EXPERIENCE 31 | Jim Rohrer - Win-Win-Win Leadership (Before it was Trendy)

Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast with LOCO Think Tank Founder Kurt Bear. Listen in as Kurt digs deep into the business and life stories of business owners and thought leaders at different stages of growth from all walks of life. Launching and growing anything can be a crazy experience, so expand your thinking and level up your understanding of what it takes to find success in the world of free enterprise. Welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. This is your host Kurt Bear and I'm glad to have you here with us. My guest today is Jim Roar and Jim is a future LOCO facilitator and someone who's become interested in what we're doing at LOCO Think Tank, but he's had a really interesting business journey and has done a lot of great things in the world and so I wanted to have him here share and so Jim why don't you just kind of finish introducing yourself for our listeners. Well thanks. So after leaving Sears after 30 years I worked for a lot of smaller companies, ran a couple of them and after retiring retiring, I was looking for a challenge so I am the district membership chair in my Rotary District and the timing couldn't be more challenging, obviously with a pandemic we've had some some difficulty so sometimes I think it's like being the captain of the Titanic. Yeah, it's probably one of the more challenging things, especially in an organization with a lot of older members and things and technology isn't always their first forte. That's true. Well we're starting to get things turned around. Good. Well, I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. And so you fill your time with some Rotary Club service. You've done a lot of consulting golf or what are the other things that you do? Yeah, I like to play golf. My skills seem to be declining. I've always wanted to swing like Jack Nicholas and now I do. He's 81. Fair enough. Well, I'm sure you play a better game than I do anyway. So you've got kind of a topic for today's talk and it's really going to take through some of your journey with Sears and some of the principles you've learned. And so do you want to just set that up for us a little bit? Sure. So I call it living at bottoms up culture and I wanted to talk about it because it really was life changing for me. Like most large corporations, the prevailing culture is tops down and you kind of queue up to your next job. And so you look at the guy before you and you emulate what he did well and you try to change the things that were not that person's strength. So now I've got, it's 1987, I've got this new job. It was very exciting working in Sears Tower. But all of a sudden I need different skills. I'm going to be confronted with things I've never done before. And what's the new job? My title was VP of systems and procedures for the company. So I was to advocate for the field organization but the difference was that you were dealing with things that you didn't have any. Try to make these field organizations stronger. Yes. Is that fair? Well, can we back up a little bit before we get to that? Was this right out of college and what was your educational background or how did you progress to this kind of a management role seems like a pretty young age? Well I started, no I started out, when I got out of college I went in the Air Force and I had four years as a commissioned officer there and somehow I got bit by the retailing bug while I was there and decided that that was going to be my career. And at the time there was only one retailer if you wanted to be in retailing the company you wanted to be with was Sears. They were the king of the hill and so I started there and worked my way through many assignments and ended up my last ten years in Sears headquarters. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. And so was that arriving with this new job or that VP of whatever? Yes, systems and procedures. Oh yeah. You could tell I'm allergic to systems and procedures. Well it was an easy job really because we were so far behind that we needed everything. So the only problem was we didn't have enough money to do all the things that needed to be done. So it was sort of my job to sort out what we were going to do next. Like I'm imagining maybe this network of stores and things that grown so fast and so kind of freely but you're trying to make it all Sears better and all of them work functionally and that kind of thing. Well, I wish it were like that. I think that we had sort of fallen asleep at the switch and we were doing things the way we'd always done them and there were lots of opportunities to use technology to do them better. Okay. But we were behind the power curve. And this is 1987 still? Well in 1987 is when I first became acquainted with the catalog my boss who was essentially the COO of the company stopped me in the elevator one day and said I want you to focus on the catalog. He says that's the largest department in the company and it's failing and it has nobody in charge of it. You've got to figure out what we should do next. And I actually took a little pride in it took a couple more times for him to get it through my head that this was to be my number one priority. And it well should have been because we were doing four billion dollars a year. No one owned it. It was just a department, a line on the PNL in the stores and there was a vice president of appliances and a president of apparel and so forth but in catalog there was nobody in charge of it. Fascinating. And the orders just came into the stores. Most of the time they'd get captured on a recording machine. Some two or three days later they'd get around to trying to figure out what the order was supposed to be and send it to the distribution center. It was a pretty messed up system. Amazon would have crushed the sears of those days. Well at that particular time yes absolutely. Although I'm sure they went through learning curves. I'm sure. I'm sure. So take us from there. What's that job evolved to? So after he got my attention and I realized that this was a serious priority. There were only really two things we could do. It was the order taking process that didn't work. The catalogs worked. Well people responded to them. It was our inability to respond to them. So there were only really two opportunities. One was you could try to come up with a mechanized order taking process using computers and then try to teach the people that worked in the 3100 stores how to work a computer and to implement this new procedure. That was option A. Option B was to open large call centers to do it ourselves. Which of course even there we'd have to develop an order taking process. Sure and distribution system associated with those call centers. So that was an easy decision option B was the obvious one. But it was dramatically different approach than what we were doing. So I found myself being scheduled to present my plans to the CEO and his top staff which was a little above my pay grade so it had a little bit of scaryness to it. Fair enough. And what were your presentations? So as I started into the thing he had a lot of great questions as you might expect. The first one was well how many centers the prevailing idea serious was that we were the biggest and the best. We were in the world's tallest building we just built the world's tallest call center. Well that doesn't work and I had done my homework and I realized that see call centers with over 500 seats are virtually unmanageable a couple of the airlines that tried and failed. So doing the math that we had done it was going to take 10 centers across the country to take the number of calls that we're going to make. Did you just lay off all those staff at the various stores and stuff that we're doing these kind of fulfillments before? Well basically we were laying off answering machines. Right. Fair enough. But that's a lot of extra cost to be able to. But I guess it does. The idea was well we'll get better at doing this thing. We'll deliver better and get more customers. Well we couldn't have gotten worse because 15% of all the orders that were sent in were cancellations. There was another 12% that were a thing called unclaimed. That was because they were sent to the store and those were orders that simply never got picked up. So when you add the two together you're talking about 27% almost a third of the orders went to nothing. So it was pretty we were very confident that we could do better. And after going through all of his questions, how many people, where are they, how we recruit them? What about turnover, all of that stuff? We were able to tell him and it was interesting there were no financials on catalog. So it was difficult to tell him what we were spending today. And I remember saying to him, for about what we're spending today, we will dramatically improve the service and therefore the revenue. Not not exactly the strongest. Right. Closing statement. Licking your thumb and sticking in the air like I think this is going to work. So what happened there? Well he approved it and then I had a new assignment. My boss became the president of catalog. And I became the operations guy with orders to go open these 10 centers. Well across the country, which we did in in 14 months. Whoa. It was a it was a pretty full court press to and hired about 1200 people in each center. So always that you said 500 was the max or 500 seats. Oh, okay, we got to keep staffed all day long or long shifts or whatever. And so one of the unusual things that we decided to do that got everybody's eyebrows up, we decided to use 100% part time employees. And the reason is that in the call center business, it's very easy to forecast when the calls are going to come. How many are going to be here at 10 o'clock on Monday morning? Special little history. Right. It's easy to do. What's hard is to have people scheduled at the right amount. Right. Because in an eight hour shift or whatever, they're going to have like three or four areas where there's just bored. In eight hours, you will be overstaffed half the time