Hello and welcome to personable personable is a podcast where we hear from the world’s best in their given Fields enabling you to become the best that you can be episode 16 features Shep Mo uh Shep has had an incredible journey initially starting out at Juke University and becoming the the student
Body president in his sophomore year I’ve got one more year to make that happen he created the black white task force uh helping race relations in the school and helping with diversity he also advocated and secured beer on the meal plan um which a lot of students not
Me because I don’t drink but a lot of students will be very happy to hear he graduated magnom loud uh also then went to Harvard for an NBA uh if he wanted to do any better uh then became a brand manager at Tostitos I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that correctly became the
CEO and chairman at shindig um generating over two billion in Revenue across the years um in the party and celebration space this on the board of directors at numerous companies inter was the international and is the international chairman of the board of YPO which is the young president organization featuring over 34,000 CEOs
Is an investor in the Juke Angel Network who was the previous president of the Juke Alumni Association and was and is on the Harvard Business School of directors I was previously also on the Juke University of trustees and has recently become the associate director of markets and management at Juke and he
Has now also created moand Partners which offers Co coaching Consulting speaking boardwork and investing I feel hugely privileged to hear from shef and I think by that long introduction uh there’s a lot of things he’s achieved and will continue achieve as the times go forward well Harry it’s great to be
With you and thanks for having me and can you just follow me around and read my resume off to people all the time I think that would be fantastic I actually thought that’s what my role was was to do I thought you were hiring me I thought that was sorry I fell asleep
Part way through but I’ll I’ll try to wake back up so with all of that and the people listening that’s a lot to digest let alone take in but I was wondering if you could describe who you are what you represent and what it is that you do
Well who I am and what my superpower is is helping others achieve their full human potential and so throughout my life I’ve looked at those opportunities whether that’s in business whether that’s in education whether that’s serving on boards and now in my new life as a faculty member and as a coach it’s
All about giving back to those who have come before us and that really came from lessons from my mentor who uh was the president of Duke University Sanford he had been governor of North Carolina um and for some reason he took me under his wing and he told me my senior year that
If um I showed up at his house by 6:30 a.m on every Sunday morning he would cook me breakfast and so obviously I did that and he would spend two to three hours with me telling me the stories of civil rights in the United States and
John Kennedy who was a friend of his and then his vision for Duke University and what he left me with was this belief that we have that opportunity to change people’s lives and we as duke students had the responsibility to give back and to help others and so now it’s exciting
For me having gone through multiple chapters in my life to now pursue my life driven by Joy so I measure my day by Joy it’s not about money it’s not about titles it’s not about any of that anymore it’s about did this bring me joy today and so working with young people
Like s being in a university environment and then helping CEOs around the world brings me enormous joy and so that’s that’s really who I am today as someone who’s now found that um combination of both s success that is transitioned into significance and so I feel like I’m
Making a difference and it brings me joy every day you mentioned that the initial mentorship came from the previous well one of the previous presidents of Juke University but how did you end up at Juke in the first place place and how did you end up becoming the the
President the student body wow those are and two very different uh stories but I am a Midwestern boy I was the only uh person in my family that was born above the Mason Dixon line so I was a Yankee um in the family and but we had a long
Family history um here and so my great-grandfather um in 1892 um had a fourth grade education he was living in eastern North Carolina working in the tobacco go Fields And as family Legend goes so take it with a grain of salt um a Methodist Revival meeting was coming to town and so these
Were tent meetings where the Methodist Minister would fire up the crowd and so he had gotten his buddies together and they had their horses outside the tent and they were going to ride through and just cause holy hell um at the right moment because he was kind of a
Apparently a rap scallion kind of fellow and so somewhere in the this story um the ministers uh said now for whoever would like to give their life to God um come forward and so for some reason my great-grandfather got down off his horse walked to the front of this town and
Said you know what do with me what you will right so he goes back works in the tobacco fields and a month later he gets an anonymous letter from Trinity College um in Durham North Carolina inviting him to come and St take high school equivalency test because he only had a
Fourth grade education um and then to get a free uh education through college to study to become a Methodist Minister and so he graduated in 1892 and I’ve gone through the library here and found evidence of him being here and then um when I was student body president I get
A call from um a gentleman in the library and he says Hey can can I buy you a coffee like okay I’ll you know go to coffee I show up and he’s a elderly African-American gentleman probably in his 70s and he pulls out his license and
He says you owe me a suit you know what are you talking about and on his license uh his name was Samuel Moy Johnson and my grand great-grandfather’s name was Samuel Moy and so apparently um ego runs in our family and he had promised any of his parishioners that if they named
