Changing the world: a Leadership Journey | Shep Moyle | Ep 16

This episode features Shep Moyle his past experience includes: Former Owner of ShinDigz - $2bn revenue, President of YPO - 34,000 CEOs, Trustee at Duke University & Harvard Business School, Managing Partner Moyle + Partners. Shep provides incredible stories, lessons & insights on the future of education, building a billion-dollar brand, and creating an impactful life that enables success whilst also giving back. 

Personable is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners become the best they can be by learning from the world’s best in their respective fields. This mission is inspired by my mother, Louise, who encouraged me to become the best version of myself before she passed away from cancer in 2023.

Connect with Harvey:
Harvey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveybracken-smith/ 
Harvey's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmith/
Personable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmithpodcast_/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JOTYDER6m2FDrlhop4api

My dad's startup: https://www.thedraft.io/
Donate to the charity we have founded in memory of my mum: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/LouLouRacefoiundation?utm_term=PvByaxmdn

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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 Moyle. Shep has had an incredible journey, initially starting at Duke University and becoming the student body president in his sophomore year. I got one more year to make that happen. He created the Black-White Task Force, helping race relations in the school and helping with diversity. He also advocated and secured beer on the meal plan, which a lot of students not me, because I don't drink, but a lot of students will be very happy to hear.

Speaker 1: 0:34

He graduated magna cum laude Also, then went to Harvard for an MBA if he wanted to do any better Then became a brand manager at Tostitos I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly he became the CEO and chairman at Shindix, generating over two billion in revenue across the years in the party and celebration space. He's on the board of directors at numerous companies. He was the international and is the international chairman of the board of YPO, which is the Young Presidents Organization featuring over 34,000 CEOs. He's an investor in the Duke Angel Network, who was the previous president of the Duke Alumni Association, and is on the Harvard Business School of Directors. I was previously also on the Duke University of Trustees and has recently become the associate director of markets and management at Duke. He has now also created Moeller Partners, which offers coaching, consulting, speaking board work and investing. I feel hugely privileged to hear from Chef. I think by that long introduction there's a lot of things that he's achieved and will continue to achieve as the times go forward.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Well, Hari, it's great to be with you and thanks for having me. Can you just follow me around and read my resume off to people all the time? I think that would be fantastic.

Speaker 1: 1:44

I actually thought that's what my role was today. I thought you were hiring me.

Speaker 2: 1:48

I felt asleep partway through, but I'll try to wake back up.

Speaker 1: 1:52

So, with all of that and the people listening, there'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.

Speaker 2: 2:01

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 board. 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 was the president of Duke University, terry Sankard. He had been governor of North Carolina and for some reason he took me under his wing and he told me my senior year that if I showed up at his house by 6.30 am on every Sunday morning, he would cook me breakfast. 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.

Speaker 2: 3:10

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 yourself, being in a university environment and then helping CEOs around the world, brings me enormous joy. And so that's really who I am today, as someone who's now found that combination of both success that has transitioned into significance, and so I feel like I'm making a difference, and it brings me joy every day.

Speaker 1: 3:52

You mentioned that the initial mentorship came from the previous well, one of the previous presidents of Duke University. But how did you end up at Duke in the first place and how did you end up becoming the president of the student body?

Speaker 2: 4:04

Wow, those are two very different stories. But I'm a Midwestern boy. I was the only person in my family that was born above the Mason-Dixon line, so I was a Yankee in the family. But we had a long family history here, and so my great grandfather, in 1892, had a fourth grade education. He was living in Eastern North Carolina, working in the tobacco fields and, as family legend goes so take it with a grain of salt 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 at the right moment. So it was kind of a apparently a rap scallion kind of fellow. And so somewhere in this story the ministers said now, for whoever would like to give their life to God, come forward. And so for some reason my great grandfather got down off his horse, walked to the front of this tent and said you know what? Do with me, what you will, right? And he goes back, works in the tobacco fields, and a month later he gets an anonymous letter from Trinity College in Durham, north Carolina inviting him to come and take high school equivalently test because he'd only had a fourth grade education, and then to get a free 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.

