Danny Jones Podcast - #16 - Tom duPont

Episode Date: July 28, 2019

Tom duPont is the 7th generation grandson of Pierre Samuel duPont who migrated to the United States from France a little over 200 years ago. Pierre founded a company that manufactured gun powder, dynamite, paints, plastics, and later invented Kevlar, Nylon and Teflon. This company "DuPont de Nemours, Inc" made the duPont family one of the top 15 richest families in America until this day. Tom is a local entrepreneur in the Tampa area who helped start the duPont Registry magazine in the 80’s, which he still publishes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom DuPont is a seventh generation grandson of Pierre Samuel DuPont, who came to the United States from France a little over 200 years ago and founded a company that manufactured gunpowder, dynamite, paints, plastics, and later invented Kevlar, nylon, and Teflon. This company made the DuPont family one of the top 15 richest families in America to this day. Tom is a super interesting guy and a local entrepreneur from the Tampa area, and he created the DuPont registry back in the 80s. but in the year 2000,

which was the 200th anniversary of the family coming to America, they celebrated on E.I. DuPont, the founder of the company, on his birthday in June. And so this was in 2000, and it's now 19 years later. And back then, there were 2,800. So there's probably over 4,000 now. Holy crap.

And that's direct descendant. from the man and wife that landed here in the United States in Delaware in 1800. In 1800, the first descendants of your family came from France to Delaware. And why did they migrate here? And what were they doing in France at the time? Well, the family has a fascinating history. And most of the world is aware of their history when it involved chemical spills. Right.

And black sheep members of the family who broke the law. Yeah, the documentary seemed to follow the dark side. But if you drift into Wilmington, Delaware, you'll notice school after building, after hospital, after something that has been a product of my family's influence over years, hundreds of years. And I think that the family's mantra of always being community-minded is something that's carried down. It's in my blood. You know, we're all very fortunate. Even now, I mean, you're like a huge part of this community.

You can't even go anywhere without your name being mentioned. No, I can't sneak around. Sneak out to a bar at night. You know, it's been part of the family philosophy for hundreds of years. Right. That there are others less fortunate, and you need to reach out and lend to hand. And you need to establish your community and community you live in a way that's going to make it more prosperous. So one of the things about the DuPont company that people don't realize is for

all the years, definitely since World War II and up until the end of the century from year 2000, they had a safety record that was so extraordinary that no other company matched it in the country or in the world. And it was because they dealt with dangerous chemicals and dangerous products. And their safety record was impeccas. Now, there are those events that are characterized on YouTube and on the Internet and everything, but their safety record for the hundreds of people that worked for them was extraordinary. And safety has always been a concern because in the early days, they manufactured gunpowder. And the family lived in France and Paris, and P.S. DuPont, Pierre Samuel DuPont, was the patriarch of the family.

and his son, L. Uther Irn-Ey-Dupont, E.I. DuPont, hence E.I. DuPont de Nommors and company was the name of the DuPont Company at the beginning. Pierre was as influential with the emperor. And then with the French Revolution in the late 1700s, the United States was already established. But in the late 1700s, Pierre Samuel DuPont, who had an influential government position because he understood finance and international financial. finance and trade in dollars versus francs and pounds and that kind of stuff. Stuff that's way over my pay grade. But he was an advisor to Louis XIV, and then the French Revolution occurred, and he got himself in some trouble.

But prior to that, he would sit in his apartment in Paris, and he would have his friends over to talk about entrepreneurial capitalism, federalism, and the basic foundation of a democratic government and free enterprise. And he was a great philosopher. And his two premier guests that he had over several times to have a cup of coffee and maybe a glass of brandy were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Really?

And if you read the stories of Jefferson and his travels in France, he mentions the fact that he sat with my seven times grandfather a long time ago. Holy. And they discussed world. matters and how government could foster entrepreneurial capitalism, free market markets, and not be the imposition of what Europe knew back then, which was emperors that ran the government the way they wanted to. Who cares? Right. So Pierre realized with his son that the French Revolution was going to be upsetting for any number of reasons. So they said, let's go to America. They just

that a revolution over there. They established a new government. It's talking philosophically. Jefferson was, this was, he met him before he was president. So he knew the government how it was operating. So they left. And they got on a

they chartered a boat called the American Eagle. And it was 60 days to 30 days to the U.S. I might be wrong on that. Don't look at the extra books. Is it everything good? So let's go, let's go back to the steps. So they're leaving and they leave for a 30 day transportation to the U.S. to start out in the new world. Much like you hear

stories from the 1800s all the way up to the 1900s and 1920s, people just coming here and starting over. And the popular story, the cocktail version, is that they landed in Newport, Rhode Island, sometime around Thanksgiving. And that they raided

a pilgrim's house in 1799 because they were hungry because they were 30 days late and they were tired of drinking salt water. Right. Uninvited. Uninvited and eating fish that hadn't been cooked properly. So they took a bunch of food, left some French coins and headed south. And they wanted to go south. And believe me, in 1799, south from Newport was Connecticut because a day's travel or two days. Right.

So they passed New York, which they knew about on their charts and information. They decided that was too close. So they went down to the Delaware River and turned up the Delaware River. River and pulled in where the brandy wine and Christiana Rivers run into the Delaware River in Wilmington and stepped off the boat on New Year's Day, 1800. So that's the day that everybody goes back to with some degree of reliability, that that's when they arrived in Wilmington. And they chose Wilmington because they wanted to get in the gunpowder manufacturing business. And they thought, you know, hunters, militias, people need guns.

I mean, we all lived in the wilderness back then. Right. And there were animals knocked. on your door and you wanted to shoot them. Plus, you hunted for food and clothing for fur pelts. So they thought the gunpowder business would be a good business. And they needed a river that had a curve in the river and they could dig a what's called a mill race. They could divert the water, run it down like a little canal. So this was, this was just to check. This was your seventh generation grandfather and a bunch of his advisors or? No, and no, and his son.

Oh, okay, and his son. And some other members of family and some other people. So they dig this ditch, a mill race, and they put a paddle wheel that spins in the mill race when the water comes through the race. Now they control the water flow because they divert it out of the river and let it flow in. You look up mill race and powder mills, and you'll see, and they built these powder mills that would then grind the ingredients for gunpowder. So they manufactured gunpowder, and by the time of the war of 1812, they were supplying the U.S. government with a substantial amount of gunpowder.

and that's when you took your flintlock rifle and you cocked it open and you poured the powder down the barrel and you put the bullet in and you stuffed it down there and you cocked it and you set the flame the spark and you shot it and it blew the gunpowder and blew the ball out and you know killed the deer that you were shooting at was anybody supplying the government with this prior yeah there were other gunpowder manufacturers but the dupont gunpowder was refined it was called black powder and and actually went into dieting dynamite and that kind of stuff. Okay. They discovered how to make it efficiently and rapidly. Okay. They sold it to the government. They sold it to hunters, to individuals, and that's how they started.

