EntreLeadership - #172: John Rich and Dr. Henry Cloud—EntreLeadership Master Series Fall 2016

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

Country music legend and The Celebrity Apprentice winner John Rich joins us for our first live podcast straight from EntreLeadership Master Series. Hear John’s thoughts on taking risks, overcoming intimidating situations, and breaking through difficult barriers in business. In addition, EntreLeadership favorite and best-selling author Dr. Henry Cloud joins us to talk about the emotional impact your behavior as a leader makes on your team. entreleadership.com/podcast Leadership University Discount Infusionsoft's Office Automation Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Cole. Broadcasting live from the Entree Leadership Master Series. This is the podcast of Leaders by Leaders for Leaders. That ruckus applause you just heard was from 200 entrepreneurs and leaders that have been hanging out here for four days at Ramsey Solutions. world headquarters in the Music City, and it's been a great time. Has it not people? And so this is rather historic. This is the first time we've ever done the Entree Leadership

podcast in front of a live audience, and we're going to kick it off with one of our favorite guest, longtime friend of Dave Ramsey's. He's a dear friend of mine as well, and probably one of my favorite conversations to have. He is multi-bestselling author, psychologist, leadership expert, and just all-around great guy. Henry Cloud is joining us from his home in Beverly Hills. Dr. Cloud, how you doing, sir? I am well. Good to be with you guys. All right. So let's dive in here. Hey, I can I just have to say one thing really quick. Well, yeah, you can say. You know, you said you got all those people came. They took time out of their business because getting out of the weeds and getting above it and working

on their business by working on themselves. Those are the people that kick butt. That's right. There you go. Clap for yourselves. And what he just said is also true for our audience that's listening in on the podcast because they take time out of their schedule to listen to us every week. And we appreciate you so much. We do this for you. And we're going to talk about his new book a little bit later. It's called The Power of the Other, the Startling Effect Other People Have on You from the Boardroom to the Bedroom and Beyond. And then What to Do About it.

So that's coming up. It's a fantastic read. It's rocking my world right now. But I want to start, Henry, with some thoughts on leadership because this is a leadership event. Obviously, a big portion of our podcast is focused on growing leaders. And one of the things that you talk about that I want you to share is we've heard so many different definitions of leadership. But you say that it's a linear process and it has certain factors that can't be skipped or eliminated. And I want you to unpack that thought.

What does that look like? What does that process? Well, you know, a lot of times we don't experience it as linear because obviously you're, you know, you're turning and readapting and changing and all that kind of stuff along the way. But what I mean by linear is that you are taking people and an idea from being just an idea of a desired future into something hopefully that lands in reality. You know, if somebody's got an idea of how they want to accomplish something or a goal or whatever we call this, it's just a fantasy until it actually begins to be able to be seen and touched in reality.

So there is a process of that. And the very first piece of that is to know what that desired future is. We call it a vision. Now, it's really, really, really important to be clear about that vision. You don't have to have it in 8,000 bullet points. You just have to have this one piece of clarity of this is what the desired future looks like. this is who it's going to affect and this is what it's going to be like and what it's going to do. Now there's a reason for that.

We have heard, Ken, for a long time, like decades. You've read all this positive thinking stuff and you've got to be optimistic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which they're finding now with brain scans is actually so true because for the brain to be able to get somewhere, it's got to marshal the resources that it takes to get there and it doesn't know what tools to pull out of the box. until it knows what it's trying to build. And so very, very important that you and your people are clear about what that desired future is. That's the first one. The second one is you've got to engage the talent.

And that's two words. You know, when your brain decides to walk from here to there, that's a vision. You know, wherever you're standing, Ken, on the stage, if you pointed 10 feet over and said, here's where I am, I'm going to go there. That's your vision. That's a desired future. but notice this your brain cannot get itself there it can't walk over there it's got to engage the talent that can do the things it can't do so it says hey legs i'm going to need you arms i'm going

need you to balance so it pulls the right talent around them and also it has to engage engage that talent your brain is firing signals that make those legs move and that's part of what leadership has to do as well then the third thing is you got to execute a plan. Are you going to get 10 feet over on the other side of the stage? Are you going to hop? How are you going to get there? So we've got to have a plan and begin to execute against that plan. And then, how do you know you're getting there where you are? Are you wandering off course? Are you going too slow? You're not going to make it in time. The fourth thing is you have to measure the right things and hold everybody accountable for the right things. And if you start to wander off,

you know, your brain's going to say to your legs, you're pointing in the wrong direction. You've got to hold you accountable. We've got to, you know, keep going where we say we're going to go and we're going to measure that and watch it. And then the fifth thing is once we measure stuff, we've got to adapt and fix what we find. So there you've got the process, seeing the desired future, engaging the talent, executing a plan, measuring the right things and holding people accountable. And then the last one is fixing and adapting to what our measurement told us. If we would do that and have every team thinking about that process, it is amazing what happens. Yeah, it has to be.

And the adaptation seems to me to be so important because you can kind of go back to those other steps and kind of look at, okay, this is what we need to be doing constantly. But adaptation is easier said than done, is it not? Well, adaptation is easier said than done because a lot of times we're adapting the wrong thing. for example, in the fourth step of measuring and holding people accountable. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, a lot of times people see holding people accountable is, you know, it's sort of like a spanking. Did you do it?

You said, you know, I'm going to hold you. I'm going to go down there and hold them accountable for this. That's not what accountability is. Accountability is about the future. See, accountability is like the instrument panel on an airplane. If a pilot has set a heading, that's your vision, you know, you're going, you're flying from Nashville to New York. the instrument panel measures are you doing the right things that are going to get you there?