Speaker 2: 5:47

And then, when I was student body president, I get a call from a gentleman in the library and says hey, can, can I buy you a coffee? Okay, I'll go to coffee. I show up and he's a elderly African American gentleman, probably in his seventies, and he pulls out his license and he says you owe me a suit, and you know what are you talking about. And on his license, his name was Samuel Moille Johnson and my great grandfather's name was Samuel Moille, and so apparently 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 Moille Johnson had done some research and there were 27 Samuel Moille somebody's that are alive and living in North Carolina named after my great grandfather.

Speaker 2: 6:43

So all that to say 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 and it was a great. It was a okay, private, regional school at the time. It had not had achieved the prominence that it has today, but that story inspired me and so I was the fourth generation in our family to go here.

Speaker 2: 7:09

My children, then two of the three, went here, and so that's fifth generation. So we've got a long history here. And when then, in running for student body president and this came after some an incident I had as a writer for the newspaper with the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina but ran, and because I had great campaign managers and friends, was able to win the campaign, and being able to do that as a sophomore was an extraordinary experience and that created those relationships with the president of the university 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 trustee or as a student, or as an alum or as a parent 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.

Speaker 1: 8:07

It's very clear that you have this passion to sort of give back society and help the world, and you as being the president of the student body. But why not pursue something like politics? Why go into business you?

Speaker 2: 8:19

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 pursue that path. The problem 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 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 career.

Speaker 2: 9:01

And so I went back to my dorm in Fuqua 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, they said, hey look, we're applying to business school. Why don't you apply to business school? So all three of us applied to business schools. All three of us got into Harvard. I went the next year, so I went directly in, which was a huge mistake 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 even to this day. So it was really more by accident than anything that I ended up on a business path and then ultimately going back into the family business, which I never really planned on doing.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Do you find what were some of the main benefits that you took away from going to Harvard Business School, and do you think that traditional education, such as university, is still as important today?

Speaker 2: 10:05

I think university education is evolving and it's going to change quickly or or again it will be disintermediated. The way we teach today, I believe, is stuck in an old model that is outdated. 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 and to articulate your arguments. So it wasn't where you're just learning 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 while it do 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 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 and the Don 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, from my Harvard, experience, taught me how I could take on any situation and analyze it in a critical way. It gave me confidence. 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 was built in me.

Speaker 2: 12:05

And the third is the network. And I think in higher education today, when we 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, 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, I remain engaged, probably on a weekly basis, with someone from Harvard in helping people or in needs that I have.

Speaker 1: 12:59

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 still with a sort of emphasis on memorization, not necessarily 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, and do you think it will change?

Speaker 2: 13:25

Absolutely well, 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 to regurgitate them, 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 going to do with it? How do you apply it? How do you make a difference with that knowledge that you've acquired?

Speaker 2: 13:57

And so the difficulty with higher education is it moves very slowly, and so you have people who were educated 30 to 40 years ago, and so my education has been obsolete 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, 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?

Speaker 2: 14:51

And so I think, as universities evolve, as non-academics become more involved in the educational process, 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 it's going to be meaningful 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. 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 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, 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.

Speaker 1: 16:10

What's particularly helpful when listening to your perspective on this is that you've served on the board of trustees and directors of both Harvard and Duke University, and you also mentioned that Duke 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?

Speaker 2: 16:43

Yeah, that's a great question, and I think 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 Harvard, at Duke, syracuse as well, and leadership there. So each one's a little different. 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? Again, higher education has, and we have, the best in the world, I will argue writ large. However, they are imitators in general, right.

Speaker 2: 17:31

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 going to get bets wrong, and that's okay. 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 Duke Kunshan University.

Speaker 2: 18:17

So establishing a De Novo undergraduate school teaching Western liberal arts in China wow, that's a big bet. Now it's a 10-year-old bet right now, at the time, semi-controversial 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 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 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.

Speaker 1: 19:32

You mentioned the university in China off Duke, but Duke 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 from your perspective on what's actually differentiating them, because people are looking at very superficial statistics on exam results that differ by a 1%ile or based on the high schools that people went to, and that's all they're looking at, basically, how the universities differentiate, but, as you made a clear example between Harvard being 400 years old and Duke only being 100 years old, what did you think are some of the other different characteristics of Duke that are enabling it to do so well and what have led you to stay with Duke and not as much focus on Harvard or the other universities?