Their child after him when they achieved the age of 18 he would give them a suit and so and this other Samuel Moy Johnson had done some research and there were 27 Samuel Moy some buies that are alive and living in North Carolina named after my great-grandfather so all that to say um
In terms of me choosing Duke over Harvard or Stanford which were my other choices that story inspired me to believe that there was a sense of Destiny about Duke I mean it was a great it was a okay private um Regional School at the time it had not had achieved the
Prominence that it has today um but that story inspired me and so I was the fourth generation in our family to go here my children uh then two of the three went here um and so that’s fifth generation so we’ve got a long history here and when then in running for
Student body president um this came um after some an incident I had as a writer for the newspaper uh with the Klux clan in North Carolina but ran and because I had great um campaign managers and friends um was able to um to win the
Campaign and being able to do that as a sophomore um was an extraordinary experience and that created those relationships with the president of the university and and the trustees and to do things that would make a difference in students lives and so that’s really what I’ve done throughout my career and
Whether that’s as a a trustee um or as a student or as an Alum or as a parent at and now as a faculty member to me it’s all about leaving Duke a little bit better than how you found it and that’s what I try to do every day it’s very
Clear that you have this passion to sort of give back to society and help the world um and you as being the president of the student body but why not pursue something like politics why go into business you know that’s a great question Harvey and I think if you asked
Most of my friends and classmates they would have told you that’s what I would end up doing that I would you know get into politics and and pursue that path um the problem was I was I was kind of set on becoming a lawyer and so that was
The path and I thought that would lead to politics and then I thought well maybe I should take some courses that you know would tell me what’s it like to be a lawyer so I took an administrative law class um in my senior year and as I
Got into that class I realized oh my God I could never do that now to all the lawyers in the audience I apologize but it was like I could never do this as a as a career and so I went back to my dorm in fuad and you know my buddies
Were there and were hanging out and I said I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life and my two friends um they said hey look we’re applying to business school why don’t you apply to business school so um all three of us applied um
To uh Business Schools uh all three of us got into uh Harvard um I went the next year so I went directly in which was a huge mistake um because I had never had I never took accounting I never had any work experience and I show
Up at Harvard Business School to try to do those things and then my friends came then one year later and then two years later and we remain close friends um even to this day so it was really more by accident um than uh than anything
That I ended up uh on a business path um and then ultimately going back into the family business which I never really planned on doing do you find what were some of the main benefits that you took away from going to Harvard Business School school and do you think that traditional
Education such as University is still as important today I think University education is um evolving and it’s going to change quickly um or or again it will um be disent mediated um the way we teach uh today I believe is stuck in a in an old model that is outdated what what I
Learned at Harvard what I loved about Harvard was the case method because what it forced you to do was to use real life situations to analyze to criticize um and to articulate your arguments so it wasn’t where you’re just learning a a tool and then regurgitating
It back on a test you had to support your arguments and I think I had gotten a bit of that taste in going to Oxford for a summer uh while at Duke and in that environment where we were given a reading list we were given topics we
Were sent away and then we would come back at the end of the week after writing a paper and with our tutorial partner and the Don again the the Don would look and say okay Harvey read your paper right now I had just spent a week
Doing my paper and I can throw it away because it’s not going to matter and then for the next two hours you would read your paper out loud and then your tutorial partner in the Dawn would challenge your thinking would force you to be able to be critical in what you
Were doing and so that experience I brought back to Duke and I changed my senior year and went to every one of my professors and asked them if they would be willing to spend time with me outside of class and rework the educational process to where it wasn’t about
Memorization and regurgitation it was about critical thinking and having to defend your ideas so that uh from my Harvard experience taught me how um I could take on any situation um and analyze it in a critical way it gave me confidence um certainly going there at
The age of 21 and not being prepared I was scared out of my mind and completely ill-prepared but by the end then that confidence um was built in me and then the third is the network and I think in higher education today um when we um
Look at the value much of it is the network it’s the people that you meet the people that you connect with and as you build these networks out over time these are this is what’s going to grow your career the jobs that you’re going to get that others will get are not
Going to come from going to a scheduled interview they’re going to come from the people that you know and have networked with and so that’s why with my students I push very hard for a let’s learn some practical skills about personal branding negotiation networking and let’s learn how we’re
Going to leverage that Network to Our Success so even to this day um I remain engaged probably on a weekly basis with someone um from Harvard and in helping people or in uh needs that I have it’s very clear that sort of the casing and the critical thinking is very important
