The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 270 Chris Clews, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches Us About Today’s Workplace Book

Episode Date: February 23, 2019

Chris Clews, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches Us About Today's Workplace Book

Bye folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, come in here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We of course have all the best guests on thechrisvossshow.com and today's going to be a dual podcast show. We're going to have the Chris Voss Show podcast, of course, hosting the show. And it will also be found on our Book Author Podcast. So you can go to bookauthorpodcast.com and you can see that. You can decide which podcast you want to subscribe to at any time. And of course, you can go to the chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com and subscribe to all the different shows. I think there's six or seven over there. But if you want to listen to 100% book author interviews,

you can do that on the bookauthorpodcast.com or you can just see everything we have on the chrisfossshow.com podcast as well. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss. If you're into gaming, you can also go to our Twitch channel at twitch.tv forward slash chris boss if you're into gaming you can also go to our twitch channel twitch.tv forward slash chris boss we're giving away some really cool game codes and different things over there so you can see some of that stuff as well uh today's guest is chris clues oh my gosh he's a marketing executive speaker and an author of the book what 80s pop culture teaches us about today's workplace it's the first in a series that finds the lessons, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches Us About Today's Workplace. It's the first in a

series that finds the lessons from the 1980s movies for the workplace today. And he even has a second one due late in the spring that he's coming out with another book. He's along with being an author, he's a speaker, frequent business and 80s podcast guest. Chris is currently the head of marketing for DHL Resilience 360, and he resides in Deerfield Beach, Florida. We don't hold the Florida against him. Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Chris? I'm doing great, Chris.

I get all my Florida friends. You guys have the, I don't know what's going on down there, man, but there's something in your guys' water. We have Florida man down here. That's what they always say. Florida man's in the news all the time. You guys just had a mayor get arrested

down there for being a doctor in his own house or something because they pulled his license and they just did a big raid on him. And then another one just a couple weeks ago for licking people's faces or something. Around here, that's what I call Wednesdays. So let's talk about you.

Let's get to know Chris a little bit better. I mean, you've done a few things. You've been a stand-up comic. I understand your past history. Yeah, I do stand-up comedy for fun here and there. I just go up on stage just once in a while. And the first time I did it, I actually decided just to go straight to the improv for an open mic. Typically,

when I go do something, I go all in. I go hard. I don't go gradual. It's like your first marriage. You did the improv, the comedy improv on Sunset Boulevard there?

In West Palm Beach, Florida. Oh, West Palm Beach, Florida. They have them all over the place. Yeah. One of my friends used to babysit, oh, what's his name? The kid from the, not from the improv, but from the comedy store. That's the one I'm thinking of. But, yeah, it's quite challenging to do improv, I would imagine.

Well, I mean, I was lucky. I do open mics where you can prepare your material for about five minutes, and then you get up there and do your thing. And I'll tell you, the first time you do it, it's pretty terrifying. Looking out over this crowd and knowing that you don't know, 95% of the people have no idea who you are, and you have to try to make them laugh at your jokes. And you can feel your heart coming through your chest you're pretty sure everybody

else can see it too so yeah yeah i remember one time i did i was uh speaking uh uh at an event back east somewhere and they had like uh they had uh the front row they didn't tell me but the whole front row the speaker folks were were a group of people who were deaf and uh and i was telling jokes and like most of the room was laughing but the front row i couldn't get the laugh and it really started driving me crazy you know i started losing it my speech right and they're just looking at me like who's this fucking guy? And it just threw my whole speech off because I didn't know those guys were like the deaf crew up front. And I'm like, I'm telling them jokes. I'm trying to, you know, interact with them a little bit.

And I'm just, you know, dying on stage with this front row thing. And, you know, it becomes one of those things where as a comedian, you just start, you know, you focus in on the guy who's who's not laughing because you're like what do i got to do to get this guy to laugh and uh yeah i i came off stage just ready to quit ever speaking again and i'm like what the is with the front row and they're just like yeah they're all deaf they can't hear you which is probably good anyway so i'm not that funny i encourage anybody who if you have a fear of speaking if you have a fear of getting up in front of people putting together five minutes of comedy material go up on an improv stage or go up on a stage at any comedy your local comedy club do that five minutes and i can assure you you will never have a problem get in front of anybody at

work ever again for meetings presentations it's the best the best thing you can do. And if you do a comedy stand-up tryout in LA, you're literally there I think you pay like 15 bucks for five minutes or something and you probably have to buy some drinks or something too. But everybody in the room is there doing the same thing you are trying to try out.

They don't even want you to succeed. They're just not even going to laugh. They're just like fuck this guy. You're basically sitting in a room trying to make a bunch of people that just want to see you fail and that also paid 15 bucks for five minutes they're just like get the fuck off the stage so it's a brutal business writing jokes and and being they're trying to be funny or being funny and i think some people they get out and they you learn you know it's funny as you do but yes definitely a trial by fire when it comes down to it especially improv so you did a little bit of that you grew up of course in the 80s which is where you

wrote this book out of the experience and knowledge I guess you gain from getting going through one of the greatest periods of music and pop culture ever. I am clearly biased with my age, obviously. And you're a huge sports fan. You've done some NCAA basketball stuff, PGA something. Yeah, so I've been lucky enough with my marketing career to do some pretty cool sports sponsorships, NCAA basketball, Major League Baseball, PGA.

And my favorite was the UFC. Sponsored a bunch of UFC fighters about five or six years ago, which was just pretty awesome. That was a lot of fun, that experience. And so, yeah. And you also did some – this is kind of interesting that's in your bio. You did some stint as a bell kind of interesting. That's in your bio. You did some, uh, stint as a bell man at several hotels on the Disney property and it's security for celebrities back in the day.

Back in the day. Uh, interesting Disney celebrity, uh, uh, celebrity stories. Anything salacious? Yeah,

there's, there's some, there's some interesting, you see some interesting things for sure. Yeah, absolutely. But working at Disney was pretty cool. I mean, it's a great experience if you're in your 20s and you're out of college

and you want to learn about true customer service. It's a great place to learn. Yeah. Did you ever get into any arguments with Mickey Mouse or anything like that? No, it was once, but that was it. Yeah. It'd be funny. I'd go to work at Disney and then I'd find out that the guy who's playing Mickey Mouse is like an asshole.

And like he has some sort of beef with me that I don't know what the beef would be. And then we just have to, you know, I'd just be like, I'd hate Mickey Mouse after that. It would just ruin my whole childhood. That's probably the way it is. Yeah, I was lucky I didn't have to be around those guys too much. So I think the experience was pretty cool, I will say. I mean, seriously, if you think about it, you've got to wear a goddamn costume all day long in 70-degree heat in California. Are you really that happy?

I mean, I'd be drinking on the inside of the costume. That's what I'd be doing. I'd be like, I'd be like, well, what's that Santa movie with what's-his-face? I'd be that guy with the costumes. I'd be fired from Disney in five minutes. They'd just be like, hey, man,

this guy's got to go. Plus, I'd be a really fat fucking Mickey Mouse, so that would probably be inappropriate in some way. You'd be too tall, man. Trust me. It's like, uh,

yeah, it's a, it's a, I'll tell you, it is a, it's a pretty cool place to, to kind of, I mean,

I guess cut your teeth. And, uh, when I moved to Orlando, I actually just literally after college, I packed up my car and a couple hundred bucks and drove. And it was 1993. So we had no cell phones.

There was no way to communicate with anybody on the way down except stopping at a pay phone. Wow. Yeah, I remember those days. I'm in South Carolina. I'm here. I'm there. And I ended up in Orlando and was lucky enough to land a job at Disney to keep myself going because before that, I was literally pasta without the sauce I could afford the pasta or the sauce and the pasta was more filling so I remember those days you know sometimes you'd you'd just eat the the uncooked top ramen just

so you'd have some solid food for a change instead of just top ramen so you sprinkle that seasoning package on there because like you know that seasoning right there there. Cause it's like, you know, that seasoning right there. So let's get to your book. What eighties pop culture teaches us about today's workplace. So what the hell is this book about? Like what is, what is going on with this? Is it Ferris Bueller's day off where I just need to call in sick for the day

for the workplace? Yeah. Well, that's, that's one lesson actually. Life balance. What's that's one lesson actually uh life balance what's that well let's talk about the book uh that you can get this on amazon i imagine in a few different places um and uh uh so you you you basically take the lessons from the

80s different things from the pop culture and and how we can apply it to the workplace. Yeah, so you can buy the book on Amazon. I actually have a website as well, chriscluze.com, C-L-E-W-S. Same on Facebook and LinkedIn and then also on Twitter. I was actually lucky enough, surprisingly, about eight months ago, I went for my Twitter handle and at 80s pop culture was available. So it's pretty easy. It ties right back to the book. Seriously? That was available? I couldn't believe it.

It was a sign. So I have at 80s pop culture as my Twitter handle. And yeah, the book's available on Amazon and I'm actually about halfway through, close to halfway through the second book. And then that one's going to have larger distribution. What's the name of the second book? Do you have a name for it yet? Is it going to be

the 90s pop culture? No, actually, I'm going to put my flag on top of the 80s mountain. Are you? You're going down with the 80s. They're just going to ride that fucking train all the way. Good for you. And I've got the... So there'll be what 80s pop culture

teaches us about today's workplace. And the first one is mixtape number One the mixtape number two mixtape number three Because we all used to make mixtapes in the 80s so And each one of them will take ten movies from the 80s and find the business lessons in them. That's awesome, man I've seen I've seen the videos of you get up and you talk about and you're speaking about what you guys learned and lessons learned. Give us some examples of some of the lessons you used in your book. Yeah, excellent.

So I'll give you one right off the bat that I think is a really important one for today's workplace and that's from the Goonies. So if you remember the Goonies, they were just a bunch of kids and two of the characters in particular really stuck with me.

It was Chunk and Sloth. Both of them phenomenal characters. Actually, Chunk now is an entertainment lawyer out in LA. He's doing fantastic on that side of the business. Sloth was played by Ted Matuszak, who was an

Oakland Raider back in the day and so they taught us about inclusion and they taught us a really important lesson about inclusion in the workplace if you remember back in the movie chunk was thrown down in the basement uh by the fatali family right and sloth was chained up down there he was one of their brothers but he was chained up because of the way he looked. He had this stone-shaped head and his ears that wiggled and eyes that were offset and missing some teeth. He was a strange-looking guy.

My parents did the same with me. I get it. Yeah. And you might like Baby Ruth too, right? You didn't have to agree with me, but we'll get... He gets down there and, of course, Sloth is chained up and eventually when he gets unchained, he picks up Chunk, and Chunk says, man, you smell like phys ed.

And so not only is Sloth awkward looking, but he smells like phys ed. And Chunk looks past all of this. All he wants to do is be his friend. That's all he cares about, wants to be his friend, bring him into the group, include him, the whole idea of inclusion, include him in the group, and in and in return what did they get they found out that swath's greatest asset was his loyalty and at the end of the movie he saves their lives he puts himself in front of his family and saves their lives over his family and shows his loyalty to them and so there's a really important lesson in there for the workplace there There is. Fuck family. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Yeah. Some people do that in the workplace too, man. That's true too. I mean, I've had a few friends who have ignored their family and ended up in messy divorces because they work too much. You don't have to do that. You've got to pay the bills. Whatever. You can't make everyone happy.

I've had personal relationships where I've worked too much and let them uh i i've had personal relationships where uh you know i've worked too much and and let them slide sometimes they were business relationships where where uh where we focus so much on the business that the friendship fell away and then the partnership fell away in the business so those uh i don't know some different ways that that happens well no it's a good it's a good segue into into when you mentioned Ferris Bueller earlier. Ferris Bueller taught us about work-life balance, but in a couple of interesting contexts. And I'll kind of set up the story about why I came up with that idea of Ferris Bueller and work-life balance.