and understaffed half the time. Right. But if you can get short shifts, three, four, five hours shifts, then you can match that actually very, very well. Interesting. Yeah. That was quite an innovation. So did you come up with that? Well, I will say that we had quite a bit of help from AT&T. They were our vendor. They wanted us to succeed. We're going to have this new 800 number for the first time and they were, they were very helpful. They pressed that out and, hey, all you other big companies, you need a call center with AT&T. They took us all around the country and we visited the best and the worst of the call centers that they could get us into. Interesting. And we learned an awful lot. Yeah, I bet. I bet. So take me to the next chapter in that journey or conversation. Well, as we actually started to work out all these little details, like, okay, we're going to use part-time people, where are we going to get them and who we're going to hire? So the conventional wisdom, I suppose, was that we needed sales people. We rejected that and said, no, the customers sitting there, they got their care log in, one hand, they got their credit card in the other. What they need is an incredibly nice person that answers on the first ring, takes their order effectively, thanks them profusely and makes it a pleasant conversation. So we decided to target senior citizens, college students, and soccer moms. And these all also fit our part-time model because they didn't need healthcare. So we did another thing. We took the money that we would have spent on healthcare and folded it into their rate. So we were the big dog in town. We were offering more money for that job. Yeah, for a part-time job, nobody was paying that kind of hourly pay. So as we would go into the cities, we would go in with great fanfare. They would do things like put up billboards and so forth. Yeah. It's coming soon. It's coming soon. Interesting. And we had thousands of people that were applied and we were therefore able to hire the best. Yeah. And we bought a hiring package that helped our young staffs figure out who were the best. And we also went where we knew we could find those three groups of people, built something that we called a work ethic matrix that helped us really quantify what was common sense. We would probably never put a call center in downtown Detroit or Midtown Manhattan because people there are unhappy sometimes. Right. They don't come to work singing a song. Well, in the costs are higher in many cases, cost of even just living being there. So we decided to try to quantify where we could find these really happy people that would be good customer service. Yes. Iowa, I recognize some of them. Well, they were all mid-sized market towns and that's just all scattered across the country so the distributions could be closer to the people. So yes, so 800 service in those days, it didn't matter how long originally, you know, all the call centers that were in the middle of the country, well, it no longer mattered at a particular time. So we were San Antonio was our first and Roanoke was our second in Greensboro, North Carolina was our third, Mobile, Alabama, fourth, Fort Wayne was fifth, Provo, Utah was sixth, Wichita 7, let's see, Louisville 8, let's see, Tucson was ninth and Johnson City, Tennessee was the tenth. That's new. But these were wonderful people that we were able to hire, I'll give you a story about Johnson City when my boss, so we had to carve up the country and decide which center is going to take calls for which area. And my boss said, who are you going to do to take the Northeast, where New York and Boston and places where people, a little more abrupt sometimes? A little bit. And I said, Johnson City, Tennessee, and he says, you're crazy, you can't do that, that will never work. He said, trust me, boss, it's going to work. Well, it was fantastically successful. Just killing with kindness. They had never been treated. Oh, bless my soul. Yeah, I'd be happy to get that for you. Or Rocky Top people as they called themselves. Okay. Did a fantastic job and they would call and write us and say, who are these people? They're just fantastic. Well, that feels like a success, huh? It did. And the sales came with it. It's just amazing to me, like I live in this world of all these small businesses that, you know, they start with one employee themselves, oftentimes, and then I get the two, three, four. And it's just, you know, kind of building this thing and eventually they can build a building or this. And seriously, just like, we're building 10 call centers in 14 months and you, young man, are in charge of most of it, and go make it happen and you're hiring these thousands of people and just quite a fascinating thing that these, these larger companies just have so much muscle to just get things done. But none of this was in our wheelhouse. Right. There wasn't anybody in the company that knew where to put a call center. Right. They knew where to put a store, but a call center was another thing. Yeah. So you were really, you know, a blue ocean there. You have to ask a lot of questions and listen to the experts. Our telephone company partners were good. They knew a lot about it. I remember when they took me to Memphis to visit FedEx and they said, we got this new concept and this will be so great because you won't have to have this area carved out for this call center and for this group of customers. The call will go to the next available agent and FedEx is doing it. So you won't have somebody over here not busy and somebody over here has two calls. Yeah. And I remember being nervous about it, doing it. And the FedEx people said, yeah, we had to try it two or three times before we got it to work. And it was coming up on the pre-Christmas season. Oh, wow. And I had to decide whether we were going to, all my people said, let's implement it in January. Yeah. And I remember my financial guy said, listen, we're about $4 million behind plan. And you know, we're probably not going to make our year. And the people that were telling us that we were going to save an awful lot of money with this new thing. Right. And we can sell more too, right? Yes. Somehow I implemented it in September. And it worked. And at the end of the year, we were $6 million under plan and it had an 18 percent sales increase. Awesome. So it was a giant leap. Yeah. It sounds like it turned the catalog into really a professional kind of thing again after a long time of degradation. Well, I did. I mean, when I went there, we were doing about $4 billion. And when the catalog closed in 1993, we were doing $5 billion. So we had nice growth during that five or six years. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not closed. It's not closed. Well, I would just tell you, I was there. It was the worst decision and perhaps the beginning of the end for the company. Yeah. Tell me about that. So the people that bought from our catalog were intensely loyal. Most of them lived in rural areas and getting to a store was not easy. Somehow the CEO was into modernizing so that we looked modern and up to date. And he thought that the catalog was kind of a throwback to the old days. And so he decided we were going to close it. And it would be okay because the people would just go to the nearest store. Well, if the nearest store is 40 miles away, and there's a Walmart or there's a target, they're not going to go. And so it was a very big miscalculation. Yeah. I remember actually, I'm from rural North Dakota and when I, not so much when I was growing up because we had more stores and stuff around then, but my grandmother always had a serious catalog laying there. We would always look through to see the things that we wish we could have. And so many of the old, like the stuff that my dad grew up playing with, some of those old toys and different things and red, red, ruby guns, like those all came through the serious catalog. Sure. That's how we got nice stuff where I came from. I mean, we lost the confidence of all those people. Yeah. And I mean, the company lost it. So it wasn't that it went to the nearest store and it didn't convert. It was a terrible decision and I can tell you an interesting story about the closing. It was, I had to say that I was upset would be mild. I had put everything I had into this organization. And for the first time, managed from the bottom up people, I had gotten close to people, they were people, they were real people. I knew them. I knew who they were. And they came to workforce because they believed in what we told them and that they were important to what we were doing. So tell me a little bit more about that. You mentioned that was the first time that you'd really managed from the bottom up. Is it like through the hiring and the culture building of these call centers, was where you really got your fingers into the dirt there? Well, I mean, it started with the traditional, you know, financial looking and realizing that if I hire 15,000 part-time people and I have the normal turnover that call centers have, I wouldn't be in that job very long because the financials would be disastrous. Right. It's been all your money entry. It started thinking about what causes people to leave. And we really got deeply involved in every study that we could find about why people leave a job, particularly in the call center industry. And we found out that one of them was because other things in their life are important and this is a part-time job. So if there's a baseball game with their son or daughter in it and they want to be there and you're blocking their way, if that happens very often, they're going to leave. So we marketed these jobs as jobs that fit your lifestyle. And our whole scheduling process was around allowing people to have their life. You can shift your schedule. Absolutely. We had plenty of people. It was just a question of deciding that we were going to do it. And so for instance, the way that we solve problems, when we opened the center, it was very hard to teach the young staff how to do this, but we taught them that the problems are solved by the