But that’s very sort of focused on the post-graduate education but sort of the undergraduate education do you you know still with a sort of emphasis on memorization not necessarily at the top universities in the world but there are a lot more than just the top 10 in the
Country there’s a lot of focus on memorization so how do you think that’s sort of going to transition moving forward um and do you think it will change I Absolut well it it has to change is the answer because we’re not preparing this next generation for the
World in which they’re going to operate right so the ability to remember facts right or or to regurgitate them right that’s what we’ve got chat GPT for right that’s what we have Google for so the ability to accumulate knowledge is not the game anymore the game is what are
You g to do with it how do you apply it how do you make a difference with that knowledge that you’ve Acquired and and so the difficult ulty with higher education is it moves very slowly and so you have people who had were educated 30
To 40 years ago and so my education has been obsoleted to a certain degree right and so I think this idea of we go to college for four years and then we’re done is going to become a very quaint concept I believe it will be a model that will be more lifelong learning
Where you’ll have this period where you go from living on your own and transitioning to adulthood and you learn certain skills but then it will be skills accumulation through life right so as I tell my children or I tell my students I think majors are irrelevant I
And I believe 10 years from now no one will care when I hired people I didn’t care what their major is I care what are your skills talents and abilities right and so I think as universities evolve um as non-academics become more involved in the educational process um that will
Change because we’ll understand that what we need not only are liberal arts critical thinking skills but you do need practical skills to go forward in life right and you need the ability to do data analytics you need the ability to understand how do I use this knowledge
In ways that are is going to be meaningful uh to me so it’s not denigrating what we’ve done but it’s understanding that we are still teaching today in higher education the same way we did 100 years ago when Duke first started um and so as it becomes disaggregated as we’re able to use
Remote learning as we realize that who can afford $80,000 a year for an education we have we have an education system we can’t afford and so economics will drive this value will drive this and then ultimately the marketplace will because as a CEO or as a business leader
Or whether you’re in government or nonprofit what we need is a generation that knows how to think operate and make impact and not tell me facts so that’s my perspective what’s particularly helpful listening to your perspective on this is that you’ve served on the Board of Trustees and
Directors of both Harvard and Juke University and you also mentioned that Juke was and I know ranking systems are very superficial but it was a lot lower down when you initially went to the university to where it is now but having served on the board
What sort of things do you look for in order to make it the best university possible do you compare it and look at all these sort of superficial rankings online what do you take into account to make it the place that it is today and
The place that it’s going to be in 10 years and 50 years time yeah that’s a great question and I think you know part of this is every school is different right and every board is different in terms of what do they want to be as an
Institution and so I’ve had sample sets at you know Harvard at Duke um Syracuse as well and Leadership there so each one’s a little different um but a trustee the role there is not to think about tomorrow or a year from now right this is 10 20 50 years from now right
What is it that we want to be as an institution and what will be our unique path um again higher education has and we have the best in the world I will argue RIT large um however um they are imitators in general right so academics and universities are traditionally not rewarded for taking
Risks or for innovating and that is what is distinguished when I compare a Harvard or a Duke Duke is a younger School 100 years old versus 400 years old Duke has been willing to take risks right and place big bets and we’re gonna get bets wrong and that’s okay um but
It’s based on the value of who are we what do we want to be and then how are we going to change the world and so with that context as a trustee you then say given that Vision what are the resources required to do that and then how are we
Going to get there and blazing your own path together an example would be uh Duke kunan University right so establishing a day noo undergraduate school teaching Western liberal arts in China wow that’s a big bet now it’s a 10-year-old BET right now um at the time semi oversi at the time today hugely
Controversial and the question will be how will we look at it 30 years from now will that have been a good risk a bad risk how will it impact our brand how does it impact China and so many of these things play out over generations
And so that’s why we have to look at it in these long time Horizons where I think we fail as higher education today is that it’s seen as this um it’s an exclusive opportunity for the wealthy right or for those who can afford it and we have to
Think about how do we deliver quality education um at scale and that’s a challenge that a Duke a Harvard or any school is going to face and particularly for Middle Market schools and colleges survival will be the challenge because of the costs of operating these places you mentioned um the university in China
Off Juke but Juke had already sort of built that amazing big name and Big Brand and when I’m looking at all these big schools I’d be curious on your perspective on what’s actually differentiating them because people are looking at very superficial statistics on exam results that differ by a 1
Percentile or based on the high schools that people went to and that’s all they’re looking at basically what how the universities differentiate but as you made a clear example between Harvard being 400 years old and Juke only being 100 years old what did you think of some of the other different characteristics
