← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
How To Conquer The Lows To Get To The Highs: Finding Fame At 60 #148
01:05:23
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome, everybody. Welcome, Richard.
- [00:03]
B
How's it going, Jeff?
- [00:04]
A
Going amazing.
- [00:05]
B
The Jeff Duden.
- [00:07]
A
Absolutely. I'm here. Well, you know, dreams do come true.
- [00:10]
B
Well, I'm really honored to be here. It's great to see you, and congratulations on such a successful podcast. I've been listening, and it's really terrific that I'm actually on a podcast that I listen to pretty devotedly. I think I'm all caught up.
- [00:27]
A
Well, hey, I appreciate that. We'll have to put some. Put some more content out there for you, but we've been friends for a long time, and I want to ask you about one of your beliefs that you shared with me. You said you believe that all lives are the same. We have wins we don't deserve and losses we don't deserve. And in fact, we deserve nothing. What does that mean?
- [00:48]
B
I remember about 20 years ago, I had the core of my office walk out of the door in a mutiny, and it was an inflection point where my company, I had just started it. I had broken off from my partner. It was in the mid 95. 96. It might have been even longer ago. 99. Somewhere in that. Somewhere in that epic. And I was so overwhelmed, and I was really angry, and I felt really betrayed, and I just wrote that down, and I said, well, what do I deserve? I mean, do I deserve the nice house I live in? Do I deserve health? Do I deserve success? And it really. I realized I didn't really deserve anything. I mean, I had to accept what was going on. I had to totally accept my role in it, that I was the creator of the good things and the creator of the bad things, and that I had to be accountable. But in just my journey in life, Jeff, I've met so many people, and I think one of the mistakes we make as humans is we judge people's outsides by our insides, right? We look at somebody. I mean, I could even look around at your operation. It's a highly successful business. It's. It's got capital equipment and beautiful fixtures and furnishings, and it's an exemplar of a successful business. And I can say, wow, you know, I wish I had something like this. But then when you get to know people, when you really get to know them, you find out we all have the same things. We worry about our kids, we worry about our health. Whether we're in any type of relationship, there's always a challenge or something that's going to come up with that, right? And so we all have similar lives. I mean, I have friends in all walks of life, like I'm sure our listeners do, and cohorts from a lot of different stripes and places. And I tell you, the older I get, the more I just think we're all the same. And getting back to what you said is, I mean, we're just. You just have to practice gratitude and you have to lean into these failures and say, okay, one step at a time, one day at a time. How can I make this better? And that was a real inflection point. That Mutiny was one of my big customers at the time, Lowe's, somebody said to me, an executive there said, you know, we have people do this to Lowe's all the time. They think it's going to be a long term problem, but it's a short term pain in the ass. And literally by that happened around the first of the year. That particular year, it was 2005. Okay, so it was 20 years ago. By February, it was almost a memory. And we had gotten in new people, we had shored up business and life went on. And that period from 05 to 95 were some of the best 10 years of my earnings.
- [04:01]
A
Life oftentimes better. When there's a crisis that's foist upon us, if it's not a health cris, or it's not a car accident or it's not cancer, these types of things, people don't deserve that. They get foist upon them all the time. But in business, you'll get a key person that quits or you'll get a mutiny where a bunch of people quit or maybe they even start competing with you. And these types of situations universally have made me a better business person and improved my business, because those people, they weren't really in the boat to begin with.
- [04:38]
B
Well, you also, when you're a new CEO and you're starting out and these things happen, you think, I'm bad at this. This is a failure on my part. And then as you get to know other people and other cohorts in any business, you find out that a lot of times this has happened to them. I mean, one of the most successful business people I know is on the Forbes 400. When he started his company up the street from mine 20 years ago, he had everybody in his customer service department quit before he sold the company to Henry Schein for $70 million. You know, they were jealous of the fact he owned the business and he was monetizing it. And they wanted to prove a point to him, and they did. He was $70 million richer, a few years later from the point that that class of employees, ex employees, proved to him.
- [05:31]
A
Richard, your career has been incredibly varied. Your Sales Edge business has been the one constant that has maintained its presence and its potential and its earnings for you as a kind of a foundational thing. But you've done so many things creating a company called Click that you sold to Angie's List. Now you've launched an acting career and you've been very successful early. You've put a lot of hard work into that. You've been an author, you're writing a screenplay. You have a very. You've been a fly fisher. Fly fisherman and a professional and a TV personality. And so would you consider yourself, Richard, to be more of an entrepreneur or more of an executive?
- [06:14]
B
I would say that I'm unemployable.
- [06:17]
A
Well, then you're an entrepreneur.
- [06:19]
B
So yeah. So, you know, Sales Edge is a company that is typical of a lot of American businesses, right? The unseen business. We don't even have a website anymore. We have customer relationships that are 35 years old. And we do in store category management for growth retailers, Fortune 10 companies, primarily east of the Mississippi. And that is a business that came out of a sales territory. And at the time that Sales Edge was founded, I was highly unemployable. And so most of the things that I've started have been as a place of coming from dead zero. And there's a lot of freedom in that because when you start, whether you're a fly fisherman and you're walking into the stream for the first time and you don't know what you're doing, you can't get any worse. And so same with acting. And so I like my life, which is going by way too fast, is something that I like the varied experiences, I like trying new things and I like the freedom of exploration. No matter what it is. I wish I could live to be 200 years old because there's so much I want to do.
- [07:36]
A
What is a core belief that you have come to late in life that you didn't realize when you were younger?
- [07:46]
B
The only religion in our household is gratitude.
- [07:49]
A
What does that mean?
- [07:51]
B
Exactly what it says. We have to think no matter what's going on, we are so grateful. And we're grateful for the fact we have a roof over our head, that we can pay our heating bill and that we can put gas in our cars. Everything else from that is a bonus. So our family's motto stated is it's all about gratitude. Like we say, it's the only religion in our household is. Thank you.