people that are closest to the problem. So when there's a problem, you don't come up with a solution, which is the normal thing. Tell the people and ask them to take care of it. You tell them what you think the problem might be or what solution you're seeking versus what's happening and let them develop the solution. And implement it. And that was the way we ran it. During the every Monday morning we have a conference call with all the centers. We use speaker phones, so all 70 of the staffs were on there and we would give them one problem. There was a significant problem and then they would take it to their people, come up with a solution, implement it, and then they would be given a little time the next Monday to tell how that came out before we gave them the next problem. Right. And then if one of the solutions of those 10 works way better than everybody else's solution, then it's like, well, hey, everybody use that one. But we never would say that. Oh, really? We'd let them decide. But they could do that. And they would, they got to know each other because we were all together and one of them would say, yeah, our solution was only half baked and we're going to do what Provo did or whatever. Right. Right. We didn't have to tell them that. And I'll give you an example, sir. So one day one of the buyers told me, we are accumulating the largest selection of missmarked blinds and and window shades. Your people obviously do not know how to measure for blinds and window shades. We have a warehouse full of them. What are you going to do about it? So we presented that that week as the problem. And just so happened, I was traveling that week and as I was coming up to the center in Greensboro, I noticed there was something going on over by the front door. And as I got up there, I found out that each person, as they came in, had to correctly measure the window that was beside the door for a blind. And once they got it right, then they got a Snickers bar and they were allowed to go in. And that's the way they solved the problem. And I remember running into the buyer a couple of weeks later and he said, what did you do? And I said, what do you mean? He said, it stopped. The problem is completely stopped. And so the brilliance of the way that the problems were solved was amazing. And they all did it differently, but they all got it done. And they were, of course, competitive among themselves. They wanted to make a good presentation the next week. So it was amazing. That's really interesting. So what would you like to take me next in this series journey? The closing of the catalog was so hard for me because I had gotten so close to so many people. It just was the nature of the research. This is 93. So the internet doesn't really exist in its current form yet, although it was kind of there. That is the year that Jeff Bezos started selling books on it. Oh, is that right? Okay. So the announcement was made on January the 25th, 1993. Okay. It was a complete surprise. I was not ready for it. Oh, they didn't tell you first. No, they didn't tell anybody. And it was announced. And it was kind of a, first of all, we had an unbelievable influx of calls because they put the whole catalog on sale for a third off. I had just let go all of the Christmas folks. So I had about half the people that I need to take these amount of phone calls. And we couldn't, we had this huge backlog. I remember. Jay Leno was making fun of us, you know, talking about Colin Sears at 3 a.m. to try and get some of these bargains and so forth. And we couldn't get it, couldn't figure out how to do it. And finally, we came up with this plan. We put an announcement on there that said, if you're east of the Mississippi, hang up and call back tomorrow. If you're west of the Mississippi, hang on, we'll take your order. And it broke this huge backlog of calls. It was so bad. Sprint was our phone company at that time. And I remember getting a call from our Sprint person says, you're going to bring our entire network down. You've got to do something about this call log that you have. Fascinating. So we finally broke the thing, but what a ham-fisted way to manage through that process. Yes. Do you want to call out this former CEO that made that dumb decision? Well, he was a bright guy, but he was a department store. His name was Arthur Martin as. And his view for the company was that we are going to become a department store, which didn't make much sense to me because department stores are already over their peak and we're starting to have some trouble. So we spent millions and millions of dollars sprucing up the stores, trying to make them look like a department store hiding the hardware department and the appliance department. It didn't seem like the right solution, but he was the guy that they hired, and that was his plan, and there were those around him, consultants, tell him the catalog makes us just look like a throwback to the old days. So I did have one glorious moment in the closing. I had been taking orders for the service department as well because they're busy when we're not. We're busy in the fall, they're slow in the spring and summer, they're real busy and we're slow. So five of the centers of my 10 would go over to the service department and those jobs were saved. But then I would have to close and lay off what amounted to about 7,500 people, which was pretty terrible. Pretty hard, yeah. So I got this bright idea that instead of doing what we normally do when we close the unit, that I went to the CFO of the company, I said, how about this? How about if I try to sell these centers as is? You take the lease, you take the equipment, you take the people, and somebody that needs a call center can just give all these people a job instead of us throwing them out of the street. So we had four out of the five, we were able to sell, and it was so cool. We would sort of let them train on our nickel. So on the given day, the ribbon would be cut, and they would stop taking serious calls and start taking, like AARP was one of those, and they would take AARP calls the next day. So four of them closed without a single person losing their job. The fifth one, which we just couldn't find a buyer for, was in Wichita. And so I went back into Wichita, and I met with all the fathers of the city that had been so gracious when we came there. And I said, do you remember those big signs that you put up all over the highways? I want you to put them back up. And they said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, we can't, I haven't been able to sell the center. I don't want to let all these people go. So I want you to put those billboards back up, and this time it's going to say Sears has great people hire one. And then there'll be an 800 number under it, and your employers in the city can call that 800 number, and we'll be standing by, we'll have put all of our people's information into a database. And that database will tell, okay, this is Joe Smith, and he's got these characteristics. And we got anybody there that wanted a job, got one. We didn't have to lay off a single bird. That's crazy. Isn't that a great story? I haven't heard a story like that before, and this is 93. So the economy was humming pretty good at that time, I suppose, and the internet was starting to happen a little bit and stuff. But still, that's pretty interesting. And the people in Wichita just came forward. I remember we had a meeting where all the people in the chamber of commerce came in and sat with one of our people and watched how they took orders, and so we kind of exposed them to our people. You're like adding one of these people to your team, and it's going to be a more professionally run team in your office. Absolutely. So they could see, wow, these are awesome people. Yeah, yeah. And what an influx of talent into the small business community and things around there as well, right? Had all that training that you'd given many of them and things like that. Yeah. I mean, I convinced our people, you take the person, and we had an upside down organization chart. So my job was to support the people under me, above you, who were the managers of the centers, and so forth throughout the organization. Yeah. And so we said, look, don't worry about getting a job. If you take care of the people that are counting on you, you will look so good doing it that somebody will want to hire you. Yeah. And it worked for me as well. I had already signed papers for the retirement because my heart was broken. Right. And I remember getting a call from the president of the company. And he said, I want to see you. And I said, well, I really appreciate you. I know you're trying to help me, but I've already signed the papers. I'm going to retire. And he said, you know, the last time I looked, I'm the president of the Sears, and you're not. So would you please get yourself over to my office? And I want to see you. And I cleaned that up a little bit from the exact work that you had. It's your ass over here. I want to talk. That was what he said. And so I went over there and he said, look, you're not retiring. And we want you to, there's another job for you to do. And so he said, the auto centers are in all kinds of trouble. And they need to turn around. And I think you're the guy for the job. I remember saying to him, I'm not sure I could even change a tire. And he said, I guarantee you, you will not be changed in tires. We need someone that can change attitudes. So I like it. So I was there for a few more years after that. So was this president? He was like the number two to the CEO that had kind of made these decisions about department stores and things like that. Where did that go? What did that president become to CEO later on? Well, as a matter of fact, he retired not too long after that. He had been there for a long time. And he was given that one of the jobs that he was given was to help close down the catalog in an orderly fashion so that we wouldn't write off. The idea was, it looked like we were headed for a billion dollar write off. And so that didn't happen. The stockholders didn't want that to