Of Juke they’re enabling it to to do so well uh and what have led you to stay with Juke and not as much focus on Harvard or the other universities yeah again we we always run the risk of being too similar right so that we’re again I
Am not a fan of the of the rankings because I’m not sure they really um measure what it is right that is what’s the true value right so the greatest out there and this is where I’ll have arguments with my academic friends universities have multiple outputs um
One research right so this is a place where you know great breakthrough research is is done and that’s the you know we hire great research faculty to do that and that distinguishes Duke and we do we do that particularly well in the in the Sciences in the Life Sciences
And in in health in medicine um the other area that we really um look at then is how can we innovate as an institution in the the delivery of the of the education so the way Duke distinguishes itself is through its interdisciplinarity right so what Duke does uniquely in higher education is
Incent um um and collaborate across these various departments and areas so that you have an engineer working with a philosopher you have a business person working with someone in medicine that’s uniquely Duke um and it’s this willingness to take risks and fail um and there are plenty of things that we
Have attempted as an institution where we fallen short and we’re not perfect and that kind of failure experimentation pivot cycle I think’s incredibly important um for for an institution today because the measurement of educ ation today has to be is it relevant for today and for 40 years from now right to
For your lifetime and this is again the Gap that we have to where we think it ends at graduation my argument would be it’s when it just begins because the power of Duke is these 200,000 alumni we have around the planet that’s the product of the university in addition to
The research right it’s this is the amplification of what Duke is um or any institution so to the degree that dukies are changing the world each and every day in their own unique ways around the planet that’s Duke that’s Duke at work and so then it’s the network right so
Your ability and my ability to reach out to the one person on the planet who can make a difference in our life today and connect me to a solution and solve my problem that’s the power of an educational institute institution in my opinion it is not a four-year education
Then we’re done and send us money for the next 40 years that that’s not how it works so I think breakthrough change and research is a is a core of what universities are driven by free you know free speech and academic exchange and development it’s the delivery of a very
Discreet type of educational product at the beginning of life but the opportunity is now lifelong learning and the ability of how do we deliver this to the people who come to us initially but then how do we do it its scale right so think of all of the people in North
Carolina that may not have access to a Duke education well how could we give them access to a Duke education at value or portions of it that you can access in your life right and is that on our mission and I believe it is and and so I
Think for un cities to continue to be relevant we have to continue to be able to innovate uh to do it at scale and and to change and change quickly being the president of the Alumni Association you’ve mentioned the importance of having a strong Alumni network in which the alumni is way
Bigger than the number of students actually at the University at the time so how do you build up that Network how do you maintain it what’s the goal how do you interact with them and you also mentioned being able to go to one of the alumni and get that connection to best
Utilize your current needs so with all of those things in your mind what’s the best way that you engaged with and you currently engage with the julum network yeah and so I I stole a lot of these ideas from The Young president organization right so we what YPO is
It’s 34,000 CEOs in you know over a 100 countries around the world right and so we thought through this problem and saying okay well now how do you connect all these people right you’re not going to travel to you know wherever it may be in sirri Lanka and find that one person
That has the background or experiences that can help you and the answer very quickly you know you know spoiler alert it’s technology right so that is the answer when we look at for example the Duke uh the Duke Network and we spent millions of dollars literally investing
In that Network so you it starts with you have to have data which is okay now we got to profile every alumni tell me your interest tell me your passions tell me your background what are the things that you are willing to share with people right what you know tell me about
You then to create ways that you can connect and so when you’re at dude as a student you connect around affinities you connect around passions right so if somebody’s all the people interested in podcasting or Media or it might be um around ethnic um affinities or you know identity affinities whatever those may
Be we have to do that with our alumni as well so you can connect not only geographically right so I’m in New York and I’m gonna meet dukies who are in New York okay but what if I could meet dukies in New York or dukies in the United States interested in running who
Also like wine and are passionate about politics okay wow my world went from 200,000 down to 512 all right so we can organize around those those interesting connections and do this in ways that are organic the institution doesn’t have to get in the way it can be the connective tissue by
Providing the technology so the opportunity is you got 200,000 alumni and when you go out and we’ve done this study which is Duke has the strongest brand identity among alumni of any school on the planet right so if you know a dookie they are going to tell you
They are a dookie we are a proud and passionate and many will say annoying Bunch but we wear it on our sleeves so you got 200,000 alumni and when we ask them right what do you want from duke right always in the top three I want to
Connect to students I want to give back to the institution I want to connect how can I help the Next Generation then we’ve got students right and now being here and this is true when I was a student right you’ve got this you know I
