The Transparent Podcast
The Transparent Podcast
Royce Hunter - Mentorship, Resilience, and Business Wisdom
What if the secret to thriving in business and personal life lies in the wisdom passed down through generations? Join me, Nick Ford, as I sit down with my granddad, Royce Hunter, a man who lived a life of remarkable achievements and passed on from this earthly world to Heaven on November 1st, 2024. His unique perspective, shaped by a career in the insurance industry, offers invaluable insights into the transformative power of mentorship, faith, and putting family and God first.
Royce shares the stories and lessons that shaped his remarkable career in the insurance industry and how his persistence and faith proved to be a successful recipe for a thriving business. Royce's journey from a management trainee at Southwestern Life Insurance Company in Dallas to the executive vice president of Southwest Indemnity and Life Insurance Company by age 28 illustrates the transformative power of mentorship and adaptability. His experiences reveal how embracing guidance from seasoned professionals can catapult one's career while navigating the ever-changing landscape of small business.
As we venture further, we encounter not just a career trajectory, but stories of heartache and resilience. Royce's personal narratives, including his struggle to balance career ambitions with the challenges of single parenthood after the sudden loss of his wife, shed light on the tough decisions and turning points that define a career. These stories underscore the importance of prioritizing family amidst adversity and the critical role of flexibility and foresight in business recovery.
Our conversation concludes with reflections on trust, transparency, and collaboration as core values in building successful business partnerships. Drawing from Royce's experiences with his business partner, we explore the importance of honest communication and valuing diverse skills within a team.
Additionally, we delve into the teachings of motivational figures like Earl Nightingale, emphasizing the indispensable role of faith and persistence in achieving long-term success. Tune in to discover practical insights and inspiring stories that offer valuable business wisdom and ignite a commitment to personal growth and purpose.
It's time for the Transparent Podcast, where we are bringing transparency to the world of small business. Welcome to the Transparent Podcast. My name is Nick Ford and I am your host, and I'm joined today by Royce Hunter and Royce Granddad. I will let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:My name is Royce Hunter and Nick didn't tell you this, but he is my grandson and I'm proud of him and his business. Yes, I will be happy to talk about my history in the insurance business. After graduating from college, I went to work for a large insurance company in Dallas, texas, southwestern Life Insurance Company. Unfortunately, they no longer exist as a casualty of the last generation.
Speaker 2:But I worked for them for two years as a management trainee and they believed in United Way and they wanted everybody to give from their paycheck a United Way campaign. And they felt so strong about that that they sent some of their management trainees out to small insurance companies in the area, in the Dallas area, to ask those companies to also support the United Way with payroll deduction from their employees. And so I was assigned to five small insurance companies that were based in Dallas, and what I actually wound up with was a small company Southwest Indemnity and Life Insurance Company. I know that sounds like a big name, but it was a small company. They specialized in selling disability income. That's an insurance policy that pays you when you're too sick or hurt to work and if you get sick and you have to go out, you get paid by the insurance company and that was our main business, although we did sell life insurance and we sold annuities.
Speaker 2:But, that was our major product. Yeah, I went to work for this man. We only had 20 employees and I was coming out of a company with 2,200 employees, wow, so it was a much smaller business, much smaller business, and I thought, when they offered me the job it was not a good idea.
Speaker 2:But I went back to my supervisor at Southwestern Life and told them they've offered me a job over there and he told me to get myself over there and take the job. He said you'll learn more over there in that small company than you'll ever learn here in a big company. Get it over there. I know those people, they're honest and so I did. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's a generational change of like that? Now? I think today a manager wouldn't tell one of their employees to go work for a competitor.
Speaker 2:Well, that's probably probably. He was the only company in that company who would say that and I asked him why are you telling me to do this? He said well, I've turned in five raises for you and they've all been declined because you make more than all the other management trainees already. And he said you're not going to get any higher here, you'll learn more. He was an older man and he said you know, you've got it. You can go and learn a lot more over there than you will here.
Speaker 1:So I did.
Speaker 2:And I went over and I worked for that company. I had two bosses I had in addition to the president. I didn't work directly for the president. I worked for one of his lieutenants, who was an older man, and one of his salespeople, who was an older man, and that's when I started traveling. We reinsured companies that wrote disability income, people who would write it but didn't want the risk, and so we reinsured those people. What does reinsurance mean? Reinsurance means that company B sells this product but they don't want to retain the risk, and so they will cede that risk to a reinsurer. And we were a reinsurer. We would reinsure that risk. If they lost money on it, we lost money. We reimbursed it. If they made money on it, we got 75% of the profit. That's nice.
Speaker 1:Well you have to make money on it. We got 75% of the profit.
