Okay, so. Anyway, right now, very personal to me, right? Very important, where I say, look, you gotta find the pony because there's always something you can find. And right now, my oldest, who's extremely good at, thank God, just everything he's touching, he's hitting a patch where he's like, this is just not, everything is feeling oppressive to him. It's feeling like a burden. And I'm like, listen, he loves fencing. He's very good at fencing. Like, he's really good at fencing. And now... he's being invited to perform at higher level and he's feeling pressure. I'm like, look, you know, this is still a game. This is still a game. It's fencing, right? This is not your life, this is fencing. And if you're not finding the pony in it, not every day, not every second, but if you're not finding the pleasure in it, not every second, but if you're not even finding the pleasure in losing some bouts, because you know what, your hero, the Olympian you think is so great, you watch him on YouTube. he's lost thousands of matches. Michael Jordan lost thousands of games, right? Thousands, right? And he was the greatest ever in basketball. And in fencing, your hero's lost thousands of matches. If you can't find the pony in that loss some of the time, then you and I gotta sit down and rethink it. So anyway, yeah, so that lesson was very important. And... we, I was able to apply that lesson to law school. I found a version of law school that I liked. And then I started a company right after I clerked, which was called Reputation Defender. Sorry, well, I was, right after I started law school, finished law school, called Reputation Defender. And at the time I was working for a federal judge in Kentucky, in Louisville, Kentucky, he's the chief of the judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States, Danny Boggs, Danny J. Boggs, I'm still in touch with him, amazing man, amazing. Michael Fertik (44:58.133) Reagan appointee, appointed at the age of 36 to be Deputy Secretary of Energy, which means he was like fourth in line to handle nukes at 36. And then at 38 he was appointed to be circuit judge at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States, amazing guy. Son of a postal worker, son of a Cuban mom, right? Danny Boggs, you wouldn't look at him and say, oh, that's a Cuban guy, but definitely a Cuban guy. And I grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, an amazing guy. Very literate, loved Rudyard Kipling, and he and I would talk all the time. I was a liberal clerk and he made me his death clerk, his death penalty clerk, because he knew I was going to fight him on the death penalty. Even though I supported the death penalty, I told him about it. I was like, listen, this is just really bad. He made me his death penalty clerk, which was a big responsibility. In a long story short, it was during that clerkship that I started the company called Reputation Defender. I didn't launch it until after the clerkship was ended because it would not be appropriate. We started the company, didn't launch the website. Then I launched the website and that company became very famous very quickly through some luck. We were hitting a nerve at the time, right? Like, you know, your privacy, your reputation is all being, is all up for grabs here by the internet and we're here to help you. So it was like this antidote to the risks of the internet. Boom, so, you know, the wired guys covered us and the big iron, the big press covered us and so we got well known and we got built a big business. And then Eventually I realized that we had a chance to buy the URL reputation.com, which was better than Reputation Defender, so we bought that, reputation.com. And then we had an opportunity to realize that the big companies in the world, like the big car dealerships and big hospital systems, they needed this too. They needed to understand their reviews, they needed to understand their surveys and how people are talking about them on social media. And so that became our biggest business and we sold that consumer business to now part of a company called Gen Digital. which owns Norton, LifeLock, and all those things, big companies, so that's good. But reputation.com continues, now called Reputation, officially, continues as a company that faces the enterprise and sells the biggest companies in the world to manage their surveys, reviews, and touch points, and customer experience, and manage their reputation online. And that became a really, really big business. And all these concepts of privacy and reputation, which are part of a continuum, Jeff Dudan (46:58.51) That's right. Michael Fertik (47:23.649) What do you do with your data? Right, that's what the question is, fundamentally it's answered a couple different ways. Well, it's your private information or your reputational information. For some people it's the same, for