Want to connect to an Alum who can help me right now in many ways that feels like um first help me get an internship help me get a job right help me connect to other people and that’s the mercenary kind of part of of things but at a
Broader level you want to be able to connect into the communities right of those who’ve come before you who can then come back and say hey based on my experience here’s what I’ve learned right of my journey and you can share that so you’ve got these two interested
Bodies and connecting them though feels like you’re having to cross a chasm and and so the magic is in using technology to allow you instantaneously to find that person and while we’re not perfect with it yet we’ve made great strides with that so that for you as a
Student you know that okay here’s how I can do it and for me is a lum here’s how I can find people like you right because there are enormous things that you can teach me and so it that will be the power of what education is when my
Children were thinking about going back for mbas and they’re looking at top schools um the question was not about what they were going to learn the question today on the relevance of an MBA program is who’s in the network right that is the value of an MBA today
That’s a fundamental shift for anybody offering a two-year MBA program and will people spend $300,000 to go back and buy a network and that increasingly is what our our interconnected world is going to look like is what’s the power of your network because it’s like metast law
Right the power of a network expands exponentially with the number of nodes connected to that network but they have to be relevant connections and that’s what the Duke Network offers or the YPO Network um that help you in your everyday life I think there’s um an understanding of with modern day technology which
Basically almost the entire world is now involved in and through things like LinkedIn and other social medias of how people can get involved or you went to a school or you worked at a business I’m interested but you mentioned that Juke was the number one in terms of the
People that went to school there wanting to help other people and recognize it and be proud of it but that’s not really a metric that you can write down on paper and say but what do you think makes Juke so special in why that people love their experience there why do
People want to help each other so much and why do people really want to be part of this network instead of having just gone to a school and wanting to move on with their life right it is um it’s one of the great questions that we started
To answer even this week in celebrating our Centennial so this is our 100th birthday uh as an institution and and the quick answer to that is it’s the people right it’s not buildings it’s not places it’s not how long have you been around it’s not your resume it is the
People you meet and your experience here as you run across someone who’s wearing that Duke’s uh sweatshirt whether it’s on an airplane or in a restaurant or wherever you might be there’s an instantaneous connection um between dukies and part of that is the spirit that we have right so there’s a there’s
Generally a little bit of an underdog Spirit here um that people have that that come I there are intentional choices that people say I’ve chosen not to do the ivy league I’ve chosen not to be in the Northeast I’ve chosen you know for whatever reasons and people choose
Duke for for a reason so I think that self- selection process has a lot to do with that I think the second part is and and I think this is where Duke has gotten much better the diversity of Duke and its Evolution um in becoming a more diverse institution um has made us
Extraordinarily tightnit so when I was here we were 94% white right so that you know and we were 40 % Northeast so that was a very different um school it was a very different experience today that tapestry is much richer and and that had that is Connecting People in a way that
Is bonding people from day one because you’re immediately accepted into this family right so that was where when I was President Alumni Association one of my passions was to create a home for alumni on campus which we didn’t have um when you came back to campus and as an
Alum you would go to the Washington Duke in and hang out in the bar and that’s our Alumni Center and my argument was our University owes our alumni more than that the university actually owes us this and so my compelling Vision was to build an Alumni Center and which we did
And it’s now here and that’s one of my you know I walk by it uh they named a boardroom in it after me and it’s I I go there with great pride because it is a home now where we can all connect right so and what I really wanted and I never
Got Harvey was I I wanted a simple app to where whenever a dookie arrived on campus you would check in right and it would just be a check-in app right so because at any point in time the based on rough studies there’s something like a thousand alumni on campus at any one
Point in time right but we have no visibility as to like I might have classmates here I might have somebody from my hometown I might have somebody in my industry who knows was the ability then in real time right so if you knew that I was on campus right you could
Reach out in real time and say hey let’s grab a coffee right so it’s those kind of small moments that I think make Duke Duke because we’re always willing to help and take that call it’s just cultural about who we are and it’s a part of the ethos and I think when you
Leave you’ll have that same belief right because we want to make Duke and leave Duke better than how we found it I want to go back to your business career having left left Harvard you had a four-year stint at Tostitos and then you went into shindig uh which is a over 90y
Year family business and you made it generate in your time over two billion in Revenue uh 20% year-on-year growth um and over 20 years and also get over 400 employees I was wondering if you could take me on the Journey of what it was like when you found it when you decided
To go into the business and how you built it into the amazing company it was an extraordinary ride and a lot of it’s luck and timing right so you have to be really fortunate um in right place right time so we have to acknowledge that but