We're not talking about being at work at extended hours. This is going back probably 1998, 1999. And I was working for an interactive ad agency. So you know I've been in digital marketing for a while. In 1998, we were getting 25% click-through rates on our banners because people were just fascinated by, wait a minute, I click this and then I go to another website? This is incredible. They didn't care about what the website was.

They were just fascinated by this animation. And I was working for a client at the agency. My mom had come down to see me i hadn't seen her in a couple of years i moved to florida and i was just busy doing things and she came down on a friday i was supposed to meet her at a restaurant at eight o'clock this is in the book and um i didn't get there till after 10 because i was working on a project for a client who by the way a year later nothing really mattered anyway. The site was out of business.

The company was out of business. And, you know, I missed this opportunity with my mom, and I left her at the restaurant for several hours by herself. My mom was one of the greatest people you could ever meet. I mean, just a gentle soul and very patient. And so thank you. But out of that, you know, I learned a valuable lesson about what's important. And Ferris teaches us that in a little bit of a different way. But what he does, he goes one step further. And what he teaches us is, think about when you're

in your workplace, your place of business, there's always you always have a camera, there's always a camera and fry at your business, somebody who's typically always unhappy, they're just things aren't going well in their life. They tend to be negative, not in a way that pushes people away necessarily. I told you not to talk about me. I'm just kidding.

Is that you? No, I'm just kidding. That doesn't seem like you. Cameron Frye, everybody has a Cameron Frye at work. Ferris taught us not only about work-life balance, but that it's important that sometimes you feel good about your life, things are going well for you, to make sure that if you take that day off that you take your work

because they need to work with you. Force them like he did. Force them to come with you. Don't let them sit there and say, you know, when Cameron was in Egypt's land, let my camera go to come with you, um, on that day off and,

and spend some time away. You know, my Tinder has that same sort of click through rate, about 25%. Yeah. Mostly women going, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? I just,

they just want to see, you know, I'm messed up. This dude is screenshot me and send me to all their friends on Facebook and go complete this assholes on fucking tinder so there's not 25% as well yeah but there's no there's no follow click through the sales funnel ends there that's pretty much what it is um you know whatever at least I'm popular so whatever that means I don't know so there's a lot of cool things we can learn I think I think a lot of people that changed a lot of people's mindset that movie Ferris Bueller's Day

Off and gave people kind of a perspective thing also you know I mean one of the one of mean, one of the greatest scenes in the movie is when they leap the car, when the car goes off and it plays the Imperial Star Wars music. That's just such a great scene. It goes

off. I mean, the 80s had some of the best times, some of the best movies, some of the best TVs. I mean, it was a really great creative age and it was and a lot of it came from I think the late 70s and in a lot of creative studios whether it was movies or music or anything else there still was this creative thing that was going on that wasn't quite the controlling part the controlling part of corporate culture and uh manipulation uh what's the word i'm looking for pay the pay uh the the payola sort of that came

around with mariah carey um you know back in those days they would take music labels would take bands and they will let them make the music they wanted for the most part and so they would make this music and sometimes it would be good sometimes it would be not really great and then they'd be like well you know we'll give you three or four albums to work out that band thing and that music thing you know and then you know they progressively get better and then all of a sudden some band that you know had a bunch of shitty albums would all of a sudden have that hit album that would hit in the 80s and you're just like all right you know those those four albums they did made you know everything better when it finally came out uh and then of course the uh i think it

was the a and r man started showing up and the corporate people started showing up going oh we need to we need to take this magic and try and control it and start killing the the creationism the creative the creationism the creative juices of the 1980s and then you know you got to the 90s and and everything went downhill after that um the uh nirvana excuse me uh grunge uh no i'm just kidding i'm just kidding my millennials ideas about that by the way about the whole creative thing in the 80s I'd love to hear your take on it because I just spewed out mine I could be wrong

I think there was a couple of things that happened in the 80s we were moving towards independence in terms of people, people being able to be as you know, Depeche Mode said people are people, right? so people being able to be as, you know, Depeche Mode said people are people, right? So people being able to be who they wanted to be.

And it was the first time in the 80s where somebody could walk down the street with a purple mohawk. And sure, there were people that kind of looked twice, but a lot of people just walked right by him and said, you know, that's it. It's a purple mohawk, big deal. And that was the first time in the 80s that we experienced that. I think that independence and creative spirit and everybody kind of starting to accept people for who they were. And that drove a lot of the creativity, right?

Where in the 70s, everyone was just kind of like a freak and looked down upon because everyone lived in the 60s with that IBM sort of model where everyone wears a black suit and a black tie and a black hat and shows up to work and no one has any color or personality and and yeah uh who was one of the big pop culture things that really changed uh the look and feel of all that madonna and then uh uh cindy lopper cindy lopper was affecting pop culture during that thing and And really, you know, going color, uh, culture club, uh, was all about color and personality. Uh, I think the cure,

um, I'm trying to think of some other bands, but yeah, it was, it was really this great time of, of experimentation and, uh, try new things.

And, and, uh, you know, there were some people in the older crowd that are like, you know, fucking kids. Um, but for the most part, the most part it was it was just a great time there's wonderful things that were happening sound was getting better we there was a

lot of individualism that came out of that you saw the launch of the Walkman Sony Walkman I remember being so proud of that and for the first time you were free of the radio, which you, if you grew up in my era, you literally sat by the radio and you called the DJ and said, play my favorite song. Yeah.

Song that they issued nowadays. Um, but Sally from John for, I would, I would call, I would call the DJ like relentlessly. Like, it's amazing They didn't have call blocking back then because they're like look we're not gonna play Steely Dan real in the years yet

That comes up every you know top every hour. Just calm down buddy and He had so much. Yeah, it's so much great stuff. I think disco was just rounding out at that time You had you know know lots of great heavy metal music Metallica lots I mean just so much great music came out of there great movies I mean they're still making you know reruns of all the great movies of the 80s Star Wars you know it's kind of like every every great creative thing kind of came out of that era.

Yeah, you know, I talk about that a little bit in the book as well, this idea that the 80s, the decade of the 80s and the creative energy that was there and why. And so what's really interesting is I was doing research for the book and one of the things that I do in each chapter before I get into the movie and the workplace lessons that it taught us, I set up the time frame. So I say if a movie came out in June of 1983, for example, I went back and I looked at what the top 40 music was, what the movies at the box office were, the television. And I talked a little bit about that, the kind of taking back to that time, or if you weren't around in that time to kind of show you what it was like. And what I found that was really interesting, and it kind of proves the point we're talking about with this individualism, the top 40 was so diverse and so

eclectic. I love the word plethora. So I like to throw it in anytime I can. There's just this plethora of music genres. And if you look at the top 40, even the top 10, you would have everything like a Debbie Gibson, right next to a warrant yeah next to you know Grandmaster Flash I mean incredible mix of music and then oh let me just throw in like Kenny Rogers who happened to be yeah I think that's one of the first country crossovers wasn't he he was yeah yeah he was actually friends going you gotta listen to this album the gambler what is it it's country country but you know I've been I think I've always been Kenny Rogers fan he's a good guy you know the top 40 everything I mean I hate to sound

old but I mean legitimately everything does sound very much the same and it's about that hope that package fine it works make a lot of money from it and stick to it and then and then comedy make a lot of money from it and stick to it and then and then comedy yeah a lot of great comedy that came out the comedy store live at the improv uh i mean what a great comedy era that the 80s were you had uh all the great comedians uh george carlin of course george carlin was around back in the 50s and 60s, but you had... Eddie Murphy. I saw Eddie Murphy raw live. Yeah, Eddie Murphy. You saw it live live? I saw it live.

Damn, dude. That's the reason I'm still single. It was incredible. Yeah, that was... I always stay away from the Ritz crackers. Or hold on, it's the saltine crackers. Anyway, whatever, you get me. But so many great comedians have that culture.

I mean, for me, just everything was vibrant and lively. When grunge came along, I was like, what the hell is this depressing shit? I am a Nirvana's fan now. I like Nirvana. But at the time, when grunge came out you were just like wow we went from bright colors and rainbows and sunlight to some really dark shit yeah maybe that was the path we were on some people see the chains down in a hole I mean we went deep we were really dark like we're just gonna have to deepen I was a Metallica fan,

so I was pretty dark. I was just like, what the hell is this crap? It was a collected time. It was a great time. So many wonderful things politically. So many crazy things going on. I think in the 80s, didn't we have the fall of the Berlin Wall in 89?

Yeah, absolutely. The mind's starting to go crazy. I'll tell you, it was an incredible decade. And when you talk about the movies, for example, one of the reasons that people say, well, why 80s movies? What is it about 80s movies that they keep coming back? And so even now, I have friends who have kids that are 20 years old, 22 years old, and some of their favorite movies are from the 80s. And so you think about why is that?

And I think part of it was if you go back to the 80s and you look at the types of movies that were being made. Today, if you make a movie and you get halfway through the movie and you realize my movie is not good or the acting, the dialogue, whatever it is, something's not good. I have a big enough budget. I'll just throw a couple million dollars at some CGI. And then everybody will say, you know, special effects. Everybody will say, man, you got to go see this movie in the theater. How many times have you heard that? You got to go see this movie. In the eighties, they didn't have that option. So if you wrote a bad movie,

if your movie was bad from a character development perspective, a dialogue perspective, a plot, people weren't going to go. And the markets that are open today for a bad movie to make money anyway, weren't there. So you spent six months at the box office in the US. I mean, this is real four to six months. And then five months later, you're on HBO. And then four months later, you're in the video store. That was pretty much it. That was all the market there was. Now, if your movie doesn't make money in the US, you send it overseas and you can make money off of it there.

It's hard not to make your money back now. Then they didn't have a choice. They couldn't throw special effects at it. Maybe they had to work harder to make really good movies because now, through the stuff they make nowadays, you're just like, what the hell? Did you know that was going to go directly to video and you just phoned it in

or something? It's just one of those things where you're just like, what the hell went on? Did you know this was going to VCR, but there's not VCRs anymore. Well, there are. You can get them on YouTube.

The thing is is with these with these you own a vcr i just realized i thought i actually have a vcr because i actually have tapes my mom gave me some tapes of my childhood she had the old eight millimeters reels put on the on the 60 millimeter eight whatever put on the video so one of these days i guess i gotta go ahead and put on the 60 millimeter 8, whatever, put on the video. So one of these days, I guess I got to go ahead and put on a CD. Or wait, those are gone too. Yeah, but everything, you know, listen, I have a record player again, so vinyl is coming back. Yeah.

I mean, the great thing about the 80s too is like you lived, you still, you caught the album era and the CD era. And like me, you probably went into the CD record store, and you would spend like four fucking hours just wandering the different albums, looking through them, reading the liner notes, trying to figure out if you wanted to plunk down your $12 for that LP. Yeah, absolutely.

And then, then I would go next door to the arcade and spend a bunch of quarters playing dragon's lair or Galaga or something. You know what I mean? That's, that's another thing that, you know, Galaga and all the different things.

I mean, in the, in the early eighties, we had the arcade shops and you went there, the pile four quarters and they had the big arcade machines and and that was how you played video games and then eventually commodore 64s and apple computers came out and you know you had little tape memory the cassette tape memory you know i love that there's a meme I always see on Facebook and social media

where it shows a cassette and it shows a pencil and says, if you know what to do with this, you probably grew up in the 80s. Yeah. You'd be like, hey, what are you doing? I'm rewinding my Van Halen tape, man. I'm trying to get back to the beginning. My Walkman batteries are dead, man. I just got to rewind this thing.