- [08:26]
A
Tell us a little bit about your family. You've got Jack, your son. You've got Lily working in Chicago doing improv.
- [08:37]
B
Simon.
- [08:38]
A
Got Simon. Tell us a little bit about your family.
- [08:41]
B
And I've got a domestic partner of 26 years, Lori Fermata. You know, we have a perfectly average family with perfectly average kids in a normal, dysfunctional household where this was a great Christmas. The sheriff didn't come. We consider that a bonus.
- [09:03]
A
That's good.
- [09:05]
B
We actually love Christmas, and we celebrate it at our farm. We have a really fun, great household. I'm very proud of my kids. They're much more humble than their dad, which is not hard to do. And they're also entrepreneurs in their own way. They have seen through me that it's okay to fail. It's okay to try. You're gonna fail, and don't take it too seriously. You know, one of the things in that opening statement is when you've had successes, they're a little bittersweet. When I look back on anything in my life, 2024 has been a fantastic year for our family financially. We checked every box, fished in Montana a couple of times. I mean, just incredible, great year. I'm terrified going into 2025 because. Is it.
- [10:05]
A
Because there's no way it can be as good.
- [10:07]
B
Because it's going to be a hard act to follow, and it's a little bittersweet, you know, like when we had the sale of one of our companies when New River Pharma was sold to Shire for $2.65 billion. And this was in 07, I was in the room when $365 million was being distributed to me and a group of LPs. Jeff, there wasn't a smile in the room.
- [10:37]
A
Why?
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B
Because we were also doubling down on clinical data and Intrexon and a host of other companies and in the VC business and the PE business. It's incredibly stressful. And you're on to the next. You're on to the next race. You're like a NASCAR racer. And just because you won Talladega. Well, next week you've got Darlington, so you better start get. You better get on the jet out of Mooresville and go to the. And get ready to test. So. And it was very, very odd that that part of my life, because I don't think I was that happy from 07 to probably 2017, and certainly not too happy during the pandemic, but it was the fact that I was also modeling after millionaires. Deca Millionaires, billionaires that I was meeting and thinking, I need to be like that instead of being like this. And then as I've the last three or four years, I've done better at just being this.
- [11:43]
A
You sold a company called Click, which was interesting for you because it was a technology play. And you found a technologist, a really smart guy named Simon, a German fellow, to help you build it. Now he's your son in law.
- [12:00]
B
Yes. And he's at Angie working out of the Chicago office and was accepted to Yale for his MBA school. And Click was born out of the fact that we had our Lowe's relationship, which went from 93 to 2018. End. Lowes is a fantastic company. I'm a shareholder, I'm a customer. Their management team, led by Marvel and Ellison is absolutely fantastic. I mean, they answer the question, which is, if you close your door tomorrow, who would care? Well, a lot of consumers would care. They're a great company and they really answer a fundamental question. Businesses, what's the world with you versus the world without you? A world with Lowe's is a really good place because it's a Lowe's and Home Depot have got it, but they serve different customers and different stripes. And they're great companies. And I was sad to see it end. I was angry it ended. But they were great to me. They gave me everything that I have, but life has to go on. And when that ended, I had 50 home improvement experts that were doing at home warranty inspections. And it took me six months of figuring out who to talk to at Amazon on LinkedIn. And I got a cold call and I started all over and I built an app called Click. And when we sold to angie, we had 5,200 contractors. About 250 were really working on a, you know, 30, 40 hour week. And we had just signed an agreement with Costco to do all of their installations. And the reason I sold it was, it was, it was either I was going to have to spend $10 million or make $10 million.
- [13:45]
A
That's right. The business would do assembly when you're at Costco or anywhere where you're buying a basketball hoop or maybe a big screen tv, it needs to be hung on the wall.
- [13:58]
B
Right.
- [13:59]
A
Or assembling exercise bikes or whatever it is.
- [14:02]
B
Trampolines.
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A
Trampolines. And you would, they would ask you would you like installation with that? And they would click the button and pay a fee and the labor and the back end mechanism to have somebody show up.
- [14:16]
B
So in the Amazon buy box, when you're Would you like it? Do you want the warranty? Would say, do you want assembly? That order waterfall based on reviews and territories to the best. So it was a real meritocracy. So when we started it, I bought a brass bell and put it in the office. And when we got our first order, we would ring it. And I said, we're only going to do the order if we get five stars. So my tech could not leave unless he knew he had done it perfectly, which we did. Exit surveys and are you sure you're happy? And the first order we did cost me $2,500 because we scratched the guy's floor. And so we started with. We rung the bell. I was at that point, I found out maybe three or four days later I had just lost about $2,500 on $150 assembly. So we did about 50 to 100 assemblies, really perfecting it. And then we started adding techs in southwest Virginia and in markets and we grew extremely fast. At the very end, we were covering 35,000 zip codes. It's hard to believe in hindsight.
- [15:31]
A
No. And it's impressive because you're not a digital native. You didn't grow up with the computers and really to see this need in this niche and then to be able to build the technology and be able to deliver on it and to build the network so quickly that Angie's List would say I've got to have it and I've got to buy it from you in five years.
- [15:52]
B
It was less than five, four years, about four.
- [15:55]
A
Okay. So now so many of us, we start a business, we own it for 30 years. I've owned my business for 25 years. You own Sales Edge for 30, 35 years. And. And then we go out and try something new and oftentimes we fail. And there may have been a failure or two in there, but it's impressive that you got that up, you got it down, you didn't get damaged, you made money, you took care of the people around you. And it's a nice feather in your cap and had to feel good. But now you've got this time you're in 22 or post Covid and you decide to pursue acting. Why?
- [16:37]
B
I watched the movie the Conclave on streamed it. It's highly reviewed stars Ralph Fiennes and there was an actor who was the lead in that. And I said I've never seen this guy. And I looked him up and he started acting during the pandemic. Latin American actor and. And it's very similar I have always had dreams of doing different things. You know, when you're young. I had a posters on my wall of Joe Namath, right? Because when I was an itty bit of a little kid, he was sort of leaving the NFL, but he was a big deal. And then Gale Sayers and all those kind of. But I knew I'd never be an NFL quarterback. But I'd always fantasized about being a rock star, an actor, something to be famous. I'm so insecure and egotistical. That just was right in my wheelhouse.