some it's not. That became the big thing that we started and I started the first effectively big privacy company online. And then I had an opportunity to step back and to become executive chairman of that company and to start some other companies, which turned out to be. pretty good, pretty lucrative and the AI space and the eyeglasses space and so forth, sold some of those companies. And then I had an opportunity to become an investor. I call myself Heroic Ventures. And that means we fund heroes. And in the last four years or so, five years, I've started to invest in something that people talk about all the time called AI, which even the most casual observer can spell. It's spelled AI. And it's... Jeff Dudan (48:14.925) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (48:18.926) Thank you. Michael Fertik (48:20.425) It stands for artificial intelligence. And there are lots of different kinds of AI. It's not gonna solve all problems. Some people think of it like something that's gonna cure cancer, it's not. But it's gonna solve a lot of problems, gonna make a lot of things more efficient. It's gonna change people's jobs and take away a lot of bunch of jobs as well. That's part of the deal. But that's one of the things I specialize in. AI and yes, ML, if you want the difference between AI and ML, I can give you a blurb on that if you really want. Jeff Dudan (48:49.83) So we've one of the things we've done well is we have a good technology structure where With all of our different brands we've been able to get Nearly all but aspirationally we will have all of our data flowing into a data lake Which in franchising is difficult because you've got these different brands Typically, they're acquired into a platform the switching cost is too high for them to change the technology stack. So even though they're owned by the same company, they operate as independent businesses within a platform. And it's very difficult to get real insights across all the customer sets. So our thesis was that we would start with companies that were relatively small and we'd have to be more patient and have a competency in growing those quickly. But then because of that, we could force them all onto the same technology platform and be able to... you know, have a shot at getting all the data. So we've done that and we have machine learning running across it and we're starting to really understand how to help our business processes with AI, but I don't understand the difference between machine learning and AI. So I'd love to hear your explanation of that. Michael Fertik (50:07.065) There's probably no circumstance in the world where you'll ever actually have to know the difference between ML and AI. Let's let me say it that way. Right. It's, it's no, no. No, I will tell you so that, and I'll say it in a way I think that everyone can understand, but it's not, it's not really important, um, uh, for most use cases. Machine learning, you almost answered it accidentally by yourself without knowing it, maybe. Machine learning is a set of technologies that Jeff Dudan (50:12.922) Okay. Well, we can skip it. Michael Fertik (50:36.481) you apply to a large data set or data lake to discover patterns. That's what ML is for. That's what machine learning is for. It effectively identifies patterns and you can teach it through a set of instructions to look for certain kinds of patterns. And once in a while, you can teach it to look for any kind of pattern. And as it enters that second part, looking for not one set of patterns like who are the best customers? That's classic ML or who spends the most money? That's classic ML. Or what do you observe about spend per customer? Or what do you observe about seasonality in my business? Those are machine learning pattern, pattern recognition questions. But as it's, as you start to ask it a question, that's more open ended, like tell me something interesting about my data. That's when it starts to emerge into a field that we would call artificial intelligence. And artificial intelligence is the set of technologies that we use to achieve a complicated human task. And you would ask your son or someone on your son's team, hey, you know, come back in a month or a week with interesting observations about our best customers. And that could lead to any number of answers. It could be, well, they turn out they live in Texas. It turns out that they use us twice a month, whereas the average customer uses us once a quarter. They turn out that they use us for things that we didn't really expect to be used for. meaning, you know, I'm picking up on your gutter example, even though it was just from a long time ago, it wasn't necessarily your business, but you know, they use this for the gutters for their homes, but also for their offices. So, okay, so, and guess what? They spend approximately nine times what the