You know, the problem was they do the, they'd make the cassettes and they, you know, they have the A side and the B side and the B side sometimes it'd be short, especially if it was like Van Halen or Rolling Stones. So that'd be like 50 miles of real you had to do. And you didn't want to burn through your battery. So you just hand wind it with a pencil. Those are high-tech days these kids have no idea what they're suffering but everything that you're talking about is what made the 80s great and why character man that built character yeah yeah

and rewind your own shit you talked about the whole idea of this evolution across you know the entire decade and all the things that there i think there was just an explosion of stuff i think is the best way to say it yeah um and that was it was the first time that we had that you know we there was this explosion of stuff and there was something for everyone i think that's the big yeah and you had you know hip-hop came into fashion but there was still punk rock you still had you still had the sex pistols you still had you know johnnyhop came into fashion but there was still punk rock you still had you still had the sex pistols you still had you know johnny rotten you still had this you still had the edgy punk you had the hip-hop coming in you had you know if people wanted to

listen to debbie gibson and tiffany they could listen to debbie gibson and tiffany you still had how huge they were man it was you had the cure you had the smiths you had it all and um yeah yeah debbie gibson no wait it was tiffany and said i think we're alone now they were both You had the Curie, you had the Smiths. You had it all. And, yeah, Debbie Gibson. No, wait, it was Tiffany who said, I think we're alone now. They were both, like, just freaking too huge for their time. I think they really set the stage for the Mariah Carey, Paola. I think that's when the decade really started dying. I remember I was a huge – you can correct me because you maybe studied the 80s when i did but for me where the

80s really started to die was when the paola started to die when the a and r men started showing up in in uh bands studios going no we need more synthesizers and we gotta we gotta control this we gotta start getting uh we gotta start you know getting the dailies on what you guys are doing so we can listen to them and then shape the music you know there's more of a corporate shaping um i remember i was a huge kansas fan and i was really excited to get their new album and it was going to be freaking huge and the uh ceo and president of mci decided he wanted to bang mariah carey and so he got in with her and then he canned every album that was coming out on the mci label just just didn't market it just threw

it in the drink really when it came down to it they issued the albums and said have fun with that um and they put all their peel and money into mariah carey and to me and then pale was you know really started taking off large talks about it from metallic and other people i think that's what really started killing the 80s it went from that bright that bright you know spontaneous creative thing like you're talking about to where everyone's like how do we make some money off of this you know the whole corporate thing yeah my take on it i don't know no no it's a good take i mean and again i think that's why it's just things keep coming back there to the 80s because of the there was this this individual freedom this creativity that we just i don't think i'm not

sure that we're ever going to see it again and the reason that when you think about the great characters of in movie history so many of them come from the 80s and they've stuck with us. And so that's, you know, I mean, there's just not a decade like it, in my opinion. Video games, of course, really started hitting the stride. The PlayStation 3, I think,

came out in the 80s. I think it was... We definitely had PlayStation 3. Yeah, it was trying to come out. You had Nintendo, you had Atari. Game was starting to come out. But I think that's the reason things went so dark with grunge and everything. I think the money and the corporate powers that wanted to be, you know,

like one of my favorite fans, Rush, talks about this. Like in 1986, I think it was, the A&R guys started showing up in the studio going, hey, I'm the rep from the label, and we're going to help you guys sell albums here by manufacturing this music a little bit better than what you guys are doing. They're like, hey, we're just artists. We want to make beautiful music. And they're like, no, we're going to meddle with it a bit and uh you need more synthesizers you need more you know whatever and and uh and i think that's i think that's where the beauty of the 80s started to really

come down that's why we got the 90s um that and a bunch of millennials got born so I kid my millennial folks you bastards um the and then we had Gen Y and Gen X and and now we know my portions legal I'm just kidding seriously anyway so what else can we learn from your book yeah so I think I think what I really I kind of want a lot of times people ask me the question how did you come up with this idea of tying 80s movies to the workplace like what would prompt this and so uh i think it's a good lesson because like a lot of people i was in a job that just really wasn't working for me and um i kind of came home one day and i I was having a self-pity party of one, I guess you would say.

Friday's around here with a bottle of vodka. We call that Friday's around here with a bottle of vodka. It was a self-pity party of one. No one else is going to feel sorry for you. I was home on a Saturday afternoon and I was watching The Breakfast Club, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

I got the Don't You Forget About Me up there in the back. And also the, you know, if he gets up, we'll all get up. It'll be Anarchy, which is one of my favorite quotes. And so I was watching The Breakfast Club. And at one point when Principal Vernon comes in and the door is shut because Bender's taking the screws out of the door so he can't see into the library. And he says, you know, who took the screws out of the door? And Bender's taking the screws out of the door so he can't see into the library and he says you know who who took the screws out of the door and Bender says screws fall out all the time the world's an imperfect place and it was it was I kind of like sat up on my couch and I it just resonated though that line screws fall out all the time the world's an imperfect place just it hit me in a weird way and I realized like that your job your career your business can be an

imperfect place and from there I just thought maybe I can take two things that I know well which is business and 80s and figure out a way to put them together and I wrote an article on LinkedIn called what the breakfast club taught us about. Hello. And it just got this – I was shocked at the reaction that I got from it. People were responding from everywhere saying, hey, this is really cool. This is a great idea. So I wrote another one, Ferris Bueller and Work-Life Balance, and then I started thinking maybe I have something here. And I started to look back at the movies, and I realized if you just look at them in a different light, if you just if you if you break them down a little bit, you can find these really cool lessons in them.

And and it's usually what the characters said. So E.T., for example, you know, at the end of E.T. And by the way, I will tell you that I typically I don't typically shed a tear in movies, but I did at two. One was E.T. when he was on the side of the riverbed he was just looking like he was gonna die and the other one was when Wilson floated away and cast away when the volleyball floated away and Tom said, Wilson I'm sorry I don't I don't know why but I cried for a volleyball and an alien but never anywhere else. did i leave you as a kid or something no i don't think so yeah i don't know maybe i'm a fine person i'm just wondering just trying to figure out the whole volleyball thing yeah it was weird i don't know

i was i was actually at the movie theater with my buddy a girl named volleyball one day and she just up and left you or something she might be remember? I might have put that away somewhere. Yeah, you might want to see a shrink. If you start finding you want to buy guns, just see a shrink. Talk to somebody. My buddy was next to me and he said, is it weird that I'm crying for a volleyball?

And I said, no, man. Everybody in a theater is. I wish I'd gotten into that movie more. For some reason, I didn't get in that movie. I don't know why. Tom Hanks is an incredible actor. I love Tom Hanks. I don't know.

Maybe I was just busy. I remember watching it in pieces. Maybe I was just really disconnected. Maybe I just didn't drink enough. I used to like to really drink and watch movies because then I get more emotionally captured to them. It's a personal issue. Well, give it a shot.

See what happens. Don't worry. I'm seeing it. My guys are so upset. Don't do that. Go watch E.T. But no, what you bring up about The Breakfast Club is The Breakfast Club resonated with everybody in the 80s. That's why it was so huge and popular because it was what you're talking about.

It was so many different people. It was the loser. It was the reject. It was the weird chick who was kind of, wasn't one of them kind of, what's that Cure look that I'm thinking of with the dark, you know, everything? Yeah, the Gotham. Yeah, and then you had the Drock,

who I think was Emilio Estevez. You just had this whole crew of people. I think that's the other reason that St. Elmo's Fire was a big hit, too, because you had these people from all these different walks of life, all these different characters and different angles on life,

and they were still friends because they were joined at the hip from the high school sort of experience. And a lot of great movies from that era and stuff. Yeah, The Breakfast Club, I'm glad you brought that up because The Breakfast Club, you're right, there was the geek, the princess, the jock, the athlete, and the basket case. And so you had these five characters characters and every high school has them. That's, that's the thing that that's why it resonates today.

Every single high school has those five characters in it and they will long after we're gone. And so that's why that, that movie I think resonates so much with people is because we see ourselves in one of those characters or we see ourselves in all of those characters. And so it really does um it really does it really does resonate and it will continue um to resonate for years and in fact uh i was watching a documentary about finding john hughes that a uh a couple kids from canada they uh in 2009 before he passed away they were on a mission to find john hughes because they wanted him to understand

how much his movies had an impact on them and they they were in their late twenties at the time. So they weren't even old enough in the eighties to appreciate the movies. They had to watch them afterwards, but they were so taken by his, the movies, particularly the breakfast club that they wanted to let him know. And they filmed this documentary when they went on a mission to go find him. And in the process, they interviewed high school kids and they asked them, what's your, you know, do you know who John Hughes is? And they were like, oh yeah, never seen The Breakfast Club. And they're like, my favorite movie ever, Ferris Bueller, love it. And these kids were 15 years old, but it's, it just, it's, it's got, it just resonates. He knew how to talk to teenagers. He knew what it was like to go through that. And I wish I had the,

I wish I had the power or the money to be able to get The Breakfast Club on Broadway because I think it's perfect. I'm really surprised someone has done it. Dude, you've got a million dollar thing there. Fuck you. Nobody's done it. It's shocking to me. It's like a perfect...

You've got to go get Frank, Andrew, whoever that guy is that writes all those Broadway musicals. You gotta go have him punch one out. One room. And I think Michael is the big playwright. What's that? Everyone loved that movie.

I mean, you probably recently saw, I call her AOC. I'm forgetting her name now. I had to Google it. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Wasn't it cool how she did the Breakfast Club dance? Yeah. All the Republicans freaked out. Like, oh, my God, I'm going to win that in the Congress.

You're just like, no, that's really epic. But she's 29. And so, again, 29 years old, not even old enough to be, you know, I don't even know, let's see, 29 years old. So she wasn't even born in the 80s but she's doing that dance and i guess that's the whole thing that that's again we go back to this idea of the 80s and what is it about this decade that people are still still looking at it and saying if i wasn't there i would have been interested to be part of it and so i'm gonna i'm gonna take some of those things from the movies and I'm going to use them. And it's pretty cool. I mean, it's like,

it's, it's, uh, you know, going back to ET, uh, ET taught us a really valuable lesson before it was even popular. And that was about social responsibility. And so you think about ET and you go back to that movie. And at the very end, ET says to,ertie and um elliot the last thing he says is be good right be good these are two words that he said before he went back home be good and that was all about being good to each other being good to the planet being good to the environment that's what i took out of it and you look at these companies today, and part of the book I talk about how some of those companies like Warby Parker and Yubi and Tom's, who built their business model on social responsibility, on giving back. And they're making a profit, and they're giving back.