Well, they had, I don't know, half dozen of these mills that were run with paddle wheels that had stone in them that would grind up the stuff to make gunpowder. Well, it was dangerous. Right. And every once in a while, something would spark and it would blow up. And they built the mills. This is a great story of how you survived. back in those days.

And the little mills were three-sided stone with a wooden roof and a wooden wall. Okay. And they faced the river. So when the explosion occurred, blew the roof off, blew the wall out, it went in the river. So they went down the river. This was intentional they built them that way. Yeah. So they went down the river and picked up the wood, went back and rebuilt the wall and started the mill up again.

The bad news was in those days that every once in a while, somebody would be in the mill. Yeah. And they'd end up in the river, and they'd take them out of the river and take them up to the cemetery and bury them, because they were obviously dead from that kind of an explosion. Right. Back then. So there was a family cemetery, and the only people that they could get to work in the mills were family, because they were told, they'd make the danger, this is what we do, you go in the mills.

Now they had other workers there. Okay. And they had workers in Wilmington supplied this wonderful force of workers and employees, that would be devoted to the company, and the company would take care of them. So that's where the whole philosophy of take care of your community, take care of your employees, safety started way back in 1802. Right.

And the company was founded, and they manufactured a lot of gunpowder, and they supplied most of the gunpowder to the Union troops in the Civil War, and they supplied most of the explosive powder to the transcontinental railroad when they blew up the mountain. to get through the Rockies to get to California. Like dynamite, right? Like dynamite. Blasting caps, the thing that actually

could the spark that would blow up. So the company became very prosperous and then got into petrochemicals and then became the DuPont company Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry. That was their logo. And then World War. And that was the slogan,

Better Things Through Better Living. Better Things for Better Living. For better living. chemistry. Through chemistry. So the gunpowder supply lasted, and there's wonderful history books about this that you can read. There's probably 40 books about the DuPont family and the DuPont company, most of which are pleasant, but there's some that are not very complimentary. And the company, the family grew to be quite large. They ran the company. They ran the company for World War I and World War II when they supplied a lot of the armaments for the gunpowder to build bullets

to shoot the Germans and the Japanese and everything. Wow. And they got deeply involved in the attempt by the U.S. government in World War II to build a nuclear bomb. And they had a big part in that, and they established a place out in Hanford, Washington, where a lot of family members went. Another story, nobody would go work on the nuclear bomb strategy

except for family members because it was dangerous. Yeah. And at the end of the World War II, and we all know what happened then with the bombs that were dropped on Japan. The atomic bomb. The atomic bomb, the nuclear bomb, the hydrogen impact bond, however you want to, whatever you want to call it, they took all of the technology in today's world. They would have put it all on a disk and in a computer base, and they took it down to the government and said,

we don't want to do this. And turned it over the government and walked away. Not many people know that, but you can imagine. what nuclear fission technology would be in the hands of private enterprise in an entrepreneurial capitalism society when a bad guy got a hold of it. So it didn't belong in the hands of private government and it belonged in the hands of government where it could be put to use for the best interest for all humanity rather than for entrepreneurial gain. So they walked away from that, but they got into paint and chemicals.

So they handed all the technology, all the... Everything they'd learned. Just handed over to the U.S. government? Yeah. And that's when, you know, at Los Alamos in New Mexico, they exploded a test bomb and all that kind of stuff. Some of that researched on how that work came from the DuPont company. And they had all the records and calculations and whatever else they did.

I mean, who knows, but I don't know, but I don't want to know. Right. So, you know, post-World War II, they're into the 50s. when. And I'm sure they made a ton of money by this point. Do you have any idea what kind of money they were making back then? Well, they were making a lot of money selling gunpowder to everybody. And then selling chemicals and pesticides and things. The experimental station in Wilmington started up, I think after the war, maybe before World War, too, but probably after the war. So forgive me all of you who are listening in or know the history of the DuPont Company, and I'm getting close. But, you know, they manufactured all kinds of breakthrough products after World War II.

And some of which have expired and have lived their useful life, some are stitched around. Don't forget that they invented nylon in time for World War II. That was part of creating the bombs. I don't think nylon was part of the bomb, no. Okay. But when they invented nylon, the biggest use for it was a parachute. and you could make a lightweight parachute that you could drop your troops in behind the enemy lines with parachutes.

Okay. And back in the World War II, nobody wore nylon stockings, which nobody wears anymore anyway. But nobody wore nylon stockings because they're using all the nylon for the war effort. After World War II, nylon stockings took off. And most of the nylon was made manufactured by the DuPont company. There were other chemical companies that were into the same product.

Right. DuPont nylon. was it. Now if you say to somebody, what do you know about DuPont chemicals? He said, Tyvec, that stuff that goes on your house. Right, right, right. Yeah, that insulating white stuff. It says DuPont all over. What's that all about? Yeah, it's very ambiguous when you ask people about DuPont or what do you know about the DuPont company. Like for me, like coming up, I know, okay, it's on the NASCAR, right? DuPont. What do they actually do? Jeff Gordon. Jeff Gordon, yeah, sponsored by DuPont. Is he still? I don't think he's racing anymore. He's retired in the Spont Company, I don't think does any racing anymore.

But they were promoting their paints. That's what Jeff Gordon's sponsor was DuPont Paint. That's why it was all the colors of the rainbow on the hood of the car. Okay. The Big Oval, that was because DuPont Paints was competing with the other paint companies. Right. And that was a good marketing effort. Right.

Yeah. I went to the website earlier, just DuPont.com, and it's, it shows that it's kind of vague. It shows like scientists working on things and doing this. Like they're doing a lot of stuff in like, like scientific research and they're doing a lot of stuff with like security or safety. Well, I told you that their safety record was second and not. Right. So they were always developing products to make you safer.

And, you know, Tyvec and some of those anti-flammatory uniforms that fire and police wear, same thing that the race car drivers wore. Yeah. And they also knew how to make chemicals to make corn grow faster. and all of those petrochemicals and fertilizers that they were capable of making so that agriculture became more efficient. You know, over a long period of time, the company was run by the family. And then after World War II, there were usually, in all cases,

it was either a blood descendant or an in-law that ran the company. And then up about the 70s, I think I had their first commercial CEO that wasn't a blood member of the family or a in-law. And that turned out to be a fellow named Irving Shapiro, who was the lawyer who got them through the divestiture suit when the government said they had to divest of General Motors and everything else. I mean, the DuPont Company and the family owned a majority of General Motors, and General Motors was buying all of their products for chemically related paints and everything

from the DuPont Company, and the government said it was a monopoly, and you'd have to give it up. Wow. So they did. But when they gave it up, they dispersed it amongst family and employees and investors and went about their business. And GM became its own enterprise. And that was back way before the war, that that whole started, but being part of General Motors,

but after the wars, when they had the congressional hearings, you should look that one up. When they forced the divestiture of newspaper, Christiana Securities, and General Motors out of the DuPont. company. Really? Yeah, pretty interesting history. If anybody who's watching this is into corporate history and corporate operations, that's a pretty interesting time. Yeah, I didn't even know about that. I didn't even know that you guys had owned General Motors and other companies. Now, today, is anybody in the DuPont family currently, are they currently involved with the company today, the modern company? I don't think so. And the fact that Conoco, well, first the Conoco and merger, but now it's Dow DuPont, Dow Chemical essentially merged with a DuPont company,

and Dow's leadership took over the combined company. So if there's somebody left on the combined board from DuPont, I don't know. Right. But I can tell you one point in time, you look at a picture of the board directors of the DuPont company, and it's 100% relatives. Really? Yeah, I'd be back in the 50s and maybe the 60s. Wow.