happen. It still was awful. It was still over $700 million that we wrote off because you had all these little stores out there with leases. Right. Oh, yeah, you got a while with all those leases and things like that. Well, I want to go, let's flip back a chapter or two before we get into the outer center turnaround. So where did you come from? You didn't know how to change oil. And why didn't your dad teach you how to change oil? Well, I don't know, it is funny that in my retail career, I had this great store manager that said, if you're going to be in my tutelage, you're going to learn appliances, home improvement and automotive because that's what really matters at Sears. And so at one point, he said to me, I'm transferring you to a B store near here. And I thought, oh boy, he says, you're going to be the auto center manager. So the auto center was a two bay auto center in this little store in a not wonderful part of Cincinnati. Okay. And so that was my automotive experience. I ran a two bay auto center fair enough. And the next thing that I had to do with automotive, they were promoting me to manage the whole thing. Yeah. Interesting. So I do want to go back though, where did you, where did you, are you Colorado native? No, I grew up in Ohio. Okay. I'm a lifelong Buckeye. Okay. Great. And I went to Miami of Ohio. Okay. And when I was graduating, I remember my dad saying, what do you, have you decided to do about the military? Yeah. And you did have to do something in those days because you're in the Vietnam War. Yeah. Okay. So I decided to go in the Air Force, went to officer training school and got my commission and served four years and they put me in this field called services, which was commissary food service, housing, basic exchange, all the retail activities. Yeah. And I liked it. But I knew that I could do better for myself in a private sector than spending all my career in the military. And it was a hard decision because I, I enjoyed my four years and did, did well. And my wife used to say, why do you work so much harder than all the other young lieutenants? And I said, I don't know. I guess it's just something that my dad built into me. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, you kind of glossed over it. You said I kind of fell in love with retail when I was in the Air Force and I was like, that doesn't necessarily compute. But that makes sense. Yeah. There's a lot of moving around of stuff that has to happen and supply chains and managers. I mean, as a young man, I'm running a grocery store, basically a commissary that does, you know, five times what your local croakers does. Is that right? You have this captive audience, so even then, I remember my boss was really not into customer service. He had been a pilot all his career. And he was just kind of living out his days, supervising people like me. And I remember going to him saying, I think we can do better in terms of customer service fact. And he said, why would we want it? Why do we care? Why do we care? I said, because if we're going to do this, we want to be the best commissary around. And this was in Virginia. And there were like nine other commissaries right in the area. Interesting. Okay. So why wouldn't we want to be better than all those Navy commissaries? I don't think he ever really understood. And did it matter? Like people could choose which commissary to go to. Oh, sure. They could shop wherever they want it. Yeah. And so, you know, he, I said, I want you to judge me based on my performance. And we're doing this much volume. If we do 20% more than that. Yeah. And we take that business from some other place. It isn't that what you want me to do. And he'd say, well, yeah, I guess I'll go ahead. If you want to. Yeah. Long as I don't have to do anything more. Right. So it was a, it was a, it was a lot of fun. And I had good people and we were doing, doing well. And yeah. And so I decided I definitely wanted to stay in retailing. But why not go to work for seers? And did you grow up in an entrepreneurial family? That sounds like a really entrepreneurial attitude toward that value proposition of the commissary and out competing the others. And I don't know. My dad had such high standards. He was, he was an amazing man. I could do a whole podcast about my dad. But I learned so much from him and he was, he always supported me, but he always pushed me gently to do better. Yeah. And somehow and still to me that if you're going to do something, you want to do it really well. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Well, let's flash back to this. Hey, I'm the VP of the Auto Center or whatever division. And I got to fix them. What was the status on the ground when you came into that job or you replacing somebody that had failed at it or they just needed to create a role to turn this thing around? No, no, I think he had failed. We had had a very horrible situation out in California, where if you put enough pressure on people to hit a number, they will cheat or cut corners. Right, it was like Wells Fargo, all those fake accounts and stuff, right? We had been charged with overselling. Selling people things that they didn't need. And that business tends to have people that do that. Sure, but can't get a reputation for that. That'll kill you. So Sears got nailed on that and we paid millions of dollars out in settlements, but we never really said, this is, we're sorry, right? You didn't admit to actually have done it. The exact statement I'll never forget it was, some mistakes may have been made. Oh, God. That's as close as the same thing. That's what that was the predecessor to. So I had not been in the job very long and I was told, so you're going to Omaha for a conference. And at that conference, they're going to be attorneys general from all over the country. And by the way, this thing is spread. Right, now the other states are looking their chops and they can get a little serious gravy. Right. We had paid all this money to California. So the guy in New Jersey says, well, I'm sure you're doing the same thing here. Sure. So I'm the new vice president of automotive. And I was a little plum job that CEO got for you. Are that president game for you? Well, definitely. I didn't have to sit around thinking, what am I going to do tomorrow? So I get out there. And first of all, they did they prepare me. They brought in all these consultants. And for a week, they battered me. And they would ask me all these questions. It's all what you and I think a president probably goes through preparing for one of those debates. Right, right. And so we spent an entire week. And they would try to make me mad. And I say, isn't it true that you did all these awful just to try and they taught me things like sit back in your chair, don't lean forward. It's OK to pause, speak slowly. They didn't have me say, ah, shucks, but almost. Right. And so we practiced for a whole week. And we didn't tell them anything but the truth. So I get in there and here's 42 attorneys, generals, from all around the country. Whoa. And I'm in this three person panel to discuss the ethics. What they should do with y'all. The ethics of aftermarket sales in the automotive sector. There was a guy from AMCO and somebody else, I don't remember who the other guys were. They read a prepared statement. And you could tell they didn't write it because they had trouble reading it. So when they got to me, I said, well, based on the fact that we've had so much publicity, I really don't have anything to say. I will just take your questions and answer them as honestly as I can. And they said, you remember the guy Barnaby Jones? He said, we want you to be like Barnaby Jones. You're just relaxed and calm and take him. And so we went over the questions. And I'll bet you you've had a test where as soon as you opened the test and you looked and you saw all the questions that you had studied, you're so excited because you know you're going to get an A. That's the way that was. All the questions that we had practiced, were asked one by one by one. Have a guess in the other two guys with you hadn't had the same liberal preparation. Well, they didn't care about them because they hadn't had the crisis that we had had. Right, you were the star. They just didn't want to put you on the stage by yourself. So I started out by saying, you know, the first thing I did was take all the folks off commission. We are now compensated based on customer service scores. And so everyone gets a base salary and then their customer service scores of that cost or that auto center determines the bonuses for the folks that are there. Cool. And they understand that we really care about service and that's what we're there for. Right. So I started out with that. And then that led them to ask more and more questions. And I can remember vividly, of course I had on my blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie, the standard garb. Believe the words I said. And I can remember realizing about halfway through that I had perspired all the way through my suit coat, my shirt, and I was sticking to the chair. So I was pretty nervous, but it just keep leading to the chair so that nobody else could tell. It went splendidly. And we were able to very quickly after that, most of the rest of the states dropped. Really? Well, they already fixed it now. So there isn't any gravy to get interesting. We had a couple that we had to negotiate our way through with New York and New Jersey. Always New York, right? Absolutely. How does an institution like the New York Attorney General's Office get so culturally consistent over the last 50 years? I don't know. I remember flying to New York had an appointment to see the guy, and he stood me up twice. Oh, shit. I fly all the way in to see him sit there half the day. When is he coming? Well, he's busy. And he just let me cool my heels. Finally, I had built a little relationship with the lady from New Jersey. And she, I said, what's up with this? And she says, oh, that's just the, she says, I think I can help you. Let me, let me reach out to him and tell him that you and I have reached