Speaker 2:That's nice and you know well, you have to make money, you know. Anyway, that was our main thrust was we helped companies get into the disability income business. We took risk off of them and that encouraged some travel around the United States. That was when I first began to travel and learned my boss. He was a really nice guy, a good guy. I liked him, the one I traveled with. He was an amazing man. He taught me many, many things and I listened to him. And that's one of the things I would say to anybody If you want to learn, listen to those who have the practice, who have the experience.
Speaker 2:And I was fortunate he was willing to share and I was willing to listen. He finally resigned and retired, as well as my boss who retired, and I became the executive vice president of the company at a very young age, after two years. I guess I was executive vice president of the company at a very young age. After two years, I guess I was executive vice president. So how long?
Speaker 1:into your career. Was that Two years, two years, two years. Okay, so how many employees were y'all at by then? From 20?
Speaker 2:About 35, between 35 and 40. Okay.
Speaker 1:So still small business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So time went on and some entrepreneurs, who were large agents of the company and sold a lot of our product, decided they wanted to own the company and so they bought the company. The company was owned by the Merkisons and the Hunts. The Merkison brothers were rich people in Dallas and the Hunts obviously were rich people in Dallas and they had a 50-50 interest in this insurance company and they sold it to these two entrepreneurs who had this great sales system that they were creating sales. One of the partners was the vice president in sales. The other partner was the inside man. His only experience was he had managed a warehouse grocery chain. Over time he promoted me to executive vice president over the company and I ran the insurance company. I reported to him and I collaborated with him when I had ideas or whatever, but I was basically running the company. By the time I was 28 years old, which was rather abnormal.
Speaker 1:And that was after you had graduated from. Did you graduate from Texas Tech, texas, techxas tech? That's what I thought. Yeah, I'd love to hear. Um, you know, I think everybody's got an entrepreneurial journey, that they went on like I knew when I was before in college that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and wanted to own a business at some point, and you know I'll share my motivation. Well, I guess part of my inspiration for that was it was real to me, I think, because I knew you had owned a company and been successful running a company. I had that as a and you've always been a that kind of just mentor figure and person I look up to my whole life. So, seeing you do it, I thought, ok, like that's real, I could, that's something I can do, I can do it. I thought, okay, like that's real, I could, that's something I could do yeah, anyone can do it.
Speaker 1:If he can do it, yeah well, let me back up, yeah, back up a little bit, I guess, yeah back up anyway, let me.
Speaker 2:I got out of high school and I went to work for a company called burr's supermarkets. They had dominated the business in Lubbock and they competed with Piggly Wiggly and the big chains weren't then in force. And this was in the 1950s. I worked for First Supermarket carrying out groceries From the time. I was 13 years old. I went to work for a grocery store every afternoon and I carried out groceries. Over time. When I got out of high school I went to work for them full-time and I became later an assistant store manager for one of their supermarkets and I loved the business. But I also saw all these vendors that would come in and look at the products and they'd straighten up their Del Monte product or their hunt foods product. And I got talking to one of these guys One time. The spice guy came in from McCormick spices and extra. He said are you happy in your job? I said yes, I love it. He said, well, we're looking for a good person to move to San Angelo, texas. By that time I was married. I had a baby, so we moved to San Angelo to work for McCormick Spices and Extracts. They're still a big company.
Speaker 2:My territory was from Del Rio to Big Springs, Texas, and from McCormick, from McKamey to Brady, which was a huge South Texas territory. I did a lot of driving to small stores. I was supposed to call on every store who sold any type of grocery or spice, along with three big airbases where we supplied all their spices and extracts, which I love the airbases, because they didn't mess with me. I went in and they said order whatever you think we need. And so anyway, I did that. I love that job. I was on the road three days a week and it was a Thursday and Friday. I worked Big Springs and San Angelo. I loved that job and thought I have found where I'm going to be forever.
Speaker 2:And about two years later my wife and I took an afternoon nap. Sunday after church I got up and went into the den. I was reading and I heard her cry out and I went in there and she was playing back across the bed. She'd been trying to get out of bed, evidently trying to put her shoes on or whatever, and she just collapsed backwards and I couldn't get any response from her. So I called 911 and they sent an ambulance out. I called the neighbor across the street. My daughter was just a baby, nine months old, 10 months old. So they came out and they took her to the hospital and about an hour later the doctor came out and said does she have relatives around here? I said no, they're all in Lubbock. She said well, you need to call them. I don't think she's going to make it For a young man. That was kind of a bad thing. I mean, it's an astounding blow.
Speaker 2:So I called her parents and they got there within about an hour, they must have driven real fast, but they got there, and by the time they got there she was gone, and so that began phase two of my lifetime and for for people listening, his wife would be my grandmother, my mother's mom, who, my mom, lost her mom when she was about a year old.
Speaker 1:Royce was what? Around 22 with a baby in the 20s. Yeah, and so yeah I decided I can't stay here.