You know, they were all businessmen. They were bankers and investment managers, and they ran companies, and they were on the board. And it ran pretty well. It was a nice run. Now, what was your childhood like now? So you were born in Delaware? I was born and raised in Wilmington.

And one story that I want to make sure your listeners and people listening to this understand this, because this has been important in my life. And today has more resonance. I went to the local grade school that was where all of the independent school kids went to an independent school rather than a public school called Tower Hill. And Tower Hill was a very run, very well-disciplined, very authoritative environment. So by the ninth grade, I left. Was it like an all-boy school?

No, it was co-ed from kindergarten at 12th grade. It's a remarkable educational institution. For those of you who are in Tampa here, it's like Berkeley. Okay. Upscale, top of the line, best school imaginable. and I went there because that's what the, if you remember the family, that's where you went. Although there are other schools that they went to there,

but Tower Hill was the one. So there was a reasonably young guy named Jimmy, and Jimmy was the janitor. And there wasn't a piece of paper in that school on the floor. He considered that school to be his personal goal was to make that school clean at all times. Well, you can imagine a bunch of teenagers and little kids run around.

There's stuff falling all over the, place. Jimmy was always there to pick it up. Jimmy always had a smile. His uniform was always pressed and his name Jimmy was on his lapel. It was navy blue uniform. Yeah. And Jimmy's last name was Jimmy Lee. Well, Lee was obviously short for something that was either Italian or Polish that took up way too many syllables. But he was always had a good attitude, always a smile, always said good morning, always had the best for the school and the students in mind. It wore off on you, despite the fact that you were well-to-do kids with bicycles and everything else, Jimmy probably took the bus to work. But that was his personal goal was to do well. So Jimmy passed away at a

fairly young age from something, I don't know what, in his 40s. Well, everybody in the school was taken aback because nobody was going to replace Jimmy and be the same person. How old was he about? In his early 40s. Okay. So they put a plaque up on the wall, and it was Jimmy Lee, mantra, his expression, his code that he lived by. And to this day, that plaques up there. And I carry around sometimes a couple of pictures of it to give to people. And it's a Jimmy Lee and it gives his dates. And it says, to look forward and not back, to look up and not down, to look out and not in, and to lend a hand. And that was a guy's philosophy that rubbed off on the wealthiest, most spoiled kid imaginable or kids,

all of whom were nice kids, I mean, you know, but we all were very comfortable. Right. And you remember that little guy with a broken English who had that philosophy. And, you know, I'm 60 years out of Tower Hill school. And I remember that philosophy from that guy. That's an impact on you.

It did. And, you know, you go back through time and you measure impact on your life and you want to be able to remember all of those things as you grow older and put the positive impacts to work for your benefit and for the benefit of the community and your family. Yeah. Generally, from my experience, at least in my generation, most kids my age that I know who have always been comfortable,

who have been born into a lot of money or born into families that are well off, it seems like they don't have much, like, an exceptional, amount of drive to get to get either away for something or to strive to something. It seems like a lot of them are just comfortable and it's hard to find like that burning passion to do something or but it seems like you're different like like you created you created the DuPont registry like that's huge. And there's plenty of people that are born into to either reasonable or substantial wealth who go through life and they're nice people and do

nice things. Right. Then there are others that just use it and don't do anything. Right. Then there are others that take those assets that they've inherited money and influence, and they do something with it. Those people are obviously more driven, but I don't think it takes away from the others. It's just different characters. Some people are born with nothing or so driven. They make a trillion times more than my entire family. Right.

Which it's the circumstances by which you were raised and influenced and your own personal character. I always thought that I was a custodian of my wealth. It wasn't my wealth. A custodian of your wealth. It's not mine. It belongs to my children and their children and their children. So I can use it and take care of it.

But since my dad gave it to me and my grandfather gave it to me, I need to give it to my kids. I can't just use it up and leave them to make $15 an hour for the rest of their life. Right? need to preserve that wealth in some way so that it enhances their lifestyle the way my father and grandfather did it to me. Okay, so you felt a responsibility to take the wealth that you had or was given to you and to put it to work and to create more wealth from that for your kids and your grandkids. Is that kind of what inspired that? Well, and you got to remember that I have three children and seven

grandchildren, so I got to pile up a whole bunch to make them as well off as me. Yeah, you do. But, you know, given that, you know, I just went to work. I mean, a lot of people to retire at 65. I missed that. I went right by that. And, you know, five years later, I'm still working. Yeah, you are. But here's another piece of philosophy to remember besides Jimmy Lee.

I've been very lucky. I've been just having to be the right place, right time, that kind of stuff. Luck, here's a definition of luck. Luck is preparation and opportunity having a wreck. They run into each other. Right. So if you're prepared and an opportunity comes along and they bump into each other and you benefit from it

because you're not prepared and there's an opportunity, you're lucky. That doesn't mean that it's just dumb luck that all of a sudden you walked out there and somebody handed you a watt, $100 bills. It means that you saw an opportunity and you were prepared to take. advantage of it. Right. Hence the story of DuPont Registry. Were you pretty entrepreneurial? Were you always trying to like hustle and create businesses or was DuPont Registry just the first thing that you made? Was it like the first company ever started and just blew up like that? Oh, I wish. I mean, I've often tell people that I've done a lot of different

adventures like the DuPont Registry and other stuff like that. And I have the good ones and then I I have the bad ones, and I have the bad ones all locked up in a closet, and don't open that door, because you're going to be covered with stuff. Well, sometimes it's important to recognize the bad ones, because they're the learning experiences that led you to the good one. Yeah, it's not a bad experience. It's a learning experience. Exactly.

Sometimes you have to swallow hard to get that across. But I've got a closet full of bad stuff, and I'm the first to admit. Not every deal works, but every deal is a learning experience. And I've, you know, just been an entrepreneur all my life. I've been vested in companies. I got out of graduate school. I went to Rollins College. I went to the University of Delaware and got a master's degree.

I went to work for, I went to politics. So I was a state representative in the state of Delaware and the Delaware state legislature for one term. Wow. I used the term I got diselected. Diselected. I lost my re-election campaign, came up a little short. I went to work for the bank, was miserable, got an opportunity in Tampa, Florida.

Realized that I could always move back to Delaware where my family was from, and I packed up and left. How did that opportunity come about? It was actually my father-in-law who called me and asked if I wanted to be part of his growing budget rent-a-car franchise group. I moved to Tampa to run his Tampa franchise, bought into the budget rent-a-car. When we sold out, I made a lot of money, so I was a genius. And then I made a few mistakes. And then along came DuPont Registry. A couple of other things happened in the meantime.