And so it measures not only are we getting to New York, but what's our altitude? What's our engine speed? And it gives you constant feedback on the things that you must pay attention to or you're not going to get there. So when you talk about adaptability, I'll give you two questions that will change everything if you're not already doing this. The first one of accountability is, did we do what we said we were going to do? If we said we were going to make 100 sales calls a day by each person, did we make the 100? If we said we're going to launch a new product by whatever, did we do what we said we were going to do? Now, if you measure that and the answer is no, we didn't do it.

We didn't make the 100 calls. Then you can't just go, okay, everybody, you didn't. make your 100 calls, go make your 100 calls. If your answer is no, we didn't do what we said we were going to do, you must ask the question, why didn't we? And do a root cause analysis, because it may be that you've asked people to make 100 calls and you've asked them to do 14 other things, and they will never get those 100 calls made because you haven't focused them and they got too much to do. It may be somebody's not doing their job. It may be you got the wrong person in a position. But don't just come up with the not-hose.

hitting the number and then go tell people to hit the number that they didn't just hit without finding out the root cause of why didn't we do what we said we were going to do. So then you fix that. That's an adaptation. If the answer is yes, we did do what we said we were going to do, then you ask a second question. Okay, we did exactly what we said we were going to do. We executed the plan.

We did it. Then the second question is this, did we get the results that we were expecting? because if you executed the plan perfectly and you didn't get the results, something's wrong with the plan. And a lot of times what people do in trying to adapt things or fix things is they just look at the goal and say, you know, are we reaching it? And then they go back and just start to push people harder or do whatever. And they don't ask those two critical questions.

And those are very important questions. When a doctor makes a prescription, the first thing, and you say, Doc, I'm not getting better. The first thing he's going to ask you or she's going to ask you is, are you taking your medicine? Okay? Now, if you're not, then we don't know if the medicine works. But if you are and you're not getting better, we've got to change the medicine. Very, very important nuance.

All right. So you just gave us five very important pieces of the process to make leadership effective, to make it come alive. Those are all action steps. And so you have a beautiful analogy. when describing leaders. You say that all leaders are like boats and that we leave a wake behind us. And I think that's really brilliant.

I want you to talk about what that wake looks like, specifically the two factors that create that wake. Well, Ken, one of the things that I've kind of devoted a big part of my personal mission to is just staying deep in the technical side of all the science and the experience and all of the research of the way, that performance happens and the way that results get made and the way that people really function

who perform well. And the mission is to take all of that and try to make as simple as possible for people who have real jobs, right? I mean, leaders don't have all this time to go comb through and find out all the research on leadership to know. They've got a real job. They're building computers or they're selling real estate or they're starting restaurants. And so what I try to do is I try to take all this stuff and give leaders something very, very simple and actionable that they can take to their teams and not have to worry about this. So getting to your question,

if you comb all the leadership research out there that's ever been done, there's a lot of different ways to look at it. But if you do what's called a factor analysis, which means you take it all and get it down to, as far as you can break it down, how many factors you can get it down to, as far as you can go, is you're going to find basically two, that leadership is about two things. It's about results and it's about relationships. There is a real, did we accomplish the mission?

Did we capture markets share? Did we sell the widgets? We wanted to sell. Whatever it is, that there is a mission and that mission must achieve results. and a leader will be known by the results that they leave behind. That's their wake in one area. The other area besides results is we might have gotten results, but we killed everybody in the process and they hate working here.

It's the relationship sign because people that are bobbing up and down out there in your wake behind this boat of leadership, they're bobbing them down like shark bait bleeding. Then you don't have something sustainable. And now what we know from neuroscience is, you're not even getting the best results if the relationships are not going well. Because when people are operating under fear, when they're operating under a bunch of toxic stuff where their brains can't work, then whatever results you're getting, you're getting less results than you would get if the relational tone and the culture of that

place were different. So a leader's like a boat. You go through, you know, they say, gosh, when Susie led this place, you know, she's gone now. But when Susie led this place, we captured market share. We grew by 20% a year. It was amazing. And it was so much fun to work here.

Every day we love coming to work. Now, Susie left a wake behind her that is really, really good. But then you hear about another leader where they're leading a company or even a team. They leave a wake too. They say, well, you know, when Steve was here, we really kind of floundered. You know, we grew a little bit, but nothing much. And we weren't innovating. And the wake on the result side was just not that good.

But, you know, the relationships, gosh, Steve, what a nice guy. But that's not enough. You know, we can't have one side of the wake. And so what you want to look at as a leader, and this isn't just in your tenure you leave awake. This is in every interaction. This is in every email. This is in every phone call.

This isn't every meeting. When you move through that person's space and their head space, you have left awake in their brain. And we can measure it by looking at their neurotransmitter. your interaction with a person or a company or a team or a customer is going to have a wake inside of their heart, mind, and soul. And we can measure it. They're either pumping out like dopamine and serotonin and all these great chemicals that are going to really cause them to drive things to results. Or you've activated other toxic chemicals that shut down the very functions that you're writing paychecks for.

So the wake you leave behind is huge. That's a powerful metaphor and a great challenge for leaders to make sure that that is even keel, that that wake is beautiful. And you know, Ken, just for a second, take it past a metaphor. One of the things I do in Leadership University is give assignments for leaders at every level. Here's what I want you to do. This week, I just want you to set up three coffee breaks. I want you to pick somebody above you. I want you to pick somebody that's a peer.

And I want you to pick somebody below you. And I want you to go sit down with them and say, so I'm kind of studying my leadership and learning some stuff and, you know, trying to become a better leader. And you're one of my main stakeholders. You know, in the stuff that I do, it really does affect you. You live in the wake of that. And so I want to ask you about this thing called my wake. A leader leaves a wake in the results we're getting in the relationships. Okay.