- [17:29]
A
I would think everybody has these fantasies and these dreams. If you don't. I can't imagine people not seeing themselves from time to time in one of these roles, right.
- [17:42]
B
So I just declared that. I said to my family, I said, I'm gonna try to be an actor. And the way this started was I went on a charity website and I bought a meeting with Francesca Orsi from HBO to pitch a television show. I waited to the very last second. I looked her up and she was a real. She is a big time executive. She's head of drama at HBO, which is now Max. And I paid about $6,000 for a pitch meeting. And I told Lori, she's like, what in the. That is ridiculous. And I said, well, look, I live in Wytheville, Virginia, right in southwest Virginia, in a town of eight village of 8,000 people. There is no way I am going to be able to break into Hollywood just by saying I am an actor. So I got the meeting. I gave myself six months to prepare for it. I wrote an outline of a TV show idea I had where I wasn't not the star. And it was scheduled for 45 minutes. We met for almost five hours. And the end of that meeting she said to me, you get your headshot, you get in acting classes, you continue to write this. They assigned a book Scout From WarnerMedia to the Project called Temungen, which is a story where a gangster from Cleveland moves to Asheville, North Carolina who has a son, who becomes a venture capitalist who sets out to seek revenge on a fellow billionaire. And we. Let's stay in touch. Six months later I was on the set standing three feet away from Robert Downey Jr. In the HBO miniseries eight episode miniseries the Sympathizer, which is a little bit role continued in acting classes. And since then I've done five movies and five TV commercials and just finished a TV pilot called the Club which was directed. Director of photography was Truman Hanks, who's Tom Hanks son with a young Cohort, cast of great Hollywood actors. I was the old man in the group. They treated me great. I love these kids and I had the time of my life and I'm wishing them great success and I believe this show will get sold.
- [20:13]
A
You live in Wytheville, Virginia, which is, like you said, a village of 8,000 people. It's in southwest Virginia. It's in the middle of this beautif, hidden gem of fly fishing, trout streams, rivers. And I've been up there now, knowing you multiple times and have taken multiple trips up there, but it's hard to get to. There's. There's a. There's a private airport. The closest airport is Charlotte, North Carolina. So you're two and a half hours away from the closest major airport. People that have business careers, like you generally say, well, maybe I need to be in Miami. Maybe I need to be in New York. I need to be where the people are that I want to do business with. Or at least Charlotte or Raleigh, Durham, just so you can have more regular access to people. Take that to acting. You need to be in New York, you need to be in la, you know, but yet you're living in Wytheville, Virginia. You're recording auditions now. You can do it on your iPhone. Like, that's all you've got to do. They can say, I wouldn't need you to read for this part. You don't have to go there.
- [21:17]
B
Right? The pandemic changed that.
- [21:18]
A
The pandemic changed everything. Are you going to continue to live in with Phil if your acting career takes off like you hope it does?
- [21:27]
B
I've always said you go where the needs of the business take you. So when living in Wytheville is. And I get this question a lot. I'll say, I live in Wytheville, Virginia. And a lot of times the next retort will be, why? And to those people, I want to say, well, then you just don't get it, because, number one, it's my home. And if you haven't been there, then I can't explain to you what life living at the same elevation of Asheville is like without the population, with clean water, blue ribbon trout streams all over the place and a lower cost of living and a safety. We don't lock our doors at night. We leave the keys in our vehicles overnight. We. It is great. I love rural America. I love rural Americans. It's the heartland of this country. It's what's made this country. And I feel more at home in rural America than I do in la and everything I've learned, Jeff. I've learned from other people. Right? And I was in a business meeting one time, and the guy said, listen, I know our company is based in Alabama and you're based here. And the guy, the buyer said, planes fly everywhere. And so. And now in a virtual world, in the acting business, it's a gig economy, Right. Tom Cruise is a gig worker. Okay?
- [22:52]
A
Right.
- [22:53]
B
He goes from gig to gig. And so if I get a show or if I'm in a part in a Z list actor like me, I work four or five days at a time. I fly in, fly out. Now, let's say if I do get a role that is more profound and the location is Los Angeles, I'll rent a house in LA and run my other businesses from my MacBook Pro, which is what I typically do. Now.
- [23:29]
A
With philosophy is you wrote articles about it, about how meth in particular was impacting southwest Virginia. It's got beautiful fisheries, but then it also has a lot of. It's a lot of poverty in certain pockets of southwest Virginia. There was a lot of meth manufacturing that happened in some of those areas. And yet you're the executive entrepreneur in residence. You've. I've been to your house. It's not a house. It's a compound with. It's right in the middle of town. It's somewhere where the mayor would live. It's beautiful property. It's got multiple buildings on it, and it's. It's really like a, you know, a lot of antiques inside of it. I can understand how reticent you would be to leave there.
- [24:21]
B
Well, yeah, I live in the home called Ingleside, which is the. The former senator U.S. colonel Enoch Withers house. And he was actually the first American ambassador in Hong kong. It's an 1860s vintage Italianate house, and it's really, really special. That's why I moved to town. But in 2015, I wrote an op ed for CNBC. Virginia was just being named the best state in Virginia. And I was contacted to say, well, to talk about how great Virginia was. And I said, well, actually, Virginia is a great state to do business. Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Tidewater, Richmond. But when you get to far southwest Virginia, which was traditionally coal country, we were left behind. We are now making a move because of technology and tourism and having a renaissance. But in certain counties in West Virginia, the population is declining. And on the main street of my Hometown, it was 80% vacant at the time. And I wrote an extremely visceral, unpopular, unpopular.
- [25:35]
A
Richard, you've never been Afraid to be unpopular in a room.