So when we got back I my wife and I um we got married bought a house moved Indiana um and all in the same month right so I can’t recommend that um but my wife and I uh worked in the business together Wendy and I and um she’s
Probably our primary reason for Success um over the years because she’s certainly the better two of them we arrived the company was relatively sleepy um we were focused on the high school prom business we did about 80% of the High School proms for their decorations and favors and events all
Based in catalog had about 35 employees and was based in town of 1400 people um and so here you know my wife’s a Northwestern MBA I’m a Harvard MBA and so you show up and it’s like let me show you how smart I am and I quickly learned
How much I did not know about running a business right so because the way it worked with my father was he didn’t believe in family discounts and so it took us um almost nine months to negotiate the sale um and we signed the contract went to dinner um and then the
Next morning he got on an airplane and told me you know where to send the send the checks um and he never came back so I was kind of on my own uh to figure this out and I made a lot of mistakes along the way but it didn’t take us long
To figure out there’s only one high school prom a year right so you can’t really build and scale a business based on that so we very quickly moved into school spirit um into cheerleading into homecoming buing some acquiring some companies adding new titles and new brands we then moved into the college
Market for fraternities and sororities we moved into the elementary school market so and we were doing all of that through catalog and then a little magic thing came along in for us in 1996 called the internet um and we were pretty early um to sell on the internet
But that really then um opened the world to us and that um then um our our product assortment expanded we moved into the consumer party market and then we focused on 27 different occasions in a person’s life that celebrate from birthdays to weddings to anniversaries
To um and then we moved globally and it was because of my network in YPO so we established uh factories in China and supply chain very early on um all through YPO and then expanding our distribution on a global basis and so that ride was extraordinary um we built
Our business based on um unique products that you couldn’t get anywhere else so 12ft Eiffel Towers um you know things of that nature um we focused on personalization so we wanted to have pictures and names and all of that um and what we were doing and then amazing
Customer service so all of that we would do um and produce to order within 24 hours and ship it around the world um so we had an amazing ride I will say you know there were times though probably 15 or 20 years in um I lost the passion for
The day-to-day honestly and so that’s when I started doing more things like back here at Duke um or YPO um to Cha I guess challenge my network to uh to travel the world so with YPO when I was International chair I went to 100 countries around the world um had some amazing
Experiences in in seeing the world in a different way and meeting with Business Leaders around the world um so then at that time I would kick myself up to Chairman and then hire a CEO to take my place and then in inevitably there would be challenges and my board would come
Back to me and say h it’s time you come back and run it so I would get um pulled back in and so I did that three times um during my lifetime ultimately then near in 2018 went back to Harvard on a fellowship for a year uh where you can
Take any class at Harvard it’s called advaned leadership initiative and you work on a project to change the world and so that was intellectually stimulating for me so it was an amazing journey um and the exited at the end of 21 um I should have done it sooner um
And that’s what I advise the people that I coach now is once you lose that passion and the DFT for what you’re doing every day I had lost the interest as to whether Sally was going to come in on third shift or not and when you’re
Running a business you do have to care about that and um so then it was a matter of okay well what’s next right I’m I’m too young to go sit on the beach or play golf and that’s when then looking at my next chapter which led me
To coaching and teaching and and these other areas now that bring me joy and I’m I’m probably working more hours than I have over the last 20 years than I ever did in my business and I worked pretty hard at it um but it doesn’t feel
Like work anymore and that is an amazing feeling to have so I’ve really found um as they say my happy place in um because it it’s just a joyful experience to see the impact and when I look back on that time um we you know we generated a lot
Of Revenue We Did You Know by all Financial metrics did extremely well but the real value you walk away from is the you know at the end of 600 people um and the the lives and the careers that we were able to impact that’s what it’s all
About and so I’m so proud of where everyone is now the careers they had the opportunities we gave them and we really focused on culture a lot um so because our our corporate mission was to make life more fun and so everything we did was built around making life more fun so
We had a what we call the journey for all employees if they chose to do it um which was a three-year program and they the team members came up with uh over a hundred different activities and it might be learning a new language or community service or doing something
With their children but and when they finish that Journey then we would send them and their family all expense paid trip to Disney World um because that’s where you go have fun and so we would bring in puppies and our um and at lunchtime we went on random acts of
Kindness that we would do downtown outside our office building um so we really worked on helping people reach that full human potential um and that’s extremely rewarding to do that I think that was part of our secret sauce we had team members who loved their work right
Because getting up in the morning to go sell balloons and plates and carry paper is not terribly inspiring but to go change the way the world celebrates and to make life more fun that’s pretty cool there’s uh there’s filming a podcast with the owner give me a chance to go to Disney World