average customer spends. So that's an amount of analysis that is a concatenation, it's a combination of a whole bunch of Michael Fertik (52:52.461) patterns and there's an insight that comes from that, which might be the following, and this is where AI becomes generative AI, or really could a cool frontier tech AI. I am oversimplifying for reasons of sanity, everybody. So when it becomes really cool AI, it's where like, okay, now I'm gonna offer you an insight. Hey, Jeff, says the AI. Now that... Jeff Dudan (53:10.141) Thank you. Michael Fertik (53:19.825) I have figured out all of these things about your best customers and your enterprise and your empire. Let me propose to you a few action items. One is let's invest more in, let's say in this example, Texas. Number two, and stop investing in, let's say, I'm making it up, Oklahoma or North Carolina. I'm making it up for the sake of this example. Number two, let's identify really early customers who are probably candidates to be big customers. How do we identify them? Well, they look like this in the first 30 days of our meeting them. Now, number four, after we identify them, how do we husband them? How do we go find them and make them love us? How do we give them enticement to use us more? And so it's almost like finding your business class customers or your corporate travel customers if you're an airline or your regular customers if you're a restaurant owner or if you're a hotel person, right? How do you identify that loyalty and how do you reward it? Probably the best people in the world, this or Las Vegas casinos, right? Right, so they just know like, oh my God, Jeff's back, give him my tight now and make it a double, right? So like, and you know what, your hotel suite's waiting for you, but don't go in yet. Stop by this table, right? And your old, you know, your old dealer, John or Sarah, she's waiting for you, she's waiting for you, right? So. Jeff Dudan (54:25.046) 100%. Right. Yeah. The Coming AI Misinformation Crisis: What You Need to Know Michael Fertik (54:45.697) That kind of, that kind of sense, they're very good at it. And so the AI part is what turns the pattern recognition of ML into a kind of human like task completer or open, open ended question answerer. Jeff Dudan (55:03.835) Yeah, analogy that comes to mind, I was in a meeting, it was with one of the national security advisors, and it was prior to the Cold War, and they had said, is the Soviet Union going to fall? And they said, well, if the Soviet Union was going to fall, you would see evidence by these 15 or 20 different things. So let's send word out to our spy network and see if these 15 to 20 things are happening. And then immediately it started coming back. Yes, this is happening on the trains and this is happening with food and this is happening here. And then the question was, why didn't you report this? It's because we didn't understand the relevance of it. It's just data along with all of our other data. So. Michael Fertik (55:40.717) Okay. Jeff Dudan (55:57.402) to find the needle in the haystack, you have to ask the question the right way. You know, where is it like, what, what is the, you know, and, and now rooms and rooms and rooms of analysts are trying to, uh, used to have to try to figure this out and you would only hope that they would pull on the thread that was the right question that the data could give them the answer to. Where now with generative AI, it's, it might even ask questions that you wouldn't have even known to ask. Is that fair? Michael Fertik (56:25.309) Yeah, that's about right. Look, it's gonna, you know, we've seen AI answer and understand, for example, a team at Stanford has come to understand secrets of the human genome and of biology that have taken either decades or hundreds of years for us to understand. And they did it with, you know, by mining a data set and took, you know, weeks to do, including comprehending what particular genes do and how they express themselves and what diseases they can cause or cure. Jeff Dudan (56:39.579) Mm-hmm. Michael Fertik (56:55.29) That's astonishing one of the one of the Jeff Dudan (56:57.366) Yes, I bought tests for my whole family to do exactly that this last December. Because it can. Michael Fertik (57:04.437) We genetic disease profiling. Jeff Dudan (57:08.234) Yeah. And it's okay. You're, you're 22, you're 26, you're 19, but you know, you know, based on your DNA, uh, you know, you, you clear these things, you harbor these things. And if you do that, and then you're more predisposed for Alzheimer's or stuff like that. And the reports that came back were incredibly specific about like what they should and shouldn't eat, what they supplements they should take and why. It's incredible. Michael Fertik (57:32.245) I'm talking about something that's a little different. So what you're describing is in the same