an agreement. And I think that you and he could, if he would just be a little bit more open. Right. And she called me back a few days later and said, if you are, feel the same way as you did with us, it's done. Cool. Oh, that was the end of it. He never even had to get sweaty without me. So I never did meet with this guy. Interesting. So let's get back into this turn around in the auto centers. And so that's the first brick in the foundation of the rebuild project it sounds like, huh? Well, I can tell you that was to get everybody off our back. Absolutely. I had people tell me, I won't wear my uniform because I have to stop off at the 7, 11 and it's got sears on it and I'm ashamed. Right, I'd rather wear not the arm band, the sears. These people didn't do anything wrong. But yet they're labeled as cheaters and liars. And so the idea, yeah, we got to change some minds here. So I can say this, if I hadn't had the experience in catalog that taught me in the end, it's all about people. It's not how smart you are, it's all about people. So I thought, OK, I don't know anything about this business. So I would just travel to the auto centers. And I think when you give me a name of a town that flashes in my mind, I can see that auto center. Right. So I would go there and I would ask the manager, what is your number one problem? And they would always say, I don't have enough people. I can't get the tires on. It takes two and a half hours to get them on. The customers obviously are tired of waiting. And they go away angry even though we sold them four tires. Well, I can't you. Well, I don't know. I go to personnel, but they don't do anything for me. Well, because they're the guys with the grease under their fingernails. So the stores, they were in a separate building usually. They're usually just across the parking lot from the. So they're just not very responsive. So my standard deal that I'd say, well, where's the nearest junior college? Well, there's one. I remember when I came to Denver and the store was on Colfax. And they said they took me over to Red Rocks. And we go in there and I'd never been to Denver before. So this was a new experience. So we go in there and says there's somebody here that works for the university or the school that helps kids get jobs so they can pay their tuition, of course. That would be Mrs. Brown. Could we see Mrs. Brown? Hey, Mrs. Brown, we're from Sears. We're needing to hire like six or eight people. And we're going to hire them at a pretty good wage. We were paying about $12 an hour at that particular time. And we'll work with their schedules. So they're not going to be missing class. But they're, again, this is the same thing I had done before. But we need them. And so the AutoCenter manager would go back with eight new employees. Immediately his time problem with tires is over. Right. And so I have flexible part-time people that can work on Saturdays and whatever. I would leave with the admonishment. And so now they know that they can do what they want. So you're running this place. You do what you need to do to make it profitable. And you know right from wrong, you don't need, but my predecessor was a top-stown guy that ran it by terror and threatened people. Hire more people. Put another ad in the paper. Well, those students aren't really looking for jobs. They didn't know they could get such a good job anyway. So I would tell them, you know, you have the power to do what you need to do. And then I would give this one admonishment. I'd say from time to time, if you get a chance, drop me an email and tell me how it's going. Because I want to hear from you. So there are 850 of these auto centers. I didn't probably get in all of them, but I got in most of them. Interesting. And that was my message. You're doing two days a lot of times. Oh, when you come to Denver, you know, there's five stores you got somehow. Yeah. You got to get to five. So you could probably get three and two. And then you'd go to drive, just fly to Salt Lake City and do the same thing there. A lot of time in airplanes and mental cars. I bet for every Monday, I'd leave and come back on Friday. How did Nancy feel about that? Well, it was very supportive. Yeah, cool. So it was, it was, I didn't have to worry about it. That's another whole story. Yeah, we'll get into the family segment here later in the, later in the show. So anyway, all of a sudden in those days, we carried these gigantic laptops that you had to defeat the telephone system in the hotel to even get online. You probably remember those days. No, not quite, but not long after. And so I would, I would get tons of emails from all over the country from these guys that had had bonded with. And they'd say, Hey, Jim, I just wanted to tell you last month we did this and we made this much money and our sales were up 20%. And we're getting the tires on on time. And thank you for helping me. And of course, you got to answer those. And so I'd be up to one o'clock in the morning answering all these emails every night because that was part of my job with it. To thank these guys, say, Hey, Joe, I knew you could do it. So proud of you. Thanks for letting me know. And after a while, it spreads and they talk to one another. People say, you know what, we can do this stuff. We don't need permission from the new guy. He's easy. Let's do it right helps us sometimes. Yeah. So pretty soon, the numbers start to turn around. And I remember my boss saying, what are you doing? I said, I'm not doing anything. It's the people in the auto centers. They're doing what they know to do that'll make us better. And they're reacting to this new compensation plan, which is all about customer service. Yeah, which is when the trust back of these people who felt like that you've been screwing everybody ever. So it was not, it didn't take very long for the numbers to turn around. Right. And at that time, especially, I reckon that, you know, sears with its scale and stuff, like it could still sell tires for cheaper than just about anybody. So as long as you can competently put those tires on and then do the oil changes and the wipers and stuff while you're there. I mean, we had the world's visible supply of Michelin tire business, right? I mean, because our people always believed in those tires because they were the best that we carried. Yeah. And they, you know, in the diehard battery was the staple of the industry. Totally. So yeah, we had the products that what was broken was the service was just abominable. Yeah, yeah. So tell me about that, I guess, eventual, was there more chapters in the series, journey that really deserves some attention? No, after the turn around, there was a time when they came to me, the CEO and a couple of people. And they said, I had developed this customer service response unit, which was very innovative. I don't know if we have time to go away. I'm totally, yeah, we've got all the time. So they came to me and they said, after the auto centers, they said they had told me that I negotiated the job at the auto centers that when I'm done with that, I can leave and get the package that I'm turning down today. Yeah, fair. So they said, well, we got one more thing for you to do before you leave. And I said, what's that? And they said, well, we got this contractor and when somebody's really upset with Sears, they call in, and if the store doesn't do what they're supposed to do, then they call headquarters. They call it Chicago and complaint. And so we have a contractor that takes those calls. And our surveys show that 47% of the time the customer satisfied, 47% said, what is that all about? You know, that's, I remember the CEO saying, we could just not even bother and get 47%. Right. Right. So he says, I want you to fix it. And he said, here's the thing. If you want to start a business, you want to retire. If you want to start a business, we'll give you the contract. Right. You'll have to hire this guy anyway. A couple million dollar contract is there. Well, when I got into it at the time, you still needed a lot of expensive telephone equipment. Sure. And I thought, boy, I'm in my 50s. If I screw this up, that's the end of the road for my family. Right. I'm not sure that I want to go that far in debt to start a business. So I went back to him. I said, look, I can solve this problem for you, but I'm going to outsource it to somebody. I will find an outsourcer that'll do it right. And we will build the process to make it work so that we don't have 47 percent. Right. So he said, okay, go ahead and do that. I'll give you a year to get it done. So I started looking around trying to find a call center that would do it on the basis of if you satisfy the customer, then you get this huge bonus. If you don't satisfy the customer, you just get a very small amount to cover your fixed cost. Yeah. Nobody would do that. Right. I went to every tele-tack all of the big call center companies. They know they just wanted to get paid so much. Too much risk, yeah. Every time we touch something, we get it. It's a three-minute call. We get paid X times three. Yeah. Found this little company in Golden Colorado, innovative services of America. Okay. And they said they might be interested. And I got to know them and I thought these are really good people. I like these people a lot. And... And were they just a small company compared to them? They were small. This would be like a third of their revenue. They had one big client. Okay. They were doing business for MasterCard. Okay. You remember when MasterCard, if you bought it on a MasterCard, and anything went wrong with it, they would replace it. Sure. That they were administering. Oh, okay. So it's not that different from what you guys were trying to figure out. It's like a last resort. Hey, something went wrong. Right. So I found this little company and I checked it out. And I liked the people. I trusted them. I knew they had a lot of financial backing. They weren't going to go broke. Right. And so I proposed to the CEO that we give the contract to them. And so then we built the contract in a very unique way. So the power in a sear