Speaker 2: 20:16

Yeah, again, we always run the risk of being too similar, right. So that we're. Again. I am not a fan of the rankings because I'm not sure they really measure what it is right. That is what's the true value, right? So the greatest out and this is where I'll have arguments with my academic friends universities have multiple outputs, one research right. So this is a place where great breakthrough research is done, and that's the. We hire great research faculty to do that, and that distinguishes Duke, and we do that particularly well in the sciences and the life sciences and health and medicine.

Speaker 2: 20:58

The other area that we really look at, then, is how can we innovate as an institution in the delivery of the education? So the way Duke distinguishes itself is through its interdisciplinarity, right. So what Duke does uniquely in higher education is incent 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, and it's this willingness to take risks and fail, and there are plenty of things that we have attempted as an institution where we fall in short and we're not perfect, and that kind of failure, experimentation, pivot cycle, I think is incredibly important for an institution today? Because the measurement of education today has to be is it relevant for today and for 40 years from now? Right, 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, or any institution. So, to the degree that Dukes are changing the world each and every day in their own unique ways, or 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 institution.

Speaker 2: 22:58

In my opinion, it is not a four year education, then we're done and send us money for the next 40 years. That's not how it works. So I think breakthrough, change and research is a core of what universities are driven by free speech and academic exchange and development. It's the delivery of a very discrete 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 at scale. 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? And is that on our mission? And I believe it is, and so I think for universities to continue to be relevant, we have to continue to be able to innovate, to do it at scale and to change, and to change quickly.

Speaker 1: 24:08

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 better 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 engaged with, the Duke alumni network?

Speaker 2: 24:38

Yeah, and so I stole a lot of these ideas from the young presidents organization, right? So what YPO is? It's 34,000 CEOs in over 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 gonna travel to wherever it may be in Sri Lanka and find that one person that has the background or experiences that can help you. And the answer, very quickly, you know spoiler alert it's technology, right? So that is the answer when we look at, for example, the Duke network and we spent millions of dollars literally investing in that network. So it starts with you have to have the data, which is okay.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Now you got a profile every alumni. Tell me your interests, tell me your passions, tell me your background, what are the things that you are willing to share with people? Right? What do you know? Tell me about you, then, to create ways that you can connect. And so, when you're at Duke as a student, you connect around affinities. You connect around passions, right? So if somebody, all the people interested in podcasting or media, or it might be around ethnic affinities or 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 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 Dukies has the strongest brand identity among alumni of any school on the planet right, so if you know a Dukie, they are going to tell you they are a Dukie. 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 Dukie? Right, always in the top three.

Speaker 2: 27:09

I wanna connect to students. I wanna give back to the institution, I wanna 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 wanna connect to an alum who can help me right Now.

Speaker 2: 27:25

In many ways, that feels like 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 things. But at a broader level, you wanna 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 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, as alum, here's how I can find people like you. Right, because there are enormous things that you can teach me, and so that will be the power of what education is.

Speaker 2: 28:25

When my children were thinking about going back for MBAs and they're looking at top schools, the question was not about what they were gonna 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 Metcalfe's law, right, power of a network expands to 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 that help you in your everyday life.

Speaker 1: 29:17

I think there's an understanding of, with modern-day top 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 school or you worked for the business. I'm interested, but you mentioned that Duke 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 Duke 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?

Speaker 2: 29:59

right it is. It's one of the great questions that we started to answer even this week in celebrating our centennial. So this is our hundredth birthday 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 Sweatshirt, whether it's on an airplane or in a restaurant or wherever you might be, there's an instantaneous connection between Dukes 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 that people have that they 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 reason, 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 I think this is where Duke has gotten much better.

Speaker 2: 31:09

The diversity of Duke and its evolution In becoming a more diverse institution has made us extraordinarily tight-knit. So when I was here, we were 94% white, right. So you know, and we were 40% northeast, so that was a very different 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 part of the Alumni Association, one of my passions was to create a home for alumni on campus, which we didn't have. 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. They named a boardroom in it after me and I go there with great pride Because it is a home now where we can all connect.

Speaker 2: 32:30

Right so, and what I really wanted I never got, harvey was I wanted a simple app To where, whenever a dukey arrived on campus, you would check in. Right now, it would just be a check-in app, right. So because at any point in time, 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 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.