They're doing the two things that you would want your business to do. And it's pretty remarkable. So we've come all this way now where people can actually take a day off from work to volunteer and the companies encourage it instead of saying, take a sick day or take your vacation day. They're encouraging their employees to volunteer and get involved. Definitely. I mean, I think we moved away, you know, we moved away from the corporate man, the IBM man, if you remember that in the 60s you know you you were you weren't gonna show up at IBM with a gray suit on or a gray

hat and warmer hats or gray shoes you showed up in black top to bottom corporate uniform you don't right outside the lines you don't think outside the box you follow the thing and then we you know we went through the crazy 70s where everything was up and up was down and there was the real sort of culture clash sort of thing and then of course we went to the 80s where like you say it became much more like hey it's okay to be an individual and being individuals kind of cool let's see it's it's good to have 31 flavors at the ice cream shop instead of

just vanilla so I remember my brother used to love vanilla ice cream. And God bless him because vanilla is good, especially to get that white bean or bean vanilla. I like it every now and then, but it's got to be really expensive, really good ice cream. You know what I mean? It can't just be that cheap crap. But he loved vanilla and I used to argue with him i'm like you gotta you know have something that tastes like something vanilla tastes like vanilla but uh you know hey everyone did the different flavors they're they're different things they like and everything else and uh what a beautiful time but yeah it was it was fun to see

aoc do that uh and and to me that me, for the last little while, that's when I was espousing the one I want in Congress. I'd love to have some more personality, some different people, some different aspects instead of a bunch of male suits and middle-aged guys. I'd love to have some flavor, some color, some different people, some different perspectives so that we

become more representative of what America is. And that's kind of what most of us saw in The Breakfast Club. I mean, you know, back then you had your cliques because you were in high school and you're like, yeah, I hate the new wave people. Fuck those people. And, you know, in Breakfast Club and some of the other movies that came out in that time, they showed that, hey, we can all hang out together.

I wasn't a big fan of girls just want to have fun. What's her face? Her name is Casey right now. I wasn't a big fan because it was kind of new wave-ish and tinkery synthesizers, but I kind of liked the song. It had a great catch to it.

Girls just want to... Cindy Lauper. It's liked the song. It had a great catch to it. Girls, yes, wanna. Oh, Cyndi Lauper. Yeah, Cyndi Lauper. And it's a fun song. And it kind of sounds like it's all some fun. It's all just lighten up a little bit here and have some fun. And so what a great time. Anything else you want to share with us about the book?

Yeah, so there's some serious lessons in there, but then there's some fun ones as well. This guy that I have on my shirt right here, if you can kind of see, that's Spicoli. Right? So, I mean, one of the greatest characters of all time. I mean, hands down, I don't care what anybody says, in every decade in the history

of movies, it is one of the greatest characters of all time. You know what's funny is I just saw him yesterday on, I don't know what I was doing, I was searching through some site on music or something, and I saw the picture of Spicoli in the video cover for him, and I was

like, I think what it was, I was on Netflix and I was like, yeah, let's find some stuff to watch. And that came up and I was like, man, if I ever meet him, I'm going to give him shit and call him Spicoli. Does he care? He's such a serious guy.

I'll probably get punched in the face. It's funny that this was the character that really made him. And so I talked about the serious lessons in the book for business. The ideas of Del Griffith from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles teaching us about how every company needs a great salesperson, you know, a very important lesson. But Spicoli taught us something as well, which is kind of a fun one. And that is that, you know, make sure that when you order lunch in the office to order enough for everybody. Because if you don't, you know, he gets the pizza and he says, you know, there's nothing

like a little, nothing wrong with a little feast on our time. And of course, Mr. Hand says, you know, you're right, Mr. Spicoli, and gets everybody to come up to have a piece of pizza. There's some funny lessons in there as well about just having some fun with some of these movies and the things that they may have taught us as well. It's quite the journey looking back. To me, some of the music was some of the best in the 80s. Some of the things in the movies, of course.

They're still retreading the movies from the 80s now in Hollywood. It's just a never-ending cycle of all the great movies. It's amazing to me how many Star Wars they keep coming up with. Seriously, another Star Wars movie? As long as I don't see the Death Star

in them, I'm kind of okay with another Star Wars movie because I long as I don't see the Death Star in them, I'm kind of okay with another Star Wars movie because I'm tired of seeing the Death Star. To my Star Wars fans, I'm sorry, man. Just, we need a new plot. That's all I'm saying. But, you know, then again, you go back to, you go back to a lot of the movies that were made in the 80s that came out of,

what's his face, from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s Japan, Akira Kawasawa, and how that affected them and everything else. So maybe you should do a book on how the previous culture affected the 80s, or I don't know if you talked about that in your book, but what kind of got us the 80s, I don't know, that might be it. I haven't, but that would be an interesting one for sure I think when you talked about the the idea

of like this kind of explosion of things that were happening in the 80s and why these you know you mentioned Star Wars for example right and so they're remaking all of these movies now and I really don't like it like I would rather they just

re-release the original first of all it would cost less money to re-release the original so i never understood why they don't do that and then you know i'm really i'm at the point where i'm like please do not make remake any more patrick swayze movies just let him let his movies speak for him because he did some phenomenal movies in the 80s. They keep remaking them and the remakes are terrible. They're always terrible. There's stuff you don't touch. You don't freaking cover Stairway to Heaven.

You just don't. Leave it alone. There's things that should be locked. Like White or Shade of Pale, you can get away with that because everyone's done it and you just got to do it because everybody else the fuck has. It's kind like pamela anderson um no i love pamela anderson she was my she was my 80s uh probably early love uh roadhouse yeah you can't don't don't make roadhouse and what's funny they're doing it they're doing it. They're doing it. I think I remember hearing that.

And the problem was, the funny thing is, who's the cowboy in that? Elliot? Elliot, uh... He's the cowboy. Sam Elliot. What's funny about Sam Elliot is he's the same goddamn age in that movie

that he is today. He looks like the same grizzled old motherfucker that he is today. He looks like the same grizzled old motherfucker that he is. He hasn't aged a year and he was old then. Like, but I remember I was real upset when he got stabbed and died. That was real. I think I cried at that moment because he's a badass. He was my John Wayne, dude. Yeah.

He was my John Wayne. He always has been in some of the great movies he's always been in. Uh, you know, he, he was never going to get caught on, uh, on a movie like Brokeback Mountain. Let's put it that way.

Uh, you know, he's, he's a real Marlboro man's man, right? That was surprising. He wasn't like the Marlboro man all the time, but,

uh, what was the other great movie that he was in, uh, with the, uh, two brothers, the Ethan brothers, brothers uh that they did where he it was that classic movie with the bridges and uh uh the they're bowling and and

stuff and and he was in the movie and and uh i forget what it is somebody will fill it in i'm sure so let's wrap the show up chris anything you want to plug, anything more you want to tell us about the book and what you got going on? Yeah, sure. So I think the important thing with the stuff that I've been working on with the 80s and the workplace is, you know, I do a lot of speaking at events and conferences. And I talk about this idea of 80s movies and what they teach us about the workplace. And I think the important thing is that when you work in a business, you know, you have people come in consistently teaching you about different things with corporate training. You go to a conference or an event and you hear a lot of the same things from, you know, businesses about leadership and management. And some of it's very

good. Some of it is difficult to retain. And I think what I do with my content, what I think is good is when you teach about inclusion and you use chunk and sloth to teach someone about inclusion, the hope is that they retain it and they take it back to the workplace. Instead of talking about inclusion and hearing the same kind of ideas in the same situations, to be able to say, I'm going to teach you about inclusion and I'm going to use chunk and sloth to do it. I'm going to teach you how there really are no stupid questions in the workplace. And I'm going to take the kids from stand by me and I'm going to show you and teach you how they taught us that really there are no stupid questions. And at the simplest questions sometimes actually create the biggest brainstorms in the office. When the kids would

stand by me said, we're sitting around a campfire and and you know had the conversation about if mickey's a mouse and donald's a duck and pluto's a dog what's goofy and of course you know well goofy's a dog and he says yeah but he drives a hat drives a car and wears a hat yeah and of course he says well yeah what the hell is goofy and that idea that it started this brainstorm from this what should have been like kind of a stupid question actually created this big conversation about what goofy was and so i think that's what i i really enjoy about the book and what i hear from people is the lessons that are in there for for the workplace and for business and even for life are you can retain them because you're thinking about these characters and then you're applying those characters to the lesson and uh and i think that's pretty i think i

think it's pretty unique and it's and it's it's a lot of fun for me i'll tell you that it's pretty interesting how the the the circular nature of movies reflect movies and music reflect life and culture and then we get our culture back from it and it feeds itself uh as it would and the second book i'm writing the second book in the first three chapters just to give you an idea. Actually, the first four. The first three chapters in the second book, I have Caddyshack, The Princess Bride, and The Outsiders. Finish those three.

Did you cover The Sandlot? That was a pretty epic book. It's epic. I love it. I love the movie, but it's the 90s. I may have to figure out a way to sneak it into one of my books because I love the movie. My book for the 90s would be how you guys missed all the greatest music and videos ever from the 80s, and you bastardized humanity. That would be, I don't know.

I'm just kidding, my millennials. No, it went really dark with Grunge I remember seeing Grunge come out and I was like what the fuck is going on in Seattle Harold That was the end of Warrant and Winger and all those guys

I remember this one of my models from my modeling agency came up and she saw my 4000 CD collection and she goes You're a butt rocker. I was like, what's a butt rocker? That sounds gay, but there's nothing wrong with that. But uh Just she goes that's all that long hair and I'm like get out of my get out of my studio And but she still was hot so I still took her out but after she was not

allowed in the cd room ever again um but uh no it's great music uh you know what's funny is my um talent agency we had an acting and modeling talent agency years ago and emilio estevez's uncle joe estevez, was with our agency. He was with a lot of agencies. And he used to call me, and he sounds just like Martin Sheen. In fact, he did the voiceover for a lot of Martin Sheen stuff. And so it was funny to learn the whole story of the Estevez family, which is their real name, not Sheen.

Yeah. So I kind of got to know a little bit about the family from that angle. So, yeah, it was kind of cool because when you watch Breakfast Club, you're like, God, I mean, he's a fucking dick. But, you know, most jocks were back then. I can see that because I wasn't one. I was the nerd. I was the weak nerd.

I was like, I have to run a third lap? I was like this thin little thing. Anyway, moving on. So give us the plugs in the book, where we can get it, and anything you're doing with it. Yeah, yes, I appreciate the time. The first book, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches Us About Today's Workplace, and it's mixtape number one.

It's available on Amazon in paperback in Kindle e-book. About halfway through the second book right now, and that'll have more distribution. I'm actually, we'll have a publisher for that one. So I won't be self publishing anymore, which is going to be great for me. Although I do like the name of my publishing company,

which is farmer Ted publishing. And if you know that one from 16 candles, so, uh, that's, that's the name of my little publishing company that I created farmer Ted publishing. Uh, and, um, yeah, so you can find me at chriscluze.com.

I'm available to speak at events and conferences at any time. I have quite a few of them coming up in the next few months as well. So my content fits any theme, any industry, and I love getting on stage and talking about this stuff. 80s Pop Culture on Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn are Chris Clues. And if I could mention one more thing that we talked about at the beginning of the show. So unfortunately, as life would have it, a few days ago, I lost a friend of mine from college.

He has a 14-year-old daughter, and he died in a car accident. It's just like that. You know, he's gone. And so, you know, people set up GoFundMes and different things to help. Uh, they, if you went to his Facebook page, you would see that she was his heart and soul. Um, so what I've done is I've taken, taken my book here, what 80s pop culture teaches about today's workplace and, uh, all the royalties through March 3rd are going to go, are going to his daughter. So, um, if you're thinking about purchasing the book or the ebook,

if you're interested in the content, you think it's cool. Or if you just want to support a 14 year old girl who just lost her, her father that's the way to do it. So I started on February 19th and we're doing pretty well and we'll continue through March 3rd. All 100% of the royalties from ebook and paperback are going to go to his daughter.

Well, there you have it. I hope that was helpful for you guys. Sounds really good. It's a good thing. We appreciate you guys coming by the show today. Be sure to check out Chris's book on Amazon.com or any of the different Amazon booksellers

out there in the marketplace. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us on YouTube.com for us. Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Also go to twitch.tv for us. Chris Voss. You can see the different gaming interviews we're doing with game developers

as well. You can of course follow Chris Voss, thechrisvossshow.com. You can go to chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. I've got too many dot coms. And you can go to, of course, see the show also on bookauthorpodcast.com. So, you know, you can go check it all out from there and be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, all this sort of good stuff. Thanks for tuning in, everyone, and we'll see you next time. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com, thechrissvossshow.com.