store is the store manager's secretary. Okay. She wheels the power. And so we deputized all the store manager's secretary. And so if you, as I say, you're running a store locally and we get a call from a customer that has a complaint. So we would say, hold on just a minute and we would link in and a third, three-way conversation the store manager's secretary. And we called her. Who's actually got the power to satisfy a customer. When she calls the department manager and says, we have this complaint, I want it taken care of. Right. Otherwise, we'll have to talk to the boss. Right. It's nobody wanted to do. It got done. It had always been the culture in the company. Yeah. Now, we gave her a fancy name as a resolution specialist. Right, right. We didn't say this is a store manager's secretary. So we're going to connect you with the resolution specialist in that store. And so we do a three-way call and they would go through the details. She would hear the voice of the customer which was often angry. Right. And then she would, but there's also this experienced person from innovative services that's basically a deescalation expert. Right. And it's leading the call through. Yep. And so then we would get a promise from the store. And so then the innovative services person would say, okay, so they're going to bring your car in and check your brakes again on Friday to make them stop squeaking. Can we call you back on Monday? Make sure it's good. Make sure everything was good. Right. Okay, sure. What time would be a good time for you to call back on Monday? Six o'clock. Okay. Fine. So we had outbound dialing machines. We would put the six o'clock Monday date in there. And it precisely six o'clock on Monday the call would come in. And the innovative services person would say, I just have one question for you. Is that so? Have we restored your faith and confidence in Sears? Yes or no. And we had 97 percent, yes. So we went from 47 to 97 percent. That's pretty cool. In a matter of a few months. And so that was that company, one of Sears' progress in partners awards for being one of their most... Well, I'm sure how many relationships did they restore? How many more sales did they empower? How many next trips to the Sears Auto Center happened because of that? It was a great... Should have been shareholder of the year or something like that. Well, it was kind of like partner of the year. They had this partners in progress. Okay. You really helped us last year. They got that award. Yeah, that's cool. So now you're hanging up your spurs at the Sears organization? So guess who my next employer was? Somebody that Sears fired before that. How about innovative services? Oh, cool. So I remember going back to the CEO and I said, look, these people want to hire me as the COO of their growing company. Yeah. And I think that would be fun. Yeah. But I won't do it if you tell me no because they are a partner. Right. And he said, as I recall, we offered you the contract and you turned it down. All right. So I think having our guy on the inside of another company would be a great win for everybody. If you want that job, go ahead and take it. Yeah. So is that what moved you to Colorado? That's how I got to Denver. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, welcome. And thanks. If you want to give a shout out to anybody at Innovative Services for the opportunity. The CEO there was a guy named Jeff Wells and I would say to anybody, he was the best executive for whom I ever worked. Wow. He was fantastic. And we made a great team together. We still correspond. And I think he's one of the finest executives I ever met. Well, that's a great shout out. Thanks for that. So you went on your, I guess, next chapter of the year is with Innovative and they grew and prospered and any great stories from that season. Well, they were, when I got there, we were doing just under $10 million. Okay. And then we lost a big contract just as I was coming on board. So now we're down to seven. And I thought, oh, boy, I wish we're building a house and evergreen. Right. Am I going to pay cut or lay off here or something now? Do my due diligence as well as I should have. Well, a few, two and a half years later, we sold the company and we were doing 38 million when we sold it. Nice. So nice to see five times didn't listen three years. Yeah, it was, it was, it was fun. I, I enjoyed working there. I'm working with Jeff. He was, he could, he could visualize the next big thing. I can remember him taking me to, he didn't give you an equity kicker or nothing like that. Well, I had pretty, pretty good. Pretty nice bit of package. Yeah, fair enough. So we would, he took, he says, we're going to Salt Lake City tomorrow to talk to Packard Bell. I said, what, what do we, he says, well, we're going to do tech support for, maybe. I said, Jeff, we've never done tech support. He says, well, I know, you'll figure it out. And that was the way the relationship. So he pitches this thing to the, yeah, to the guy there. And then the guy says, well, how are you going to do that? And he says, guy there with the gray hair, he's your guy. He'll figure it out. That's a, where, where the, my landlord is Chiba, and the, the founder is the visionary Scott Jennings and longtime member is Mark Torres. The way Mark describes it, he's, he's like, well, Scott's got the vision, he points it out, and then I got to lay the tracks. You know, that was kind of the way it was. Yeah. And I remember when we got that contract, I thought, oh my gosh. So the guy said, he was a, Israeli, it was an Israeli company. He had been a commander of a tank battalion. And he was, you know, he had his sleeves pushed up and he was always sweating. And you'd think, this is the most intense person I've ever met, you know, and he would say, I know you can do this. And this is rarely accident. I thought, oh boy, this guy is going to be calling me on Sundays, you know, this is not, but he was a great partner. Cool. And it was a great company. We did tech support for a company whose product didn't work very well. Oh boy. So every, you got a lot of business on it. He had a lot of business. That's funny. So what else in the business journey? I know you've had kind of tech, not tech, but COO type and managerial consulting engagements with a number of firms around the Denver Metro. Any, any particular business learnings that you'd like to unfold from there? Or, well, I mean, I had some other great experiences. I took a job in a tech company in San Jose. Silicon Valley. That was a great experience. I told them the person that was the CEO had been the CEO of Sprint. And she knew me from those days. So she called me one day and hired me over the phone. She said, what do you do? And I said, I'm just getting ready to hit my second shot here on. Number four, she said, no, no, are you working? She said, well, not at the moment. And she said, well, I want to see you tomorrow. I need you. Well, I've got this company and we're going to go public. All they ask is, who's your customer service guy? And I need you. So I said, well, patty, I'll do it for a year. But I can't move there. And I can't do it forever. Because that's going to mean back and forth. Right. So I did. And we did go public. Oh, fun. However, and I had figured out what I was going to do with all this money that was going to come my way. We went public on 2001, March 27th. That is the day of the tech bubble. Oh, no doubt. And I remember we were going to go public at 30. And then Merrill Lynch called and said, something's going on in the market. Maybe we better do 20. So we went public at 20 and nobody bought it. Stock got up to 23 and then it crashed. And then it was like, you know, a dollar. Right. And so, but the company survived. It's called Hughesnet today. Oh, yeah. I've heard of that. And it's in the in the DSL business. Did you keep your stock that was the only worth of buck after that? Yeah, I mean, I cased in what, you know, I was in early enough that I still made a little bit of money. But I certainly didn't make enough to have the lifestyle that I was. Yeah, that beach house in Hawaii wasn't part of the equation. I saw it on TV again. My wife teases me about it at Harbor Town, which is in Hilton, had on the 18th hole. There is a building right near the 18th green on the right that has town homes in a more condos or whatever you call them. Sure. And that was going to be I was going there. I had that picked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every year when I watch the tournament on TV, I look right there. That's my unit almost. I missed it by a month or I'd have been living there. Right. Well, that's fun. But that was it seemed like so many times I'd get a consulting gig and then they'd want to hire me. Yeah. And so I would take the job as COO or whatever. But officially, I was still a consultant, but the employees didn't know the difference. And I got a job working to help a moving company. A large moving company in Denver with branches all over the place. Okay. And so I became the COO of Johnson's storage and moving. That's interesting. You mentioned a customer service guy. And I think in a lot of respects, that's been your special sauce that you've brought to these turnarounds and things. And then that doesn't always resonate with the title of COO or operations guy. But really, that's making the customer happy is such a big thing in the service industry that that's core revenue. I mean, you know, revenue is the friend. You got a bigger number to divide by. All your ratios go down. So oftentimes, you think, okay, we can hire more salesman. We can do more marketing or we can improve the product. Yeah. And usually they've already done the first two. Yeah, sometimes the third one. They haven't really worked on the third one. Well, it services your product. Right. Yeah. Well, a lot of times, even just the experience, like the product is already really good. It's got, we got good tires here. There are Michelin's and this and that. But the experience of waiting two and a half hours to get your Michelin's on turns you off from buying them. Right. I