- [25:40]
B
And looking back, I made one. I made a couple of mistakes with the article. I wish I would have been more like Donald Trump after I wrote it and said, because the blowback for me to say, how dare you call out a drug problem. Now, keep in mind, I'm talking. I'm anti drug, obviously, but I was unpopular for being anti drug. You just said it yourself. Why would I be unpopular to be anti drug? You tell me.
- [26:13]
A
I don't know.
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B
Well, you said it. Those are your words. But that's exactly what happened, right?
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A
People didn't like the light being shown on their problem.
- [26:25]
B
So we have a saying in business, in a crisis, tell the truth and tell it fast. And also, if you have a problem, shine a light on it. And in recovery, we say, you're only as sick as your secrets. We had a major secret, which was addiction, which has affected my life. It has affected me. I've been in recovery for a long time and off and on in recovery for a long time. And I said, we have got to do something different. That article, as unpopular as it was now, the blowback that I got, I mishandled because I said, oh, I didn't really, you know, maybe I went a little too hard. I should have said, I didn't go hard enough. Now, fast forward 10 years later, I have a road named after me. There's Fermato Drive. Our Main street is 100% leased up. Our mayor lost his job. The police chief lost his job. We have a great female mayor. We have African American police chief Joey Hash, who's doing an amazing job. We have local restaurants. We have two craft breweries, including one which is kind of a counterculture brewery that has everything from amateur nights to drag shows. This was not the Wytheville of my article. So I did my job. But also when that happened and the blowback came my way, I was online and I saw, you know, leadership is a lonely place. If you want to be popular, choose another vocation than leadership. Because you certainly seen with any president we've had, anytime you make a tough decision, Jeff, you are going to offend a certain group of cohorts. You can't do it in your company. Hey, this person gets the gets the weekend off because of whatever reason, well, somebody on the other side of the house is going to say, well, I didn't get the weekend off. That's what leadership is. You have to make those calls. That was the right call at the right time, and I'm glad I did it. And I would do it again tomorrow, and that will be in my legacy. One of my most proudest achievements was at CNBC op ed because since then Purdue Pharma has written checks to Virginia in excess of a couple hundred million dollars in settlements. Also western North Carolina. That started a lot of change.
- [28:46]
A
That's right. We're sitting here between Christmas and New Year's. I have gone deep into the musings of David Goggins and David Goggins. When I read the first few chapters of his book, he grew up in a place that in some ways I resonated with my upbringing, but it was a hundred times more abusive and harder than what I grew up in. You grew up in Asheville. What was your early life experience in Asheville and how did that shape you into who you are today?
- [29:30]
B
Well, history is repeating itself because my father was an Italian immigrant, second gen. My grandparents were born in Italy. He moved to Asheville. He ran a plastic pipe factory. And Asheville was a town of 50,000 people and a village a little bit larger than Wytheville, Virginia now, but not much. Everybody knew each other and Asheville and our childhood. I was just speaking with one of my Asheville buddies the other day was a fabulous place to grow up. It was a small town, no traffic in the mountains, culturally centered around, you know, the folk arts, the mountain crafting business. And then of course, we had the Vanderbilts on the other side of town, on the rich side of town and with the Biltmore house, which was delivering milk back then to every house in Asheville. It was a great place.
- [30:25]
A
What did you do as a child?
- [30:27]
B
Oh, what did what?
- [30:29]
A
Let me rephrase that, Richard. What didn't you do as a child?
- [30:33]
B
Well, until I was a junior, I didn't study. Okay. In high school, I didn't study. But I always was aware as a child in Asheville how beautiful it was. I mean, I think I can still see this everywhere I'm at. I mean, I still get my breath taken away when I'm in Iowa or when I'm in anywhere, Florida, any state, North Carolina, anywhere. I am at. I can always see the pretty, the beauty of a place. And I just can remember the clouds on a pretty summer day in Asheville about how beautiful it was. So I liked to walk and hike and fish. And I was a real. Unlike my dad, who was a golfer and a card player, I was always as a kid, a consumer of the outdoors. And on mom's side, my grandfather was a tobacco farmer from Stokes County, N.C. and my mom was one of 10, so we were spending a lot of time in Lawsonville, North Carolina, on that farm, tying tobacco, putting up tobacco in the fall, and playing outside with my 19 other cousins.
- [31:43]
A
We spent a lot of time together through our YPO forum and just personally.
- [31:50]
B
Right.
- [31:51]
A
And you've said that your mom was the one person that you truly respected.
- [31:56]
B
She was.
- [31:56]
A
Why?
- [31:58]
B
Well, my dad, number one, was like me. He was a handful. In fact, I think I'm a little bit of a better version of my father who, as we look back on our dads and I'm sure my children will look back on me. They'll see me things that they loved about their mom and me, and there'll be things about me they will have despised or wished for different. And there were things about my dad I wish were truly, truly different. My mother, on the other hand, was born in the depression, one of 10 and A. And who lost everything. And those depression people were different. She conserved assets, however, lived a very elegant life. She was a master gardener, she was a painter, she was an artist, she was a business person, all at the same time. She was a great cook, and she was the epitome of unconditional love. I gave a speech one time and I said. And I dedicated to mom when she was alive and she was in the audience. I said, thanks for loving me even when you shouldn't have. And that was my mom. She was a wonderful person, and I really still miss her. And she was my oracle, too. I would go and talk to her about anything. We had a truly open relationship.
- [33:17]
A
I believe that's rare today. Somebody that's gone out and had as much world experience as you have and had success and still find the humility within themselves to see the wisdom in their mother.
- [33:33]
B
I tell you what, if somebody doesn't have a relationship with their parents, it's a red flag or a brother they don't talk to or somebody that they can't deal with. You know, if you communicate and you just keep talking, you can find common ground with. With any person anywhere in the world. I mean, we have just got to be. We have just got to stop what we're doing, which is just to keep these walls up in these divisions. You can't take a car ride to the beach with your biggest enemy, and by the time you get there, you will have found something you guys agree on and are laughing about. And that is one of our. That comes back to gratitude. Just be thankful you're in the car and you've got that time, because Some people don't have it.