Hey, come in here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We, of course, have all the best guests on the chrisvossshow.com. And today is going to be a dual podcast show. We're going to have the Chris Voss Show podcast, of course, hosting the show. And it will also be found on our book author podcast. So you can go to bookauthorpodcast.com and you can see that. You can decide which podcast you want to subscribe to at any time.

And, of course, you can go to the chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com and subscribe to all the different shows. I think there's six or seven over there. But if you want to listen to 100% book author interviews, you can do that on the bookauthorpodcast.com or you can

just see everything we have on the chrisfossshow.com podcast as well. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss. If you're into gaming, you can also go to our Twitch channel at twitch.tv forward slash chrisvoss. We're giving away some really cool game codes and different things over there, so you can see some of that stuff as well. Today's guest is Chris Clues. Oh my gosh. He's a marketing

executive speaker and an author of the book, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches Us About Today's Workplace. It's the first in a series that finds the lessons from the 1980s movies for the workplace today. And he even has a second one due late in the spring that he's coming out with, another book. He's, along with being an author, he's a speaker, frequent business, and 80s podcast guest. Chris is currently the head of marketing for DHL Resilience 360. And he resides in Deerfield Beach, Florida. We don't hold the Florida against him. Welcome to the show.

How are you doing, Chris? I'm doing great, Chris. I kid all my Florida friends. You guys have the, I don't know what's going on down there, man, but there's something in your guys' water. We have Florida men down here. That's what they always say. Florida man's in the news all the time.

Oh, yeah. You guys just had a mayor get arrested down there for being a doctor in his own house or something because he they pulled his license they just did a big raid on him yeah and then another one just a couple weeks ago for licking people's faces or something around here that's what i call wednesdays so uh let's talk about you let's get to know chris a little bit better i mean you've done a few things you've been a stand-up comic. I understand your past history.

Yeah, I do stand-up comedy for fun here and there. I just go up on stage just once in a while. And the first time I did it, I actually decided just to go straight to the improv for an open mic. So typically when I go do something, I go all in, I go hard, and I don't go gradual. Something in your first marriage. So you did the improv, the comedy improv on Sunset Boulevard there? In West Palm Beach, Florida. Oh, West Palm Beach, Florida.

They have them all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. One of my friends used to babysit, oh, what's his name? The kid from the, not from the improv, but from the comedy store. That's the one I'm thinking of. But, yeah, it's quite challenging to do improv, I would imagine. Well, I mean, I was lucky.

I do open mics where you can prepare your material for about five minutes, and then you get up there and do your thing. And I'll tell you, the first time you do it, it's pretty terrifying. Looking out over this crowd and knowing that you don't know, 95% of the people have no idea who you are, and you have to try to make them laugh at your jokes. And you can feel your heart coming through your chest. You're pretty sure everybody else can see it too.

Yeah, yeah. I remember one time I did, I was speaking at an event back east somewhere and they had like they had the front row they didn't tell me but the whole front row the speaker folks were were a group of people who were deaf and and I was telling jokes and like most of the room was laughing but the front row I couldn't get the laugh and it really started driving me crazy and i started losing it my speech right and they're just looking at me like is this guy and uh it just threw my whole speech off because i i didn't know those guys were like the deaf crew up front and i'm like i'm like telling jokes i'm trying to you know interact with

them a little bit and i'm just you know dying on stage with with this front row thing and you know it becomes one of those things where as a comedian you just start you know you focus in on the guy you who's not laughing because you're like what do i got to do to get this guy to laugh and uh yeah i i came off stage just ready to quit ever speaking again and i'm like what the fuck is with the front row? And they're just like, yeah, they're all deaf.

They can't hear you, which is probably good anyway. So I'm not that funny. I encourage anybody who, if you have a fear of speaking, if you have a fear of getting up in front of people, putting together five minutes of comedy material, go up on an improv stage or go up on a stage at any time,

your local comedy club, do that five minutes. And I can assure you, you will never have a problem. Get in front of anybody at work ever again for meetings, presentations. It's the best thing. And when you do,

when you, if you do a comedy, a standup tryout in LA, you're literally there. I think you pay like 15 bucks for five minutes or something. And you probably have to buy some drinks or something too, but everybody in the room is there doing the same thing you are trying to try out so they don't they don't even want you to succeed they're just not even gonna laugh they're just like fuck this

guy you know you're basically sitting in a room trying to make a bunch of people that just want to see you fail and that also paid 15 bucks for five minutes they're just like get the fuck off the stage so it's a brutal business writing jokes and and being they're trying to be funny or being funny and i think some people they get out and they they you learn you're not as funny as you as you do but yeah it's definitely a trial by fire when it comes down to it especially improv so you did a little bit of that you grew up of course in the 80s which is where you wrote this book out of the experience and knowledge i guess you gained from uh getting going through one of the greatest periods of music and pop culture probably ever i'm i'm clearly biased with my age obviously um and you're a huge sports fan you've've done some NCAA basketball stuff, PGA something.

Yeah, so I've been lucky enough to do some pretty cool sports sponsorships, NCAA basketball, Major League Baseball, PGA, and my favorite was the UFC. Sponsored a bunch of UFC fighters about five or six years ago, which was just pretty awesome. That was a lot was a really it was a lot of fun that experience and yeah and he also did some this is kind of interesting that's in your bio you did some stint as a bellman at several

hotels on the Disney property and it's security for celebrities yeah back in the day back in the interesting, interesting Disney celebrity, uh, uh, celebrity stories, anything salacious. Yeah, there's,

there's some, there's some interesting, you see some interesting things for sure. Yeah, absolutely. But working at Disney was pretty cool. I mean, it was a,

it's a great experience if you're in your twenties and you're out of college and you want to learn about true customer service. Um, it's a great, it's a great place if you're in your twenties and you're out of college and you want to learn about true customer service. It's a great, it's a great place to learn. Yeah. Did you ever get into any arguments with the Mickey mouse or anything like that? You ever,

you ever? No, once, but that was it. Yeah. It'd be funny. I go to work at Disney and then I find out that the guy who's playing Mickey mouse is like an asshole.

And like, he has some sort of beef with me that I don't out that the guy who's playing Mickey Mouse is like an asshole, and he has some sort of beef with me that I don't know what the beef would be, and then we'd just have to, you know, I'd just be like I'd hate Mickey Mouse after that and just ruin my whole childhood. That's probably the way it is. Yeah, I was lucky I didn't have to be around those guys too much, so

I think the experience was pretty cool, I will say. I mean, seriously, if you think about it, you've got to wear a goddamn costume all day long in 70-degree heat in California. Are you really that happy? I mean, I'd be drinking on the inside of the costume. That's what I'd be doing. I'd be like, well, what's that Santa movie with what's-his-face?

I'd be that guy with the costumes. I'd be fired from Disney in five minutes. They'd just be like, hey, man, this guy's got to go. Plus, it'd be a really fat fucking Mickey Mouse, so that would probably be inappropriate in some way. You'd be too tall, man. Trust me. I'll tell you, it's a pretty cool place to kind of, I mean, I guess cut your teeth. And when I moved to a, I'll tell you, it is a, it's a pretty cool place to, to kind of, I mean,

I guess cut your teeth. And, uh, when I moved to Orlando, I actually just literally after college, I packed up my car and a couple hundred bucks and drove and it was 1993. So we had no cell phones. There was no way to communicate with anybody on the way down except stopping at a payphone. Wow. Yeah. I remember those days.

I'm in South Carolina. I'm here, I'm there and, uh, ended up in Orlando and, I was lucky enough to land a job at Disney to keep myself going because before that I was literally eating pasta without the sauce. I could afford the pasta or the sauce and the pasta was more filling.

So. I remember those days, you know, sometimes you, you just eat the, the uncooked top ramen just so you'd have some solid food for a change instead of just top ramen. You sprinkle that seasoning package on there because it's like, you know, that seasoning right there. So let's get to your book.

What 80s pop culture teaches us about today's workplace. So what the hell is this book about? Like, what is going on with this? Is it Ferris Bueller's Day Off where I just need to, uh, call in sick for the day for the workplace? Yeah. Well, that's, that's one lesson actually. Uh, life balance. What's that? Well, let's talk about the book, uh, that you can get this on Amazon, I imagine in a few different places. Um, and, uh, a few different places. And so you basically take the lessons from the 80s, different things from the pop culture,

and how we can apply it to the workplace. Yeah, so you can buy the book on Amazon. And I actually have a website as well, chriscluze.com, C-L-E-W-S. Same on Facebook and LinkedIn and then also on twitter i was actually lucky enough surprisingly about eight months ago i went for my twitter handle and at 80s pop culture was available so it's pretty easy ties right back to the book seriously that was available i couldn't believe it it was a sign it was a sign i think so i have at 80s pop culture as my Twitter handle.

And yeah, I'm actually about halfway through close to halfway through the second book. And then that one's going to be have larger distribution. So the second book, do you have a name for it yet? Is it going to be the nineties? No, actually I'm going to take the,

I'm going to put my flag on top of the eighties mountain. You're going down with the 80s. You're just going to ride that fucking train all the way. Good for you. So there will be what 80s pop culture teaches us about today's workplace. And the first one is mixtape number one, mixtape number two, mixtape number three, because we all used to make mixtapes in the 80s. And each one of them will take 10 movies from the 80s

and find the business lessons in them. That's awesome, man. I've seen the videos of you where you get up and you talk about and you're speaking about what you guys learned and lessons learned. Give us some examples of some of the lessons you used in your book. Yeah, excellent. So I'll give you one right off the bat that I think is a really important one for

today's workplace and that's uh from the goonies so if you remember the goonies they were just a bunch of kids and uh two of the characters in particular really like stuck with me and it was chunk and sloth and um both of them phenomenal characters actually chunk now is an entertainment lawyer out in la and he's done fantastic he's doing fantastic on that side of the business uh sloth was played by ted matuszak who was an oakland raider back in the day and so they taught us about inclusion and they taught us a really important lesson about inclusion in the workplace if you remember back in the movie chunk was thrown down in the basement by the Fatelli family, right?

And Sloth was chained up down there. He was one of their brothers, but he was chained up because of the way he looked. He had this stone-shaped head and these ears that wiggled and eyes that were offset and missing some teeth. He was a strange-looking guy. My parents did the same with me. I get it.

Yeah. And you might like Baby Ruth too, right? You didn't have to agree with me, but we'll get, you know. He gets down there, and, of course, Sloth is chained up, and eventually when he gets unchained, he picks up Chunk, and Chunk says, man, you smell like phys-ed. And so not only is Sloth awkward-looking, but he smells like phys-ed. And Chunk looks past all of this. All he wants to do is be his friend.

That's all he cares about, wants to be his friend, bring him into the group, include him, the whole idea of inclusion, include him in the group. And in return, what did they get? They found out that Sloth's greatest asset was his loyalty. And at the end of the movie, he saves their lives. He puts himself in front of his family and saves their lives over his family and shows his loyalty to them and so there's a really important lesson in there for the workplace there is fuck family no i'm just kidding yeah yeah some people do that in the

workplace too man it's meant to well that's true too i mean uh i've had a few friends who've ignored their family and messy divorces because they work too much. But, you know, I see that you got to pay the bills, whatever. You can't make everyone happy. But I've had personal relationships where, you know, I've worked too much and let them slide. Sometimes there were business relationships where we focus so much on the business that the friendship fell away and then the partnership fell away in the business. So those, I don't know, some different ways that that happens. Well, no, it's a good segue into when you mentioned Ferris Bueller earlier.