Absolutely all right I will take you off on the off um I will get that signed in contract and so I’ll make sure that happens um the one thing I’m very curious about I actually mentioned this in my last podcast I think it was episode eight I filmed a podcast with a
Guy called Nick wheeler you may or may not have heard of the company called Charles turret one of the biggest short shirt companies in the UK and throughout the world Y and similar to you there’s a lot of people that sell shirts just like in your business there’s a lot of people
That sell entertainment things um but J what he was able to do was generate a unique brand behind the shirts and why you’d want to buy in to that brand also generating a great culture that made that people want to work there um you’ve mentioned the delivery time the
Personalization and building a 12 foot Eiffel Tower and having Unique Products you know with the rise of the internet and Amazon there are so many people creating these sorts of products but yet you’ve still been able to grow this absolutely enormous business but what so for Founders listening what is the
Underlying thing for how to create a brand on top of the product to make people buy into you instead of just the products which can be easy easily replicable by lots of people absolutely because it’s not about the products right so for me it begins and ends with
The customer right so that whether it’s Tostitos or anything else you start with who is that customer and what problem are you solving right so you have to be solving a problem and ultimately what I focus on in any business and every founder what what’s the emotional connection right what is that emotion
That you are solving so for so for us in the party supply business the emotion we were tapping into when you throw a party it’s a very stressful event for most people right and the reason for that is a most people aren’t that creative B um they don’t have a lot of
Experience doing it C you have to pull together a whole lot of different things to make it work and then D if you f you’re doing it in front of your friends and family the people who care or your neighbors right the people who are most important to you that’s a really high
Bar so that emotion what we were tapping into was to that super mom and we were saying don’t worry we’ve got you right we’re we are your partner in this we’re going to give you a party that’s unique creative you don’t have to worry about delivery and you’re going to look great
Right so you’re going to be able to badge that out and then we’re going to create a community right because here’s what we believe we the reason we do what we do this is the why you have to answer and every founder has to answer what’s
Your why because we want to make life more fun we want to make life more fun for you we want to make life more fun for our team members and so our our customers bought into that right so they they believed in us they weren’t buying products they were buying a solution and
They were buying a community because people don’t buy buy what you do they buy why you do it people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it so that driver to me is the is the magic and I used it at Fredo in creating restaurant
Style Tostitos used it um in um in our business at shindigs um and then I use it today right so when I teach right you’ve got to get at what’s that emotional connection that I’m going to make with these students what how am I going to get them to connect and learn
And be willing to fail right because that’s what entrepreneurship is it’s a willingness to fail and to be resilient I think there’s still a barrier to entering starting a business I mean the people that you’re sort of dealing with and in The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at Juke are
People that actually have businesses and are building them but there’s often a bit of privilege in the sense of they might be back uh from a great financial background or they’re still in education so they still have the freedom to build a business without the pressures of
Everyday life or getting a mortgage or something like that but as you mentioned you and your wife both had mbas and you stopped your other job and then went into building this business but I’d be curious on your thoughts of when the best time to build a business is to go
All in on it uh what experience you think you need for an idea um and just anything and everything uh that you have to say about that yeah you know there is no magic time right because if you wait to when you’re ready I’m not sure what
That looks like right because some of the best entrepreneurs they aren’t necessarily you know brilliant operators they don’t have the answers right what they’ve done is identified a problem and they found a solution right that’s the magic of being an entrepreneur and then putting together a team right so this is
The secret sauce of it is surrounding yourself with amazing people who can help you realize that vision and being clear on that Vision now what we’ve done as we’ve kind of now institutionalized entrepreneurship we we look for a formula we look for a cookie cutter kind of approach and this is where Venture
Capital has come in and and we’ve mistaken success with raising money right from VCS or from private equity and that’s not really the measurement right what you’re trying to do is create value and and the more that you create value both for your customer and for your your
Team then the financial pieces will take care of the elves on how you finance it the mistake I see many entrepreneurs start with now is they they confuse an idea with a good business there are a lot of great ideas out there but they’re not good businesses so you have to
Clarify what that is and then not confuse raising money with building a business so those who are able to clarify their focus and are able to build the team around them right why is this the team at this time to bring this idea to market right why do these things
Intersect right and I and you literally you know at any point time here in the Triangle you’ve got probably I don’t know 800 companies right that are in startup mode of some kind um and those Founders right the the ones um who are successful are not necessarily the ones