So here's my question to you. what's it like to be in my wake? What's it like to be on the other end of me as my peer or my boss or as somebody that reports to me? What's it like for you in terms of my performance? How am I affecting your results and how can I affect them better? And what's it like relationally to work with me and be on the other side of me? And then just shut up and listen and say, look, I'm not going to argue with anything.

want to know what it's like to be in this wake. For good, better, or worse, I just want to know. And then just listen. You'll learn amazing things. Now, that is a simple challenge. It's not easy to do. It's going to take some courage, people, here in the room and listening all around the world. That is phenomenal. All right. I want to shift to your new book, The Power of the Other, because everybody in this audience here live and everybody listening to this podcast, I think we could say this one thing about them, that they want to be better. They want to go. They want to get more out of themselves, out of their organization, and beyond. And the subject of the book, you say on page number two, the subject of this book is how we become better and how we become

more. And there's so much to unpack here, but you really say it all in the subtitle, the startling effect other people have on us from everybody we come in contact with. And why is this such a huge, huge thing to understand this effect that others have on us if we want to get the most out of our potential. Because literally, Ken, it is the way the universe works. Now, I don't mean that. Like, that sounds lofty. But seriously, I mean, everything from a baby, okay, you want a baby to do those two

things. You want them to get more and you want them to get better, right? How many of you ladies out there, I know we got some ladies listening and the guys were probably in the delivery room. When your baby was born, how many of those babies turned around? to you, mom, in the first five seconds of their life and said, gosh, mom, was that hard on you? I'm really sorry. Anything I can do. Can I help clean up around here? Why don't you go, you know, get a massage and I'll just take care of stuff here for a while? No, they didn't do that.

What did they have to do? They had to become more, meaning they had to grow in capacity to be able to turn into that person. and they had to become better along the way. All right, so how did they do that? Well, one of the things that we know, whether you're a Navy SEAL or a business owner, you are going to become more and you're going to come better if the physical tools are working better. All right, that's your brain. That's your body. That's the biology of this.

If you're feeding crap into your system, that will affect your creativity. It will affect your brain. You know, if we're not healthy, if we don't have energy, that will affect the profits. It affects the bottom line. Okay, but a lot of people focus on the physical, right? But there's something past the physical that affects performance. And that's the non-physical or the immaterial parts of us that call it your mind, your soul. This invisible stuff is the software.

That goes into your beliefs, your beliefs about your sins, your principles, the way things work, the principles you operate on, you got people there for four days, and they are really upping their software. They're downloading new information. They're downloading codes. They're getting viruses out of the software of their heads, and they are going to go execute life in a different way because of the software you're downloading. So we got the software and we got the hardware. Now here's where most people don't realize the truth. And the truth is, is you can take that baby and you can feed them and water them and you can give them books to read. But if you don't connect with them emotionally and relationally, here's what happens to the physical and the software.

They get to be 10 or 12 years old. They start to have behavior problems. And we go take pictures of their brains. and the wiring that is supposed to be able to control their behavior and the software, the understandings, the emotional intelligence, the emotional regulation, the creativity, the impulse control, the belief systems, all of that stuff is missing, but especially even the hardware. The physical wiring is not there because they didn't have relationship.

Now, you take that into a team, you take that into a company, and you send people out on a sales call, for example, and you send them out for the first time. If you just gave him a manual and sent him out there and said, go sell some stuff, versus you've got somebody, like a Michael Phelps won, however many gold medals, he has had the books on swimming. You know, he's been working on his body, but he's had a coach, the power of the other. He's had a coach in that space with him since he was 14 years old. And through that downloading, you get all the ingredients I talk about in the book.

And it's not just that we have others in our lives. The others in our lives around our performance must have certain dynamics. If they have those dynamics in our relationship with them, we will get to another level. If they don't have those dynamics, we will go backwards or stay at the same level. And that's just the way that all the research shows it. So what I'm trying to tell people in this book, you can't just focus on knowledge and strategy and all the software that you've got to focus on. That's not enough.

You've also got to focus on the power of the other. How are relationships being utilized to get the brain and the software working better? Because if you do that, there's a handful of dynamics. If you do those dynamics, people get better. If you violate those principles, people get worse. And that includes ourselves. All right, folks, there's a great summary of why and what in looking at this book. Doc, we don't have a ton of time to unpack all this.

So I'm going to take our audience here to page 31 for those of you who need to run out and get the book and everybody does. And page 31 in the chapter of the Four Corners of Connection, you introduced the four corners. I don't know if I want to hear this. It sounds like one of those election clips in the debates. Well, Hillary, Erdognell, in 1974, you said this. No, this is actually really good. You don't have anything to be worried about. So on page 31, he introduces for the first time.

This is just for book notes, people, okay? And the four corners of connection, which you need to get the book and really dive into this. But I'm going to summarize it and then read something, and I'm going to let him comment on it. The first corner is disconnected, or in other words, no connection. The second one is the bad connection. The third corner is the pseudo-good connection. Feels good, but it's not really good. And then finally, the fourth, and this is where we want to get to as individuals and leaders,

and that's true connection. So fast forward to corner number four, where we really want to focus just the rest of our time here. On page 53, I'm reading from a passage. And this is so powerful. And Henry writes, no matter where you are, or what obstacles you might be facing, you need your connections in order to win.

They, your connections, your relationships, help you figure out where you are, where you need to go, where the real enemies are, and they give you the reinforcements you need to win. The connection that comes in, corner number four, stems from three questions. Where am I? Where is the enemy?