Ferris Bueller taught us about work-life balance, but in a couple of interesting contexts. And I'll kind of set up the story about why I came up with that idea of Ferris Bueller and work-life balance. We're not talking about being at work extended hours. This is going back probably 1998, 1999. And I was working for an interactive ad agency. So you know I've been in digital marketing for a while.

In 1998, we were getting 25% click-through rates on our banners because people were just fascinated by, wait a minute, I click this and then I go to another website? This is incredible. They didn't care about what the website was. They were just fascinated by, wait a minute, I click this and then I go to another website. This is incredible. They didn't care about what the website was. They were just fascinated by this. And I was working for a client at the agency. My mom had come down to see me. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years. I had moved to Florida and I was just busy doing things.

And she came down on a Friday. I was supposed to meet her at a restaurant at 8 o'clock. This is in the book. I didn't get there until after 10 because I was working on a project for a client who, by the way, a year later, nothing really mattered anyway. The site was out of business.

The company was out of business. I missed this opportunity with my mom and I left her at the restaurant for several hours by herself. My mom was one of the greatest people you could ever meet. I mean, just a gentle soul and very patient. And so thank God for me. But out of that, you know, I learned a valuable lesson about what's important.

And Ferris teaches us that in a little bit of a different way. But what he does, he goes one step further. And what he teaches us is think about when you're in your workplace your place of business there's always you always have a camera there's always a camera and fry at your business somebody who's typically always unhappy they're just things aren't going well in their life they tend to be negative not in a way that it pushes people away necessarily i told you not to talk about me. I'm just kidding. Is that you?

No, I'm just kidding. That doesn't seem like you. Cameron Frye, everybody has a Cameron Frye at work. Ferris taught us not only about work-life balance but that it's important that sometimes you feel good about your life, things are going well for you, to make sure that if you take that day off that you take your work

and work and work. Because know direct make force them like he did force them to come with you don't let them say you know when Cameron was in Egypt's land let my camera go to come with you on that day off and spend some time away you know my tinder has that same sort of click through rate about 25%. Yeah. Mostly women going, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? I just,

they just want to see, you know, I'm messed up. This dude is screenshot me and send me to all their friends on Facebook and go, can you believe this assholes on fucking Tinder? So there's not 25% as well. Yeah. Yeah. But there's not. Your ghost is on 25% as well? Yeah.

But there's no follow-up click-through. The sales funnel ends there. That's pretty much what it is. Whatever. At least I'm popular. So whatever that means. I don't know. So there's a lot of cool things we can learn.

I think a lot of people, that changed a lot of people's mindset that movie ferris bueller's day off and gave people uh kind of a perspective thing um also uh you know i mean one of the one of the greatest uh one of the greatest scenes in the movie is when they leap the car when the car goes off and it plays the imperial star wars music that That's just such a great scene. It goes off. I mean, the 80s had some of the best times, some of the best movies, some of the best TVs. I mean, it was a really great creative age.

And a lot of it came from, I think, the late 70s. And in a lot of creative studios, whether it was movies or music or anything else, there still was this creative thing that was going on that wasn't quite the controlling part of corporate culture and manipulation. What's the word I'm looking for? The payola sort of thing that came around with Mariah Carey. You know, back in those days, music labels would take bands and they would let them make the music they wanted for the most part. And so they would make this music and sometimes it would be good,

sometimes it would be not really great. And then they'd be like, well, you know, we'll give you three or four albums to work out that band thing and that music thing you know and then you know they progressively get better and then all of a sudden some band that you know had a bunch of shitty albums would all of a sudden have that hit album that would hit in the 80s and you're just like all right you know those those four albums they did made you know everything better when it finally came out uh and then of course the uh i think it was the a and r man started showing up and the corporate people started showing up going oh we need to we need to take this magic and try and

control it and start killing the the creationism the creative the creationism the creative juices of the 1980s and then you know you got to the 90s and and everything went downhill after that um the uh hermana excuse me uh crunch uh i'm just kidding i'm just kidding my millennials ideas about that by the way about the whole creative thing in the 80s and i'd love to hear your take on it because i just spewed out mine i could be wrong uh yeah so i think there was a couple of things that happened in the 80s. We were moving towards independence in terms of people, people being able to be as, you know, Depeche Mode said, people are people, right? So people being able to be who they wanted to be.

And it was the first time in the 80s where somebody could walk down the street with a purple mohawk, and sure, there were people that kind of looked twice, but a lot of people just walked right by him and said, you know, that's it. It's a purple mohawk. And sure, there were people that kind of looked twice. But a lot of people just walked right by him and said, you know, that's it. It's a purple mohawk. Big deal. And that was the first time in the 80s that we experienced that. I think that independence and creative spirit and everybody kind of starting to accept people for who they were. And that drove a lot of the creativity, right? Where in the 70s, everyone was just kind of like a freak and looked down upon because everyone lived in the

60s with that IBM sort of model where everyone wears a black suit and a black tie and a black hat and shows up to work and no one has any color or personality. And yeah, who was one of the big pop culture things that really changed the look

and feel of all that? Madonna and then Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi Lauper was huge at affecting pop culture during that thing. And really, you know, going color, Culture Club was all about color and personality. I think The Cure. I'm trying to think of some other bands. But yeah, it was really this great time of experimentation and

Try new things and and you know, there were some people in the older crowd. They're like, you know fucking kids But for the most part it was it was just a great time. There's wonderful things that were happening sound was getting better We there was a lot of individualism that came out of that. You saw the launch of the Walkman, the Sony Walkman. I remember being so proud of that. For the first time, you were free of the radio, which you,

if you grew up in my era, you literally sat by the radio and you called the DJ and said, play my favorite song. Sounds like a song that they issue nowadays. The second one, Sally from John. I would call the

DJ relentlessly. It's amazing they didn't have call blocking back then because they're like, look, we're not going to play Steely Dan real in the years yet. That comes up top of every hour. Just calm down, buddy. You had so much great stuff uh i think disco was just rounding out at that time you had

you know lots of great heavy metal music metallica um uh lots i mean just so much great music came out of there great movies i mean they're still, you know, reruns of all the great movies of the 80s, Star Wars, you know. It's kind of like every great creative thing kind of came out of that era. Yeah, you know, I talk about that a little bit in the book as well, this idea that the 80s, the decade of the 80s and the creative energy that was there and why. And so what's really interesting is I was doing research for the book, and one of the things that I do in each chapter, before I get into the movie and the workplace lessons that it taught us, I set up the time frame.

So I say if a movie came out in June of 1983, for example, I went back and I looked at what the top 40 music was, what the movies at the box office were, the television. And I talked a little bit about that, the kind of taking back to that time, or if you weren't around in that time to kind of show you what it was like. And what I found that was really interesting, and it kind of proves the point we're talking about with this individualism, the top 40 was so diverse and so eclectic. I love the word plethora, so I like to throw it in anytime I can. There was just this plethora of music genres.

And if you look at the top 40, even the top 10, you would have everything from a Debbie Gibson right next to a Warrant right next to Grandmaster Flash. I mean, you have this incredible mix of music. And then, oh, let me just throw in Kenny Rogers, who happened to be here at the same time. I think Kenny Rogers was one of the first country crossovers, wasn't he?

Yeah, he was, actually. I remember my friends going, you've got to listen to this album. I'm like, what is it? It's country. Fuck country. But, you know, I've been... I think I've always been a Kenny Rogers fan. He's a good guy. That doesn't exist anymore. You know, the top 40,

everything... I mean, I hate to sound old, but legitimately everything does sound very much the same, and it's about that package. Find a way it works, make a lot of money from it, and stick to it. And then comedy. You had a lot of great comedy that came out. The Comedy Store, Live at the Improv. I mean, what a great comedy era that the 80s were you had all the great

comedians George Carlin of course George Carlin was around back in the 50s 60s but you had Eddie Murphy raw live yeah Eddie Murphy you saw it you saw it live live damn dude that that that that's the reason I'm still single. That was incredible. Yeah, that was, I always stay away from the Ritz crackers. Or hold on, it's the saltine crackers. Anyway, whatever you get me. But so many great comedians have that culture.

I mean, for me, just everything was vibrant and lively when grunge came along i was like what the hell is this depressing yeah um i am a nirvana's fan now i like nirvana but at the time when grunge came out you were just like wow we went from bright colors and rainbows and sunlight to uh some really dark shit. Yeah. Maybe that was the path we were on. Some people say that. That was the chains down in a hole. I mean, we went deep.

Yeah, we were really dark. Like, we were just right out the deep end. I was a Metallica fan, so I was pretty dark. But I was just like, what the hell is this crap? And, you know, it's – but it was a collective time. It was a great time. Just so many wonderful things Politically so many crazy things going on. I think in the 80s didn't we have the fall the Berlin Wall in 89?

Um Mind starting to go It was it was an incredible decade and when you talk about the movies for example One of the reasons that people say, well, why 80s movies? What is it about 80s movies that they keep coming back? And so even now I have friends who have kids that are 20 years old, 22 years old, and some of their favorite movies are from the 80s. And so you think about why is that? And I think part of it was if you go back to the 80s and you look at the types of movies that were being made,

today if you make a movie and you get halfway through the movie and you realize my movie is not good or the acting, the dialogue, whatever it is, something is not good. I have a big enough budget. I'll just throw a couple million dollars at some CGI and then everybody will say special effects. Everybody will say, man, you've got to go see this movie in the theater. How many times have you heard that? You've got to go see this movie in the theater. How many times have you heard that? You've got to go see this movie. In the 80s, they didn't have that option.

So if you wrote a bad movie, if your movie was bad from a character development perspective, a dialogue perspective, a plot, people weren't going to go. And the markets that are open today for a bad movie to make money anyway weren't there. So you spent six months at the box office in the US I mean this is real four to six months and then five months later you're on HBO and then four months later you're in the video store and that was pretty much it that was all the market there was and now if your movie doesn't make money in the US you send it overseas and you can

make money off of it there and it's hard not to make your money back now then they have a choice they couldn't throw special effects at it so they had to work harder to make really good movies because now some of the stuff they make nowadays you're just like you're just like what the hell i mean did you know that was going to go directly to video and you just phoned it in or something um you know it's just one of those things where you're just like it's just like what what the hell went on like did you know this is going to vcr but there's not vcrs but uh but but yeah you can um but the thing is with these with these you own a vcr i just realized i thought yeah i actually have a vCR because I actually have tapes my mom gave me some tapes of my

Childhood she had the old eight millimeters reels put on the on the 60 millimeter eight Whatever put on the video so one of these days I guess I gotta go ahead and put on a CD or wait Those are gone, too You know listen I have a record player again so vinyl's coming back yeah i mean the great thing about the 80s too is like you lived you you still you caught the album era and the cd era and like me you probably went into the cd record store and you would spend like four fucking hours like just wandering the different albums looking through them going you know reading the liner notes trying to figure out if you wanted to plunk down your 12 dollars

for that lp yeah absolutely and then then i would go next door to the arcade and spend a bunch of quarters playing dragon's lair galaga or something you know i mean that's that's another thing that you know galaga and all the different things i mean in the in the early 80s we had the arcade uh shops and you went there the pile four quarters and they had the big arcade machines and and that was how you played video games and then eventually commodore 64s and apple computers came out and you know you had little tape memory the cassette tape memory You know I love that. There's a meme. I always see on on On Facebook and social media where it shows a cassette and shows a pencil

This is if you know what to do with this you probably grew up in the 80s Yeah You'd be like hey, what are you doing? I'm rewinding my Van Halen tape, man. Trying to get back to the beginning. My Walkman batteries are dead, man. I just got to rewind this thing. The problem was they'd make the cassettes,

and they have the A side and the B side. And the B side sometimes would be short, especially if it was like Van Halen or Rolling Stones. So that would be like 50 miles of real you had to do. And you didn't want to burn through your battery, so you just hand-wind it with a pencil. Those are high-tech days. These kids have no idea what they're doing. Suffrage.