Speaker 1: 33:30

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 Shindix, which is a over 19 year family business, and you made it generate in your time, over two billion in revenue 20% year-on-year growth 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.

Speaker 2: 34:04

It was an extraordinary ride. A lot of it's luck and timing right, so you have to be really fortunate in the right place, right time. So we have to acknowledge that. But so when we got back, my wife and I we got married, bought a house, moved into Indiana and all of them the same right. So I can't recommend them. But my wife and I worked in the business together, wendy and I, and she's probably our primary reason for success over the years because she's certainly the better Two of them.

Speaker 2: 34:37

We arrived, the company was relatively sleepy. 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. I had about 35 employees and was based in town of 1,400 people. 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.

Speaker 2: 35:07

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 almost nine months to negotiate the sale and we signed the contract, went to dinner and the next morning he got on an airplane and told me you know where to send me, send the checks, and he never came back. So I was kind of on my own 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, cheerleading and homecoming, 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 and for us in 1996 called the internet and we were pretty early to sell on the internet. But that really then opened the world to us and then 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 they celebrate, from birthdays to weddings and Britishies to a weekend. And then we moved globally. It was because of my network in YPO. So we established a company in China and supply chain very early on, all through YPO and then expanding our distribution on a global basis, and so that ride was extraordinary. We built our business based on unique products that you couldn't get anywhere else, so 12 foot Eiffel towers, you know things of that nature. We focused on personalization, so we wanted to have pictures and names and all of that and what we were doing, and then amazing customer service. So all of that we would do and produce to order within 24 hours and ship it around the world. So we had an amazing ride.

Speaker 2: 37:15

I will say, you know, there were times, though probably 15 or 20 years in, 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 or YPO, to challenge my network, to travel the world. So with YPO, when I was international chair, I went to 100 countries around the world, had some amazing experiences in seeing the world in a different way and meeting with business leaders around the world. So then at that time I would kick myself up to chairman and then hire a CEO to take my place, and then, inevitably, there would be challenges and my board would come back to me and say it's time to come back and run it. So I would get pulled back in. So I did that three times during my lifetime. Ultimately then near in 2018, went back to Harvard on a fellowship for a year where you could take any class at Harvard called the Advanced Leadership Initiative, menu working project to change the world. So that was intellectually stimulating for me, so it was an amazing journey and it exited at the end of 21.

Speaker 2: 38:33

I should have done it sooner, and that's what I advise the people that I coach now is, once you lose that passion and the dream for what you're doing every day, I'd 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 so then it was a matter of OK, well, what's next? Right, 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 these other areas now that bring me joy, and 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, but it doesn't feel like work anymore, and that is an amazing feeling to have. So I've really found, as they say, my happy place, because it's just a joyful experience to see the impact and when I look back on that time, we generated a lot of revenue we did by all financial metrics did extremely well, but the real value you walk away from is at the end of 600 people and 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.

Speaker 2: 40:00

We're focused on culture a lot, because our corporate mission was to make life more fun, and so everything we did was built around making life more fun.

Speaker 2: 40:11

So we had what we called the journey for all employees, if they chose to do it, which was a three-year program. The team members came up with over 100 different activities, and it might be learning a language or community service or doing something with their children, and when they finished that journey, then we would send them and their family an all-expense paid trip to Disney World, because that's where you go, have fun, and so we would bring in puppies into our own, and at lunchtime we went on random acts of kindness that we would do downtown outside our office building. So we really worked on helping people reach that full human potential and that's extremely rewarding to do that and 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 curate papers not terribly inspiring, but to go change the way the world celebrates and to make life more fun, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 41:18

There's filming a podcast with the owner. Give me a chance to go to Disney World.

Speaker 2: 41:23

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 41:25

I will take you off on that offer. I will get that signed in contract, and so I'll make sure that happens. But 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.

Speaker 1: 41:39

You may or may not have heard of the company called Charles Tirrett, one of the biggest short shirt companies in the UK and throughout the world 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. But 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 the people want to work there. You've mentioned the delivery time, the personalization and building a 12-foot Eiffel Tower and having unique products. With the rise of the internet 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 easily replicable by lots of people.