Who are the most ready right because again typically Harvard mbas don’t make great entrepreneurs right because they they overthink it all great entrepreneurs are the ones who are going to Pivot adjust fail and then keep moving forward today’s generation I would argue Harvey one of the things we
Have to learn is failure is okay and that’s how you learn and then being resilient to move forward and that’s what entrepreneurship is right the definition of Entrepreneurship my professor at Harvard uh was Howard Stevenson one of the fathers of you know modern day entrepreneurship and it’s the pursuit of opportun Beyond resources
Controlled that’s what entrepreneurship is right you don’t have the resources but you see an opportunity so it’s how do you draw those resources to you as you pursue that opportunity and the only way that happens is through testing pivoting failing and adjusting we’re not resilient enough in today’s generation
Of entrepreneurs to to stick through it um and realize that failure is part of the formula and we’re not resilient either as Founders or as funders right the funders don’t have the patience to tolerate failure and I think that model will change and evolve over time I’ve
Got three last questions the first one being a few different ideas clumped together um the covid pandemic social media and AI how have those three things either together or separately changed the way you think business will be moving forward wow co uh covid impact um
Is um the um rise of the remote work right I I think that is going to change the the nature of work globally um in how we interact and managers are going to have to learn how to lead in that and manage in that environment and today’s managers they’re not trained developed
Or used to learning in that environment so that is going to be a fundamental shift for tomorrow’s leaders is how do you build a virtual organization how do you lead a virtual organization how do you motivate them so that’s a uh um that is a huge part of social media um and
I’ll I’ll go more broadly than that the Creator economy I’m fascinated by this is this is a GameChanger right it’s currently already a two trillion doll industry right and most people don’t understand what the hell it is right and and one of the arguments is that each of
Us will be managing our networks and monetizing our own personal economies right that that’s what we’ll do and how we create value like through this podcast right you monetize this in some way um based on your network and so that to me is a fascinating disaggregation of of the world right so
What’s that g to look like um and and H what does an economy look like and what’s fascinating to me is you’re creating literally millions of entrepreneurs now because they are entrepreneurs right monetizing their con their content monetizing Their audience I love that idea um so social media um
Um Co what was my third one AI all official oh and I’m working on a course a new course on AI right uh it is it’s the GameChanger right because it is now the new new internet it’s the new tool now it’s terrifying and thrilling at the
Same time just like the internet was but the power um of it will be extraordinary the impact of it every business if businesses are not use as I tell my um students and clients right now I say you may not be replaced by AI but you will be replaced by someone who understands
And uses AI better than you do so for today’s students learn AI right be the expert because when you come out the generation’s ahead of us and that’s not that far ahead right even five years ahead of us they don’t understand it they don’t get it 20 years out
You might as well be speaking SC Sanskrit to them so those who have the knowledge who are willing to experiment and it’s going to be the wild west here for for quite a while as it becomes institutionalized but it will become the new base of our U of our economy and
Businesses will be wiped out by it and many you know there’s certain categories that it’ll just wipe them out but it will enable um work and performance and efficiency at a level we have not seen um I think in in at least my business career my penultimate question what does
The future look like for you my future is continuing to pursue joy every day I hope I continue to be able to teach and to coach and to be a part of the entrepreneurial uh Community because I love it and so I will tell you the hardest thing I’ve done in my life
Of all the different things breaking into teaching is the hardest because I’m not an academic and so I work really hard at leveraging my network and so if there’s anybody out there who’s looking for has teaching opportunities keep them coming my way or has coaching needs
Because um because I love it um so so my future is our uh our next Generation here and continuing to give back uh to a place I love um and now to watch the impact in a younger generation which is extraordinary and my final question what’s one thing you want to listen to
From this podcast to take away from either yourself your journey or your message one person could change the world right it’s the message that Terry Sanford gave me is that and I believe dokies have this Spirit to a great extent um which is it doesn’t require a
Movement one person can change the world in important ways and if you believe it and you live it and you do it it’ll happen amazing I mean I think that’s the perfect way to to finish the podcast I feel hugely privileged to talk to you today and I think that long journey of
Accomplishments I think a lot of people can say they did did things not to that level say they did things but I think anyone listening to this podcast and see that you really transcend all those things and the message and how sharp you are and lots of different issues is
Really important and I think I have personally taken away so much from that podc from this podcast um both in terms of growing this podcast in the future future startups I might go and hopefully create and any businesses and personal Endeavors that I might enter um I’m
Really excited to see what you keep doing and hopefully I’ll be able to work with you at some point again in the future uh so thank you so much for coming on my podcast today well Harvey thank you so much I appreciate all you’re doing congratulations on all your
Success um and the podcast is fantastic and all the listeners should continue to subscribe
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