But everything that you're talking about is what made the 80s great and why. That built character, man. That built character, man. That built character. Yeah. And rewind your own shit. You talked about the whole idea of this evolution across the entire decade and all the things that – I think there was just an explosion of stuff, I think is the best way to say it.

And that was the first time that we had that. There was this explosion of stuff, and there was something for everyone.. And that was the first time that we had that. There was this explosion of stuff, and there was something for everyone. I think that's the big thing. Hip-hop came into fashion, but there was still punk rock. You still had the Sex Pistols. You still had Johnny Rotten. You still had the edgy punk.

You had the hip-hop coming in. If people wanted to listen to Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, they could listen to Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. You still had tiffany you still had happy how huge they were man it was you had the cure you had the smiths you had it all and um yeah i did debbie gibson no wait it was tiffany said i think we're alone now they were both like just freaking too huge for their time they really i think they really set the stage for the Mariah Carey payola. I think that's when the decade really started dying. I remember I was a huge... You can

correct me because you maybe studied the 80s when I did, but for me, where the 80s really started dying was when the payola started dying, when the A&R men started showing up in band studios going, no, we need more synthesizers. And we got to we got to control this.

We got to start getting we got to start getting the dailies on what you guys are doing so we can listen to them and then shape the music. You know, there's more of a corporate shaping. I remember I was a huge Kansas fan and I was really excited to get their new album. And it was going gonna be freaking huge and the CEO and president of MCI decided he wanted to bang Mariah Carey And so he got in with her and then he shit canned Every album that was coming out on the MCI label just just didn't market it

Just threw it in the drink really when it came down to it they issued the albums and said have fun with that um and they put all their pale and money into mariah carey and to me and then pale was you know really started taking off large talks about it for metallic and other people i think that's what really started killing the 80s it went from that bright that bright you know spontaneous creative thing like you're talking about to where everyone's like, how do we make some money off of this? You know, the whole corporate thing. Yeah.

My take on it. I don't know. No, it's a good take. I mean, and again, I think that's why it's just things keep coming back there to the 80s because of the,

there was this, this individual freedom, this creativity that we just, I don't think, I'm not sure that we're ever going to see it again. And the reason that when you think about the great characters in movie history, so many of them come from the 80s, and they've stuck with us.

And so that's, you know, I mean, there's just not a decade like it, in my opinion. Video games, of course, you know, really started hitting the stride. The PlayStation 3, I think, came out the innings i think it was we had definitely a place yeah i was trying to come out yeah nintendo you had atari uh games starting to come out but uh i think i think that's the reason um things went so dark with grunge and everything. I think the money and the corporate powers that wanted to be, you know,

like one of my favorite bands, Rush, talks about this. Like in 1986, I think it was, the A&R guys started showing up in the studio going, hey, I'm the rep from the label, and we're going to help you guys sell albums here by manufacturing this music a little're going to help you guys sell albums here by manufacturing this music a little bit better than what you guys are doing. They're like, hey, we're just artists. We want to make beautiful music. And I'm like, no, we're going to meddle with it a bit. And you need more synthesizers.

You need more, you know, whatever. And I think that's where the beauty of the 80s started to really come down. That's why we got the nineties, um, that bunch of millennials got born. So I kid my millennial folks, you bastards. Um, the, um, and then we had Gen Y and Gen X and, and now we know abortion is legal. I'm just kidding. Seriously. Anyway, so what else can we learn from your book? Yeah, so I think what I really – I kind of want – a lot of times people ask me the question of how did you come up with this idea of tying 80s movies to the workplace? Like what would prompt this?

And so I think it's a good lesson because like a lot of people, I was in a job that just really wasn't working for me. And I kind of came home one day and I was having a self-pity party of one, I guess you would say. Nobody else. Friday's around here with a bottle of vodka. We call that Friday's around here with a bottle of vodka. Yeah, it was a self-pity party of one.

No one else is going to feel sorry for you. I was home on a Saturday afternoon, and I was watching The Breakfast Club, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. I got the Don't You Forget About Me up there in the back. And also, if he gets up, we'll all get up. It'll be anarchy, which is one of my favorite quotes. And so I was watching The Breakfast Club, and at one point when Principal Vernon comes in and the door is shut

because Bender's taking the screws out of the door so he can't see into the library, and he says, you know, who took the screws out of the door? And Bender says, screws fall out all the time. The world's an imperfect place. It was an imperfect – it was a great movie. And it was – it kind of like sat up on my couch and it just resonated. That line, screws fall out all the time, the world's an imperfect place, it hit me in a weird way. And I realized that your job, your career, your business can be an imperfect place.

And from there, I just thought maybe I can take two things that I know well which is business and 80s and figure out a way to put them together and I wrote an article on LinkedIn called what the Breakfast Club taught us about the workplace hello and it just got this I was shocked at the reaction that I got from it people were responding you know from everywhere saying hey this is really cool this is a great idea so I another one, Ferris Bueller and work-life balance. And then I started thinking, maybe I have something here. And I started to look back at the movies. And I realized, if you just look at them in a different light, if you just if you if you break them down a little bit, you can find these really cool lessons in them. And, and it's usually what the characters said. So ET., for example, you know, at the end of E.T.

And by the way, I will tell you that I typically, I don't typically shed a tear at movies, but I did at two. One was E.T. when he was on the side in the riverbed and he was just in a white and looked like he was going to die. And the other one was when Wilson floated away and cast away, when the volleyball floated away and told me, Wilson, I'm sorry. I don't know why, but I cried for a volleyball and an alien, but never anywhere else.

Did your dad leave you as a kid or something? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I – I'm just trying to figure out the whole volleyball thing. Yeah, it was weird. I don't know. I was actually at the movie theater with my buddy.

You made a girl name Volleyball one day and she just up and left you or something? I might have put that away somewhere. You might want to see a shrink. If you start finding you want to buy guns, just see a shrink.

My buddy was next to me and he said, is it weird that i'm crying for a volleyball and i said no man everybody in the theater is so i don't know i i wish i'd gotten into that movie more some reason i didn't get in that movie i don't know why and tom hanks is an incredible actor i love tom hanks uh i don't know. Maybe I was just busy. I remember watching it in pieces because I just, I don't know. Maybe I was just really disconnected. Maybe I just didn't drink enough. I used to like to really drink and watch movies because then I get more emotionally, you know, captured to them.

It's a personal issue. Well, give it a shot. See what happens. Don't worry. I'm seeing it. My eyes are so red. Don't watch E.T. But, no, what you bring up about the Breakfast Club is the Breakfast Club resonated with everybody in the 80s.

That's why it was so huge and popular. Because it was what you're talking about. It was so many different people. It was the loser. It was the reject. It was the weird chick who was kind of, wasn't one of them kind of, what's that cure look that I'm thinking of with the dark

you know, everything. Yeah, they had the jock, who I think was Emilio Estevez. You just had this whole crew of people. I think that's the other reason that St. Elmo's Fire was a big hit too, because you had these people from all these different walks of life,

all these different characters and different angles on life. And they, they were still friends because they were joined at the hip from the high school sort of experience. And a lot of great movies from that era. And so just. I'm glad you brought that up because um the breakfast club you're right there was the geek the princess the jock the athlete and the basket case and so you

had these five characters and uh every high school has them that's that's the thing that that's why it resonates today every single high school has those five characters in it and they will long after we're gone and so that's why that that movie i think resonates so much with people is because we see ourselves in one of those characters or we see ourselves in all of those characters and so um it really does it really does resonate and it will continue um to resonate for years and in fact uh i was watching a documentary about finding john hughes that a uh a couple kids from Canada, in 2009, before he passed away, they were on a mission to find John Hughes

because they wanted him to understand how much his movies had an impact on them. And they were in their late 20s at the time, so they weren't even old enough in the 80s to appreciate the movies. They had to watch them afterwards. But they were so taken by the movies, particularly The the breakfast club that they wanted to let him know. And they filmed this documentary when they went on a mission to go find him. And in the process, they interviewed high school kids and they asked them, what's your, you know, do you know who John Hughes is? And they were like, oh yeah, never seen the breakfast club. And they're like my favorite movie ever,

Ferris Bueller, love it. And these kids were 15 years old, but it's, it just, it's, it's got, it just resonates. He knew how to talk to teenagers. He knew what it was like to go through that. I wish I had the power or the money to be able to get The Breakfast Club on Broadway because I

think it's perfect. I'm really surprised someone has done it. Dude, you've got a million dollar thing there. Fuck yeah, son. It's shocking to me. It's like a perfect thing. You should done it. Dude, you got a million dollar thing there. Fuck you, Edson. Nobody's done it. It's shocking to me. It's like a perfect... You should do it.

You got to go get Frank, Andrew, whoever that guy is that writes all those Broadway musicals. You got to go have him punch one out. It's one room. It's one room. What's that? Everyone loves that movie. I mean, you probably recently saw, I call her AOC. I'm forgetting her name now.

I had to Google it. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Wasn't it cool how she did the breakfast club dance? Yeah. All the Republicans freaked out. Like, oh, my God, I'm going to write that in the Congress. You're just like, no, that's really epic. But she's 29 and so again 29 years old not even old enough not not even old enough to be you know i don't even know let's see 29 years old so 10 20 so she wasn't even born in the 80s

but she's doing that dance and i guess that's the whole thing that that's again we go back to this idea of the 80s and what is it about this decade that people are still looking at it and saying, if I wasn't there, I would have been interested to be part of it. And so I'm going to take some of those things from the movies and I'm going to use them. And it's pretty cool. I mean, it's like it's, you know, going back to E.T. E.T. taught us a really valuable lesson before it was even popular, and that was about social responsibility. And so you think about E.T. and you go back to that movie,

and at the very end E.T. says to Gertie and Elliot, the last thing he says is be good, right? Be good. These are two words that he said before he went back home, be good. And that was all about being good to each other, being good to the planet, being good to the environment. That's what I took out of it. And you look at these companies today and part of the, in the book, I talk about how some of those companies like Warby Parker and Yubi and Tom's who built their business model on social responsibility, on giving back, and they're making a profit and they're giving back.

They're doing the two things that you would want your business to do. And it's pretty remarkable. So we've come all this way now where people can actually take a day off from work to volunteer. And the companies encourage it instead of saying, take a sick day or take your vacation day. They're encouraging their employees to volunteer and get involved. Definitely. I mean, I think we moved away, you know, we moved away from the corporate man, the IBM man, if you remember that in the 60s. You know, you weren't going to show up at IBM

with a gray suit on or a gray hat. Everyone wore hats or gray shoes. You showed up in black, top to bottom, corporate uniform. You don in black top to bottom corporate uniform you don't right outside the lines you don't think outside the box you follow the thing and then we you know we went through the crazy 70s where everything was up and up was down and there was the real sort of culture clash sort of thing and then of course we went to the 80s where like you say it became much more like hey it's okay to be an individual and being individual is kind of cool let's see what it's it's good to have 31 flavors at the ice cream shop instead of just vanilla so uh i remember my brother used to love

vanilla ice cream and god bless him because vanilla is good especially to get that white bean or bean vanilla that's pretty good i can pretty good. I like it every now and then, but it's got to be really expensive, really good ice cream. You know what I mean? It can't just be that cheap crap. But he loved vanilla, and I used to argue with him.