Where is my buddy? I thought that was just so profound. I want you to just unpack that. That's where we want to be. and why are those questions so important and helping to understand who those real, true connections and relationships are to help us win? Well, those are the three questions, right? Ken, you know, where I got those questions actually was from the SEALs.

And in Taco and Navy SEALs, they will tell you, you know, there's three things you got to know. When you parachute into enemy territory, which means, you know, your local market, right? Yeah. If you're in business or a board meeting or with a hostile, whatever it is. When you parachute in, there's three things that you got to immediately know. Where am I? And a seal will look at their GPS because if I'm on the wrong side of Osama bin Laden's wall, I'm in trouble. Right.

So where am I? Number one question. Where am I? Number two, where's the enemy? I got to know where the enemy is. or I'm going to get killed. Number three, where's my buddy? Now think about this.

Which one is more important? If you don't know the answer to number one or you don't know the answer to number two, but you know the answer to number three, then you'll get the answers to one and two. And that's kind of the essence of this, that when people have corner four teams, and the corner four teams are the real ones,

the authentic ones, where the good is welcome and celebrated and pushed and turned into more and recognized. And the not so good is accepted and not spanked and not condemned and not shamed, but welcomed in. Bring your struggles to this table. We'll talk about them. We got your back. We'll help you.

We'll help you get out of it. We'll coach you. You know, we'll do whatever is needed. When we can take the good and the bad to that table and we know that table is for us. us and we know that table has the resources of questions one and two and three and four and five and six where's our strategy what are we going to do what's next when we know that we have a corner where we can get whatever we need you can't stop anybody you just can't stop good people if they know whatever they need they're going to be able to find it but when they lose

is hope. If you're a leader and you're in corner one that's disconnected, you have people that need some clarification or they need some encouragement or they need some correction or some, you know, advice or training, and they walk into your office and they walk out and they're still alone, even though they had that interaction, then things are going south. Or if they go into corner two, if your office says corner two and they walk in there and they come out of the place feeling bad about themselves. I'm not talking about not facing issues. I'm talking about feeling bad, inferior, stupid, dumb, whatever it is about themselves.

Things are going south. Or if they walk into your office and it's Corner 3, this is the happy talk. And all you do is flatter people and try to make them feel good and, you know, have some sort of brain affair with them. That's not going to work either. Corner 4 teams and Corner 4 companies and corner 4 board members and quarter 4 board members and quarter-in-four mentors, those are the ones that, and I'm not just talking about encouragement, I'm talking about literally transform the capacity of your performance.

And there's neurology, there's biochemistry, there's spirituality, there's psychology, there's all sorts of factors that go into that, but it's real. Henry, I want to ask you this, because I think this could be transferred to an organization, because we've got all these leaders listening in there going, okay, that makes total sense. I can apply that in my personal life and leadership life, but can we adjust those three questions there in corner four for an organization? So it looks like where are we? Where is our enemy? Where are our friends?

Can we also apply that as an organization? Yeah, I think it's a great question. You know, even in a team meeting within an organization. For example, where is the enemy? What is in our way? Now, that could be outside the walls of the organization. or it could be inside the walls. I'll give you a great example.

I was working with a global company. You'd all know their name. We're on an executive team offsite with the CEO. And one of the big issues and they were being written about, it hit the, you know, the papers, everything, was the sales group and R&D had a rift. They were not connecting. And what happened was because of the pressure of the CEO for the sales group to go out and sell this stuff,

they were out there selling and promising customers things that R&D knew good and well. There is no way in God's Green Earth that we're going to be able to build those features in by launch date. There's no way. It can't be done, right? We can do it, but that equipment's not going to do what you're out there selling. and because they didn't recognize that. They got onto a discipline and started asking themselves, what's the enemy? Enemy doesn't mean somebody hates you, but enemy is something that's in the way or that can keep you from getting or will do you in to where you want to go.

And so they start looking at and then they're going to go attack the enemy. Well, some of them, you know, with the competition, yeah, you go attack them. But if it's in-house, no, you go establish a relationship and you turn that enemy into your ally. And so you start to look at one of the most important things, especially leaders that are looking at change. You got to find out who inside the house is for the changes you're making. Who's in the middle group? They're skeptical, but they can be one over.

But who's really opposing the change you're trying to make, even on the team or inside the organization? That's got to be dealt with. But then the third question is, who's going to help me? You know, I was working with a company who had a big change process going on, and it was a big one. There were a lot of people who have been there a long time. They did not want to go there. They were in that third camp.

We're against this, and the meeting after the meeting, and at the water cooler, you know, they're just kind of trying to really keep this from happening. But what we did was with the executive team, we went and got a big whiteboard one day, and we locked ourselves up, and we made three columns. who is really, really excited about this in your departments? Who knows how to do this? When we announced this, who said, this is awesome, I'm behind you. Let's go do this finally.

Okay, put them in column A. Those are the people that are for us. Column B is the skeptics. They're asking, why are we making these changes? We don't, but they can be convinced. Now, the third group, that enemy, you know, they're not going to come along. So we got to either send them to China for two years on a project or neutralize them or something. You're not going to change them.

But what you have to do is you got to find out, where's my buddy? So you go to that A group, and we put names up on the A group, and then we put names on the B group, and we started to send our buddies out into those departments and into those teams, and you took the people that were really, really for this, and you go knock on the doors, and you work on communications, and you work on projects together, and you begin to utilize your friends to win these people over. And that is way more powerful than just standing up on a podium saying, hey, the company's going to change and go from A to B.