Speaker 2:So I need help. I'm going back home to dial up to lubbock. My mom and dad gave me my old bedroom back and my daughter, whose name was Suzanne, we slept together in the same bed. She was a baby, she was a two-year-old, and the hardest thing was when she would ask me when was mother going to come back or when was mom? That was hard, but we did that. My quarterback didn't want me to quit. They said they had a job for me in Lubbock. So I kept my company car and I moved to Lubbock, back to mom and dad's house, and I continued to work for McCormick. Unfortunately, what they had available for me to do this was during spice seasons the fall, the year, christmas holiday, the thanksgiving and christmas and so forth big time for spice and extract business. They sent me to colorado. They to call on stores to help people there. They sent me to kansas to help guys there.
Speaker 2:So what I found that I was doing. I was on the road and out of town a lot and I wasn't seeing my daughter. I need to do something, but never did think about what I was going to do. So one time I was in Denver and finally, after being stranded there for a week, the highways opened up and I found a way to get back to Lubbock. And I got three-fourths of the way to Lubbock and hit a nice storm.
Speaker 2:The car spun around, slid down the road sideways for a long ways and all of a sudden just parallel parked itself off the side of the road. I got out it was about 11 o'clock at night Used my flashlight and there was a big old gully ditch right below the right fender. It was a miracle I didn't roll over into it. Anyway, I sat there and said it's cold and the car won't run. I had it running but you know it wouldn't run, wouldn't start. And all of a sudden I see in my mirror headlights and all of a sudden, about the last part I could see of him he'd stop and after and after a little bit he came. He kept coming and when he saw me he pulled over and picked me up. The other guy had slid off the road also. So he took us into a town called Dalhart, texas, a little old, bitty town in the north Texas panel animal.
Speaker 2:And I asked the guy. I said what are you going to do? He said, well, let's go get something to eat or drink. And so we went and got coffee at a little deal and I said what are you going to do now? And he says, well, I'm going to try to find a way to get out of here. I said, well, everything I have in that car is nearly all my clothes. I said I'm going to treat that and find a service station that'll take me back out there and see if I can start it.
Speaker 2:This is 1145 at night. I'm walking down the street it's colder than a bear's rear and I come to this Texaco station, I see this guy turning off all the lights. Just as I walked up. I called him and he says what can I do for you? I said, well, I'm stranded about 20 miles out. I wonder if you could come start my car as well. Let me turn out all the lights. It cost you $20. Well, $20 was a lot of money in those days. I said that's fine, I'll pay it. So he took me out and he found out that it wasn't an alternator, it was a regulator, and he said the regulator's burned up and it's not going to start again. Once you get this car started and I'm going to jump it for you, don't let it die until you get to where it's going, where you're going, because it's not going to restart.
Speaker 2:So I drove it all the way to Plainview, texas, got there about two o'clock in the morning where McCormick had a branch office, and found me a motel and a hotel and on the way I decided I've had enough of this, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to quit. So they came and gave me another car, picked up the car and I drove and went into Dallas to Lubbock, and I called my mom and told her that I was, you know, to find out when Tech enrolled. I was going to go to school, texas Tech enrolled. Well, I get home and I find this man sitting on the counter in the living room from Lubbock Christian College that later became a university, and he was a friend of the family, and he sat there and told me. He says let me tell you why you need to come to Lubbock, christian. I said well, let me tell you why I can't. He said why. I said because you charge $450, whatever it was per semester and tech is $50 per semester as well. The difference is we care and they don't. You're just going to be another freshman that they have to wash out if you're not real serious about it.
Speaker 2:I said, love a Christian, we're going to make sure you make it. I said I don't have that kind of money. You're $50 a semester hour. They're $50 a semester period. You know, for all the courses you take, I can get you a student loan. And he did. I was one of the first people who applied for the student loan program and later on I found out after I met Barbara, my future wife, that she also had a student loan program. So I went to talk to a little bit of a Christian and they were right.
Speaker 2:I probably wouldn't have made it at Tech because I needed a lot of help. I'd been out of high school too long and after being there for a year some great educators who knew me and took care of me and encouraged me in this small private school I was ready to go to tech and they told me I was ready. They said you can transfer now because we're only a two-year school. Because I saw her in class one day and I said she sounds like a smart woman. I began to watch what she would say and finally I had enough nerve to ask her out for a date. This was a year, two years later, after Glenda had died and we started dating. All of her friends told her to avoid me because I had a child and we played miniature golf the first date and I thought we had such a good, good time. I asked her if she'd like to do it the next night and she said no, you don't ask a girl out for the next day. I said okay, how long do I need to wait?
Speaker 1:well, at least four or five days you know your grandmom, she's still that way so time passed, barbara and I, an item we transferred to tech.