I'm like, you got to, you know, have something that tastes like something. Vanilla tastes like vanilla. But, you know, hey, everyone did the different flavors. There are different things they like and everything else. And what a beautiful time but yeah it was it was fun to see AOC do that uh and and to me that's uh for the last little while that's when I was spousing the one I want in Congress I'd love to have some more personality some different people some different

aspects instead of a bunch of male suits and middle-aged guys I I'd love to have some flavors, some color, some different people, some different perspectives so that we become, you know, more representative of what America is. And that's kind of what most of us saw in The Breakfast Club. I mean, you know, back then you had your cliques because you were in high school and you're like, yeah, I hate the new wave people. Fuck those people. And, you know, in high school and you're like, yeah, I hate the new wave people. Fuck those people. And, you know,

and Breakfast Club and some of the other movies that came out in that time, they showed that, hey, we can all, we can all, you know, hang out together. Like I, I wasn't a big fan of girls just want to have fun. What's her face? Her name is Casey right now. I wasn't a big fan because it was kind of new wave-ish and tinkery you know synthesizers but you kind of had to do yeah i kind of liked the song i had a great catch to it you know girls yes oh yeah cindy lopper and it's a fun song and it it kind of

sounds like it's all so fun it's all just uh lighten up a little bit here and have some fun. And so what a great time. Anything else you want to share with us about the book? Yeah, so, you know, there's some serious lessons in there, but then there's some fun ones as well. You know, this guy that I have on my shirt right here, if you can kind of see, that's Spicoli, right? So, I mean, one of the greatest characters of all time.

I mean, hands down, I don't care what anybody says, in every decade in the history of movies, it is one of the greatest characters of all time. You know what's funny is I just saw him yesterday on, I don't know what I was doing, I was searching through some site on music or something, and I saw the picture of Smacoli in the video cover form, and I was like, I think what it was, I was on Netflix.

And I was like, yeah, let's find some stuff to watch. And that came up and I was like, man, if I ever meet him, I'm going to give him shit and call him Spicoli. Does he care? He's such a serious guy. I'll probably get punched in the face. It's funny that this was the character that really made him. The character that propelled him.

And so I talked about the serious lessons in the book for business, the ideas of Del Griffith from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles teaching us about how every company needs a great salesperson, a very important lesson. But Spicoli taught us something as well, which is kind of a fun one, and that is make sure that when you order lunch in the office to order enough for everybody. Because if you don't, he gets the pizza and he says you know there's nothing like a little nothing wrong with a little feast on our time and of course mr hand

says you know you're right mrs piccoli and gets everybody to come up to have you know a piece of pizza and so there's some funny lessons in there as well about you know just having some fun with some of these movies and and the things that they may have taught us as well so yeah it's it's quite the journey looking back to me some of the music was some of the best in the 80s some of the things in the movies of course and they're still retreading the movies from the 80s now in hollywood i mean it's just it's just a never-ending cycle yeah of all the great movies i mean i mean uh uh i mean it's amazing to me how many star wars they keep coming up with i'm just like seriously another star wars movie um as long as i don't

see the death star in them i'm kind of okay with another star wars movie because i'm i'm tired of seeing the star war the death star to my star wars fans i'm sorry man just we need a new plot that's all i'm saying. But, you know, then again, you go back to a lot of the movies that were made in the 80s that came out of, what's his face, from the 1940s,

50s, and 60s in Japan, Akira Kawasawa, and how that affected them and everything else. So maybe you should do a book on how the previous culture affected the 80s. I don't know if you talked about that in your book, but what kind of got us the 80s. I don't know.

I haven't, but that would be an interesting one for sure. I think when you talked about the idea of this kind of explosion of things that were happening in the eighties and why these, you know, you said you mentioned star Wars, for example, right. And so they're remaking all of these movies now.

And I, I really don't like it. Like I would rather they just re-release the original. First of all, it would cost less money to re-release the original. So I never understood why they don't do that. And then, you know,

I'm really, I'm at the point where I'm like, please do not make remake any more Patrick Swayze movies. Just let him let his movies speak for him because he did some phenomenal movies in the 80s. And they keep remaking them and the remakes are terrible. They're always

terrible. There's stuff you don't touch. You don't freaking cover Stairway to Heaven. You just don't. You Just leave it alone. There's things that should be locked. Like, why does she appeal? You can get away with that because everyone's done it,

and you just got to do it because everybody else the fuck has. It's kind of like Pamela Anderson. Don't remake Roadhouse. No, I love Pamela Anderson. She was my 80s. Probably early love Oathouse yeah, you can't don't don't make Roadhouse and what's funny? They're doing it They're doing around I think I remember hearing that and and the problem was the funny thing is who's the cowboy now? Elliot

Elliot He's the Sam Elliot what's funny about Sam Elliot is he's the same god damn age in that movie that he is today he looks like the same grizzled old motherfucker that he is he hasn't aged a year and he was old

then like I remember I was real upset when he got stabbed and died I think I cried at that moment because he's a badass. He was my John Wayne, dude. Yeah. He was my John Wayne.

He always has been in some of the great movies. He's always been in, you know, he was never going to get caught on, on a movie like Brokeback Mountain. Let's put it that way. You know, he's a real Marlboro man's man.

Like that was surprising. He wasn't like the Marlboro man's man. That was surprising. He wasn't like the Marlboro man all the time. What was the other great movie that he was in with the two brothers, the Ethan brothers that they did where it was that classic movie with the bridges

and they were bowling and stuff and he was in the movie, and I forget what it is. Somebody will fill it in, I'm sure. So let's wrap the show up, Chris. Anything more you want to plug? Anything more you want to tell us about the book and what you got going on?

Yeah, sure. So I think the important thing with the stuff that I've been working on with the 80s and the workplace is, you know, I do a lot of speaking at events and conferences, and I talk about this idea of 80s and the workplaces. I do a lot of speaking at events and conferences, and I talk about this idea of 80s movies and what they teach us about the workplace. And I think the important thing is that when you work in a business, you have people come in consistently teaching you about different things

with corporate training. You go to a conference or an event, and you hear a lot of the same things from business about leadership and management and uh not some of it's very good um some of it is difficult to retain and i think what i do with my with my content what i think is good is when you teach about inclusion and you use chunk and sloth to teach someone about inclusion the hope is that they retain it they take it back to the workplace instead of you know uh talking about inclusion, the hope is that they retain it and they take it back to the workplace. Instead of talking about inclusion and hearing the same kind of ideas in the same situations, to be able to say, I'm going to teach you about inclusion and I'm going to use Chunk and Sloth to do it.

I'm going to teach you how there really are no stupid questions in the workplace and I'm going to take the kids from Stand By Me and I'm going to show you and teach you how they taught us that really there are no stupid questions and that the simplest questions sometimes actually create the biggest brainstorms in the office when uh the kids would stand by me said we're sitting around a campfire and and uh you know had the conversation about if Mickey's a mouse and Donald's a duck and Pluto's a dog what's goofy and of course yeah well goofy's a dog and he says yeah but he drives a hat drives a car and wears a hat. And of course, he says, well, yeah, what the hell is Goofy?

And that idea that it started this brainstorm from this, what should have been like kind of a stupid question, actually created this big conversation about what Goofy was. And so I think that's what I really enjoy about the book. And what I hear from people is the lessons that are in there for the workplace and for business and even for life are, you can retain them because you're thinking about these characters and then you're applying those characters to the lesson. And, and I think that's pretty,

I think, I think it's pretty unique and it's, and it's, it's a lot of fun for me. I'll tell you that. It's pretty interesting how the, the, the circular nature of movies reflect movies and music reflect life and

culture. And then we get our culture back from it and it feeds itself. nature of movies and music reflect life and culture and then we get our culture back from it and it feeds itself as it would. I'm writing the second book and the first three chapters just to give you an idea. Actually, the first four. So the first three chapters in the second book I have Caddyshack, The Princess

Bride, and The Outsiders. Finish those three. Did you cover The Sandlot? That was a pretty epic book. It's epic. I love it. I mean, I love the movie, but it's the 90s. I may have to figure out a way to sneak it into one of my books

because I love the movie. My book for the 90s would be how you guys missed all the greatest music and videos ever from the eighties and you bastardize humanity. That would be, I don't know.

I'm just kidding. My millennials. Um, no, it's just, it went really dark with grunge. I remember, I remember seeing a grunge come out and I was like,

what the fuck is going on in Seattle? Uh, heroin. Um, that was the end of warrant and winger and all those guys. That was, yeah. Like all the, I remember on in Seattle, Harold? That was the end of Warrant and Winger and all those guys. I remember this, one of my models from my modeling agency came up and

she saw my 4,000 CD collection and she goes, you're a butt rocker. I was like, what's a butt rocker? That sounds gay. There's nothing wrong with that. She goes, that's all that long hair. And I'm like, get out of my studio.

But she still was hot, so I still took her out. But she was not allowed in the seating room ever again. But, no, it was great music. You know what's funny is my talent agency, we had an acting and modeling talent agency years ago. And Emilio Estevez's uncle, Joe Estevez, was with our agency. He was with a lot of agencies. And he used to call me, and he sounds just like Martin Sheen.

In fact, he did the voiceover for a lot of Martin Sheen stuff. And so it was funny to learn the whole story of the Estevez family, which is their real name, not Sheen. So I kind of got to know a little bit about the family from that angle. So it was kind of cool because when you watch

Breakfast Club, you're like, God, I mean, he's a fucking dick. But you know, most jocks were back then. I can see that because I wasn't one. I was the nerd. I was the weak nerd. I was like, I have to run a third lap. This is, uh, I was like this thin little thing. Anyway, moving on. Uh, so give us the plugs in the book where we can get it and anything you're doing with it.

Yeah. Yes. Appreciate the time. Um, the first book, uh, what is pop culture teaches us about today's workplace and it's mixtape number one is available on amazon and uh paperback in kindle ebook um half about halfway through the second book right now and that'll have more distribution i've actually have a publisher for that one so i won't be self-publishing anymore which is going to be great for me although i do like the name of my publishing company, which is Farmer Ted Publishing. And if you know that one from 16 Candles, so that's the name of my little publishing company that I created, Farmer Ted Publishing.

And yeah, so you can find me at chriscluze.com. I'm available to speak at events and conferences at any time. I have quite a few of them coming up in the next few months as well. So my content fits any theme, any industry, and I love getting on stage and talking about this stuff. 80s Pop Culture on Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn are Chris Clues. And if I could mention one more thing that we talked about at the beginning

of the show. So, unfortunately, as life would have it, a few days ago, I lost a friend of mine from college. He has a 14-year-old daughter. He died in a car accident. It's just like that. He's gone. And so people set up GoFundMes and different things to help.

If you went to his Facebook page, you would see that she was his heart and soul. So what I've done is I've taken my book here, What 80s Pop Culture Teaches About Today's Workplace, and all the royalties through March 3rd are going to go to his daughter. So if you're thinking about purchasing the book or the e-book, if you're interested in the content and you think it's cool, or if you just want to support a 14-year-old girl who just lost her father, that's the way to do it. So I started on February 19th

and we're doing pretty well and we'll continue through March 3rd. All 100% of the royalties from e-book and paperback are going to go to his daughter. Well there you have it. I hope that was for you guys.

Sounds really good. It's a good thing. So anyway, we appreciate you guys coming by the show today. Be sure to check out Chris's book on Amazon.com or any of the different Amazon book or booksellers out there in the marketplace. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on youtube.com, hit that bell notification button.

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