bucket, but I'm talking about something that's slightly different, and I'll tell you what it is. It's the machine in the case that I'm giving, and it's not super important to our discussion, but the machine in the case that I'm giving was able to understand what specific genes do, not for any given person, but for all of humanity. And they might release an enzyme in your kidney, and when that gene is not... Jeff Dudan (57:54.293) Oh. Michael Fertik (58:02.161) operating, then your kidney does not benefit from that enzyme. And when your kidney does not benefit from that enzyme, something might be going wrong or right with your body. And so just understanding what that particular gene does is something that the machine was able to isolate, even though it took decades for scientists doing research manually to isolate that same fact, right? But by ingesting millions and millions of pages of data and billions of rows of data, probably. that machine was able to figure that out. That's AI. And so, you know, how do I make my garden grow might be a question you would ask. How do I solve the problem of the crows eating my blueberries might be a question you might ask an AI. And you know, for most topics, that's gonna be pretty darn good. It's gonna take away a lot of the responsibilities of some people who are kind of professional analysts. On the other hand, it's not gonna be perfect. It's gonna be a garbage in, garbage out. And... If you're talking to an AI that has a certain political persuasion, because the people who made it are very lefty or very righty or whatever, it's going to give you an output that's very politically oriented or potentially politically oriented. So very famously recently, it was shown that OpenAI or similar could be asked a question, or Google AI, I think it was Gemini in that case, could be asked a question, who was more evil, Adolf Hitler or Elon Musk? Now, for people who are watching this, they'll see that there's a... There's an image, there's a poster of Elon Musk right there in the kind of pride of place behind you, Jeff. And so I bet you haven't answered that question. I bet you don't think that Elon Musk is nearly as evil as Adolf Hitler, but this AI... Jeff Dudan (59:32.967) Yes. Jeff Dudan (59:38.55) Well, if I move slightly to the, no, I'm not gonna say that. Go ahead. Yeah. Edit that out. Michael Fertik (59:41.917) No, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Bad joke. Bad joke. Too soon. So that but the and he didn't mean it. Ladies and gentlemen, he did not mean it. But that but the joke is that Gemini did not want to answer that question. Gemini said, well, it's hard to say who's more evil. And so you can have an AI that is taught falsehood, or you can have an AI that knows how to mimic human behavior, but make stuff up. So AI was recently caught a lawyer was recently caught. submitting a brief to the court using AI. And that AI had very cleverly mimicked all the briefs that it had ingested. It had seen all the briefs and understood the briefs and copied the briefs and mimicked the briefs and mimicked the voice of the briefs and so forth and so on. A brief is just a document you give to the court. And it turned out the AI had invented some precedents, invented cases and was citing cases that did not exist. Totally made them up. With, by the way, very correctly constructed citations. They were just false. Not by the way, not by the way, bad interpretations of cases that existed. Cases that were just made up whole cloth. Okay, so if the AI can do that, and it can, then we're in for a big battle on our hands, which is probably closer to nuclear weapons level of challenge than to... social media level of challenge, in which the AI is gonna be very smart, and gonna be able to spread falsehood, either as encouraged or engendered by the Russians or the Chinese or just political officers who run some of these bureaucracies inside large big tech, or will just make stuff up because it's funny and inconvenient to do so. And it's like, that's what you taught me to do. I just make stuff up. And I'm not trying to cause harm or chaos, I'm just doing it. And guess what? You asked me a question about how to operate that car in this situation, I just made up an answer. And now you're driving backwards along the highway because you follow my instructions. You know, I'm making up a vivid example that's unlikely to obtain but there it is. So I you know, I am very bullish on AI but I also I also want your listeners to understand that at least in my opinion, there's a lot of a lot of room for the entrepreneurial person to be able to sit on top of these tools. Michael Fertik (01:02:11.465) and sit on top of businesses and make use of them and not be abused by them. And so I don't think that you should be scared of the future if you're hearing this broadcast or podcast. I think