mean, even in the moving business, I, well, you know, we didn't train the guys very well. Therefore, we had lots of damage. Right. The damage, you know, and some people. And that was my grandmother's piano and all that kind of stuff. Absolutely. So, so, you know, I convinced the CEO that we need to invest in these things and they'll pay back. You got to trust me. You know, it's going to, you know, I remember saying, well, this training program we want to do is going to cost about $200,000 and he gulped and I said, but we got to do it. Because look at the, look at the trends in your customer services. How many claims you're playing paying out and how many angry customers call. And it's, and we haven't got to refer over two to half years. All of that. That's right. So, it worked. Yeah. And what was the, it almost always works there. We had a branch in New Orleans. And I can't remember going down there and spending countless days down there. And we just had a lousy workforce. The work ethic was not very good and we were not well positioned to hire good people. And we just didn't, didn't have, you know, look, you could tell to look at him. I mean, he was lovingly looking and you think, oh boy, this is our, this is our team. And so it was, that was a real challenge. Did you fix it or did you? Yeah, we got it a lot better. Yeah. Well, we did a huge volume. It was our second largest store. Wow. And so you think, well, I don't want to lose this volume. But, you know, we, we struggle on a good year, we might break even. Yeah. So, yeah, we've changed a lot of internal things. The one thing that was the worst was the damage ratio. Right. Well, and I think that goes with people owning it. You know, the people closest to the problem, like you said before, are the ones that, you know, so you're getting in there with some of those, even though they're slovenly dudes and whatever, but, but getting there at the ground level and hearing from them, how we can stop having this damage experience and setting up there. Maybe they're, I don't know, what did you comp structures? So that if you get damages, then it's, well, we had a thing of your bonus or what? We really had to change the whole management team. So I got the manager out of there and, and, uh, brought in a new guy that had different standards. And it, it was pretty slow in changing, but it finally did get better. It's still open. Good. Good. Yeah, hopefully profitable too now. Oh, I think so. Yeah, good. Um, let's move into kind of the later segments of the show. It, um, I always do the family-faced politics segment. We've been touching on your family just a little bit, Jim. Why don't we, um, start there and, um, let's hear the love story. It sounds like Nancy was with you even before the Air Force. I don't know. She came along later. Unfortunately, I, my bride of 40 years died in 2004. I see. I didn't understand that. She, we were together all through college. And we were actually from the same hometown. Oh, even though we didn't really know each other in high school very well. I knew who she was. Yeah. But we started dating in college and got married. And she went through the military with me. And, uh, unfortunately got leukemia in 2004. Never been sick before. Wow. And then I got lucky. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, is there things that, for people that face, I've, I've faced two tragic sudden deaths in my immediate circles these last six months. And it's hard. And a lot of people are going to face it someday. Is there anything that you got through that with? Well, I didn't do it very well. So I was the other miss. And so, um, you know, people called from different agencies and said, why don't you come and join with others that have lost loved ones. And I decided that I was probably didn't need that. I can handle it. I'm not in that, well, I think about it now. And I think I have neighbors tell me they'd see me go out in the morning with the dog walking. And I would have my head down and come back an hour later. I still had my head down. And, and I really had a rough time. I could not understand how this could happen to such a perfect person or nearly perfect person. Yeah. I thought, why didn't they pick me? You know, she was a better person than I am. So I just, just really struggled. And my dad, I went for a visit. And it has been a couple of years. And he was in his 80s, I think, and sat me down. He says, you know, but nobody ever loved Judy more than we did. She was a wonderful lady. And, but you've got to get your act together. I cannot stand seeing you with your head down all the time. And so you know what you always do is you set goals and then you move towards them. And so I suggest that you decide on some appropriate goals. And I'd love to know what they are when you figure them out. If you'll tell me what they are. So I made three. Okay. One was to lose some weight. Second was to come up with some kind of a job. And the third one was to find some lady that would go to dinner with me. Those were the goals. Okay. And the some lady turned out to be Nancy. Okay. It was kind of an interesting story. I had a friend call me and say, would you serve on the board of the Evergreen Corral? Okay. And I said, I can't sing a note. He says, no, no, no, we don't want you to sing. We have some serious financial problems. Would you be on our board of directors of the grow? So I said, okay, I'll do it. I thought, do you know what? I haven't got anything else to do. That's maybe that's my job that I'm going to get. Right. Or at least something to do. Something right. So so I did I took it and did it. And along the way, I know why these people are different. These are artists. They're different. They're more sensitive. They're more artsy, you know what? You know, artsy, artsy people, you know. Yeah, you'd been a serious tower. And this and that. But I like these people. You know, they're nice people. And they thank me for my suggestions for their organization. And they love this organization. They'll do anything to see this thing survive. And so among those people that I met was Nancy. Somebody said, I know this lady. She's really nice lady. And she's alone and you're a nice guy. And you're alone, you know, and so I called her up. And that was, I found that number three. There were two people, two ladies that would put up with me. So in this world. And that's pretty successful if you. So I'm happy to have her. And so how long have you and Nancy been? 15 years. Awesome. Congratulations for that. And do you have children from your first marriage? Yeah, I have two boys. Okay. And one of them lives here. The other one lives in Chicago. And I'd like to get one word descriptions. Their name and then a one word description of those two boys. And maybe their age too, just for reference. Well, Scott just turned 50. Okay. He's the one that lives here. And I would, uh, boy, I would say. He's, uh, he's innovative and aggressive and not in a bad way. Yeah. He figures out unusual solutions to things like it. And, uh, how about your other son? Andy. Andy was a catcher on the baseball team because that fit his personality. Okay. You know, he wasn't the most athletic kid on the team. But nobody got around him to score at home plate. Right, right. Any catch everything that was sent his way. Kind of thing. Yep. I like it. And, uh, got grounds kids too. I do. I got four. Okay. I got two, two each to a boy and a girl each. Awesome. And you want to, um, give any one word descriptions of those grandkids? Sure, my, my granddaughter's going to graduate next year from CU. She's a straight A student. She's just, I would, if I, I just think she's magnificent. Okay. I just, that's pretty nice one word. Oh, she is. And her little brother is 16. He's getting ready to graduate from high school here in about a year. Okay. And Robbie is really into music. And he's going to be successful because he's doggett about it. So I just use that word. Doggett? I like it. That's what it takes to be. I like to use the word, uh, perseverance is what it takes to get a business going a lot of times. Our band. And then Andy's two kids, his, his son, it just turned 16. Another straight A student, I don't know where they got that. Right. Probably from my wife's side. Or from your dad too. He was a put, yeah. Yeah. Maybe it was. It skipped the generation I hear too. Bradley is, uh, boy, he's brilliant. That's awesome. He's, and not just in his schoolwork, he figures stuff out, you know, in the real world of how he should act and what he should do. Emotional intelligence. They call it these days. Yeah, he has absolutely. That's pretty impressive at 16. Most of us are walking around dorky wondering how big our pimple is. I know. And then little is the youngest Mia, who's 13. Uh, Mia, she's just Mia Mia. Why call her Mia Mia? She's just the brightest star there is. Nice. Well, that type raised from grandpa. It's easy to see. I bet they love their gramps all the time. Well, I hope so. I love them very much. Fair enough. Proud of them. Before we get into the, I don't think I told you, but the local experience is the craziest experience of your of your journey. But, uh, faith politics, anything to share in that regard? Well, I, I do. I write a newspaper column. Okay, great. And I used to write about business in the editor and I were friends and one time we were having coffee. He says, I think you and I are the only two people that read this column. I said, I know. I mean, he said, they're well written. I love them, but, you know, our readership doesn't care about that. People are into politics. I want you to write about politics. Okay. I said, Doug, I don't want to do that. And he says, no, your brand of politics is where everybody is. So the name of my column is view from the middle. Nice. And I just believe that we can do better working together and that the parties are what's wrong. The parties don't give a wit about the country or the people in the country. They only care about their own power. Well, and creating that conflict and that apparent conflict and hate and anger toward one another is what