The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 250: Shep Gordon - THE SUPERMENSCH: How To Add Value To The Lives Of Others

Episode Date: March 25, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode 250: Shep Gordon - The Super Mensch: How To Add Value To The Lives Of Others Shep Gordon is known in the entertainment industry as having an eye for talent and an innate understanding of what people find entertaining.  After graduating from SUNY Buffalo, Shep moved to LA and in 1969 co-founded Alive Enterprises.  Over the years, Gordon has been responsible for managing the careers of Alice Cooper, Groucho Marx, Raquel Welch, Luther Vandross, Kenny Loggins, and countless others.  He's also credited as creating the celebrity chef,  which revolutionized the food industry and turned the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today.  His clients that include culinary legends, Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Nobu, Daniel Boulud and many more.  In addition to the impact he's had on the music, film and food industries, he's also highly regarded for his philanthropic endeavors.  Shep was named one of the 100 most influential people in Rolling Stone magazine.  He was the subject of Mike Myers 2013 documentary - Supermensch The Legend of Shep Gordon.  He's also written a best-selling book called They Call Me Supermensch A Backstage Pass To The Amazing World Of Film, Food, and Rock 'N' Roll. Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show On meeting with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama -- "When he walked in the room, it felt like I had taken the greatest shower of my life." -- Shep Gordon Show Notes: The value that Jayson Gaignard added to his life "He came to Hawaii and helped me launch my book and it was a best-seller" "You should always bring value first" A 1968 graduate of college -- great divide in our country at the time - Vietnam War, "I was raised a liberal Jew" "I was a long haired acid dealer" The Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix story -- How it got him his start as a manager in Hollywood Fame -- Media is a manipulation - "It consumes people and can be very damaging" "My job was to push the artist. Fame was fools gold." People who wanted fame needed attention... When they stopped getting it, bad things happened Shep had a visionary eye for what would be successful in the future, the ultimate talent scout.  He also understand how to earn PR for his artists to help make them famous "Create things that parents hated... Which led to kids loving it." --> Alice Cooper played a show naked Going from Alice Cooper to Ann Murray... Shep did great work for them and it kept leading to his next client --> Groucho Marx, Raquel Welch Commonality among great entertainers? "They have that moment right before they go on stage... They are scared, neurotic, full of fear.  This fuels them to be great." Commonality of those who sustain excellence? "They never did it on their own.  All the best were surrounded by great teams." Meeting with The Dalai Lama? "When he walked in the room, it felt like I'd taken the best shower of my life." How to throw a world class dinner party? Great food, customized for your guests Eat at a round table and always leave an extra seat (for the host to sit at and move from table to table) The food needs to be buffet style Send quality invitations -- "It's all about the WHO" --> You must get that part right, it's most important Don't talk business Think -- "What could I do to really make their night great?" Life lessons -- "The failures are more important than the successes" "To me, failure is not trying" "If your team can't fail, you can't win" Success to Shep = "A life of service to others" Serving others will make you happy Use you wealth to help other people (ex: "If you own a private plane, find people who will never fly on a private plane and offer them a ride.") "Use your resources in service to other people." Always think about how you can add value to the lives of others. "Success for Shep = "A life of service to others" --> Helping other people will make you happy Social Media: Follow Shep on Twitter: @SupermenschShep Read: They Call Me SUPERMENSCH Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 More Learning: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 216: Jim Collins -- How To Go From Good To Great Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why

If your team can't fail, then they can't win. If you're going to hold your team accountable for failures, rather than learning from the failures, you can't win because nobody will take a chance on doing anything. So, you know, in my relationships with my artist, when I failed, they carried me on their shoulders. And we just made it work. You know, I've had, especially with Alice,

so many embarrassing moments for him on stage where, you know, he could be coming off stage and screaming. And instead he comes off stage and what can we do to make it work? Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world.

Text Learners to 4-4-2-2-2. Now, on a night's feature leader, and it is a treatise with the legendary Shep Gordon, works as a manager, agent, and producer. and has supported and managed some of the greatest performers of all time, including Alice Cooper, Raquel Welch, Groucho Marx, Jimmy Hendrix, Sylvester Salone, among others. Also invented the celebrity chef. He's represented Emerald Lagassee and Wolfgang Puck, and he toured the world supporting His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Yes, it is true, although it's hard to believe it.

Chef and I talked a lot about throughout our conversation. He's also the star of an incredible documentary called Super Mench, The Legend of Shep Gordon. Now, a few of the topics we got into. The incredible story about his first night in Hollywood and why Janice Joplin punched him in the face. Then the keys to throwing a world-class dinner party. This is something Shep is famous for doing in Maui all the time. And then how he became the most successful talent manager in the world. This advice will help people in all professions.

I promise it is applicable to what you do in your career. And Shep, definitely towards the end, give some life advice when it comes to how to define success. I could have talked to him for hours. I love this one. And huge thank you to Jason Gaynard for making this connection. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a treat. It's Shep Gordon. All right, Shep, thank you so much for joining me here on the Learning Leader Show.

Welcome. Aloha. Aloha from a beautiful morning in Hawaii. When Jason Gainard connected us, we were kind of messaging back and forth and he said, yeah, that might be one you should do in person. And I said, you're right. At the timing when it worked out, I should have flown over and done it in Maui. And you're in Maui, correct?

I am, yeah. Hawaii. Bad, Jason. Man, he's, and Jason's the best. So I'm so appreciative. By the way, I wasn't going to start here, but I remember the Facebook post, Jason put up, and it was years ago now that he said, like, one of my idols in life is Shep Gordon. Is there anybody who knows anybody who could possibly connect me with Shep?