you should be interested in it and not worried about it in a way that paralyzes Jeff Dudan (01:02:27.51) Yeah. I was meeting with another tech investor and it was had a lot of success and they said, well, and they're a builder also. And they said, people that look to invest in us look for three things. They look for the rider, they look for the surfboard, but then they look for the wave. And they're the rider, they're the team with the experience that understands how to put it together. Surfboard's the tool. Michael Fertik (01:02:46.221) Oh cool. Jeff Dudan (01:02:54.594) And what is it they're building? But then the wave is the momentum. Like what is, what is going to be so compelling that these people in this tool can take advantage and be wild, wildly successful inside of that. How do you think about your investments that you make into these emerging private companies in the AI and machine learning and robotic space? How Heroic Ventures Chooses Startups to Fund Michael Fertik (01:03:18.153) So, you know, I'm a really, it's a very good question. I'm a really early stage investor and I invest in venture capital. I think it's probably worth spending about two minutes on what venture capital is and is not. And then I'll answer your question very directly, but to set the table, to set it up, what is venture capital? Venture capital is a very narrow asset class that does not belong in most successful businesses. Most successful businesses do not need venture capital. They have, you can build it with sweat equity. You can build it with a loan. You can build it with a little bit of your own money. Venture capital is for one very specific use case only. When you have a thing that takes some amount of money to build, because the people or the parts that are required to build it are expensive, and there's a period of time where your company might have no income, because until it builds enough of that thing, it cannot make any sales. And then once you build it, the margins are extremely large. Okay, so I'm not talking about 20%, I'm talking about 70, 80, 90, 95% margins, which is extremely rare. That's software, some hardware, and biopharma, biotech basically. The margins are enormously high. Then there have to be a couple other conditions met. And the most important conditions are that it has to be defensible and scalable. So scalable means it can become very large. There are a lot of people who could spend money on this. Tens of thousands of businesses or thousands of large companies or millions of consumers. Michael Fertik (01:05:02.069) So that's a lot. A lot of people can spend money on this, scalable. And then it has to be defensible. So what is defensible? Defensible means that it's very hard for someone to copy it. And that can come from having some intellectual property that you can take someone to court on top of and say, look, you can't compete with me because I invented this and I patented it or whatever. Or that can be something that you have a unique proprietary data set, right? So you have a data set and you're a business, Jeff. that begins to sound defensible. You have all these customers, all these franchises, and maybe that's defensible, okay. And maybe you've got a unique relationship with a vendor, right, you've got an exclusive deal with a really big school district, or exclusive deal with a really big company, or exclusive deal with someone else, that could be. Or maybe you've got a product that has a trade secret around it, like Coca-Cola, the most famous trade secret in the world, like six people alive. at any given time know what the formula is exactly for Coca-Cola, right? Something like that. So if it's defensible and scalable, that means that you can sell to a lot of people and still keep your margins very fat. If it's scalable but not defensible, someone's gonna find you, copy you, and then they're gonna sell you, sell the same or similar product at a lower price, and then you're gonna have to reduce your price, and then your margins will get less fat over time. So venture capital, venture capital. really only ever works for a company that requires a certain amount of capital to get going and will have no revenue, usually for some period of time, not close enough to cover its costs, in other words, and can be scalable and defensible. The nice thing about venture capital is if your company doesn't work, you don't have to pay it back. Right? It's amazing. God bless America. Okay. But the... Jeff Dudan (01:06:54.154) Right. Michael Fertik (01:06:57.689) The downside of venture capital is that you're selling a piece of your company. You're selling it basically forever. And you're selling it forever basically from the very first moment you started your company. So that's venture capital. Now what do I look for? I am a really, really early stage investor. I look for a company that