So we started DuPont Registry in 1985. Can you explain to me in a little bit more detail of how that came to be? Was there an individual you met at a bar? Hey, I got this great business opportunity. I needed you to invest. How did that go? Well, I was running budget rent a car here at the Tampa Airport. It was a franchise back then.

It's a company-owned operation now. That's a whole complex system that's pretty remarkable. But I learned a lot. I had employees. I had cars. I had debt on the cars. I had contracts with the airport. And I was part of a group that did all of that.

And when we sold it, I had the money. So I started doing some investment opportunities. And a friend of mine who I met through a college, not a roommate, but a fellow who went to Rollins with me, was in the radio business. and he had an employee who was a time salesman on the radio. Okay. And selling advertising on the radio.

Okay. In Tampa. In Tampa is a hustle business, man. People selling radio time back in those days were really hustlers. They really worked it, and they didn't stop. So there were a couple of them that were working for the old pirate radio, Y and F. And they, this friend of mine, they were working for him. He said, these guys want to come talk to you about something.

So we sat down and we talked about the fact that they wanted to stop selling radio and start selling maybe into a magazine of some kind. And there's a magazine out there called Hemmings Motor News. It's still alive today. It was big back then. And it was newsprint, black and white, classified ads for T-birds and Mustangs and Corvettes and bumpers and model T's and spark plugs and parts and everything. Everything. If you were a collectible hobbyist in the business, you subscribed to Hemmings Motor News.

We're 300,000 people subscribed to it in 1985. Wow. And so we determined at that point in time that somebody out there, the next generation coming along, wanted a color, four-color, perfect bound, high-gloss Hemmings, pictures of classic luxury and exotic cars for. sale. So we said, okay, this is a good idea. So we sat around and these guys said, this is what we want to do. And we know how to sell. I said, well, I know how to run a company. So let's do it. So we put the deal together and took it to the finance company that I was running, a company called First Tampa Capital. And the board review process turned it down. It was my business plan. Your own business plan. Yeah. And your company turned it down. Yeah, I was president of the company. How does that happen? Well, it was actually

you know, fairly democratic process. You made the presentation. There were three people that reviewed it, and they voted to do it or not do it. Okay. They voted against it. So. I guess it was not very biased then.

These two guys and I went out to have a beer and talk about this. And I don't know, by about 9 or 10 o'clock at night, we finally had enough courage to do it ourselves. So we started it, and the venture capital company folded. And in those days, the paychecks were, had to hold them until after 2 o'clock on Friday to make. sure the deposits all cleared. And we start off by circulating the magazine and getting a newsstand representative

to put on the newsstand and pushing subscriptions and get it on the phone and calling car dealers all over the country. This is before the internet. Right. This is, you guys are creating a tangible print magazine. Right. And what year was this? 1985.

And it's the only national marketplace for buying and selling classic luxury. and exotic automobiles besides Hemmings. Right. And Hemings is collectible cars, and we're into exotics and luxury cars. Right. Yeah, the way, the way when I had to describe it to people who don't know what it is,

it's the high-end rich person's version of auto-trader. You got it. It's a high-end auto-trader. Right. So, and it's color. It's perfect bound. It's glossy. And auto-trader back then was a newsprint.

Right. And auto-trader was localized. You know, the auto-trader Tampa Bay, was distributed to auto trader in the Tampa area. So there's auto traders in like every big city. Yeah, a bunch of them. So we were

one for the country. Okay. And here's a simple example. You're a Ferrari dealer, or you're a used car dealer and you're in exotic cars and you've got Ferraris. And you're in St. Louis. 1986, 87, 88. There was probably a small market in St. Louis for Ferraris. Some high-end guys that like Ferraris

in St. Louis. But you really wanted to get in front of a guy in Los Angeles. Had a bunch of money and was really into front. Or Miami. Or Miami. Yeah. Hence that $4 million dollar Lamborghini. So we made our circulation flow in those areas and appealed to these guys who had,

for our reason, in St. Louis or in Omaha, Nebraska, for some reason, and gave them a way to sell their car, their inventory, either personal sale or a dealer to the rest of the country. And so we were a paper internet. Wow. And then the internet came along and changed that deal. But we grew the magazine from, you know, five or six thousand circulation to over a hundred at its peak. The distribution newsstand all over the place, international. We also placed magazines in specific places, very high-end places where people would see them. And we developed a reputation, incidentally, for becoming sports figures, the go-to magazine. Right.

And there are tons of stories of the DuPont Registry being in the magazine rack in the locker room of NFL, MLB, you name it. Right. And there's great stories and basketball as well, the NBA. So we hit a nerve. Everybody can look at it and say, boy, you were lucky. Well, we were prepared to sell the ads and distribute the magazine and the office. and the opportunity came along to do it, and we did it.

And you really were in the right place at the right time, too. It was. The timing was terrific. Yeah. The country and the marketplace was hungry for buying and selling Ferraris and Porsches, Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces outside of Pinellas County to somebody far away. And that far away back then was Miami. So buy an ad in the magazine, the next thing you know, a guy calls you from Miami and says,

I'm interested in buying your Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, your 1967, four-door, air-conditioned, low-mileage, luxury car. And you go, well, where are you? Why don't you come over and see me? Well, I'm in Miami. He said, okay. He said, well, I'm going to come up through Tampa. I'm doing some business.

I'll come see you. So you get the address. The guy flies in on his Lairjet. Yeah. He gets a rental car. He comes over. He looks at. He says, yeah, I'll take it.

Here's a check. He says, well, I'll have to wait for the check to clear. He says, yeah, when you do that, put it in a, car carrier and sent it down to Miami. You just sold the car to Miami. You had no other way to sell the car to Miami than the DuPont Registry. Right. Wow.

So we extrapolated the car magazine. We went in the Homes Magazine business to match the cars. You have a vacation home in the mountains of North Carolina. You want to sell it to somebody in Florida who wants to take their summer vacation. You can't just put it in the North Carolina newspaper. Right. So you put it in the Tampa, DuPont Registry, a buyer's gallery of fine homes. and it gets distributed around the country.

Now, how long was it after you started the auto magazine until you went into the homes and the books? That's a highly technical piece of information that I don't recall, but it was probably 10 years. Well, how did you guys first make money? Was it just from dealerships paying you guys to put their listings in there? Or did you actually try to go out and get advertisers for space to sell like, you know, quarter sections of pages, half pages or whatever?