- [34:20]
A
If your life plays out the way you want it to over the next two or three years, what will you be doing?
- [34:31]
B
In 1993? I lost all my business through a combination of the fact from 83 to 93. I started off making lots of money and, you know, I was a douchebag. I don't know if I can say.
- [34:53]
A
That on the call, but I think you just did. Addiction. Did any addictions play a role into getting into your demise during that time?
- [35:04]
B
Well, it was an addiction to materialism, an addiction to. To sex addiction, drug addiction. It was, check all the box addiction. And, you know, I was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year at 30 years old, living in Roanoke, Virginia. And, you know, I was immature, real full of yourself. And what happens is, you know, that works until it doesn't. And on March 23, 1993, it ended. And so I lost all my business. I got in a bar fight, was jailed till 5 in the morning. And the next morning I went into my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. But I had been in NA and AA to either get a girlfriend to take me back or try to make somebody show that I was really different for five years prior to that. But this time it stuck. And as these stories always go, after that happened, within a matter of 30, 60 days, it was all gone. Even though I had a little bit of sobriety, that 10 years of behavior was like a tsunami that hit me on the beach. And if I hadn't been sober, I would have been probably washed out to sea. But that's where my life started to change. And in that I had a cassette deck and I had a Tony Robbins series of motivational tapes that I had bought on one of those Guntherinker infomercials at 2 in the morning, probably coked up that I had sitting that I didn't listen to. Well, I put in the tape and it said, congratulations, you're listening to the tape. That's the good news. The bad news is if you're like 99% of the people that buy these things, you won't even make it to the end of the tape.
- [37:01]
A
Wow.
- [37:02]
B
And on that cassette tape, it was, I think 12 cassette was a lot of tapes. I listened to it and it said, write down your goals and write down the whys behind your goals. And I wrote down that I wanted to have a company, that I wanted to be respected, that I wanted to have a family, that I wanted to live in a mansion. And then one day I wanted to win an award in the entertainment business. And that is. I have been true to that yellow legal pad for 40 years now. And as Tony Robbins would say, faced with an intractable problem, you have to look it in the eye and say, what can be great about this? And when I got sober in 93, the rest the world changed for me so quickly and so profoundly that that set in motion from that sobriety that first five years set in place the next part of rest of my life. That was my real inflection point. That was where it could have gone either way. And there's still a lot of people that wish it would have gone the wrong way. And maybe you're banking that it will go the wrong way, but all I have is, is that. And I look back on that, and that that moment is probably the greatest part of my life and the part that I'm probably the most proud of.
- [38:35]
A
Two things. One, you were sued as a result of that bar fight.
- [38:41]
B
I was.
- [38:42]
A
And you had to write a. And based on how you were living, based on the fact that you were an employee, I know what you had to pay. And it was a lot of money, and it probably made a huge impact and probably really caught your attention that there's real risk and there's real loss out in the world. And if I'm feeling my oats and I've got artificial courage coursing through my veins and I hurt somebody, I can be liable.
- [39:13]
B
Well, as you should be liable. We're not meant to. We're not meant to touch other people. They try to tell us that in kindergarten. And some people like me didn't listen too good. And at 33 years old, I decided to touch somebody else's face with my fist.
- [39:29]
A
Right.
- [39:32]
B
And in your 60s. Yeah. It's really sad. Right. So.
- [39:37]
A
Oh, I got the Instagram reels right. You know, every Eagles game.
- [39:41]
B
Yeah.
- [39:42]
A
Knocked out.
- [39:43]
B
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And then you have a. What I say is, do you really want a lifelong commitment with that person in that moment of.
- [39:50]
A
Of, you know, you can really hurt somebody.
- [39:53]
B
Yeah. And you can hurt somebody. So the. The. I was sued again, losing all the business. I was sued for $250,000.
- [40:04]
A
That's a lot of money in 1993. It's a lot of money today.
- [40:07]
B
Well, it's a lot of money in 1993 when you don't have any money to.
- [40:11]
A
That's right.
- [40:13]
B
And so the good news is that the lawsuit was settled for $2,500. The better news is, it took me five years, but I finally had the guy that I got in the tussle with down to Virginia, and we had dinner and I was able to tell him, could he chew? That it was. He could.
- [40:41]
A
That's good.
- [40:42]
B
And I apologized and I said it was all my fault. And that's another thing, Jeff, that this is one of the most freeing things that you can ever say. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. You know, when we're talking about business, when these things happen, well, you know, you go to your customer and they say, well, what happened here? You know, it's all my fault. Well, it was your. It was your guy in Minnesota that. No, no, not really. It's. My name's on the business. It's. I'm the president or CEO or manager, divisional manager, territory manager, whatever. No, it's. It's my fault. It's my responsibility. You know, US CEOs are great at taking credit for earnings, right? And we're great when we have record quarters, but we're not as good when we have these material upsets and things are really, really bad. You've seen this so many times in business. You know, we had Hurricane Helene decimate a community in Irwin, Tennessee. And the CEO that was on television was appalling in his response. Human lives were lost, workers were lost because they weren't let go during the storm. And that's the time where you have to say, no matter what the consequences are, which could be jail, but you have to say, it's all my fault, because there is forgiveness. Us humans like forgiving each other. We like it when somebody says, I effed up. Because we all have so many times that when somebody comes to me and says, you know, Richard, I really messed up, well, I can look them in the eye and go, man, I think we just found some common ground. Let me tell you about this thing, or let me tell you about that thing. That's where we bind as human beings, where we realize that we have things that bind us instead of separate us. And so CEOs and leaders have to say, I messed up. Because people will see that vulnerability and that humility in you to say, okay, I'm gonna have some freedom here. I don't need to be in fear of this guy. He's just like me, right? And going back to my op ed, part of the problem was the other mistake I made as a writer is I didn't come. I didn't come across. I didn't put a hero in that story. And in that time, there were plenty of heroes. A pastor that I know and myself were holding NA meetings. And this guy, pastor, his name's Don Sunshine, his real name was doing at the First Church of God was really working towards addiction and helping a lot of these people. You know, in my arrogance, I left out some people that I shouldn't have. And I. And that's what I should have been apologizing for. Not the content, but the context.