You'll never get it done like that. You've got to lead it, but you've got to know who your buddies are. Well, folks, Dr. Cloud has just scratched the surface of the amazing content in this book, The Power of the Other. And also he's been describing a lot of the content that he is delivering to leaders in a new project that you're excited about, called Leadership University. We will have a link to the book and everything that Dr. Cloud's doing in the show notes.

But, Doc, our time is up. Can you give me 60 seconds before I give these folks a special offer from you? Give me 60 seconds on what leadership university is and how folks can engage. Okay, 60 seconds, you know, for a long time, what I spend about 100 days a year on is I'm with CEOs and their executive teams. And basically, a lot of companies, you know, they can pay for somebody. to come in at that level, but they want the rest of their people developed in leadership. And some of them been developed and some of them hadn't and some of them are hired from

somewhere else. And I found that companies very small all the way to big needed something scalable, cheap, customizable, and cohesive that they could know. Everybody knows leadership 101. Everybody knows the stuff that we've been talking about today. And everybody knows how to have a difficult conversation. Everybody knows how to hold people accountable. They've been trained in this stuff, but they want to do it simple.

So I've created Leadership University. It's digital. People can pull it up on their iPads. They can do it around their meetings. They can do it at home. They can do one-on-one. And it basically takes people on a modular basis month by month to develop everybody in the organization around leadership. That's what it is.

All right. So folks that are listening in, we will have a link to the Leadership University opportunity here in the special offer it's $297 that is a steep discount for you you just have to enter the code Ramsey the last name of Dave that's one word Ramsey at the point of checkout well doc it's always good to have you with us we love doing live events with you and looking forward to the next one and I know our audience here appreciated you and I know our audience online did as well thank you were better for it hey you guys rock there are you know there's some people you

You run across in life and you're just simpatico and I always feel that with you guys. I love being with you. All right. Thank you, Dr. Cloud. All right. So there it is. One in the books and I'm going to take these headphones off and we're going to keep rolling. I'm excited about this.

First time we've ever done this and we were sitting around talking about what can we do that has a Nashville flavor? Who can we bring in that we know, that Dave knows and respects and something a little bit different because half of the word entree leadership is entrepreneur. And so we've been discussing leadership, but we know so many of you in here also describe yourselves as entrepreneurs. And I think it's always fun we can learn from entrepreneurs in different spaces. So we're going to keep on rolling, and our guest is live, and I could literally spend 10 minutes, summarizing his bio. He is one half of a superstar country group, big and rich.

He is a solo star. He is the winner of The Apprentice on NBC. You're going to hear about his company. He's an innovator. He's an entrepreneurial thinker and wildly successful in business. What you may not know about our guest is that he's also a very successful producer, not just a head artist out in front of everybody and headlining, but also finding new talent. and has helped some superstars really truly develop and become stars in their own right.

And so he is a longtime friend of Dave's. I got to meet him recently when he loaned us his convertible caddy for a shoot that we did and let me drive it. So he's also way too trustworthy to let me drive his car. But he's a great guy. He's here with us live, Entree Leadership Master's Series. Please welcome with a huge applause to the stage, John Rich. Welcome to my living room, John. Thank you.

Yeah. We just set it up real quick in front of everybody. Everybody say, hey John. Howdy. Well, this is fun. We're going to dive into really your background as an entrepreneur, but I like to go back a little bit because I know you've always loved music. But it just occurs to me. You've probably always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial brain.

So I'd love you to take us way back. You choose. Was it childhood, early adolescence, late adolescence, where you kind of said, I think I've got a business brain. I like creating ideas. I think it, uh, probably the first time I ever exercised that was we were selling, uh, magazines at our school. You know, you go door to door and selling the magazines and stuff and the coupon books or whatever. And I wanted to win this one prize because if you sold the most, you got like something, I forget what it was, something cool, bicycle or something. And, um, I went to this one neighbor's house and I knew that they could buy a lot of magazines because they,

They had the biggest house on the street. And so I went up there and they said, yeah, we'd love to order a magazine. I said, you should order this package because this package, you know, you'll get all this stuff. And I was trying to sell them. I was about nine or ten years old. He went, well, that's a little expensive. I said, if you buy this package, I'll mow your yard for the next two weeks for free. He went, why would you do that?

I said, because I'm going to win a bicycle if you buy this. He went, deal, shook my hand, bought the big package. I got the bicycle and I had to go mow his yard for two weeks, but I didn't care because I went to school and I was the top seller at school. So I think back then you start learning. If you want to make something happen, you can figure it out. If you think deep enough and work hard and I've had it, you'll probably figure it out. And for our country music fans and just people who appreciate art, when did you realize you had a talent for taking lyrics, you know, essentially a story, putting some music to it, when you really love, man, I love music. Because I know I've read many interviews with you.

you've just always had music, and specifically country music is in your DNA using your words. Well, my dad's a non-denominational preacher. He preaches into prisons. And when I was a kid, he was preaching churches, but I was always small churches. And he would get up and sing in church because it was a little church, so he led to singing and would preach. And when I'd go to him, like I've actually sang at the prison here in Nashville with him, he'll kick off with boy named Sue, Johnny Cash, and Folsom Prison Blues and stuff like that. And then he'll roll into gospel. and I watched him kind of meled all that together to get, you know, to crack people open a little bit so we could get his message into him.

So it was always interesting to, I would hear him sitting in a bedroom writing a new song, a new gospel song, and then he would sing it at church, and then I'd watch everybody go, oh, what a great song. And I went, man, that's like magic or something, you know. I saw him writing that in the back room and all these people are now singing it and wanting him to sing it again. So, yeah, in my DNA, way back as a kid watching my dad do that, he also taught me how to play the guitar. So songwriting is the one thing that, you know, you can't guarantee you'll be successful at it, but you can definitely, your work ethic is everything when it comes to songwriting. You know, when you're an artist, it's dependent upon getting played on the radio, it's depending on how the management's going, it's depending on if people are going to book you for concerts.