has what we call a team and a TAM. So a team is obvious, who's working on it. And the TAM is the total addressable market. Is there a big, big honkin' market that we think is gonna want this. And if I can see those two things, that's usually the beginning of a yes to me. Now there's some other criteria, it's got to be something I can believe is defensible. And that goes to team because the team is a group of people who get what defensibility is and know how to make things that are defensible. And I invest very heavily in Silicon Valley and Israel. So I have a I have a bit of a relaxed geography since the start of the pandemic, because now everyone's an avatar, right? Everyone just exists on zoom. You invest in companies where you don't even, or meet the guys, you just meet the over gals. Like you just see them on Zoom. And eventually you meet them in person a couple years later, like, wow, you are much taller than I thought you were. Happens to me all the time. And so I tend to focus on these two geographies, right? There are a lot of people who invest in India. I don't do that because I don't have any advantage there. For example, even though great companies coming out of India, great companies. I just don't know how to find them. I don't know how to qualify them the same way I can for Silicon Valley or. Jeff Dudan (01:08:10.242) Ha ha ha. Michael Fertik (01:08:30.745) America and Israel. So those are my focuses. Now, what I don't say, and this is something that you might hear people talk about, who are other professional investors. What I don't say is I look for a product market fit product market fits immensely important. Product market fit means this guy, this team, this gal, they have figured out what they need to make. And that's the product and they found the market, they know how to sell it and the people are buying it. Well, why don't I need a product market fit? I'll tell you why I don't need it. Because by the time a company's got a product market fit, you've got one million investors who want to invest in it and they bid up the price and then I can't make money anymore, okay? That's too late. So, no, it's not too late for some people. Some of the best investors in the world with funds that are bigger than mine, they say, hey Michael, who's got product market fit? And I say, hey, Jack, hey Jane, I got this company here for you. Jeff Dudan (01:09:13.958) That's too late. Michael Fertik (01:09:29.281) You want to invest in that company? And sometimes they say yes. And they look to people like me or they look for other companies, hey, you know, who's got product market fit? But I am willing to go before there's product market fit. I'm willing to go when there's a higher level of risk. And sometimes, you know, you never get to product market fit and that's a fact. But when you do, oftentimes you get a really big markup from a really great fund and all of a sudden you're off to the races and you're much more valuable set of shares than I had when I invested. Jeff Dudan (01:10:00.522) When did you first take money or how did you stand up reputation.com? How long did you go before you took outside capital? Michael Fertik (01:10:13.161) Yeah, I took some friends and family money pretty early. I don't remember exactly how early but it's not a lot. It was very small as 10s of 1000s or 100,000 bucks, something like that. I don't quote me because it's not it's in that zone. I don't I don't recall exactly but then I took a little more, that's a little more we got some more traction a little bit more. And then a very famous VC in Silicon Valley found me and Jeff Dudan (01:10:24.994) Right. Michael Fertik (01:10:41.385) I had like a full year on the books at that time and I had like a million two or something like that my first ever year of operation was subscription revenue. And I had no idea how valuable that was. And also I realized after I looked back because I hadn't spent a year at breakneck speed, I hadn't breathed. I was like, he's like, hey, you got some financials? I'm like, well. Michael Fertik (01:11:05.917) I got this here shoe box, right? And so, and I got some receipts. And so, you know, I spent like, you know, a few weeks cleaning up the books, you know, and I realized that we had been cashflow break even or profitable the first year as well, which was, I mean, first year, first 15 months, whatever it is, don't quote me, but something about that. And I was, I couldn't believe it. And so, that does not happen every day. That was lucky. A lot of hard work, but lucky and also. And... And then we were off to the races. Michael Fertik (01:11:40.033) And then by the way, the 2008 financial crisis hit and then everyone was like, well, the world's dead. Everyone's gonna broke. You're gonna be a waiter. And nothing wrong with being a waiter, but I was the CEO of a company, I had like 30 employees. I