Speaker 2:She lived with another in her apartment and I lived at home.
Speaker 1:So y'all you met at Lubbock Christian. We met in Lubbock. Okay, I didn't know that. I thought y'all met at Texas Tech.
Speaker 2:We met at Lubbock. That's where Texas Tech is, anyway. But if I'd gone to tech I never would have met her, probably Right In the meantime. First, supermarkets let me continue to work, and I could work anytime I wanted to work. They told the store manager at store number five that let Royce work whenever he wants to. No college kid had that privilege.
Speaker 2:At first I went to work. Sometimes, whenever I wanted to work, I worked, and so Barbara and I dated. I worked at first. I wanted to work, I worked, and so Barbara and I dated. I worked at FERS, I went to college and to get through college I made sure before I left the campus that day I had all my homework done. Before the next day I'd go to the library, sit down, do the assignments and then I'd go to work, and then I would spend time with Suzanne. Sometimes Suzanne went on dates with us and time passed. We both graduated from tech, got married, moved to Dallas. That's how you became born. Well, not really, because Suzanne. By then Suzanne was in Dallas. She was probably six or seven years old. I remember we took her to kindergarten. Then we adopted a young man.
Speaker 1:Well, he was a young baby at that time. Oh, he was a baby.
Speaker 2:He could barely turn over. He was good at laying in his crib and singing.
Speaker 1:Does that catch us up to where you started in insurance somewhat.
Speaker 2:That's when I moved to Dallas to work for Southwestern Life Insurance Company. That's how I got to Southwestern Life. They interviewed me on campus, told me what a magnificent management training program they had and that I should come to work there for $425 a month.
Speaker 1:So I did.
Speaker 2:And I worked there for two years before I moved over to a smaller company and so what was the name of the smaller company? Southwest indemnity and life insurance company. And so what was it later on the lone star life insurance company?
Speaker 1:which, by the way, for being a texas-based company lone star life I don't know if you can get a better name than that, but what was that like when you were at like 28, you were the executive vice president and essentially running the company. What was that like scaling a business? How would you decide who to hire Because I'm assuming you were over the budget to like how many people are we going to hire next year? How many new salespeople? How would you? What was that like, figuring that?
Speaker 2:out. We didn't hire salespeople. We had brokers, insurance agents who wanted to sell our product. We would give them a brokerage agreement. We guaranteed them no money. We guaranteed them we'd pay them a commission if they sold something. So we had a marketing department that recruited brokers to sell our product to the public. But our main business at that point in time was reinsuring other companies and teaching them how to sell, how to be in the disability income market, and they would share. We got half the risk, they took half the risk. So if they made money we made money, and if we made money they obviously had to make money. So we did that and we taught people how to do that. The company continued to grow Back.
Speaker 2:In those days there were no computers. We had what was called a 402 accounting machine where they had these paper tabs and they were punch tabs and it would go through this machine and do things that computers do automatically. But anyway, it was early. Early Later on we did get computers. Of course Southwestern Life had computers. That doesn't mean anything to anybody today because nobody uses a formal church counting machine anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see it as like your small company was doing everything on paper manually, essentially, and Southwestern Life had a bunch of MacBooks that everyone got to use.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did a good thing and I was blessed to work under two older gentlemen who knew the insurance business inside and out and they taught me everything they knew and that was a great help. And they also helped me learn how to manage people. Their idea of managing people was you help them, you don't tell them. You're not their boss, you're their helper. That's the way our company was run. When I left the company and we sold it some years 15 years later we had about 250 employees. About 200 of those were clerks people who sat in front of a computer every day and managed what they were doing.
Speaker 2:I wrote every employee a thank you card every day. Every anniversary they were there thanking them for this is your second year with Sloan Star Life Insurance Company. Thank you for being such a great person. I also got a birthday card on their birthday, written by you, written by me. All of them were handwritten by me. My secretary gave me every Monday. She says here are the cards that you need to write this week and I wrote them and put them in the company mail and they went there. Some of these employees would put these cards around your computer tube. They would line them up all the way around. One day, four or five years later, barbara and I stopped by there. I had to pick up some stuff on Sunday afternoon and I said let me give you a tour.
Speaker 2:We'll just rearrange some things. This is after Jack and I had bought the company.
Speaker 1:Y'all. So how long was it, how long were you working as the executive vice president before the company got bought out? Because it got bought by one or two. Kmart bought it at one point. Kmart bought it at one point.
Speaker 2:Kmart bought it and I ran it for Kmart After they came in. Well, they ran it. They left the people, they bought it from my bosses and they let them run it for a while. And they came in one day and I knew things weren't going good and their treasurer from Detroit came down about six hours later. After he got to the company, I began to hear that such and such had been terminated, so-and-so had been terminated. He had terminated all their non-productive, high-paid people. And he walked into my office about two o'clock and he looked at me and he says Royce, what are you going to do? Well, do I have a choice? And he says what do you have in mind? He said well, I need somebody to run this company that doesn't lose money and doesn't need any. Can you do that?