Anything that we could sell. Anything. But were you able to sell? advertising before it was big. Well, when we first started, the basics of the economic plan said that if you can take something you're manufacturing, a piece of paper with ink on it, and you can sell it twice, you ought to be able to make money. Well, because we were 100% advertising, sure, a couple pages of editorial and the masked

heads and stuff like that, but literally almost 100% advertising. That means I sold the... page to the advertiser. And then I sell it to the reader as an individual copy in an airport or as an annual subscription. So I've created revenue coming in for the people who want to read it and revenue coming in for the people who want to be in it. Right. So I've sold that page twice. I ought to be able to figure out how to make some money. You ought to be able to. So there was a long time coming. There were some years that were pretty scary. Right. No, they were very scary. and we had people leave because, you know, it took a little bit of a stretch to believe what we're doing,

but make 100 dials a day. We got an 800 number back in those days. Make 100 aisles a day to talk to somebody to see if you could buy the car. So we were looking in other magazines and calling dealers, get the Ferrari dealer list for the country and call every Ferrari deal. Wow. Get the Lamborghini list. Get the Rolls-Royce list.

Get the Porsche list. Old school. And back in those days, there was no internet. You didn't Google it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You went and found the list and you called somebody and you got it. And then we got lucky. Rolex occasionally would advertise some of a high-end product trying to sell something exotic.

And they wanted to be part of our marketplace that was being distributed. Pretty soon, people wanted to be part of the marketplace because it was represented by the DuPont Registry as a brand. and they realized it enhanced their business by associating with the DuPont registry. Took on a life of its own and the rest of history. Still around today, even though the Internet is obviously choking print media to death. Right. But people still want paper and ink.

And you know what we've learned just recently? There's been a couple of holes of the millennial generation which everybody's trying to figure out and they're not going to. But they found that some people are tired of their cell phone and their computer. and they want to put it down because not only does your cell phone and your computer give you instant information, but it gives you instant feedback and sometimes unwanted instant communication. When you turn that off and you sit down in a chair with a nice light glass of wine or whiskey or beer or none or a glass of water, and relax and read a magazine, you control.

the input that's going in and the opinion that's going out, and nobody's interrupting you. And in today's world, how often do we do something without being interrupted? Maybe for about eight minutes in the morning when you're brushing your teeth and you're not even looking at the TV or listening to it? Yeah. No, it's hard. It's an addicting thing.

It's like your iPhone is kind of like heroin. Well, as long as we're going to branch out here and talk about almost anything, when there's a chemical in your body called dopamine. You're familiar with that? Oh, yeah. Okay. So when you're using your phone and you're either responding, you're putting stuff in and people are recognizing it

or you're communicating through your phone or something's coming in or you're putting something on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever it is, when you get satisfaction out of that because people are realizing you're part of it, your dopamine count goes up. Yep. And you become addicted to that process because, the more dopamine, the happier you are. Right, right.

So guess what? You're hooked on your cell phone. Yeah. And it's a good thing you get hooked on this stuff. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. Right. Well, this, I love this because this is like my longest period of the day besides like going to the gym or something where I don't have any interruptions.

Like I don't look at my phone during this. It's just connected with someone having a conversation. And it's hard to find somebody nowadays that can sit there. When's the last time besides doing a podcast where you can sit here? here with somebody uninterrupted and have just a one-on-one conversation with them. It's rare, right? It's rare. Now, here's another thing. My phone's sitting here, so I apologize.

But when you go into a meeting and somebody puts their phone on the table, that's really an insult to everybody else in the room. That means that everybody else in the room is probably less important than what that phone is. Right. Because you're so attached to it. Now, should you look at it and just turn it off, that's a downer to the people in the room, because you've now looked at this, it's more important than the people in the room. Yeah.

Which is why when we do stuff, now a lot of times we're using our cell phones because we're having somebody call in or something like that. Right, right. When you go into a meeting like that, you go to dinner with your friends. What do you do with a friend or you're out at a nice restaurant and you have a dinner and they take their phone out and put it on the tape? You're going to shoot them. Yeah, everywhere.

Or all of a sudden they pull it out of their pocket and look at it back in. Pull up to a red light and look at the three cars on each side of you. They're all sitting there staring at their phones. Yeah, they're on their phones. and nothing gives me more fun than to blow the horn when light turns green. The guy's looking at his phone. The light turns green, you pause for a minute, you go, me, me, beep, beep. Yeah.

And then you point out to him that he's doing something wrong and you probably don't do a nice gesture. Right. How do you feel about Elon Musk's NeurLink? It's going to break all barriers from your iPhone to your brain. You're just going to be able to think about something and it happens. Well, because I'm older, because I've had an active childhood and, and life where I may have injured my hearing, I wear hearing aids. Oh, yeah.

Oh, imagine that technology. So I'm partway to Elon Musk because if my phone rings and I've got my Bluetooth on, it rings of my hearing aid. You don't know it in the room. Right. And I can push the button and talk to the person and you don't hear them talking to me. Yep. So here's magic.

This is something that's really fun. Somebody might be interested in this. You're going to negotiate a deal, a business deal with people. that speak Spanish and you don't. So you go into the room with your phone on. Okay. And you're connected to your friend Jose who speaks Spanish. And you put your phone down on the table just casually.

The people you're negotiating with don't know your phone is on. Right. You get your hearing aid in. It's translating? No. Jose is hearing the conversation. Okay. And so they say something.

to each other in Spanish. I have no idea what they're saying. And Jose pops in my ear. They just called you a fool. And you know, you don't acknowledge it. You don't do anything. So you start to work with it. And then they say, we're not doing this deal for any less than half a million dollars. But if we had to, we'd take 400. And right now you're negotiating it a million bucks. So Jose says that's what they just said between the two of them. So all of a sudden you look and push something across the table, it's not paying any more than $400,000 because you've overheard what they're saying

and be able to interpret it. You've got a spy in your ear. I have a spy in my ear. So it's as if I knew Spanish and never told them. Right, right. But they think I don't know Spanish, but I'm hearing it through my cell phone. Some of that stuff is wild.

I think they're actually creating something that will in real time translate speech into your ear. Kind of like what you're saying, but it's built in technology. So it's built in technology. you turn your phone on and you don't even need a guy that speaks Spanish and it comes up on your screen or what it is. Well, they do that now. I mean, you can have somebody and you can say, I need directions to the town hall when you're in France and it tells the guy in French what you

need. Yeah. It's amazing. It is. It's incredible. The technology goes so fast. We don't have time to rest anymore, which is why it's nice to rest every once in a while. Yeah. Take a moment and just relax and have it. Think about the world. It's nice to take a just put leave your phone inside and just go enjoy nature and and disconnect you know it is i i i i you know i don't have rules in my house but i do i do people just know that they don't bring their cell phone in that room or this room or whatever right and to put it down and leave it aside and in today's world you if you have any insecurity at all you don't want to leave this thing for a minute that's your life link to stuff right so how did you going back to your your whole family history is

How did you learn all this? Did you just study it all when you were younger? And like, I want to know about my family. Like, oh, Tommy, you have one of, you have some of the, you know, the richest family in the country. You may want to learn a thing or two. Oh, you know, I was motivated because people make certain assumptions about you. If your name starts with a small D and a capital P and they make certain assumptions about it. And then first off, I was out to disprove those assumptions.