- [43:29]
A
You mentioned that you set five goals when you were 33 years old. And when the student was ready, Tony Robbins, the teacher appeared in your cassette deck of your 1986 whatever you were driving. You probably driving a Porsche in 85.
- [43:44]
B
I had a Mercedes.
- [43:45]
A
Okay.
- [43:46]
B
I had. Yeah, I didn't have it. I didn't have an ask me in 86.
- [43:51]
A
Right.
- [43:51]
B
It was a Ford. Yeah.
- [43:53]
A
Well, you always drive tasteful cars. These days I'm. It has not gone unnoticed. What would you say? So for context, we're sitting here on December 30th and I've made a conscious decision to schedule a goal setting two hours with. We have several hundred franchise owners here. We're sitting here in 24 several hundred franchise owners, the majority of which are under 18 months in business. And I'm leading with them today. A two hour goal setting seminar. And I'm going to hit it pretty hard. I've thought a lot, I've worked a lot to prepare for this. And you don't need to wait until there's consequences to try to do something better, to try to do something great. Most people, many people wait until they're up against the wall before their greatness really comes out, but that's false. It doesn't have to be financial goals. It doesn't have to be performance goals. It can just be getting better, making myself better every single day, 1% better every day. In the face of not even understanding what your purpose is. And what experience would you share with another 33 year old today that's listening to this podcast that's sitting here in 2024. Their career is maybe not going exactly they want it to. Their business is not going exactly the way they want it to without having consequences, without failure of everything in their life. How would you encourage them to step back and to set some goals that your goals have lasted for 40 years? I mean, everything that you mentioned is everything that I know you've accomplished in your life, which is powerful and it's a testament to writing down your vision for yourself and making a commitment to it.
- [45:55]
B
Well, I'm glad you mentioned this goal thing. I was writing and tweaking mine. I start on mine in the first of December. And so I try to crystallize them into one page of doable things. But thoughts are things. And to make those thoughts things, you have to write them down. Because you're. Your supercomputer will put that in your brain and you will subconsciously work towards those for Everybody, whether you're 35 or 65, you have to keep your debt as low or no go as possible. The secret to my success is even when I was making mistakes, I never was in debt. I was cash on cash from day one. I have no personal debt, no corporate debt, no debt of any kind. My true net worth is absolutely.
- [46:55]
A
It's all positive.
- [46:56]
B
It's all positive. There's no liabilities. And you have to think ahead. And you have to have insurance for what you do for examples, for when you make mistakes like I made at that time, because my insurance defended me in that actually lawsuit. And they settled it. And I had a good.
- [47:18]
A
I didn't know they had assholes reservation.
- [47:21]
B
Of rights, you know. And so to start out, you have to write down your goals. And one of the things that I liked about Tony Robbins and I know a lot of people say, say what they say. I don't care what they say. It worked for me. And I'm not them. But writing down the goals are the most important. I have people that have goals. I say write them down. They're like, no. I'm like, well, okay, I write mine down. But I also write the why. Don't you know, I don't write, I want to have a mansion. I write why I want to have a mansion. And my why behind where I lived was I grew up in Asheville with these beautiful Norway spruce trees all over town. And there was these beautiful homes in Biltmore Forest that my family couldn't afford, but that I was aware of. And that house in Wytheville reminded me of those grand ladies, those mansions in Biltmore Forest. And I couldn't afford Biltmore Forest, but I could afford Wytheville, Virginia. And that was the why behind my decision in 1996, my why to become an actor. Because it was a childhood fantasy. And that's okay, you know, that's my fantasy. You can judge it, you can laugh at it, you can laugh at me. That's okay. That's not going to prevent me from following my childhood fantasy of being behind the camera and learning my lines, being with other actors. That sounds really fun to me. And it is super fun. And it's also a challenge. My why behind fly fishing was because it was a terrible lie. It was because the rich kids were of this certain strata were fly fishermen and they were wing shooters and they were shooting something called skeet. Okay. And I, you know, and it felt like it was over my head and I said, you know, I want to try this fly fishing. And so I really became, you know, pretty proficient at fly fishing. You know, it's on Team USA and been on a bunch of TV shows and featured in a lot of media on it. But it's because I spent a lot of hours in the stream. Just like as an actor, I spend all this time that nobody sees that. You know, you might see four minutes of me in a movie and think, oh, well, that happened overnight. Nah, the four minutes that I've been on screen has taken two years.
- [49:37]
A
Right, right. How do you think about legacy?
- [49:46]
B
I would want my legacy to be the immortality that I will achieve when my children tell my grandchildren or great grandchildren some great funny story about their dad, some stupid thing that I did or some bonehead thing that we did, or some saying that I used to do or the fact that I used to play a lot of video games. That's the only legacy. I don't have the need for any long term legacy, you know, I just don't. I'm a lot more humble than that way than I think you would think of. As to me that immortality is man, I wish you'd have gotten to know my, you know, granddad. I wish you would have gotten to know my dad, you know, because my kids, my, my kids were born after my father passed away and I have talked to them about the good and bad of their grandfather and channeled him in so many ways. And in that way, he is immortal. That's the legacy that I'll live. Thank you for. That's a great question. That's a thought provoking question. How about you? What's the legacy you want to live?
- [50:51]
A
Well, let me ask, let me follow up on that real quick. Why, why is the relationship with our father so deep and important to us? Because I've really realized for myself, like, how much I think about him now that he's gone.