But songwriting is a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, that's all it is. And I've been down to that a couple of times. In the band Lone Star, you go multi-platinum, and then the band goes, okay, get out of here. kid, we're going to go a different direction. And you spend four or five years without a record deal. And the only thing I could control at that point was a pencil and a piece of paper. So I just started writing, I was writing 150 songs a year. And that is what turned into Gretchen Wilson and Jason Aldeen and Faith Hill and all those songs that got recorded in mass back through those years. So John, we're at a leadership event. And it strikes me that if you're

leading, I don't care if it's a company of two or two thousand on some. level, I think almost every day you're having to collaborate. I play trumpet for two years. That's the extent of my music ability or experience, and that's good for the world. How's your ambusher? Not good. Not good. But I don't think there's anybody I respect more when it comes to collaboration than writers, songwriters, specifically, and producers. You do both almost every day. I'm curious from your vantage point, because I think leaders can pull much from this. What's the key to healthy collaboration and successful collaboration? Because many times you're writing with people, maybe you haven't met before, you haven't written

with before, who's got the better vision? That's the hardest one. Yeah, how does it work? How do you all make it work? Well, you have to, first of all, don't ever show up to a collaborative meeting without ideas. You know, the one thing that'll make me never call you back or call your publisher back to take anybody else they want to send me is if a new artist sits down with me, And I said, well, what do you want to write? They go, I don't know what do you want to write? And I go, you're the one cutting a new record. You're you.

What do you want? What do you want to talk about? And if they don't, if they can't spit out a couple of choruses or a bunch of titles or some groove or something that they want to do, I'm not interested in writing with them again. We'll go through it, but it's not anything that I've ever seen work. The ones that really work are when, like, I'll sit down with that same exact artist, knowing that maybe, hopefully they're bringing ideas. but if none of their ideas or hit ideas, I've got my own, and then I'll throw them down. Once I see that they've thrown theirs down.

If we don't use one of theirs, I'll go, actually, I have been working on a thing, and then we'll lay it out, and a lot of times we'll follow, chase my rabbit, you know, down the hole. So you always have to have your ammo ready, man. Don't ever come into a room to collaborate without a pile of ideas, even if they don't wind up being the idea that you go with, have the ideas. One of the most important things, I think, especially if you're producing a record, you've got this artist. Let's talk Gretchen Wilson. So the redneck woman, right? She sold seven million records. She was my bartender in 1999. She was attending bar in Printers Alley

in Nashville and I was down there hanging out with Big Kitty and a bunch of crazy people. And at the end of the night, the band leader goes, before we close the night out, it's almost 2 o'clock in the morning. We're going to get the bartender up to sing a song. And I went, oh, of course, the bartender sings. It's Nashville. And she gets up and here's a great. And she gets up and here's a Gretchen Wilson and we just went, I went, what was that? I could not believe this girl's sound and what was coming out of this girl. And so we started working together and writing together, and the one thing that happened with her, she told me, I don't think I'll ever be a star. I said, why is that? And she was watching CMT. She goes, because I can't do that right there.

She was smoking a unfiltered camel with a dip of Copenhagen in her lip, sipping on a Miller light, spitting in a cup with a wife beat her tank top looking at the TV. You can picture that, that scowl in her face. She's a little scary. Yeah, she's pointing at the TV going, I'll never be able to do that. I said, do what? And I looked up and it was Chenaya Twain. Right. She goes, that. She goes, Shanaya and Faith Hill and Martina, all these beautiful women with these beautiful, slick, cool songs. She goes, that ain't me, man. I'm just a redneck woman. I went, yes, you are. I said, the majority of women in the United States are just regular old blue collar hard work. moms, working moms, whatever. And I said, that's why I think you'll be a big star. So Gretchen, instead of sanding off your edges, let's put a magnifying glass on your edges,

on your cracks, on your imperfections, like Loretta Lynn did, like Tanya Tucker did, like all those great grates of all time. And that takes a lot for an artist to be willing to do that, but then we start writing these songs that are really personal and really identify her. And what do you know, tens of millions of people identify with that lyric. So working with new talent. or somebody like that, it's your biggest job to identify in them what it is that's special. Because a lot of times they don't even see what it is because they're them.

They don't really recognize it. And once you identify it, you have to really sell them on the idea of that's the way you're supposed to go. And then help them be the best them they can possibly be. That's a producer's job. Yeah, that's good. And really, leaders are producers. Some producers don't do it that way. Some producers put their will, put their elbow down on the artist and try to morph that artist.

into what they think they should be instead of the opposite. It takes great security, doesn't it, for you to see that, to not impose your will and your ideas, but to dig a little deeper and get the story out of that person. Yeah, I mean, to let them come to grips with that. Some artists won't do it. When you do point it out to them, they don't want to do it. And then you still go in and you do the best you can, but it's never authentic. You know, I think the biggest stars out there are the people that are really authentic.

You can't really replicate that again. And it's only one of them, like a Gretchen. I think Biggin'Ritch isn't act like that. There's no other band like that, you know. Thank God. What would happen? Cowboy Troy is a good example. You know, I don't know if y'all know who Cowboy Troy is.

We call him the Big Black Rapping Cowboy from Dallas, Texas. He's been my friend since 93. And when I met him in 93, we're in a bar in Dallas. I was playing bass and Lone Star. And this guy walks up to me. He's a great big guy. And he says, I'm Cowboy Troy. and I went, hey, nice to meet you.