was like, well, crap. And I remember telling my employees, I remember coming out, because the 2008 financial crisis, you'll remember, you can cast your mind back. It was sort of like. Jeff Dudan (01:11:40.183) Fantastic. Michael Fertik (01:12:07.617) but no one really knew how bad it was until, like it was really upon us, then it was again upon us, and then it got really bad. And I remember after like, as the news was really bad and people got really sad and people got really worried and the news was really terrible, and they were layoff. And I came out and I said to my employees, like 25 employees, I said, look, we're not gonna have any layoffs. And I believed at the time. And sure enough, about five, six, 10 weeks later, I don't know what it was. Again, don't quote me, but about that. I realized I had made a big mistake. This is now 16 years ago, so some of your listeners may be interested to know that I had made this mistake. And I had kind of made this sense of, I can't say I made a promise, but I made a sense of like, this is what I believe is gonna be true, and you don't have to worry about it for your jobs. And I realized I had made a terrible mistake. The world got so much worse so fast. If you... Jeff Dudan (01:13:02.899) That's right. Michael Fertik (01:13:04.833) did not live through the 2008 crisis. You may not know it was like as bad as everything except since the depression. And then the coronavirus pandemic for a year or half a year was even worse, but then the government's bailout was so vast that they were able to put us back to work and make the stock market go. But the 2008 financial crisis was worse because it was a depression in the financial markets that lasted for years. Jeff Dudan (01:13:34.798) That's terrifying. Michael Fertik (01:13:36.009) and terrifying and full illiquidity. It was a full ice age lockup of money. Money wasn't moving. It was the textbook example of a disaster. You know, you couldn't get a loan, you couldn't get investment, you couldn't write nothing. And so I came out and I said, look guys, I've cut my salary by 50%. I cut it, whatever, four or six weeks ago, whatever it was. It's not enough. I've cut all the candy, I've cut all the stuff. I'm making it up. I cut the air conditioning, whatever it is. not enough and I got a fire, you know, I fired these three people or let these three people go or four people go or whatever it was. This is years ago. And so that was a moment I was like, well, Michael, you got to not say it until you're certain it's true. And I was a younger guy. Like I didn't, I really believed it, but I didn't, I wasn't careful enough with my words at the time. Why Fertik Moved His Family to Paris (and What He’s Teaching His Kids) Jeff Dudan (01:14:28.214) I'm interested. You're living in France now. How many kids hold? Michael Fertik (01:14:34.441) Um, so let me not answer that question, but my oldest is 12. Yeah, but I will answer that question offline. I'm very protective of my family, but, but as soon as we turn off recording, I'll tell you all about my kids and all the details and all that. Yeah. Well, my oldest is 12 now. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (01:14:39.21) Okay. Jeff Dudan (01:14:42.417) Okay, no, fair enough. Jeff Dudan (01:14:46.558) Yeah. Well, I was more interested. I was interested in the, you know, what did you see that led you to move to Paris? Michael Fertik (01:14:57.653) Well, there came a time when I was ready with my family to leave California. And we decided for a number of reasons to leave California. We relocated to Texas and then, and that was a good fit for us. And then there came an opportunity to move abroad and we decided to take up that opportunity because my, um, my, uh, oldest two kids were of an age when that could make sense and I can still get them back for high school. in America. And, you know, my oldest son, who is, he's now 12. I remember asking him, I asked him every six, 12 months, I said, Hey, you know, kid, you know, what do you think you want to do when you grow up? And you're allowed to change your mind, you know, after dinner or tomorrow morning? There's not a big commitment question. He says, he's probably nine at the time. Okay, Jeff, he says to me, Michael, sorry, he says to me, Dad, he's nine years old, says to me, Dad, you know, my whole life, I'm like, okay, fine. It's my whole life. I wanted to be a chef. By the way, he's a really good chef. And I said, great. He says, you know what, Dad? I said, what? He says, you know, being a chef is a really difficult life. Owning a restaurant is a really difficult life. I'm like, well, I don't know how you came to understand that, but it sounds true to me. I think it's a difficult choice. But you know, if you love it, you love it. He says, so? I mean, the wording is important. We're in the middle of Palo Alto. We're