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, we can do that, not having a grand clue as to whether I could or not. It was better than getting walked out the door.
Speaker 2:Better than walking out the door. He says I don't want to keep coming down here from Detroit. Your only job is don't lose money and don't need any. I can handle that. So he left me in charge of this company and I called my troops around and all the vice presidents in and I told them. I said if we want a job here, here's what we have to do. We have to make money. I want you to all go back and figure out what you really need and tell me what you don't need. We got rid of a lot of dead weight. We didn't fire very many people, though. We just got rid of practices. So we did that for quite a while.
Speaker 1:How many years was that that you? Quite a while. How many years was that that you?
Speaker 2:were. Really we did that under the two years. I did that and during that time my job was not to sell more business, but most not lose money, although we still had brokers and. But we didn't have paid agents. So we didn't hire anybody, we just you want to work for us, sell something, we'll pay you. So we did that. And we also had our reinsurance business with other companies that we continued. We were reinsuring other companies.
Speaker 2:As I looked around the company, we had a lot of dead weight and, unfortunately, even after he had fired the big guys, we had to pare the company down to size and so that was the hardest part for me. I never wanted to go do that again and we didn't. Once we got stabilized, we never ever fired anybody because we couldn't pay them. We had people quit. We had people didn't like their job or they got a better job. I didn't say that, but we didn't fire anybody. So we operated like that for a long time until Kmart decided they wanted to do something more with the company and they had the bright idea that they were going to do what Allstate did with. Allstate put agents in Sears stores and created business. So we can do that in the Kmart stores. You can put agents in Kmart stores. Problem was they didn't want to pay the agent any commission, they're just going to pay salary. Well, you know from sales salespeople don't want salary, they want a commission. That's their incentive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, For me. Why would I want to work any harder and do any more than what I had to do?
Speaker 2:So we hired agents, we spent tons of money, we gave them a spec sheet and told them here's how many million dollars you're going to lose before you turn a profit. And it ended up talking to you probably five years after we start making money to pay back the money we lost. That's fine, go ahead, stupid people that came up.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we did. This was Kmart's idea.
Speaker 2:What they didn't realize was that Allstate was well-known. They spent years making their reputation with Sears and here we are coming in with Paymark stores with an insurance booth. I tried to tell them. I said you know, your marketplace is from the very poor to the very rich. I said the very rich only go into your store to get something like a hunting goods or something that they can't find somewhere else. And they can get it maybe cheaper, but they don't do their marketing with you. They buy somewhere else, which was true. They traded the rural market and the undereducated market and it worked for them. They made a lot of money but it didn't work for them in the insurance business.
Speaker 2:We sold a lot of insurance business in these stores but they didn't want to pay the agent a commission. They weren't even on a salary. I told them that was rather stupid because the agent needs an incentive to earn the money. So we paid them salaries and we lost a lot of money. And one day I get a phone call after they've spent millions of dollars two or three years later and said we want you to stop the pay market insurance program expansion but keep everything you have going because we're going to sell the company. I said we want you to stop the pay market insurance program expansion, but keep everything you have going because we're going to sell the company.
Speaker 1:I said who are you going to sell it?
Speaker 2:to. He said we're going to sell it to Metropolitan or Prudential or somebody big like that who will want to get into this market. I said, okay, what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2:We want you to continue to run the company. We're going to host the people who come, look at them, show them the books, show them what you're doing. Other than that, you don't ask questions. They won't be part of the marketing, that's okay.
Speaker 2:By that time I had a guy who was running our outside operations. He did all the legal work. He did all the dealing with the state board of insurance. He was kind of, you know, the back office guy, and so he and I had the brilliant idea after all this, they're going to sell the company. Why don't we try to buy it? Except we don't have any money, we're just employees. So we went all over the place. I went to New York and I called on all kinds of venture capital people and the story was the same when you go in, it's your deal. When I walked out the door, it was their deal. You were just going to be an employee.
Speaker 2:We said we didn't want to do that, and so we didn't do it. We never were able to find anybody to back us. So finally, kmart wanted out so bad they loaned us the money and we took a long-term note with Kmartart. We had to pay them a certain percentage of all of our profits every year towards our debt. It was a 20, I think, a 15 or 20 year loan, I can't remember exactly how long it was, but it was a long loan. Well, we turned that company around. We got rid of some of the and got rid of all the kmart stores and the booth stores. We're not doing that anymore because that was what was losing. Money Went back to our brokerage operation and then we went into the reinsurance business in a big way.