- [51:13]
B
I don't know if it's cultural, but our dads, man, I mean, aren't you different dad than your dad? I mean, my, like when my dad showed up at one of my games, it was like, he's actually at one of my games. You know, I don't miss anything of my kids. I was Flying to little Lily's choral recitals. I'm going to go see Lily and Simon tomorrow in Chicago. I mean, my dad was kind of disinterested in a lot of the aspects of my life. He was a traveling sales guy. You know, mom was the constant. And then when he was around, it wasn't like we were having lots of deep father son talks. He was usually screaming at something me about something that he, you know, how come I wasn't like this? A student? Or how come I wasn't like this?
- [52:01]
A
So how often do you think about him?
- [52:04]
B
Every single day.
- [52:05]
A
Right? Because that's. That's the question. Because why, how does.
- [52:10]
B
Because that mother trucker would say things to me like, you know, don't trip over your ego on the way to the bank. Some of these nuggets that he would say to me. And he would say to me, because I went to him when I lost everything, and he looked at me, was smoking his Winston cigarette and kind of saying, well, I ain't surprised. But I said to him, I go, dad, what should I do now? And he goes, you make your reputation every day. And walked out of the room like, Mike dropped me. And I'm sitting there like, that's it. But here it is. He died in 99, here it is in 20, almost 20, 25. And he was right. You make your reputation every day, you know, and unfortunately, post that, I wish I could say, well, I've had this great, perfect reputation. I have it, you know, I'm like the New York Stock Exchange. I go up, I go down. Over time, I've gone up. But, boy, I've had some corrections. Have you had some corrections? I haven't met anybody who hadn't had a correction.
- [53:09]
A
No. And I heard somebody say recently that the failing of our fathers is. And us, our ability to observe those failings is one of the greatest gifts that they gave us.
- [53:23]
B
Well, you know, my regret with dad is that he hasn't gotten to meet my son and daughter because he would really be proud of them. And I think most of all he'd be proud of me. Because as one of my best friends said to me the other day, Jeff, he goes, you know, man, Richard, he's shaking his head. Your kids, Lily and Jack. Yeah, they're really great.
- [53:51]
A
He goes, they are great.
- [53:52]
B
And he said, man, you know, you were in a real basket case growing up. I didn't see this coming. Talking about how good the kids were.
- [54:00]
A
Well, it skips a generation.
- [54:01]
B
Yeah, it must, right?
- [54:03]
A
Yeah, it's one of the Things that I feel really bad about my kids is the fact that, you know, I'm so perfect that they just can't, you know, because there's no failings for them to observe.
- [54:16]
B
Right.
- [54:16]
A
So what are they. How are they gonna bond with me, Me over these years? That's probably why they don't think about me.
- [54:21]
B
You're kidding me.
- [54:22]
A
Yes.
- [54:23]
B
My kids come in and sleep.
- [54:25]
A
I'm obviously kidding.
- [54:26]
B
Yeah. Ours take our inventory all the time.
- [54:29]
A
Oh, my gosh. It's relentless. It's relentless. The things that we clearly. It's amazing that we've survived this long, Richard.
- [54:38]
B
Well, you know, I mean, I guess we call Lily. I mean, mom, rest her soul. Mom's still around, and she happens to be my daughter. So we're good there.
- [54:48]
A
Yeah. Tell us what Lily's doing right now.
- [54:50]
B
Well, she just did a performance at Second City last night. She finished her BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, and her and Simon are gonna go to New Haven, Connecticut, for his mba, and she'll try to break into the New York comedy scene. And she's writing, and we're doing this together. You know, she's my fan in terms of my career. We sort of launched at the same time. And, you know, I'll do an audition, I'll send it to her, and she'll do the same thing, and we'll talk. It's like a father daughter project.
- [55:23]
A
Yeah. And she was an entrepreneur. When I visited you, there was an art gallery that was downstairs from your office Right. In downtown Wytheville. And she ran the gallery and she put on shows. And she's. She's always been very entrepreneurial, but around the arts.
- [55:40]
B
Yes.
- [55:41]
A
And very talented. And now she's been on stage doing improv. And I think she got the lead. What do they call the lead role in the improv show?
- [55:48]
B
Yeah, she's one of the featured people at Second City.
- [55:51]
A
Like the mc. She was.
- [55:52]
B
Yeah. She's hosting.
- [55:53]
A
She was hosting.
- [55:54]
B
Yeah. But yet, Lily. So we don't make our kids do this, but this is the. The cost of college education is ridiculous.
- [56:03]
A
Yes.
- [56:04]
B
And so there's not a financial planner in the universe, no matter if you're rich or poor, going to say the first two years are a great investment. We ask our kids to go to community college for two years, low cost or free, under the proviso, they volunteer and work. And so Lily went to Cracker Barrel, worked at Cracker Barrel, started a little art gallery. Jack teaches karate. Now he's finishing community college and. And goes to Community college. And then if you get good grades, dean's list, you have your choice to do whatever you want to do, no matter if it's state tuition or wherever it could be in France.
- [56:42]
A
Right.
- [56:42]
B
You have earned that. Right. And so Lily had started an art gallery, was incredibly successful. It's still in business and she is still working and managing it. And they're doing performances there, other things and other events, and it's still, it's open today. They've had a great Christmas and Jack is bound for great things. He wants to go to the dark side and be an investment banker, though. So I've often said. Well, he's stoic and unfeeling, so it'll be a perfect spot for him.
- [57:15]
A
Yeah, there you go. You know, teach, if you love your son, you'll teach him to throw right, bat left and learn finance.
- [57:22]
B
Right? Right. Well, I mean, we've all, you know, we've all seen in this new paradigm that's a very lucrative career, so.
- [57:29]
A
It is. It is.
- [57:30]
B
But, you know, for the entrepreneurs out there, you hear this over and over again, you're going to fail. Dad said to me, you're going to have years where everything you touch turns to gold and years where everything you touch turns to shit.
- [57:45]
A
Right.