I said, what do you do around here? He goes, well, I do hicc hop. I said, hip hop? He goes, no, hic hop. And this is 93. So, like, run DMC and all that at just the aerosmiths mashups and all that had been happening. I said, well, what is hiccop?

And he goes, I rap to country music. I said, no, you don't. He goes, yeah, I do, man, you want to hear it? And I said, yeah. So he goes into this rap, and I went, okay, that might be the coolest thing I've ever heard. That's 93. And 2003, 10 years later, Big Kenny and I, put him on our very first record and now he's a star.

Yeah. Because you can't replicate a cowboy joy. I love that. Well, I tell you what, what's great about entrepreneurs is they figure out things and they get out to it first and it's never scripted. It just kind of happens. And that's your story. Redneck Riviera is a brand you probably have heard of if you haven't.

You're going to. The story behind it where you just kind of figured out, I heard you share it with Dave at a radio event recently and I want you to share that because to me it is just a phenomenal story opportunity, but then staying with it to see it come alive. Share that. Do you guys know the phrase Redneck Riviera? Raise your hand if you've heard that phrase before. A few of you. Well, like in the south, we say you can't afford to go to the French Riviera, so you go to the Redneck Riviera and it's the Gulf Coast or wherever, because it's beautiful down there and you can afford to go there. You can drive there. Like, you know, a third of the country can drive there in about eight hours. And so I was

down there in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It's now almost nine years now. And I'm sitting there, with a friend of mine and about every other person walking by had on a t-shirt or a ball cap or something that said redneck riviera this or that the waitress brings me a beer in a beer coozy and it says golf stores Alabama in the heart of the redneck riviera and i'm looking at that i'm going man somebody is just i've called it that my life too i wonder who owns the trademark to that so i called my attorney and i said would you see who owns a trademark to redneck riviera and he goes sure and he checked on it he calls back he goes you're not going to believe it nobody's ever trademarked Redneck Riviera. I said in any capacity like barbecue sauce, t-shirts,

nothing. He said, nothing. What do you want to do? I said, well, I'm going to try to trademark it. He goes, okay, and I didn't understand trademark law at that time. I could probably be a trademark attorney at this point. He said, you have to have intent to use, and then you have to sell it across interstate lines, and then you have to turn the receipts in, and then they'll approve it or deny it based on that. I said, okay, let's start with T-shirts. So we printed up Redneck Riverad T-shirts. I sold them on Johnritch.com. I sent out a tweet. We sold them in several different states to fans, turn the receipts in, and then waited a couple of weeks.

He calls me back my attorney. He says, well, now I know why nobody's ever trademarked it. Why is that? Because they say you can't trademark a geographical location. So, there's your answer. I went, well, that's the wrong answer. He goes, well, that's the answer. I don't know what else you want me to say.

I said, ask them where they think it is. because if they're so sure it's a geographical location and I can tell you where Nashville is, where's Redneck River? Because nobody pays taxes to the Redneck River. You can't mail a letter to the Redneck River. Nobody's address is the Redneck Riviera. So where is it? He asked a question.

They come back with basically the Wikipedia answer, which is the Redneck Riviera is between Destin, Florida, and Gulf Shores, Alabama, otherwise known as the Emerald Coast. And I said, no, it's not, and I can prove it. It's the same place Margaritaville is. state of mind. It's wherever you say it is. So I start digging through and of course Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, South Padre Island, Texas. I started finding inland lakes like Lake Havasu. All these boats are tied up. There's Facebook post, welcome to the Redneck Riviera.

People in their backyard with kitty pools or feet in it sitting out there having a beer. That's, it says the Redneck Riviera. I compile this information, send it into D.C. And what do you know? They go stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp. And we start knocking out those categories. we've now perfected 32 out of the 38 categories with Redneck Riviera, including casino services and some huge, huge opportunities out on the horizon. But had we not asked the question and went one move further down to board and then arm wrestled them and beat them, you wouldn't have been able to do anything. But now we've got it in Redneck Rivera Club Nashville and Redneck Riveria Club Las Vegas

both open up the end of this year. And I want you to talk about this because you're doing something really cool in your restaurants because you are a patriot. I don't think you shy from that description. Nobody should shy from that. That's absolutely right. But you're doing something really special for our veterans. I want you to share that.

This is really cool. So, well, we've got apparel lines and boot lines and all this cool stuff. You can go to the website, redneck revere.com and check it out. But when we were laying out how to do these live music venues in Nashville and Vegas, and hopefully more towns past that, I said, you know, you hear all these people that say, we should, you know, take care of the veterans. And we all agree with that. said, well, we're opening up some new businesses. I said, we should put a bar in the back of our

big bar called the Heroes Bar. Let's call it the Heroes Bar. And if you're active duty or you're a veteran, the first drinks on the house. I don't care if all of Fort Campbell shows up at the same time, we'll just get more beer if we have to. But the first drinks on the house and we'll have veteran bartenders as our bartenders. And the guys I'm working with went, of course, let's do it. So we put that into these drawings, and you would not believe the outpouring from the veteran and active duty community that hits me online all the time that are applying for jobs for these positions and thankful that I get to come in and it's not a big deal it's a wholesale it's a dollar 25 or whatever but the fact that somebody would say thank you for your service first drinks on us

thanks big guy yeah thanks darling whatever that's the thing it's it's those little things are not really little they're really big and i think that's the good fertilizer you're sewing back down into your business too and that's not why you're doing it you're not doing it for this reason, but it certainly creates a lot of buzz when people talk about that. And I think it's going to be a real positive brand extension of what you're doing. Well, all you guys around here are operating companies and brands. I mean, you know, the biggest thing you can do for your brand is for somebody to experience your brand, not just see it or hear it or whatever, like actually have a feeling about it. How do you create a feeling about your brand? That's a hard thing to do.