I remember that post. And so do you, do you, how did you guys first meet? After the documentary, I had a lot of people reach out to me. So my assistant, Nancy, he was sort of filtering for me. Yeah. And, um, one day, she said to me, you know, there's this one person who's been sort of approaching us that I think maybe you should talk to. And when I had a moment, I called him and he was like overwhelmingly positive, intelligent and was so open and wanting to do things and offered his services. So I pursued it. I kept thinking about how I, when I wanted to meet someone and how I pursued them. Yeah.

You know, so. And he came out to Hawaii. and he really helped me launch my book and focus on, I think what he really helped me with, besides demonstrating how great humans can be to each other because he was about as good as you could be to another human who he didn't know.

He showed me how to get to my audience, how to get to people who might actually care about reading the book. So I'm forever indebted to him. Yeah, I think it's a good message though because you get it a ton and I actually get this a decent amount where people will reach out and the phrase I actually just got one five minutes ago. And that's why it's the problem mind where they say, hey, you know, I really like some of the stuff you've done. And I love to buy you coffee and pick your brain. Right. And so you look at the, the, so that's like the worst

possible way to, to send a cold outreach. And then the best, the best way is a guy like Jason who says he is leading with legitimate value to bring to your life. And I feel like, you know, we're going to get to your story. I feel like that's the story of Shep Gordon's life. Oh, yeah, I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a huge part of the story. And I think it's one of the things I sort of tried to tell on the book,

but until I met Jason, I wasn't clear on what I was trying to tell. You know, I did it to me, I saw, wow. That's what I used to do. Like I developed a relationship with this holiness to Dali Nal, but not by saying I want to pick your brain, but by saying, what can I do to make your life a little better? Well, I'm in the culinary arts.

You need to eat. You're coming to Hawaii. Can I feed you? And same thing with Mr. Verje, my mentor was, I took him on bus trips. I said, I said, listen, I have resources. You have friends. take 10 of your friends. I'll get a bus. I'll pay for everything. And we'll go for a week and live.

Because I just want you to live. And we did that for 10 or 12 years. But it's just saying, you know, you use the resources you have. Right. In Jason's case, it was knowledge. At that particular point in my life with Mr. Verde, I had an excess of money that I could use. Some resources are just a smile. You know, if you get in front of someone and you give that right smile, you get picked out of the crowd. If your intentions are right, the smile is usually right. So it's about, even though your overall purpose maybe is to take, you get there by giving. I love that. You know, the giving gets you what you want.

So you've told the story a lot, but for the people who don't know you, I'd love for you to tell it just one more time because I love it. I know it's going to be great. I'll set the stage, but I'm not going to tell it because it's your better storyteller, especially because it's a your life. So I don't remember the year, but you, I think, I'll set up, you see a vacancy sign. You want to spend some time in a Hollywood motel. And how about you take it from there? 1968. Okay. Graduate college. It was a time when there, as there is now, a great divide in the country. In those days, it was the long hairs, the hippies against, um, I don't know. I'm, I would say Reagan, who was governor of California, was probably the figure hit of the two opposing sides.

So it was the Vietnam War protesters and the Reagan types. And in California, it was very serious. I lived in New York. I went to the University of Buffalo. And we kept seeing these pictures of hippies up against the wall with their hands up and police and batons. and it just seemed like things were decaying. And I always, as a liberal, raise as a liberal Jew, I always sort of thought I had a white horse under me

that I could ride in and save the day. I went out to California as a probation officer at Los Padreino's Juvenile Hall. I was a long hair, acid dealer. And the job lasted one day. And it was about an hour from L.A. and I had never been to Hollywood. I had heard about the whiskey of go-go and all these things.

So I drove into L.A. And didn't that much money. It had maybe $500 to my name, but a lot of acid. And so our vacancy signed in a motel. Pulled in, it was like $20 a night. So I had almost three weeks of rent that I knew I could survive. And went out of my paper. patio and took a little bit of the psychedelics thinking about what am I going to do with my life.

And I heard someone scream. The hotel was like Hotel California. It was two stories around the swimming pool. So I was on a patio overlooking the pool, heard a woman scream, a woman's scream had just come from a jail, Los Padrinos, Scrivenile Hall. So I had crime on my mind. So I thought she was getting raped. So again, I got on my white horse to go down to the pool. I separated them. The girl punched me. They were making love. It wasn't criminal. In the morning, I went to the pool, and the girl was Kenneth Copplin. And she was sitting with Jimmy Hendricks and the Chambers brothers, and I think Jim Morrison was there that day.

Wow. And the first thing that hit my head, you know, she was laughing and they were laughing. But it hit my head was, oh, my God, these are the greatest clients in the world for my profession. Oh, my goodness. And it began. Maybe three months into it, two months into it. Jimmy Hendricks, one of the chambers brothers said, you know, what do you do for a living other than sell us drugs?

And I said, well, nothing really. And they said, well, you have to have a, you have to be able to say you have a real job. Jewish, aren't you? They said, yeah, I'm Jewish. And they said, you should be a manager. And they introduced me to Alice Cooper. And that was sort of the turning point in my life. So going to that specific motel is what set up the chain of events that you thought a crime was taking place.

You were wrong. You met them the next day. They just so happens to be Janice Joplin and Jimmy Hendry. I mean, this is insane. I remember when I watched the documentary and read your book, I just thought that this is one of the true cases where if somebody wrote this story, you wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe it, but it just so happens it's your life. And then you meet you. And, you know, I saw this quote from Mike Myers, who I know you're obviously very close

with and worked with. And he says, Shep is the most, the nicest person I've ever met. And, like one of the most likable people you ever meet. And then you talk to like hundreds and hundreds literally of other famous people. And they all say the same thing. And the guy behind it all is you. And I, you know, I think I and maybe a lot of people weren't as familiar with you and your story and everything you'd done until.

this documentary comes out. And the documentary by that was called Supermensch, the legend of Shep Gordon. And then your book's called, They Call Me Super Mench. And we weren't familiar with this. So you're living this life. And I think part of it, though, was intentional

from what I've heard you say because you've seen what happens to people when they become famous, especially in the time when you were managing them and helping them. What was it about how did you stay kind of under the radar, at least from a wide-ranging fame perspective

versus the people that you helped and managed? You know, it's much easier than it sounds. Ever since I've been in the business, meteor has been a manipulation. And the ones that rise above the noise are usually either doing self-manipulation for their career for some reason, or there's some spark that happens just completely randomly and then it usually dies out. So I just never, I always chose not to do the interviews. I always chose not to be the face. It was really, really easy.