Speaker 2:We reinsured other reinsurers, other insurers who didn't want to keep the risk, and we slowly but surely moved the company into a profit. We did it without firing anybody in the back office, the people who actually are doing the work. Long story short, we did this for eight or 10 years. I guess. We were doing well, we were happy, we were running our own business. Jack and I were equal partners and we get this call. One day. He goes hey, royce, you had enough fun. What do you mean? He says I've been watching what you're doing. But he worked for Swiss Re. They purchased small companies and they conglomerated them into Swiss Reinsurance, the largest reinsurer in the world, and he had been the one that helped Jack and I get the State Board of Insurance to approve us by testifying that we were honest, and people who knew what we were doing.
Speaker 2:And he's well, I've been watching what you and Jack are doing up there. I said what do you think we're doing? He said well, you're a vulture. He said what do you mean? He said you're going in and you're buying up blocks of business from small insurance companies in this disability field and you're not paying them everything it's worth. I said they seem happy. They got out of the business. That's what they wanted. He laughed. He says I understand, we're doing that too. If we're doing it in life insurance, we're buying up small life insurance companies who don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:I just want to know if you and Jack would be willing to let us look at your books with a view to doing what Is what we might want to make you an office. I said well, let me talk to Jack and I'll call you back. So I went down to my partner's office and I asked him, told him what happened and he said he got up, he went over to his window and he looked out the window towards North Dallas and said Royce, I don't see a big line of people out there wanting to buy our business. I said yeah, we do. He said but if we could get a ton of money in the bank, it'd be better than working, I said well, I gotta think about that.
Speaker 1:I really didn't want to.
Speaker 2:You know I wasn't ready to quit. You weren't done working yet right, I wasn't done working.
Speaker 2:He was how old were you then at that point, 60. He sold the company in 1999. So I went back, I called him and I said what's the next step? And they said we want to come look at your books and we'll see what we can do. I said okay. So they sent a bunch of people down there and they went through all of our books and records and they looked at what we were doing, talked to our employees and they made us an offer and I wasn't happy with it. So I was sitting on my can with it. Jack wanted to do it and I didn't. One day a door opened and my attorney from downtown, who was a good friend of mine in Jack's, he said look at me, Royce. I said I'm looking at you, al. He says make the deal. I said well, al, they're not paying enough. He said there's more money than you'll ever see in your lifetime. Make the deal.
Speaker 1:I said okay, we'll do it, yeah that made your decision a lot easier, didn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lot easier. I said the only problem, al, is that Barbara and I we're going to be on a ship, one around the Cape Cod. And I said when they want to close, he says leave me your power of attorney, I'll have the money in your bank when you get back. He said sign the deal. So we did. We signed the deal, barbara and I went on a trip. About five days into the journey, my secretary sent me a wire wire, grim or whatever and the ship delivered it to me and says congratulations, you don't have a job and your money's in the bank. That's when I really had a bad problem. I was happy for the money. I didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was happy doing what I was doing.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 1:You're kind of your background, your story on your business.
Speaker 1:So me wanting to go into business because I saw you run a business right and own a business, I wanted to start my own company for a long time and you know that because I've talked to you about multiple ideas I've had over the years. I remember one of the conversations stuck out to me that you may not remember now. I wanted to start a remodeling contracting business and I told you I wanted to start it with my brother who's a finance guy. And I thought, ok, well, alex is a good finance guy, he's tightwad with the money and would be smart on the financial side. I'm good at making money because I've been in sales convincing people to do business with us, so we'll make a great partnership. And then I kind of had a little bit of a business plan together and I remember sitting in my office and I called you about it and proposed it to you and kind of went over the whole thing. Well, first of all, what do you think you said to that? If you don't remember that conversation, I'd probably advise you against it.
Speaker 1:You said something along the lines of that's about the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Yeah and uh. Your rationale was well, first of all you said, nick, you and your brother do not get along. Why do you think that you'd be good business partners? And your second piece of feedback was neither you know how to do remodeling or contracting work, so why would you go into business doing that?
Speaker 1:But I remember just sitting there being like defeated and just been like, oh man, I thought this was such a good idea and I took your opinion obviously very seriously and so obviously I did not go through that idea. But the third thing you said, and what made me think of this story, was you said if you think you're so smart that you could run a business successfully, why would you give half of it away? And I think that you kind of are maybe jaded about having partners in a business. Obviously it worked out for you in the end. But what is your opinion in general, for people who are listening and thinking about starting their own company or buying a business, what is your opinion about having partners and how that affects how you can run your business?
Speaker 2:I guess my first thing is know who your partner know your partner well. Are they honest? Are they straight shooters? Are they in a lot of debt? Do you trust them?