But secondly, I wanted to, I wanted to understand the history of what I represented. Okay. And I wanted to, I wanted not only to have the benefit of being a descendant, but also know the responsibility that comes with the name. I mean, this sounds a little odd. DuPont Registry, a buyer's gallery of fine automobiles is very different from DuPont Registry gentleman's club on Dale Mayberry. There's a DuPont Registry gentleman's? No, there is. Oh, okay, okay. But there's not going to be because there's not going to be because. The value of my name is invaluable. Right. And I didn't want it associated with something that I didn't want.

So I didn't get into some businesses because they weren't ones I thought spoke well of what I wanted. Because your last name was already a brand by then. And when we started the DuPont Registry, and fortunately, Steve Chapman and my partner and I both agreed that the brand was not to be messed with, that it was to be pure at all opportunities. And we turned down a lot of, a lot of great. good money over 30 years of publishing of people that wanted to put stuff in the magazine that we said no. Oh, man. And there was some stuff in the magazine that people said we didn't have any standards. But every once in a while we had to let somebody in, but there were times when we said, no, we're not doing that. Right. And I'll tell you what. The first rule was if you didn't pay your

bill, you didn't come back in. We don't, we don't carry people. Right. So, but you're, you know, I decided that one of the things I wanted to make available to my family, and I was interested in, I wanted every publication available, and I wanted to read it. And there are a number of books on the family. And that's where part of the Jimmy Lee saying of looking forward and lending a hand, when my ancestors became of age,

there was a lot of things when you turned 18 or 20 in those days when you became sort of a man and you had responsibilities. Right. And the patriarch and the family would turn to the younger one who was aging up and point out to the family's motto to live by was essentially in these words to those whom much is given, much is expected. So I learned about that. And I said, okay, I was given a pile of stuff here.

Not only cold hard cash and investments, but also influence. prestige and I was exposed to a lot of things that people aren't exposed to a youngster growing up so I had experience and I had wealth and everything and the other part was a whole lot was expected of me right so it was easy I just made the decision that I wasn't going to spread it or just lose it and I wasn't going to mistreat it right and then I was going to use it obviously for my own benefit and my family's benefit but also for the benefit of others.

And I think you can look back over the years and see where DuPont Registry has been a leader in philanthropy. And we don't have any buildings named after us, but we've done lots of campaigns to help people who need help. Yeah. No, I mean, you can just ask around this town. I mean, when it comes to philanthropy

and people giving and being charitable, I mean, your name's at the top of the list. You don't even have to ask. There's a lot of others above the list on me. Yeah. In Tampa Bay, incidentally, is one of the most charitable philanthropic communities, I think, in the world. Yeah.

There's so many events and activities and people giving. One of the reasons is this community has been very prosperous. But the people who have been very prosperous have shared their wealth with others. And that's, it's a habit here in this community, which is why I really like this part of Florida. Yeah, it's great. You know, when I was preparing, when I was, before we did, this, we talked about it a couple, maybe like a month ago. I was trying to do some research on you know, DuPont family and just Googling it and coming up with things. And it seems like

touching on what you were talking about earlier, when you have so much and you have such a responsibility with not only like the DuPont brand, but also such a massive amount of wealth, there's a lot of people who just want to take it from you. And a lot of people who just want to take you down. And one of the main things you find when you search for DuPont is you'll find like the documentary on Foxcatcher who was John DuPont and the whole wrestling, the guy, you know who he is. Yeah, John, yep. And then the other documentary about the Teflon chemical. And I watched the, I just watched the Fox Catcher documentary and it seems, it's sad because you can tell that, you know, in the same way you are, he was a very charitable guy,

and, you know, he did the best he could to take care of people. And it seemed like at the end, he just kind of got lonely. And maybe his mind started to deteriorate because he was because of age or, or I don't know what it was, but it really hit me, you know, because I've seen people like that who just have a lot of money, but they're lonely and they're not happy. Well, he was lonely and not happy, but also I would assume, and I don't know the factual truth

that there was some drug addiction in there. Right. There was some substance abuse. And that brings down people who have a lot of wealth and it brings down people who have no money at all. Right, absolutely. Substance abuse can change the personality of the person and take them from an active philanthropic community-minded.

John DuPont built the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. He built the Delaware Museum of History, natural history. He built a couple of buildings at Villanova University where he graduated. He was a very generous man. And over a period of time, mentally he, and, you know, he could have had Alzheimer's back then. Right.

We didn't know what Alzheimer's was back then. It sounds like he did. So he must have had some imbalance in his own body chemistry that was accelerated by substance abuse. and it became tragic. I mean, obviously, you know, you saw the movie, and it's a pretty good representation of what happened. And it was a real tragedy, but, you know, it's going to happen to people,

whether they're fabulously wealthy or fabulously poor, that when those kind of influences of substance abuse and old age, and he wasn't that old, actually. No, he was like in his, well, he was in his 60s, right? Yeah. And how long ago was it that did that happen? Do you remember? Well, it's been quite a while. Yeah.

It's been quite a while. And of course, they didn't convict him of manslaughter, a murder, but they got to the point where they convicted him to the point that they suspended his sentence and put him in a mental hospital where he remained until he died. Right. And the law, I believe this is correct, said that if he ever got out, if he ever cured himself of whatever deterioration was going on, then he would stand before the judge and be sentenced to death for the murder. Really?

So he never saw free air after that trial, never a breath of free air, and rarely saw the outside. What was his relation to you? Oh, you know, fourth cousin twice removed on the other side of the family. I mean, there's so many of them. Probably go back to my grandfather's first cousin. So my great-grandfather's brother or sister, then you go down for him

with Joe, it would have been brother for John DuPont. Right. But I mean there are 4,000 of us, so who knows. 4,000. That's amazing. Do you guys ever? I'd have to go back and look at the book to see how far away he was.

Do you guys ever have any kind of like big family reunions? You said there were someone who keeps track of the family history. Is there any kind of like yearly massive reunion you guys have in Delaware or? Well, we had the one for the 200th anniversary. Oh, really? Yeah, that was in the year 2000, the 200, anniversary. All the cousins were invited. There were all of the

major family houses in Wilmington and the chemical company headquarters were all opened up and we all tour around. We had a big dinner and a bunch of lunches and there were people that were, you know, were interested in the company and there were people interested in the environment and there were people that interested in the country clubs

and golf and everything. So it was a long weekend of four days. Wow. Family got together. Everybody came that could possibly take time off to be there. Yeah. And, you know, I saw some cousins then. I never saw again. Wow, man. That's incredible. So back to DuPont Registry.

What are you doing today with DuPont Registry? What's the current state of your involvement with it? I know it's a lot within the Tampa Bay community. Well, I realized one day that I was spending an awful lot of time on airplanes flying around the country doing car shows and talking to customers. Right. And I said, you know, we've got to find somebody else to do this. I said, I'm not getting the time. that I should, that I don't know as I deserve, that I wanted, at the end of my business career.