It's hard to get attention. It's really easy to not get attention. I think it's a concerted effort. A lot of people like the attention though. Why didn't you want the attention? Did you felt like you didn't need it or you saw others and that you said that's not what I want or why didn't you? Because I mean, most people seem to want, especially the people in Hollywood.

I think it started with a, strong conviction that my job was to push the artist, not my, and that I was just annoyed that would get in the way. And as I got into the job and I saw more and more what fame was doing to these people, you know, when I first started, fame was was like fools gold. That's what you tried for. You know, that was the dream of every young kid and every rock and roll band that every young manager was, oh my God, get a number one record, have people screaming for your

were autographs, that was the goal. But just like everything else in those days, it was a time where none of us understood consequences. Sex, there was no AIDS, so there were no consequences. You know, we didn't know, we didn't, although we, at 27, most of our friends died up until that point, none of us realized there were consequences. We didn't relate Janice Schopen drinking with her dying or taking drugs. with people dying or AIDS with people dying.

There were no consequences. As I got into it more and more, I started to see how serious the consequences were, how few survivors there were. And in my particular corner of the entertainment world, which was dealing with live audiences, that there was some common thread amongst the people who were rising to the top,

there was some hole in their stomach driving them that they needed this applause every night there's attention from people they didn't know and when they got to the top and they got what they wanted it didn't fill up the hole so I never really wanted to find that if I had that hole yeah they're almost like addicts they kept needing it every day right yeah and it doesn't fill the hole yeah you know in some case in some of the artists I've seen now that I've got Now that I'm 70, I've seen some of the artists go through rehabs, go through years of work, and actually come out the other end where the tension is not hurting them anymore. You know, Alice is a perfect example. Alice Cooper.

He went to rehab twice. Alice Cooper, excuse me. He went to rehab twice. My closest friend, I love him. Big golfer, isn't he? Great golfer. He transferred some of his alcoholism to golf. Yeah.

But he dealt with whatever it was he needed. to get up in the morning and be happy other than applause. He dealt with it and he resolved it. And I've seen other people, you know, Stephen Tyler, lives here on Maui. And I've watched this amazing transformation into someone who just, you know, uses it all positively instead of negatively, that energy. But there was a moment in my life for the middle part of my ears where I didn't think

anyone could actually outlive the fame. So for me, I just didn't want to deal with it. You didn't want to deal with it. So going back, Jimmy Hendricks says you should be a manager. They introduce you to Alice Cooper. So you, you, I've heard or I read that you and Alice still don't have a contract. You've been managing for.

Correct. That's correct, right? You've been managing. Alice says we met on a lie. He told me he was a singer. I told him I was a manager. So, but you still work together, right? Best friends.

But here's the thing I want to take it back to just to continue to relate to the people who listen the show, right? people who are ambitious and career-oriented and driven. And there's so many good messages to take from your life, Shep, I think. But everybody at some point usually gets some sort of an opportunity, right? And that's, you know, people, there's sayings about opportunity and luck and hard work, you know, meeting luck and opportunities. That's where it can happen. But there's another part to it that you had to make the most of it when you got introduced to these famous people, these singers or whatever they, they call them.

themselves. So what was it? If you had to think about this now that you've had obviously time to reflect and think about all of the incredible life you've, you lived and continue to live, what was it that made you good at your job at such a young age, or such an early part that then had Alice introduced you to other people and you kept getting more and more management jobs with other famous singers and performers? What was it that made you great at that specific job? Thank you for saying that. Still not sure. I think history proves my statement correct.

I think, you know, it's interesting you should say that because there were two highways going. One highway was this was really just the cover for what I did for a living, so I didn't take it seriously. It wasn't like I met Alice and I said, oh, now I'm going to be a great manager. I met Alice who nobody wanted to listen to. and I said, this is the perfect act. He will never make it. I'm not doing it to be a manager. I mean, I didn't even know you were supposed to have a contract.

So it sounds very magnanimous that we didn't have one, but I didn't know that people had contracts. I just graduated college. So there was that one highway going. The other highway that was going, and I've really focused on it recently, by watching the kids in Florida on TV after the shootings happened, What really touched me and moved me and gave me some awareness and it relates back to your question very clearly was in I was part of that generation that manifested in our brain that we could stop the Vietnam War.

We manifested that. We had a vision. We thought we could do it. We acted. And it ended. So I came out of the shoot of college. There were no barriers. There were no walls.

Anything I can think of, I can do. And I give it to that moment. I give it to the Vietnam protest moment. And when I started to work with Alice, there came a point in time when everyone around me was getting arrested for dealing. And I didn't want to get arrested. Dealing drugs. Yeah.

So I said to Alice, hey, I'm getting. out of that. I have nothing else in my life but you. If you want to try and figure this out together, let's do it. Yeah. So that led me to, okay, what do I want? And I started to manifest in my brain like I did at the war, or I did it a few stunts at college. Okay, how do I get attention? How do I, here's a guy who nobody wants to listen to. How do I turn that into something positive? Or I manifest that into something positive. What became obvious to me, was that kids liked anything their parents hated in culture. And we knew how to irritate parents.