So there's a million hockey talks in downtown Nashville, but there's only one that's got a hero's bar in it where the first drinks on the house. You know? Yeah. That's a feeling about that. That's absolutely right. Yeah. Whether you've ever walk in that bar or not, you're going to have heard about that,

and you know a lot about what we stand for by hearing that story. Just curious, any veterans in here with us? Would you stand? Let's give you some love. I just feel like we need to do that. And thank you guys. I owe all you guys a beer. That's what I was going to say.

Head on down to downtown Nashville. Come on down. We got one waiting. Get yourself a free one on the house at the Heroes Bar. Before we let you go, just because, you know, it's so fun to, to get the backstory of people like you. And I introduced you as a former winner of The Apprentice. And of course, that was Donald Trump's reality show. And I know you know Donald well. We're not going to get into politics. Don't worry. But what you may not know about John, not only did he win it,

but he does a really good Donald Trump impression. It's pretty great. I mean, John Rich, you won my show. Can I interview you as Donald right now? I don't know if I can go that far. All right. So let's try it. Because you know what will happen. They're going to chop it up and I'll be on CNN. And they're going to go, oh, John Rich. You know, I remember. remember one of my favorite moments with Donald Trump was though we're at the boardroom and he leans in and his whole thing is he'll lean in when he talks to you because he's big he's a big guy and he's got that big personality he'll lean in and most people lean back like that when he leans in because it's literally you can feel him kind of pushing you so he leaned into me and i leaned

right back like that he kind of went okay he goes so john rich how was Gary Busey as your project manager. He's looking at me with those eyes, you know, like this. I said, Mr. Trump, he's the nicest bunch of guys I've ever met. And he goes, that's pretty good. That's funny. I mean, Gary, you're talented, but let's be honest, you're kind of nuts, right, Gary? I mean, it's a good point.

It's good people. That's pretty good. And so that's kind of, I think, went a long way for me winning that show is that when he leaned in, I leaned in. I didn't lean back. He's one of those guys that he's going to test you with all of that. And I think that goes into business big time, especially if you're dealing with somebody more powerful than you.

They got more on the table than you. Don't ever lean back when they lean in. When they lean in, you lean in the same exact amount. You know, there's a lesson. That's that telepathy that's going on when you're doing those negotiations. Well, thanks for sharing that. That's just kind of a fun thing there. But the reason we wanted you here is because I think many times we see somebody as one thing,

an artist, a producer, and a star, and yet you've got this amazing business motor inside of you. And I know you appreciate entrepreneurs. Dave says this all the time. He said it earlier this week that the people we're looking at right now, John, and then the hundreds and hundreds of thousands that are going to listen to this on the podcast, they are the backbone of the economy. And so what would you say just to encourage these men and women and what they're doing? Because sometimes they feel maybe lonely.

They've got a lot going on. Sure. hold mine for dear life sometimes, what would you say to them to encourage them? Well, I can put it into terms that I deal with on a daily basis. So, Big and Rich, we're signed to Warner Brothers records for a decade. And one day we turned in a record that they didn't expect because Kenny and I write so many songs. We had all these songs, and so we went and recorded 10 of them and we said, I think we just recorded a new record. Warner Brothers is going to be so pumped that just out of nowhere here's this new Big and Rich record. And we walk in and lay it on the desk and they

went, what's that? We go, it's a new record. They went, okay, and they listened to it, and they went, wow, this is some of the best music you've ever done. We went, yeah, and they said, it's going to be over a year before we can put a single out, because we've already laid out our entire year, and you guys weren't in the plans to come with new music, so you're going to have to wait at least a year to put something out on this record. I said, well, I thought you said, this is some of the best music you've ever heard. They said, it is, but you're still going to have to wait over a year. Well, that's a killer. You can't wait a year. You can't be off the radio for a year in our business or somebody will fill that spot when you're gone for that year. So we had to

take a hard look at that. Kenny and I and go, do we want to wait a year? Do we want to ask out of our record deal, which means you lose the leverage of that label? And if we do, do we want to go to another label or what do we want to do? So we decided, you know what? Let's bet on ourselves. Let's go for it. So we started big and rich records. We asked the record label to let us out of our deal and give us our music back. We asked pretty forcefully asked, but they did it, you know, to their credit. They let us out.

We started Big and Rich Records, which is a P.O. Box. That's our building. It's a P.O. box, literally. And then a bunch of really hardworking people that have come in around the edges, 30 Tigers, New Revolution, people that have come into our situation

as promotion and sales forces. But at the end of the day, Big Kenny and I got our own money in it. We're betting hit by hit by hit. that we're going to have success. And what do you know? This record, three top ten singles in a row, which had never happened at Warner.

They had never put three back-to-back top tens on Big and Rich. So it's risky to do it, but man, how many heartbeats do you have? You only have so many. I say go for it, you know, while you have the shot. And if somebody tells you you can't do that because X, Y, Z, go, oh, let me think about that for a minute. Oh, it's a geographical location. Where is it?

Three words. Where is it? You'd be surprised how the most simple answer, or the simple thought can unlock the door that you're trying to get through is what I've discovered. So I would say that version of that would probably work for everybody in this room. Absolutely. Good stuff. Well, our time is up. It has been absolutely fun. I want to thank Dr. Henry Cloud, who phoned in from Beverly Hills. I want to thank John Rich for being with us today. You are live audience. And so, as I say, every podcast on behalf of Eric the producer and the

entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk you with you again. very soon.