living in Palo Alto, right? You have to understand what I've been doing my whole life, but his whole life. He says, well, Dad, I've decided I want to be an investor or a startup. OK? So he wants to be an investor or a startup. So I'm like, oh boy, this kid is definitely a Palo Alto creature. So anyway, and anyway, so I, oh, another funny story. I invented the technology, just a company I sold, and for a while, the conversational AI company, when you talk to the computer, it talks back to you like it's a human. And for a while, one of the use cases was, that we had an Alexa and we could talk to a pizza company about ordering, like how will you order a pizza? We wrote this conversational AI that could help us relay an order of your pizza order to whatever Domino's or Pizza Hut or whatever it was. And so I remember we had a friend come over to the house and my other son was probably six at the time. What does your dad do for a living anyway? He says, he orders pizzas on Alexa. Michael Fertik (01:17:25.741) That's what he thought my life was, ordering pizzas and the like. Jeff Dudan (01:17:28.749) Not completely untrue. Michael Fertik (01:17:30.633) not completely untrue. So, and then the other guy said, he does what he has to do. That was his other answer. So yeah, nice. Anyway, long story short, I had these two Palo Alto creature kids and I was like, look, I'm going to get them out of here and the world's changing and God bless, but I don't think I really need to be in Palo Alto anymore, in Northern California anymore. So we decided to make a move and go to Texas. And then we had this opportunity and I had some freedom in my life, thank God, to go, hey, where do you want to move abroad? Jeff Dudan (01:17:35.27) Oh nice. Yeah. Michael Fertik (01:17:58.449) Paris is a wonderful place. Many of your listeners will have been here or certainly seen in the movies and maybe want to come here. It's everything you think it is and some things that you don't. But the idea was to expose them to the big world. And maybe they can learn another language and maybe we can travel around Europe. And we go to Israel a lot and go to Israel more easily. You know, it's only a few hours by plane. And then we'll come back to America because we're Americans. We want to live in America. But now they've come back with... a different perspective and a broadened perspective and maybe know the language and, and so forth and so on. And we'll move to Texas and live our lives in Texas, which is the plan. So that's what we want to do. But but the idea was really to broaden the kids and to say, look, there's a lot of different ways to live your life, a lot of different kinds of people. And you don't have to just think about being an investor or a startup. Jeff Dudan (01:18:54.899) Everybody needs an adventure in life and for at least for my kids I've really invested heavily in experiences and just get them exposed because you know it's similar to AI. Your kids really will make decisions based upon a subset of the information that's available to them and what they've been exposed to. And I think you know entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and my dad was a. had an engineering business, and I would say it was kind of a failed business. I mean, he kept it for a while, but it didn't scale. I mean, when he had clients come in, I'd have to put a sport coat on and go sit in a cubicle, so it looked like there was people in there and stuff. And raid the snack box and stuff. But you never know what they'll be exposed to on this incredible adventure that will speak into them, and then their life will be a tapestry of the- Michael Fertik (01:19:36.189) That's funny. Jeff Dudan (01:19:49.418) of the raw material we give them. So that's the best we can do, man. That's the best we can do. Well, hey, this is a bit. Michael Fertik (01:19:56.749) Well, God bless. God bless. I appreciate everything you're saying, Jeff. Jeff Dudan (01:20:00.53) Yeah, man. Hey, this has been great, Michael. I can't thank you enough for being on. Last question for you. If you could, if you had one sentence to speak into somebody else's life, what would that be? One Sentence to Live By: Michael Fertik’s Final Words Michael Fertik (01:20:15.585) Have guts. Jeff Dudan (01:20:17.966) Thanks for watching. All right, simple, two words have guts, got it. All right, well, thank you so much for being on Michael Furtick. This has been incredible. So nice to meet you. I've really enjoyed our time together today. Michael Fertik (01:20:32.769) It's my pleasure. I hope we'll meet each other in Charlotte one day. Jeff Dudan (01:20:36.722) We shall. You've got friends here, so when you come by, please look me up. We'll break some bread together. All right, sounds good. This has been Michael Furtick. You've been On the Homefront with Jeff Duden. Thank you for listening.