So that manifestation for me was, how can I get a parent at a kitchen table to say, don't you dare go see Alice Cooper? If I can get that, I win. And that's what I tried to execute. So I, which brings me full circle back to these kids in Florida. And I think it's so amazing. that they got legislation changed in the Florida legislature yesterday. And I think anything we can do as adults to empower them at this moment because they're

on the beginning of their journey. And I want them to face situations like I face with the same attitude of I can manifest the way I want the world to be. So I know this may be airs after. I hope millions and millions of people come out and keep supporting them. Yeah. So you just have this relentless drive and almost says like the Steve Jobs reality distortion field, some would say maybe where you think I can manifest something to happen.

But then it also goes down back to I think some of your just creativity, right, of thinking first, okay, kids love things that their parents hate or their parents will tell them not to do. So what then was it that you helped Alice Cooper do to make the parents, hate him and the parents and the kids love him we tried everything we could do i mean we first of all a guy with the you know girls name alice yeah wearing a dress wearing eye makeup back in the 60s you you didn't even declare you were gay you never came out of a closet so the sexual lines were you know we were dealing with dynamite so that was there was things like um i mean the first stunt many of these things failed but i the thought process was um like um like the thought process was um

Like the first stunt we tried to pull off, I said, okay, how do we get to that parent? Let's do a Nate New Show, get arrested for playing naked. A guy named Alice in Los Angeles getting arrested for playing naked on stage. It's got to get some attention. Somebody got to say this is disgusting, which is what we wanted like a headline, LA's most disgusting thing. So we booked the club in LA called The Experience, who made these clear plastic scenes. suits, put them up on stage completely naked, five guys, completely naked, except for these suits. And I went and called the police.

There was only telephone booths then. There were no cell phone. And by the time the police came, the clothes had fogged up. You couldn't see anything. So the police came to they left. We failed. But that was the thought process. That manifested itself into throwing a chicken off the stage.

That manifested itself into, you know, anything disgusting. disgusting we could attach ourselves to you. That manifested to wrapping the album in paper panties because we knew that really irritate parents. That manifested. Everything we did had that as the core. That manifested into schools out. You know, blow up to school. Parents hate that.

That was the thought process. And Alice's sort of genius in, in, that I don't think he knew or I knew he had in the beginning, which was, seeing its cultural waves and putting them into words. You know, I'm 18 and I like it. That was so on focus and so on point. So anyway, I don't know if that answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

But that leads, then that leads to then the more and more work for you, right, is having some success with him. I just, I love learning about the chain events because a lot of people listening are at that stage where maybe they're getting introduced. to their Alice Cooper, right? Or maybe they're in the middle of that first part of whatever they're doing, trying to figure out, okay, how can I get started? And then maybe they've had that initial success,

and then how do you keep it going? Because one of the reasons Jason's so successful and others that we both, are mutual friends of ours, is the relationships that they've been able to build with people. And that's what you have, if you're a master at anything, you're a master at building quality relationships. And it doesn't even seem like you have to try. Like, I don't know if that's just innately with,

you or what is it? So what is your key then to having the first kind of job that you know you know you know, you know, you know, a contract with, with Alice? How did that then lead to the next whatever you, the handful of people you worked with? How did that work? Well, for me, it was, my journey was, I wanted, I didn't really know if I was lucky or good. Yeah. Had I affected this? It was it really, you know, was, um, because there was no, it's not like being an engineer or carpenter or electrician or a doctor, you know, it's, there's no books. There's no, at that point, there was no highway to know if you're doing right or wrong. So I said to myself, well, let me take the furthest thing from Alice I could possibly find.

I had a really good reputation early because nobody thought Alice would make it. And 1972, he was the biggest act in America in the world, excuse me. Led Zeppelin was the number two. and the hood number three Alice was the number one touring artist in the world. And I was a 21-year-old lunatic, you know, so I was getting a lot of attention within the industry. Wow. So I looked around, there was a girl, Anne Murray, up in Canada, who had just put out a song called Snowbird. And it was rising up the charts, so I knew there was a way to get some attention.

And I said, let me, that's as far from Alice Cooper as I will ever get. in my lifetime. So let me see if she wants a manager. And let me see if I'm any good. So I took on Ann as my second one and I had success with it. And then just randomly I got a phone call from Raquel Well. I think Groucho was next. Alice called me up that he was watching TV with Groucho Marx.

It was like, could you believe I watch TV with Groucho Marx? I watched TV with Groucho Mark. I said, you're kidding me. You got to invite me over. I got to beat Croucho Marx. And a couple of nights later, invited me over, and him and Alice were in bed together with Mickey Mouse ears on watching TV. Wow. With Groucho on the Mickey Mouse Sears.

And I ended up working with him for the next five or six years, which was a huge honor. And then it just started to snowball, Raquel Welsh told him. Yeah. And then after a while I got to a place where I had support and I could actually choose what I was passionate about. And for me, it was always soul music. So I sort of dove into that pretty heavily. And that was the first time that I really combined my personal kind of passion with my business. I think one of the commonalities among people who achieve these levels that you do, and I

found this when having sometimes off not recording, but sometimes also while I'm recording is the fact that they have success and a lot of people look up to them, but they still have this immense imposter syndrome. They don't feel like they've earned it. You mentioned, am I lucky or am I good? So maybe you had some of those thoughts initially. Did you have to get over that? Or did you think, no, I'm just kind of keep focusing on doing my thing. Or did you ever think, how did I get here? Or what am I doing? Or how is this me? How? Like, how did you handle that? I think if you wake up in the morning and think you know anything, you're lying to yourself. And I think the fear is part of what drives you. Yes. I don't have as much of that

fear anymore and I don't do much commerce anymore because that's, that's the difference. It's that going, you know, looking in the mirror and say, shit, this is, this is the one I'm not going to be able to pull off. And then you spend that extra two, three hours figuring out how to pull it off. I still go through that with every project I do. Wow. So, So there's never like that moment where you think, you always have probably moments that pop up to where you think, like, I can't believe that they want me to do this. So they can't believe that. You know what I mean? I don't know what every day.