Speaker 2:I knew Jack really well. I trusted him to be able to do the jobs that I couldn't do, like deal with the state board. He was an attorney, I wasn't. He had gifts that I didn't have. He was a smart guy. He was a Yale graduate. I needed the expertise that he had. He was also an honest guy. I knew he was an honest person, which is huge. It's huge, and if you don't know the person well that you're going to go into partnership with, you need to know them well. You need to know are they honest? Are they reputable? Are they fast with the money? Are they fast with their tongue? How do they treat people? I knew that Jack was not one who was going to appeal to our workforce and so I asked him not to get involved in that. I said when you have an idea about human resources, come talk to me and let me present it what we agree to.
Speaker 1:Because you've got to go sell everybody on that idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, You've got to sell people on the idea you can walk in and say this is what we're going to do. We never did that. I would go in and say we're thinking of this.
Speaker 1:What do you think about this? Is there?
Speaker 2:a better way that you could think about doing it. That's a great point, and you put that ownership into the employees and they will give you honest answers.
Speaker 1:The flip side of that, though, is and not to cut you off, but I've been in situations where executive vice presidents like you were an executive vice president came into a room of my division and came in and said hey, we're going to do a whiteboard meeting and we're going to talk about how we think we should tackle a project or change how the team operates, or whatever, and we whiteboarded for an hour and came up with an idea, and the next day, they came back in and proposed and implemented a completely different idea than everyone had come up with together, and they obviously already had that idea before they even asked us and knew they weren't going to listen to us.
Speaker 2:Well, I will have to say that every Monday morning, Jack and I met with the leaders of the company. All the department heads came to the boardroom and sat in the boardroom and they had the floor and they everyone reported on what they thought was going wrong and what they thought was going right, that's on monday mornings. Y'all did that every monday morning, we had a meeting with our staff, our head, our heads, our operators had gps and directors and things and they knew they could say whatever they wanted to say.
Speaker 2:and it took a while to get that confidence, but they gradually believed what we said we weren't going to. We're not going to condemn or complain. We may ask you questions. If we don't agree with you, that doesn't mean we don't like you, but we'll tell you why we don't agree. We probably agreed with 85% of everything they wanted to do, what they thought was best. Because if you want to know how to run a department, you're sitting in the president's chair. You don't have a clue as to what's going on in that department of, say, eight or 10 people, but they know, and so you need them in your corner and you let them make those decisions. If you see that's going off the tracks, then you have to go down and talk to them and say tell me why this is a good idea if this and this and this is happening.
Speaker 2:And then they would but, you don't go and slip them in the head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I got advice from someone who's been in business and has also worked in church ministry business and has also worked in church ministry. One of the pieces of advice that that person gave me was you know, now that I'm in a leadership type position, I have an employee. I have one employee now, I guess too, I also have a full-time recruiting consultant that I hired about a month ago, and then I have a freelance recruiting consultant also on my team that, uh, you know, sort of works for me but really is a commission only position. So they're not an employee but um, they that this person gave me the advice of. And tell me what you think of this. He said a b plus idea that you get buy-in from a lot of people on in your organization or in your team is better than an A-plus idea that you try to implement on your own 100% correct Really.
Speaker 1:Tell me more about why you think that's right.
Speaker 2:If you try to implement it on your own, you're going to run across every one of the obstacles that they pitch up at you. You need compromise. If the supervisor can't compromise, well, that's a really good idea. Tell me what it would be if we did this or what and let them walk him through that. I I found that 90 of the time through our discussions with our our leaders, they were right. More often than I was discussions with our leaders, they were right more often than I was, because they were running the business. They were in the department every day. It's always better to go to them and say gee, here's what I've been thinking about. I want your honest opinion of what you think and tell me why it won't work. They're going to look at it, obviously, from their point of view. They're going to say what's in it for me, is this going to help me? Can I do this? They're going to look at it, obviously, from their point of view. They're going to say what's in it for me, is this going?
Speaker 1:to help me. Can I do this?
Speaker 2:They're going to have questions. Most of the time, people are going to be straight with you. If they respect you, they're going to tell you what you want to hear. Well it depends on the culture. They're not going to tell you what you want to hear. They're going to tell you what they think.