- [57:46]
B
But all has to be is good enough. And it goes back to the principles of gratitude. Is it good enough? You know, maybe you're wanting to scale, maybe you're wanting to go faster. Maybe you look and you say, oh, my God, this year I made $50,000. I mean, when am I ever going to get out of this? You're going to have to say, are we really in debt? Are we in bad shape? Or does or really get there. Nobody has glioblastoma today.
- [58:13]
A
Right.
- [58:14]
B
You know, like, you know, we all have friends that have some. Some serious things going on.
- [58:20]
A
That's right.
- [58:20]
B
We're knock on wood today. We will be one day. But today we're not one of them. Just be grateful, because when you're grateful, man, the universe opens up. The birds chirp and good things really just start to happen. Where I'm at my worst is when I'm ungrateful, when I start thinking that I'm successful. When I'm better is when I go into customers or go into a meeting and say, I don't know what I'm doing here. Can you help me? I am so lost. Help me understand what the heck is going on. I am just. I don't have a clue. People lean in at that point where I'm at my worst is when I'm like, well, you know, after my exit and this and that, they tune out so fast they want to. You can't even see the tail lights are out of the parking.
- [59:06]
A
That's right, that's right. I, I get prodded all the time. I was on a podcast, I was on a big podcast and they like to throw numbers around. And I don't share numbers.
- [59:19]
B
I don't either.
- [59:19]
A
Some people are going to be like, that's a big number. Some people are going to be, that's a small number. I thought he was big, you know, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, like, I just, I don't want a number to define. I don't want people to formulate their opinion on me based on a number, their impression of a number. Look, you only need to make one fortune in life, but I'll challenge that. You don't need to make any fortunes in life to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be contributing, to be independent. But if you're in business and there is a scorecard up there and you're building businesses, all right, you only need to make one fortune in life. And then people make that fortune and then they, then they're like, well, now I've got to make 10 fortune or I got to make 20 fortunes. And then they're chasing something that they already have.
- [60:03]
B
But it's a balanced scorecard. That's where the mistake is when you say, oh, why, we sold this company for X billion dollars. Well, what about the kids, right? Okay, what about the wife, the marriage? What about the relationship with mom and dad? What about your relationship within your community? You know, tell me about the balance scorecard. Because, you know, like you, we know some real hitters, some pretty famous ones, and when you get inside that situation, you're like, holy mackerel. Wouldn't trade it for any amount of money. I mean, don't let the jet deceive you. There's some real crazy stuff going on in a lot of this stuff. So these numbers are illusionary, they're ephemeral, and so much of it is BS. You know, this company says for $10 billion, has 11 billion in debt. I mean, I'm totally agreeing with you. And you have no idea what the founder's equity was. All these top line numbers are meaningless, right? They don't mean anything.
- [61:10]
A
Well, they grab attention. And if you're trying to build credibility, it's better to have done something than nothing. I mean, if you've done, on the other hand, if you've done nothing, nobody should listen to you. You should go out and do something.
- [61:21]
B
Right.
- [61:22]
A
You know, don't. You know, you have all these motivational people out there that start a career to be motivational and to. And. But they've. They've done nothing. They've built nothing. They've done nothing. But. Yet. Well, I, I guess maybe they know how to work the algorithms on Instagram or, you know, on Facebook or whatever it is, and they're able to get eyeballs on, you know, the presupposition that they've done something. But I would. I look for what's underneath people. People that have built things and people that are, you know, that have a. That have a raw, you know, they have just a raw authenticity based on the suffering that they've been able to endure to accomplish what they've accomplished in the face of great adversity.
- [62:08]
B
Well, the failure stories are the only interesting stories.
- [62:11]
A
Sure.
- [62:11]
B
I mean, if I'm at a party and somebody's boring me about their kids who are in the gifted program, I'm like, sipping on my Diet Coke thinking, I'm going to get out of here. If I meet somebody who says, you know, listen, it looks like I'm going to do two and a half years in federal prison for, you know, fraud, that's somebody I'm going to talk to and say, tell me about that. How are you dealing with that? That's pretty big failure. But, you know, at least you're honest about it, right? I mean, I don't want to hear about herkimer and the gifted program or this or that. I like the real stuff. That's why a lot of my best friends are fly fishermen, because we tend to, when we're sitting on the banks, just talk about not fishing, but just stuff. Our families. And we've all got the same. We've all got the same issues and challenges. They're just. They're just in. We just wear different clothes. That's it. So I agree with you like that. It's just be real. And, you know, the reason the influencers aren't built to last is because they're not adding value. You know, the Kardashians did a great job because they created skims and they actually created products with real features and real benefits and real price points that created real value.
- [63:22]
A
They're real business people.
- [63:24]
B
Real business people. These influencers that come and go, if they're not going to add value over a long period of time, they're not going to sustain. So businesses that are built to last. Have to have that question what is the world with you versus the world without you? And if you don't answer that on a long term basis, you will not stay in business. And the reason Sales Edge is still in business is for one reason. Switching costs and execution. We know how to execute. We've been at this a long time and the switching cost are a little bit troublesome for the companies. I mean they could do it in a heartbeat. These are all multibillion dollar trillion dollar market cap companies. They can change. It's just like do they want to? Are we that important at this period of time? Are we giving them a real reason to change? But we have to show up every day and not give them a reason to change. You have to answer your customer every day why they do business business with you. And if you're not answering that, don't prepare for the long term.
- [64:23]
A
Love it. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [64:30]
B
You matter. As long as you're grateful, humble and sober and have its faith in something greater than yourself. I wish you lots of luck and I hope it's half as fun as a journey that I've had. And don't make the same mistakes that I've made because looking back, I could have done without them.
- [64:56]
A
Perfectly said, Richard. Thanks for being on.
- [64:59]
B
Jeff. It's great to see you. You've got a lovely studio and I love your podcast. You've had some extraordinary guests with some terrific business ideas. I love the Instant IP guy who's fantastic and you're a fantastic guy and man am I am I glad to see you. Thanks for having me.
- [65:16]
A
100%. This has been Richard Formata with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.