Well, it's good to hear that too because like I remember just yesterday I got a call from Joe DeSena's company, which is a Spartan race guy. He's the CEO. And they said, would you come and be what they have these like expert speakers the day before their races at some of the cities? And I wanted that like play it cool, you know, like, oh, yeah. Obviously, I deserve and belong here, but I was thinking, wait, did you get the right number? Like, did you get the right person? I just went through one of those. I got a call from people doing a series on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square of iconic New Yorkers.

And I was in New York last week, they filmed me for it. And it was like, are you sure you got the right Jeff Gordon? I couldn't stop laughing. But I was going to make another point. because back to that other question. Alice Cooper, who has been 50 years, he's done everything. He just signed up to do King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC, April 1st, with John Legend. He's been so nervous.

Wow. He's probably sang the song 25 times a day for the last three weeks. But that's what makes him special. You know, the great entertainers I always worked with, every one of them has some neurotic thing before they get on stage or do their thing. They have that fear moment, some vomit, some, you know, go to silence, some, you know, whatever it is, they have some method. And when you lose that edge, when you're not scared anymore, you lose your edge. That's why Alice loves doing it. You get every night, there's that little bit of fear.

They have that, what Jim Collins will say, that healthy, productive paranoia. It seems to be common, right? Oh, absolutely. Because it has to drive me on. Those are, you know, getting and giving that much energy every night. That's tough stuff, especially you get, you know, R.A. My, Allison mine, you know, he's been doing this a long time. But he still, it was so beautiful to see him get nervous about Herod, you know, to really care that much.

Yeah. About what he's doing. So you still negotiate and put together those projects for him? Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool after all these years that you guys are still doing the same thing. It's like completely wild. It's really wild.

It's like a body part. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's really wild. You said something interesting. The great entertainers, they all have that kind of, they have fear. They're neurotic. They have certain routine.

that they have to go through. Yeah, we'd say neurotic, but fear. Fear, fear. What, I like to ask the question, normally I do it at the beginning, and I think of leaders in general, but you, I would, I will change that phrase to high performers, uh, people who perform at high levels over an extended period of time. You've spent your life around these types of people, the, the majority of your life around these types of people.

What is it that separates them from the many people who want to be? the highest They want to sell out stadiums. They want to be the number one touring act in the world. They want to be movie stars. What is it that separates the Alice Cooper types from the wannabes? I think everyone is a different story. Definitely a team.

I mean, the things that I've seen in common maybe are I've never seen anyone do it on their own. I think the closest is probably Mick Jagger. But he's had strong support. for so many periods of his career. Even in the acting world, it's rare that someone breaks through who doesn't have a team, a PR person that they really trust, a lawyer, an agent. So it's being able to allow the team to do what they do.

Yeah. So it's not easy. You think of how this relates to the business world. The best CEOs in the world are the best CEOs in the world are the best. because they do the best job of surrounding themselves with fantastic people to be experts in their specific field. Right? Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, it sounds very similar. So you see a movie star, you see a TV star, or you see someone who's a rock star, and whether they're surrounded by a great band and that band is surrounded by a great support system. It's all of the above. Yeah. In every corner of it to have a great support team. The band's got to be great. The management's got to be great. The agent's got to be great.

It's everybody working together to a common cause. And that's really hard to give up. You know, it's easier for a businessman to give up, I think, than for some artists. Yeah. And that's why you see train wrecks a lot of times because they don't have a team with them. Yeah. They get to a place where they think they did it completely on their own. They don't need the other people.

And then you start seeing train wrecks. Do you have a team? Or what's your setup like to help you be still doing a great job to this day and doing it throughout the course of time? Did you surround yourself with a group or how did it work for you? I wasn't a great executive. I was great at doing it for my artists. I wasn't really great doing it for myself. I think in the business world to be a great executive, you have to enjoy saying no.

I think it's one of the requirements. And I never was good at no. I had great people with me. I don't, I'm not great. I'm so friendly with so many of the people that worked for me. But I wasn't a good delegator. And it was good for my clients. I wasn't,

I wasn't a good company builder. Yeah, you're good, like, again, related to business, where you're a great individual contributor. You're great at doing your craft, your thing. But as far as running the whole show,

the business may be managing a team of people. It wasn't your, that wasn't your forte. And it didn't interest me. It wasn't my. You know, I used to say there's Sammy Hagar that wrote a biography, and he talked about when he came in with Van Halen for me to manage him. And the first thing I said to him was, listen,

I won't make you the most amount of money. There's other managers out there make you a lot more money. I'll make you famous, more famous. But if money's your thing, so it's an artist having a clear focus on what they want and then building a team around them with people who can deliver that. You guys also partnered from a business perspective as well, right? Are you involved or were involved with him with, what was it?

Did you guys open a restaurant or do your, yeah. We just closed that we were open about 20 years. We do a lot of stuff together. Wow. We're pretty, we're body parts. We're like the same person. Yeah. Yeah.

It's completely insane. Do you have like you, I don't know, I don't want to ask you favorites, but sometimes then like the rapid fire question you. you'd say, like, who were those handful of people that if you could be around the most? Who would that be for you? Whether they're famous or not? Yeah, Mr. Regier, who passed away, who was my mentor. Can you explain who he is for people who don't know?

Mr. Rijé was a French chef who invented with two other chefs, Nouveau cuisine, which was the first real chef-driven food association with people. up until him, there were no chefs that were really well known. It was restaurants that were known. And he really, he's, he's the father of the modern culinary movement. And he cooked in a restaurant in the hills in France. He was a Legion of Honor recipient from the French government. He was the first five-star Michelin chef in the world. And I was very lucky to have him take me into his world as a groupie with resources. He's groupie for about 20 years until he passed away.