keeps them in power. Right. Absolutely. Got a fear of your enemy. I mean, they've, you know, and now they've got the cable news stations to Right. Five on one, you know, Fox is a little soldier. They're trying to stand on the conservatives, but, but 100%. I've, I've, I've been listening to a podcast recently that cultivated the notion that the, the conservatives, the moderates and the, in the liberals, the classical liberals from the democratic side and the conservative or the moderate conservatives will kind of do something different and let the super progressives and the ultra whatever is right. He's sorted out on their part. But let's just have some. I'm, I'm, my wife got me this subscription to, you know, books on tape, you know, or that's not the name of it. It's a audible problem. Audible. It is audible. So I get one or two a month. Yeah. So right now I'm listening to John Bainer's new book. Oh. Oh my gosh. Now, you know, at heart, I'm more Republican than Democrat. Okay. But, but I'm really registered independent because I'm angry at both parties. Right. But it is the most entertaining book I've read in a long, long time. Nice. He has a way and it's not a sort of tell all I'm going to make fun of everybody. It isn't that kind of book. Yeah. Because he isn't that kind of person. But he's a moderate person who he says that anybody that's in Congress that isn't there to get things done, then they shouldn't be there. Yeah. We're not there to get attention, to raise funds, to get reelected. Yeah. They're getting things done. And that means we have to deal with the other guys. And sometimes we don't get everything we want. It's the people business, right? Absolutely. I guess that's why I like John Bainer so much. And he's so funny. I'll take it as a recommendation. The best one I've listened to lately was, oh, what Matthew McConaughey's book, Green Lights. Oh, okay. I'm sure it's excellent. Great listen. Yeah, it's worth one of your credits next month. All right. I'll do that. He has some funny sayings. One that I got to kick out of. He says, if you're the leader and you look behind you and there's nobody there, then you're just a guy out for a walk, right? I've heard that quote before. Actually, that was great. So faith family, faith, we haven't touched on faith. We haven't touched on the new journey. Any faith background of your family? Or have you had an answer to that? Well, I've always gone to church, although I have periods of time when I get out of the habit. Fair. But I, yeah, it's a good way to end this thing. My wife wanted to join the Lutheran Church because it has a music program that she wanted to be part of. Okay. And they have this really amazing lady who's the pastor there. Okay. And I admire her a lot, but at that time, I didn't know her very well. And I said, so pastor Vera, I have a question for you. And I've always grown up, I was taught by my dad, if it's to be, it's up to me. And by taking that ownership, I have done pretty well in my life. And so you would say the Lord will provide. So if you can reconcile those two things, I'll join the church. And so she thought for a minute and she said, throughout your career, you've come up with some things that have worked out well. Is that true? And I said, I have. She says, so I would ask you, who put those things into your head? I said, okay, I'll join you. I like that. That's a good summary of, especially, I think, mature faith sometimes where you see providence flow. And yeah, I have that same kind of perspective. I have that same kind of upbringing where you got to do the work. Right. But also being in line with what's supposed to happen with the right intentions. Anyway, thanks for sharing that. I like that. Okay, the local experience. This is the craziest experience from your whole life that you're willing to share in a public forum that we'll get listened to. And it can be a job assignment, a short thing, or a mugger on the street in New York. Whatever comes to mind to you as a really fascinating experience. You might find amusement fascinating or humiliating crazy. Humiliating is best. Yeah, that's what we shoot for. Real humiliating. Whatever you'd like to share. We don't want to share anything that your grandkids will be upset about. One that is sort of hilarious. I had this guy that when I was running the Detroit market who was older than I was, he was the CFO. And he took me under his wing and taught me a lot. But this guy was the biggest character you ever met. And his name was Horn. And he could talk his way into any place that you wanted to go. And so one day he gets the me and two other guys. He says, we're going to go to the Republican convention. It was in Detroit at the time at this silver dome. And it's the year that the Reagan was nominated. He says, we're going to go to the convention. And I said, how are we going to do that? Of course, we need tickets like eight months ago. He said, just come with me, we'll go. Now this guy we had lions take us that we shared. And when we went to the lion's games, we parked in the players parking lot, because he got us in there. He would yell some inaudible thing to the parking attendant. The guy would step back and then we'd go. We just guy had big balls, I guess. I don't know how he did it, but he didn't always speak clearly. Half the time he weren't, when he was excited, he weren't sure exactly what he said. And somehow he turned this into an asset. So in we went, we go into the super silver dome. And we were walking in and there, I look, oh my god, that's Elizabeth Taylor. She was with Senator Warner, who was her husband at the time. So we shake her hand. She introduces us to Frank Sinatra, who's coming, who's, of course, a friend of Reagan's. And she's there. So we meet all these people. We met Jerry Ford that, and Horn would just, he would, had a way, he would introduce you. Right. You know, he would say, Jerry, I want you to meet my friend, Jim Ford, is looking at him like, who is this guy? Yeah, he must be a big giver or something like that. I was thinking you're some big activist somewhere. We had so much fun and we drank so much scotch. And they used all the little individual booths, you know, for rooms. Okay. And so different groups had these different rooms. And so our room ran out of scotch. Horn goes next door and he was, by this time he's calling himself Senator Orn. Sure. Nobody knew. He goes next door and he says, listen, we're out of scotch over here. He comes back here in two great big bottles. And he never got discovered. He just enjoyed the whole evening. He enjoyed the whole thing. I mean, so we, one time we went to the football game and it was Monday night football. And he said, at halftime, I'm going to take you upstairs to introduce you to Fran Tarkington. You know, we're both from Minnesota. I thought, okay, so we, sure enough, at halftime we go up there. He says something to the guy and gets in. And I get stopped. Yeah. The guy asked for my plan. And so I'm standing there and he, Horn turns around, comes back over and says to the guy, he's with me. And I go, sorry, sir, Mr. Horn. Here comes Fran Tarkington on the way probably to the men's room, you know. Fran, Fran, you got to meet my friend Jim. That's it. So that's how it looked like a character. Oh, it was, I, years before, not that many years ago, he died, before he died, he was living down in Florida. And I was thinking about buying a business down there. And so I called him up and I said, I need somebody to do, do diligence for me. Because I have no clue how to do that. I'm just the serious guys, you know. So he said he would. And so I went down there and we had lunch. And I got a chance to tell him. How much he affected my career in a positive way. Yeah. Well, and sometimes that I had an old quote before I started local, ask of your needs and share of your abundance was, uh, was just kind of a model. Oh, it's great. I love that. That ask of your needs thing, people leave that undone a lot of time. Right. If you need to meet Fran Tarkington or you know, sometimes just asking for what you're looking for, whether you really need it or what is a beautiful thing. His wife called me when he died and said, I just wanted to tell you that we lost Bob. He had bad diabetic problems. Yeah. But he, he helped me. He always challenged me. You know, we, we were so bad when I got the Detroit that every little incremental improvement. He would, he would shake me up a little and say, I know you think that we're doing a lot better now. We've just gotten up to mediocre. Yeah, we're up to the surface of the water. Let's get a float going. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was an inspirational person for him. Shout out to Bob Horne and the local experience of crashing the RNC and drinking all their scotch. Yeah. Jim, I want to thank you for making the drive up here to Fort Collins. And I look forward to hearing your voice and seeing your face again real soon, okay? Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Sir. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the local experience podcast. This is Kurt Baer, founder of the local think tank and host of the local experience. And I'm here with Rory Sharer, local business developer, and host of the local shorts episodes. We hope you heard some new ideas and business perspectives in this episode. Our mission and all that we do, including this podcast, is to share collaborative business ideas and solutions that uplift the business community. Subscribe and follow us for you listening to podcasts to get new episodes as they are released. Curious about local? You can learn more about us at localthinktakes.com where you'll find more information about our chapters, business resources, and events for business owners and creators. If you're looking for perspective, accountability, and encouragement along your business journey, why not apply for a chapter near you today? Why not? Why not? Why not? We'll catch you next time on the in-depth local experience podcast with me, Kurt. And with me, Rory, provide size business lessons in the local shorts. Bye!