Speaker 2: 42:34

Absolutely. It's not about the products. For me, it begins and ends with the customers, so that, whether it's tostitos or anything else, you start with who is that customer and what problem are you solving? So you have to be solving a problem and, ultimately, what I focus on in any business and every founder, what's the emotional connection. What is that emotion that you are solving so far?

Speaker 2: 43:02

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 and the reason for that is A most people aren't that creative. B they don't have a lot of experience doing that. C you have to pull together a whole lot of different things to make it work. And then, D if you fail, you're doing it in front of your friends and family, the people who care, or your neighbors, 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. 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. So you're going to be able to badge that out, and then we're going to create a community, because here's what we believe, the reason we do what we do. This is the why.

Speaker 2: 44:02

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 customers bought into that right. So 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 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 Frito Lay and creating restaurant style toastitos, used it in in our business at Shindigs and then I use it today. So when I teach, right, you've got to get out. 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.

Speaker 1: 45:03

I think there's still a barrier to entry and starting a business. I mean the people that you're sort of dealing with and in the innovation and entrepreneurship center at Duke, 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 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. I'd be curious on your thoughts of when the best time to build the businesses, to go all in on it, what experience you think you need for an idea and just anything and everything that you have to say about that.

Speaker 2: 45:46

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 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.

Speaker 2: 46:19

Now, what we've done, as we've kind of now institutionalized entrepreneurship, we look for a formula, we look for a cookie cutter kind of approach and this is where venture capital is come in 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 the more that you create value, both for your customer and for your team, then the financial pieces will take care of themselves on how you finance it. The mistake I see many entrepreneurs start with now is 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 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. And those founders, right, the ones 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 overthink it all. Great entrepreneurs are the ones who are going to pivot, adjust, fail and then keep moving forward.

Speaker 2: 48:04

Today's generation, I would argue. Harvey, one of the things we have to learn is failures, ok, 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 was Howard Stevenson, one of the fathers of modern day entrepreneurship, and it's the pursuit of opportunity 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 stick through it and realize that failure is part of the formula. And we're not resilient either as founders or as funders. The funders don't have the patience to tolerate failure, and I think that model will change and evolve over time.

Speaker 1: 49:04

I've got three last questions, the first one being a few different ideas clocked together 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?

Speaker 2: 49:21

Well, covid impact is the rise of the remote work. Right, I think that is going to change the nature of work globally 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 that is a huge social media. And I'll go more broadly than that, the creator economy. I'm fascinated by this. This is a game changer. Right, it's currently already a trillion dollar industry. Right, and most people don't understand what the hell it is. Right, and one of the arguments is that each of us will be managing our networks and monetizing our own personal economies. Right, that's what we'll do and how we create value, like through this podcast. Right, you monetize this in some way based on your network, and so that, to me, is a fascinating disaggregation of the world, right, what's that going to look like? And 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 content, monetizing their audience. I love that idea. So, social media, covid.

Speaker 2: 51:01

What was my third one? Ai? All this and I'm working on a course On AI Right, it is. It's the game changer, 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 of it will be extraordinary, the impact of it for every business.

Speaker 2: 51:26

If businesses are not used, as I tell my 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 is 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 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 quite a while as it becomes institutionalized. But it will become the new base 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. They will enable work and performance and efficiency at a level we have not seen, I think in at least my business career.

Speaker 1: 52:29

My penultimate question what does the future look like for you?

Speaker 2: 52:34

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 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, because I love it, so so my future is our, our next generation here and continuing to give back to a place I love and now to watch the impact in a younger generation, which is extraordinary.

Speaker 1: 53:21

And my final question what's one thing you want to listen from this podcast to take away from either yourself, your journey or your message?

Speaker 2: 53:30

One person could change the world. It's. The message that Terry Sanford gave me is that and I believe dookies have this spirit to a great extent 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.

Speaker 1: 53:54

Amazing, I mean. I think that's the perfect way 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 podcast, from this podcast, 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. 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. So thank you so much for coming on my podcast today.

Speaker 2: 54:37

Well, harvey. Thank you so much. I appreciate all you're doing. Congratulations on all your success and the podcast is fantastic and all the listeners should continue to subscribe.