Wow. I'd say he's probably number one. I love being around Teddy Pendigress. He was always a joy for me. But I'm really lucky. I have so many good friends. How did the meeting with a Dalai Lama come about? I was in Los Angeles.

I had a little curiosity about Buddhism from a trip I had made. My first trip with Mr. Verge in the drawer of the hotel was a Tibetan Buddhist book rather than a Bible. And I read a little bit of it. A little bit I read sort of talked to me. And I was a Jewish kid who was not religious at all. but culturally very Jewish. And so anyway, it had a little tickle in the back of my brain, but I don't think I'd even heard of the Dalai Lama.

And I was in L.A. and I was going out with an actress, and she invited me to come see the Dalai Lama. And because she was a famous actress, we got access backstage. And when he walked in the room, it was, I felt like I had taken the best shower of my life. I had never been so clean ever. I didn't even, you just walked in the room. my whole molecular structure changed.

And I was really taken. I'd never had that happen to me before. And when I got back to Maui, there was a little note up saying that he was coming to the Big Island to give a speech, a teaching. So I got a hold of the person who had invited us and got the name of his representative in America. And got a hold of him,

I had been there with this actress, that I lived in Hawaii, and that the farmers and the chefs of Hawaii would love for when His Holiness came to show him the bounty of Hawaii and not get room service, but really have real humans who really love them, make food for him. And I didn't know at the time, the Tibetans never say no. It's always, the Tibetans always say yes. They don't have no. You have that in common, it sounds like.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, a lot. It really was too. So they allowed me to cook for them. Wow. Then I made the offering again a few times, and I traveled with him to Trinidad and New York City. It was great. Wow.

So at one point, I was cooking in New York, and this girl came, who was the first big benefactor of him. And she knew who I was. So she, like, you know, you need more help with management than you do. with cooking. So they took off by whites that I've been on the board of the Tibet Fund ever since. Oh, man. Yeah, funding the government and exile. Speaking of that, so you have these legendary dinners, you know, before you've hosted,

I don't know, from what I saw just over and over and over, this is what you've done for many years. Right. You host dinners and you're part of obviously a big, big part of the art of putting those together. And so I'm thinking of from a practical perspective, if you had to give advice to somebody who wants to throw a fantastic dinner party that's full of interesting people, that there's connection and the power of breaking bread, so to speak, with friends or maybe meeting new people that they haven't met prior, what are the keys in your mind to throwing a world-class dinner party? great food having a knowledge of what people like and don't like or allergies what they can eat what they can eat and custom tailoring everybody's needs

need to be round tables yeah to eliminate somebody being at the head everybody's equal and around table I always leave an extra seat or two at every table so people can move around. I never do plate of dinners. Ever.

So what do you do? Buffets. Buffets. Okay. You can come up and get what you want unless you have a specific allergy. If you have a specific desire allergy, then we serve to that person. And the real key is in the invitations, thinking about who would like to meet who, who hasn't seen who, making it clear in a very subtle way.

at everybody that this is not a business place. This is a place to eat and laugh and be happy. But the real key is who you have. It's getting people who you know would really be interested in meeting other people. I'm doing one Friday night here. I won't name the names, but I met this really, really nice guy who been very fortunate in life. His parents, his family has been,

major resources and his passion is being in a band and he's an older guy now but he has resources to do it and he's in a band but private planes and all you know all the act so we arranged to have dinner he was stopping by here for no reason at all but then a friend of mine called up who's a very successful manager manages seven or eight major acts he was coming to the island I thought that would be interesting for them to, you know, the musician. And then I got a phone call from another friend who was also a musician who had an accident during the height of his career. He was a fairly well-known musician. And I was paralyzed.

So he became a day trader and now owns one of the major modeling agencies in the world. So each one of them have so many things in common, but I've never met. each of their passions playing into the other stuff I think it'll be a fun dinner for everybody so you're the central point that is bringing everybody together that you know everybody

what I try to do is you know if I'm having someone over I try and think what would what would make their night yep who would they enjoy what type of person what type of thing put together an exciting group that doesn't need the other people for anything

so it's curious I don't know maybe and you've probably done this, I guess. But so one of the challenges, I'm going to one of Jason's events in Toronto and April. I'm not sure when this is being released. But anyway, one of the challenges he said is each person that's coming. It's a very small kind of intimate workshop that he's leading for people that he's asked to come. And it's not one of the big 150. It's got, I think there's going to be about 20 of us. And he said, but on Friday, it's a free night, but it's not really because you have to organize, design, invite

people to a, you know, what he calls a mastermind dinner. But you're doing it in Toronto, which is, you know, I've actually never been to Toronto. I have a few, a couple friends there. So when somebody's going to a new city and they want to organize a dinner, how do you do that? Because normally you're doing it at your house probably in Maui, but what about, what would you do for somebody like that going to a city where you don't have many contacts or friends? So you probably need to lean on maybe a couple people to say bring some people who you think

would be good. How do you handle that? Yeah, I don't, you know, each one is individual. Yeah. I would probably, if I have to get the focus of what he's trying to do. If I was you, I would probably try and do some research into who are the prominent podcasters in Toronto, who might really enjoy, you know, that live in a similar world you do that might enjoy meeting and exchanging ideas. Yeah.

I think might be a real, an interesting path. you know, I think they'd be interested if you went to them and get it, you know, it would add it, it's an easy way in. Yeah. It can have some nice consequences. It can be a nice place. You can do each other's podcast maybe. Yeah.