So Steve Chapman and I agreed to, I think the best term was bifurcate the company. He got the car magazine, the Holmes magazine, various publications, the building, and a couple of businesses. And I kept the DuPont Red Street, Tampa Bay, which is like Palm Beach magazine or Orlando Magazine or Tampa magazine, but it's the DuPont Registry brand. And it's all about the community in Tampa Bay and living the luxury lifestyle, exposing people to the next great gadget, home for sale, stories about people that are leaders in the community, trying to communicate scheduling and events and community

calendars, what's going on in the arts world. So now instead of getting on a plane at 8 in the morning and flying to California, I get my car and go to Tampa. That's perfect. And you have to realize that before the DuPont Registry, when I was running budget rent a car, I was on the Chamber of Commerce, and I had lots of friends in Tampa and St. Petersburg and lots of mutual business acquaintances and banks and finances. I'm back doing what I was doing before the DuPont Registry, but I'm doing it for the DuPont Registry, Tampa Bay.

We've repurposed the magazine. Excuse me. We have a wonderful guy, David Warner, who was a Harvard, a Harvard, Jersey. Journalism graduate and a Villanova Theater master's degree. He's bright. He can, boy, he can write. He can really put a pen to paper and inspire other people and help with the editorial direction of the magazine. It's oversee the business end and the sales end.

And we've got four salespeople that are crackerjack. And we're trying to sell relationships. And this is important. We sell media partnerships. We don't sell advertising. We sell a way for us to be part of your business that promotes your brand and your product to a community that you want to reach. And the people in the community that we expose you to are the people that want your product. Okay.

And it's all on the umbrella of DuPont Registry, which adds a little legitimacy to it. Yeah. Hope we darn well better live up to the name. And it's bi-monthly. So the intensity is down from the monthly car magazine. Right. But at the same time, we're doing podcast, DRTB Live. It's a great podcast.

We're having so much fun. It takes about 20 minutes, not as long as we've been at it. And we've interviewed lots of different people. And we had a guy today who lives here in the community in Dunedin, I think, and Richard Albaro, who decided to memorialize the loss of his nephew in 9-11 in New York. He was in the World Trade Center. It was a great guy. And he said, you know, I've got to do something.

and his memory that's greater. He's reaching retirement. He's an educator, schoolteacher, so he knew about reaching out to people. So he was a baseball fan, and so was his nephew. So he decided he was going to raise money for charity, and he was going to walk from Steinbrenner Field in Tampa

to the Yankees Stadium in the Bronx. Took him 88 days. He walked from Tampa to New York. He got sponsors to help him. He got drivers to watch him, and he walked and he wrote a book about it and we interviewed him today on our podcast. Wow. And he raised $25,000 for Wounded Warrior Foundation.

No way. And it's all because he wanted to do something in recognition of the loss of his nephew. Right. And in recognition of those who needed help and how could he raise money for something that he would have an impact with. He said something interesting about veterans. I'm going to remember this. Maybe people listening in should remember this. he said, you know how we always say,

thank you for your service to a military, whether they're a veteran or an active military in the military. So thank you for your service. And I do that all the time. I see a guy in the airplane and uniform. I know a guy or it's a policeman. I always say, you know, thanks for what you do for me. Yeah.

He said, no to that anymore. Look at the guy and say, I'm going to go out and do something that makes the community better in your name because you've inspired me because of what you do for the community. So thanks for giving me the opportunity to help somebody else. Yeah. And I'm going to remember that now. And I'm going to be able to look at these members of the military

and not only thank them for defending the country and doing what they do, but also, you know what? Your sacrifice has inspired me to go do something good for somebody else. I'm going to do it in your name. Make a $25 contribution to somebody who needs money. Yeah. Why not? Wow.

That guy's a savage. You walk 88 days from Tampa to New York. That's pretty incredible. 88 days continuously and a policeman in Wilmington, Delaware, as he was leaving Wilmington, the police had given a little escort through a bad part of town, looked at him and said, you know, this is a pretty big hill in front of you. Yeah. He said, let me give you a ride to the top of the hill.

And the guy said, no thanks. I got this. He said, I'm going to do it. One chapter is 49 hills in Virginia. That's one chapter. Yeah, he puts a little quote in there about 49 hills in Virginia. He said it wasn't pretty. Speaking of veterans and I met this one guy who he was in multiple,

I think he was in Vietnam, older guy and he got wounded pretty bad. He got ancient orange and this guy was in bad shape. And anyways, long story short, he told me that when people say, thank you for your service to them, he looks at him and he says, you're worth it. Really? Yeah. Well, that's a reaction.

I thought that was pretty good. Yeah, right? Absolutely. Yeah, so as long as we're talking about business here, I can put a pitch in about the podcast that we do. Absolutely. Every Tuesday afternoon, DRTB live, we interview somebody. We interviewed a gal who raises puppies that are going to become dogs for people who are blind and service dogs, not the service dogs that people take in a restaurant, but once it actually take care of. So you raise a puppy for a year and then you have to hand it over, and you've got to teach the raise the puppy from the little baby and get them squared away and you have certain discipline.

and she's talking about guide dogs, Southwest Florida. So she told us all about that and made me want to do it, except for just when they're a year old, when you really want to keep them for the rest of the life, you've got to get rid of them. You've got to give them up.

Oh, gosh. But we did that. We've interviewed people, part of the baseball team. We've done people involved in various charities. We talked to the McDill Air Force guys when they had the air show. So we try to promote somebody,

but we try to introduce into the community, somebody that you'd be interested in hearing about, listen to talk. Sort of like what you're doing with me, but somebody more valuable than that. So every Tuesday, goes up on YouTube, goes up on our website, DuPont Registry, Tampa Bay.com. I don't want to say that too fast. And it goes live on your Facebook page. On the Facebook page. Yep, DuPont Registry.

And it's inventoried on DuPont Registry, Tampa Bay.com on our website. So you go look at the old interviews. We interviewed the head banker at Pilot Bank. And it's a lot of fun. You got a lot of big wigs on there. A lot of bankers, big shots in real estate, people who have done cool things like the guy who walked from Tampa to New York. A lot of really interesting people.

Yeah, we try to get somebody interesting on. And, you know, first thing you do is turn it on when you're in the car going home. It takes a half an hour to get home. It's 20-minute broadcast. Yep. Listen in. You can also look. But, you know, because we do it live.

It's like this. It's live. So you don't want to say the bad words. That's cool. That's awesome, man. So cool. I know we're running short on time. But I wanted to,

one thing I did want to talk to you about real quick before we wrap it up was, um, partnerships. So now that you're only on DuPont Registry, Tampa Bay, for, for, what was it, more than a decade, you were, you had a partnership with DuPont Registry. Ben is one who always tell, you know, he tells everybody, I don't like partners. I don't like to have partners. I like to be able to call all the shots. I don't want to, you know, because he has to compete with companies that have a board of directors.