Talk about, you know, what the difference between a Canadian mentality when they're doing it and an American, you know, it's such a strange time now. So anyway, I'd just, that would be my, if I was managing you, that would sort of be. or a journalist who lives up there. College professor. They have some great schools up there. Marshall McLuhan used to lecture it. So media is very important to the college in Toronto. I'd maybe reach out if there's a professor

who teaches podcasts or stuff like that. Just some thoughts, some random thoughts. That's great. That's great. I know I didn't really even think of that. until now when you're talking about dinners. But I think, because my wife and I really want to do this at our home. We don't live in Maui, but do us at our home and be much more intentional about it.

And when you go to Masherman Talks with Jason, one of the cool things is, you know, they have 150 people there and you've been there, I know. And he, he's staying in touch with a lot of them. Yeah, he actually chooses kind of like the seating chart. And I think that just shows the intentionality of this is why you sat at this table. You know, you have a history in athletics. And then there's a guy whose family works. professional athletics.

And then this guy, you know, he is a dad like you with similar age kids. And he also does this that, you know, it's just, there were so many parallels that he thought this would be the perfect table. And it was. I'm like good friends with a guy who I was at the very first night dinner because it was carefully orchestrated. I know others had the exact same experience. No, no, that's he's very conscious.

Yeah. Which I think. So what made you up? When did you move to Maui? What my home, 43 years ago. And you started and you moved then? I didn't move. I stayed.

I was in L.A. in New York and here. And then 12 years. What made you want to live there? Just fell in love with it. I came here and I put one foot on the island and I felt different in my skin. And that remained all the way through. I just feel I'm happy anywhere, but I'm here I am more comfortable on my skin than anywhere I've ever been.

it looks me up every day. Do you have a lot of friends that live there? Or do you or they travel to meet with you? I have friends who live here. I have a larger community of friends who come in and out. Yeah. Who have part-time houses here. A lot of friends in that category.

And then a transient group, there's always somebody. Yeah. It's always a really nice group of people. Yeah. And they come for short blasts, which is really nice. So, you know, I get to have a nice exchange with them and then move on. Yeah. So when I first moved here, that wasn't the case.

Yeah. No real hotels or there was no. But now it's full on. And we have a great community of people who live here. Very heavily tipped to the world I came from. So Mitch Lee Wood lives here, Stephen Tyler, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, Chris Christopherson. Sammy Hay, I mean, on and on and on and on. There's a great community on this Little Island of people who are very open and gracious with their time and talent.

We're doing a benefit March 24th in support of the kids, a free concert. And Willie Nelson, Jack Johnson, Chris Christofferson, on and on. They call them to donate their services. Yeah. You know, what can we do to support it? We have a great community here. So I think it's obvious you could just sense in your voice and obviously I get to see you here on Skype. We're talking and you just sense this ease and this calm and this genuine happiness, like very little or zero insecurity about yourself.

And I sense that. I could be wrong, but that's what I sense. And the reason why I bring this up, though, Shep, is because we all, have gone through certain failures, and it's easy to gloss over them when you hear about all of the incredible Shep Gordon's stories that you have, like the people, the success, right? But you've had to have faced probably a number of failures, and I'm curious to hear about maybe one or just your thought process towards not really being afraid to fail or how you responded when something you tried failed.

Because you mentioned earlier the Alice Cooper portion of our talk that, you know, we tried a lot of stuff and most of it didn't work. And so just your your mindset towards how to not be too afraid of failing at something and how then to respond when those moments do arise. Yeah, I think, you know, I think the failures are almost more important than the successes. Because you're going to fail. If you try, if you're going to really do anything that's at the outer edges, you're going to fail. It's part of what it is. I used to get all these phone calls from my friends saying that kids were acting and they get turned out all the time

and what I used to say was tell every time they get turned out tell them to be so thankful because it's going to take hundreds of turn downs to get to a yes. So every turn down, you're now closer. Wow, that was great. Now I'm one closer. You know, how do you define failure?

I'm not sure. You know, in each particular instance. Is it the journey or something? it's the result. So where is the, you know, to me, the failure is not trying. But I never use the word even failure. And I've had it, you know, my personal life, I was married and that didn't work out. That was, you know, some would consider it failure for me.

It was a beautiful thing. Painful. Yeah. But beautiful. I don't look at it. I learned a lot from it. I've had so many in my business life, so many failures. I try and explain when I talk to managers and to young artists or managers or people in the business,

I try to explain to them that if your team can't fail, then they can't win. If you're going to hold your team accountable for failures rather than learning from the failures, you can't win because nobody will take a chance on doing anything. So, you know, in my relationships with my artist, when I failed, they carried me on their shoulders. And we just made it work. You know, I've had, especially with Alice, so many embarrassing moments for him on stage where, you know, he could be coming offstage and screaming. And instead he comes off stage and what can we do to make it work? And we get down to the work we have to do.

So I think failure is a really important part of success. If you're not willing to fail, you're never going to win. never do anything important. How do you, not to get too deep, but how do you define like living a successful life or what is success to you? I think a life of service. I think that's the overriding dividing line between happy and not happy. I think as I get older and all of those kind of words that I never understood have picked up so much meaning. If you're living your life for yourself, it's hard to be happy. If you're living your life for others, knowing that you're going to be the biggest winning. There's so many of these ironies in

life. I gave the commencement speech at the Culinary Institute. And I said, you know, you guys are going to graduate and you're going to have a hundred thousand dollars jobs. You're going to you're working in a restaurant or a hotel, you're going to be making these dinners for people who can afford $100, $100, $200, $200 dinner. That's, you know, when you walk outside your place, when you look to the left, then you look to the right, there's going to be people who are hungry. Your job is feeding people, not feeding them $100 dinners, feeding them. So you can come out your front door and decide that you're going to feed the hungry people

because it's the right thing to do and be of service. Or you can do it because if you don't, they're going to break into your restaurant and steal everything. So do it because of service, which will make you happy, or do it because of paranoia, which will make you angry, but do it.