And it takes them forever to make decisions to buy deals because there's so many people involved to make decisions. And sometimes there's clashes or whatever. And he's like, you can't get, you can't get shit done like that. He's like, I don't like to have partners. I like to call the shots myself. Do you, I mean, coming from your history, what is your experience with working with partners? And what do you prefer running us running, running. calling all the shots by yourself or have you had a better experience having somebody else

be a partner in a company? You know, Ben's business is a peculiar business because when you're buying and selling properties, as long as you know what you're doing, which Ben does, you need to make the decision. And you need to make it based on the criteria and not depend on some time. Timing is everything too. Yeah, not depend on raising the question and getting five people in a boardroom to answer the question. Oftentimes you use boardrooms and partnerships and that kind of thing to bring in additional

expertise because you don't understand the whole picture and you're looking for their advice and their perspective. The other reason you use partners and frankly goes down the organizational chain into people when you want to use people to work with you is because they're smarter at what they're doing than you are. So I've always had the philosophy that, you know, I'm, I think I know how to run a company. But if I can get a bookkeeper that can keep the books better than me, I'm going to be better off. If I can get a salesman who can sell better than me and wants to work with me, then he can sell better than me, better than I can. I can keep the company organized and running, so therefore I learned to surround myself in business with people who are better at doing what they

do than I could ever be. Right. So that collective expertise takes the enterprise and moves it forward. and I've always been a collegial guy, and a lot of times I'm accused of not making a decision because I want to hear everybody's point of view. Sometimes the other person's point of view is not pretty, but I want to listen because I'll learn something. I'm not looking for advice. I'm looking for input that will help give me more information

to make a rational conclusion. Right. And, you know, when I did in the investment management business and I'm investing in a small company that hopefully will grow to be worth billions of dollars, which I haven't quite conquered that yet. Yeah. I'm looking sometimes, would somebody please explain this to me

and looking for their advice and then I make the decision? Well, when you have a true partnership, you get all the information and sometimes you trade back and forth as to who makes the decision or you at least listen to your partner. Right. And I listen to my partner all the time. Sometimes it's a fine line to dance too. I mean, you're walking on.

Absolutely. And sometimes you have to realize that what I want to do and my partner wants to do are very different. and what's best for the company. Well, okay, let's do it his way. I'm okay with that. I don't need the answer to the question. I just need the question answered.

Okay. Okay? And so when you're moving forward and you say, I think we should discount this guy's rate by $500. And I got, I don't discount that guy's rate. You're crazy. Next thing you know, you give up, you say discount is rate by $500.

And six issues later, you've got him spending twice as much money because it worked well for him. Right. Well, I would have made the, the wrong decision because I would have said don't lower the rate and he would have walked away. So I rely on the expertise and the intuition and the knowledge of other people a lot because I don't propose to be the brightest acorn in the room.

Right. Brightest bulb in the room, the smartest acorn that fell from the tree. Right. So and collegiality is important. I do a lot of civic stuff and sit on boards of homeowners associations and stuff like that. And I'm always trying to draw people in to get their input because I'm, That's the second part. I want them, and this is not as true with a partner,

but I want them to have ownership of the decision. So let me give you one more important quote to everybody can watch. Okay. The Frank Morsani theory of negotiation. Frank Borsani. Yep. Frank Morsani was a car dealer in. Mor Sani.

Mor Sani. He donated enough money to the USF to build the Morsani College of Medicine. He's been marvelously successful. And Frank is the guy. They used a negotiating technique called, let's let these good folks have our way. So Frank would be trying to close a deal to buy a building, and the people were asking a lot of money,

and he don't want to pay that much. So he would ask them about what their goals were, and it would take hours, hours. And finally, the guys would say, you know, we're not going to sell this for this dollars, but we might take this. And Frank would go, you'd actually let me take it.

the building for that amount of money? They go, yeah, and he said, okay, I can do that. Well, if you look at the negotiating going on, it was their idea to sell it for that price, not Franks. When Frank walked in there, he said, I'm going to buy this building for this amount of money. If I look at him and tell them that, we're not going to get anywhere. So Frank would walk around in circles, communicate in circles until he let these good folks on the other side of the table have my way. So he would create an opportunity for them to propose a solution that met his criteria. He wouldn't tell him to do it. So a lot of times in a collegial atmosphere and a business,

you're trying to get everybody on board and take ownership so they could say, that was really a good idea I thought up. Interesting. That was my idea from the beginning. I just didn't want to impose it from the top down. I wanted the community to articulate it and say, that's what we should do. And I go, that's a pretty good idea.

That's the Frank Morsani theory of negotiation. Let's let these good folks have my way. Interesting. I like that. It takes a lot of conversation, a lot of patience, and a lot of humility. Because a lot of people want to put their stamp that, hey, I did this. It's my idea, right? And there are times for that.

But there are other times when it's just as good an idea to let the other guy claim responsibility for getting to where you want to get. Let them understand it, let them talk it through. One more for you. Running out of time. The theory of communicating, not only negotiating business, but in your personal life, with your family, your children, your community, everything,

the term is understanding, understanding. And I have to understand on this side of the table when I'm communicating with a family crisis or something nice or what's going on or talk about the community or business or whatever it is. I have to understand. what you're understanding. So I have to say it in a way that I understand what I'm saying,

but I might say it in a way that you don't understand what I'm saying. So I have to think, how do I understand understanding? So I think about how you're going to interpret what I'm going to say, and I change it so that you understand me, and I understand that you understand. And there's a whole TED Talks, Nantucket project thing on understanding, understanding. Interesting. And in today's world, you think about that and you think about, okay, let me stop for a minute.

Understand understanding. And what you're trying to do is get in the other person's point of view so that what you're saying, they understand. And I understand what I'm saying. Right. But do you cross the table? Oh, I got to say it this way for you. So that's another important philosophy. Especially in today's age.

Communication is very important, especially with all the technology and texting. Here's my last piece of philosophy. You got me going on some philosophy. I love it. My last piece of philosophy for you that I think is valuable. Don't react. Act. So when somebody pushes your hot button and you react, a lot of times you're just reacting to it.

You got to stop and use the thinking. word, which is think about what you're trying to accomplish, pull down the emotional reaction, and then take action to move the ball forward, to make it work, to figure out how to get to where you want to get. And so I tell everybody to pause. When somebody says something to you and you want to react, take a swing at him, you want to yell at them, you want to pound your fists on the table, is that going to accomplish what you want to accomplish in the long term or the media term

as a result of the conversation you're having. So before you react, act. So I find that in emotional situations, when somebody pushes my hot button, I go, okay, now I think we should do this because I've given a little bit of thought and I put the logic and it's really hard to do in emotional situations, especially in family and children and that kind of stuff. you're about to have a child.

You're going to have to think about acting and not reacting. Because when that little guy's got you up at 3 in the morning, he's screaming. Yeah. And you're reacting. How is this happening? Right. You've got to think and you've got to act in the child's best interest. Comfort him, quiet him down, get him back to sleep.

So you can lie down and go back to sleep. It's not going to do any good to sit there and just look at him and react. And go, why are you yelling like that? Because he doesn't understand at that point. But at the same time. So a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of, little bit of act, don't react, act. Awesome. I love it. Thank you for your time, Tom. It's been exciting. It's been

enlightening and I can't thank you enough.