And I think that's the same kind of thing. I think, you know, if you go through life doing, being of service, you know, thinking you having a dinner part, already thinking about the people who can't who have dietary restrictions and making making that a plus for them not a oh well we can you know no a human being comes out proud with a dish that makes them

happy while everybody else is on the buffet line that serves and um that that's what i don't know yeah i got you so i it's funny i had lunch with a great mentor yesterday chef and towards the end of we were getting kind of deep. And, you know, we've both been building careers our life. And he said he was earlier in his career, he was flying home with a high level person that worked at GE. And they were actually on a private plane. This guy was like a president level type. We had a bunch of money, a bunch of stock options, all this. And so my mentor said, you know, how do I, how do I kind of progress to get to your job someday? Like, how do I progress to live the life that you live? Like, everybody loves you in the company or everybody looks up to you. Everybody wants your job and you got

all this money and the guy looked at him and stopped and he said, you know, it may appear that way. But my life outside of my job, since I work about 85 hours a week, I travel nonstop, my kids don't talk to me anymore. And certainly I have a lot of money. But the second they fire me from this place or I leave this place, I probably won't, I don't really even have that many friends. And I'm also, so no one's really going to care about me at all because all I've been doing is trying to kind of shepherd this company and it's been fine.

Don't get me wrong. got a lot of money, but I don't really have any connection. I don't have any real relationships, not even my own kids. And he said, so my advice to you would be to not do what I do, right? My advice to you would be to think of something that you could finally, like, truly be passionate about, whether it's your family or, or the actual work that you do, not just kind of driving some random companies stock price up, but find something that you genuinely enjoy and then certainly develop real relationships every day along the way.

And that is how you will be happier. You might not have as much money as me, but you will be much happier. And it just hit me, man. And I was thinking about this talk with you, you know, that. I would actually give a different point of view. Okay. My point of view to them would be use your resources and service. So, you know, you have the corporate plane.

You're flying from L.A. to New York. Take a kid from make a dream. Yeah. Who needs his dream has been on a private plane. take them on the flight. Factor into your daily life routine ways that what may be a negative to you can become a positive in terms of service. And because resources are important. I mean, to have the kind of resources he has, he can have a real effect on the world.

Yeah. Even if it's one person. So that, I, I always, I, it's so easy to, put the blame on not having human contacts and service by being successful. I see it so many times where friends will say, I shouldn't have worked that hard. I should have looked after my family. I should have. Well, they're not mutually exclusive.

That's a great point. You know, at all. They only are if you look at it that way. And if you do the work to not make it that way, you know. You can do both. And you can really do something because you have, you have the platform to do it. Yeah. You know, um, so anyway.

It just feels to me like it just, it is a, the core foundation of your mindset. And that's really where it starts. And then from there, anything can happen, whether you want to be the CEO of a big company. Like it's the, right, the intention of the core framework of your foundation of your mindset is being of service to other people and how you could have. help that that that high up at GE never thought of using the corporate plane to give a ride to somebody who had never even you know been on a plane like that I think that's that's the difference right there is the actual mindset of being in service not necessarily like well I have regrets because my life fell apart outside of this the way you view everything yeah on the journey of

your life you know so I think you know it would be great if more people with resources questioned for daily routines because they can add. There's so much stuff they can do to help humans. Yeah. Well, Shep, man, I would, I could talk to you all day. I really appreciate like just the sheer wisdom that you possess and are willing to share and be of service to me here and everybody listening. It's just a real treat. It's a surreal moment.

It really is. And I'm appreciative of your investment because you, you know, you have a rainbow right outside your window. And you can be doing anything you want. You're sitting here talking to me for over an hour. So I'm so grateful. So thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. That means a lot. Everybody out there, please pay attention to these kids from Florida. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm sorry. Is there anything else like, did I miss something to do with you? Just that I think, you know, I've spent the last year being angry about the way the world is going.

And I've seen those kids, I realized, wow, is that the wrong emotion? What are you angry? What have you been angry about? I've been angry about the way the world's changing. I've been angry about the way our government is dealing with situations that we've moved from a compassionate point of view to a really, in my opinion, nasty, evil point of view. It's not the way I like to treat humans and it's being done in my name. So I've been angry. You mean from Americans. Is that what you mean? Yeah.

I've been really angry. It's like, you know, I've invested 70 years in trying to make a difference and to see it all get wiped out to see education programs wiped out to see all the safety nets going away to see, you know, AR-15s and people saying that's a good thing. It's just, it's, so anyway, when I saw the kids, I said, I can't live in anger. I have to live in action. And they really motivated me back to that corner. which I hadn't been in since Vietnam. And I hope a lot of people go back to that corner. That's powerful, man.

That's really powerful. These kids are having that impact on so many people. Like you said, taking action is impressive. It really is. It's hard work. It's hard work. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thanks again. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Or maybe you just say watch the DVD or the Netflix. documentary or read the book. They call me Super Mench. Super Minch, The Legend of Shep Gordon on Netflix. I assume it's still on Netflix. I watched

it like five times. I think so. Yeah. It's by Mike Myers, but it's amazing all of the, it would take us 10 hours to get to all the stories, but we got to some of them here. So it's amazing. I encourage people to go watch it. I loved it. And it's a pure joy that I got to have this

conversation with you, Shep. So thank you so much, man. Aloha. All right, man. Thank you. I want to thank Shep for joining me today. I could talk to him for hours, the wisdom, the stories, the life advice. I just treasured that talk. And I'm so grateful to him as well as to Jason Gaynard for making the connection.

I'm grateful for you for listening and spreading the message to all of your friends. And certainly by also doing that via iTunes Apple Podcasts by subscribing, writing a review, and rating the show, hopefully five stars. That's writing a review. subscribing and rating the show on iTunes, Apple Podcasts. It really helps spread the message. Thank you so much for doing that. As you can hopefully tell, I absolutely love doing this one.

I will see you all next week. Can't wait.