Speaker 1:Well, that's probably one of the things that made your company successful is the culture that you fostered there, because I've been in the situation I explained before that company. The culture was not a culture of, I think. I never felt like I can say what I think and anything positive will come of it. What I think and anything positive will come of it. Usually I thought if I say what I think, there'll be negative repercussions to me for voicing my opinion, rather than thinking my leadership will listen to that and use it to help the company. It was more. They're going to see me as a problem because I don't agree with what they think or what they're trying to implement. So that's a dilemma everyone probably has some form of facing in their work. It's something I think about now. It's like I founded Transparent Staffing because I believe I could do staffing differently than the way I had done it with other companies and the way the industry is doing it in general, and the vision for the company is bringing transparency to the staffing industry and what that means to me is being honest, being upfront, being being I love that word transparent like that means to be able to see through something I want people to trust me. And when I talk to a candidate about a job, I want them to trust that I'm telling them the truth, that when I tell them how a job is or what the culture is like at a company or what the benefits are like, that they can listen to me and know that what I'm saying is true. And the only way that that could be the only way I can build that trust, is if I'm saying that people start taking jobs with me and it's what I said it was going to be after they get there. Because what a lot of recruiters I worked with would do was spin it to the point of it not being at all what the candidate thought it was going to be when they got there. And same thing on the other side of that with clients that you know, I present a candidate and part of that is kind of selling the client on the candidate. And why do you think? Why you? Why I think that they're a good fit for a role after I've interviewed them. You can't spin it to the point of it not being true where it's not going to be a good fit for, but because that's you gotta, I'm on a, I'm in a position where I have to sell a client on the candidate and I got to sell a candidate on the client and then I got to make sure they stay happy together too after they go to work. That's kind of difficult when you're when you're not there. Well, that's why I think it is exactly. It's very difficult because I'm not there and I have no control over what that position and job is going to be like after that candidate goes to work.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other conversation around, you know, giving a client a guarantee that a client, a candidate, is going to stay with them, and things like that. Again, I appreciate you sharing about your business and I've, uh, you know, been able to share a little bit about mine and I just, I want people to be able to see entrepreneurs about, um, what it's like starting a small business, hear those stories and, uh, be able to ask them, you know, be self-reflective and ask themselves questions like you know, what kind of business they want to go into or how could they build and scale it. What advice would you give? If you're going to give three pieces of advice to a wantrepreneur, someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, that wants to become an entrepreneur what would you? What advice would you give those people?
Speaker 2:I would find out everything there is to know about that business that I could and understand it. For example, if they were selling books or clothes or whatever, or real estate, I would find out everything I could about that business. If you're going to go into it and you want to be in management, then you're going to learn everything you can about that business. You should share that knowledge with people who want to hear it, but you don't drive it down their throats if they don't want to hear it, because if people don't want to talk to you, you're dead in the water.
Speaker 2:So the personality is the big thing. It doesn't mean that you go in and slap everybody on the back and be a hell fellow well met. It means that they see you as a sincere person who cares. Yeah, I can't, I can't tell you how to, how to do that. I can just say that's what they need to see is sincere person who cares. And one way they can see that is do you listen to them if. If they have a problem, are you listening and are you letting them state the whole thing before you jump in and say, before they get through talking?
Speaker 2:I think you've gotten some good advice about listening in the past Well if you want to hear what somebody has to say, you need to listen. The minute that you start thinking this is a bad idea, dah, dah, dah dah, you need to say. You need to prompt yourself real quick. This is not the time for that, because you want to hear everything they say before you come up with negatives or before you come up with ideas. The more they talk, the more you might be convinced, or the more you might be convinced that they're wrong. So I would say don't interrupt people when they're trying to tell you something. Ask them questions to tell you more about this and more about that. You can't give good advice if you don't have good knowledge. You don't know what's going on and you don't know all the factors that are going on in somebody's life.
Speaker 2:You really can't put yourself in their shoes and that's the most difficult thing that I think I ever did was try to put some, put myself in somebody's shoes when I was trying to help them and it seldom ever worked, because I never knew everything that was going on in their mind. Listening is a big, big deal and there's not enough people in this world that are listening. There are too many people like me who wanna talk.
Speaker 1:You know, I think listening is a skill that's very important for salespeople, and everyone in life has to sell at some point In the wise words of Earl Nightingale.
Speaker 1:You have to sell your family, point you in the in the wise words, in the wise words of earl nightingale you have to sell your family on your ideas. You have to sell you know teaching and education to kids in school and sell them on why they should do that and want to learn you. I mean, you're constantly selling in life and you can't. What I learned early on in my sales career, particularly at Paycom when I was selling outside sales software I would try to sell them a product without knowing what their problems were, so I wouldn't listen to them and ask questions and learn about their business and what issues they were having before I tried to offer them a solution. And that was a big mistake. You can't do that in sales.
Speaker 2:We all have that struggle that when somebody starts trying to put a hard sell on you, I begin to back off. If it's not a hard sell, I will hear them out, but if I hear a hard sell coming on, it's hard for me to concentrate after that because I'm negative.
Speaker 1:Well, so let's say, the first two pieces of advice you give to someone would be first, learn as much as you possibly can about the industry you're wanting to start a business in. Number two, uh, learn to be a good listener.
Speaker 2:And and uh, listen to people and get advice from people in the in the industry, maybe, and what would be the third thing you think I would try to learn as much as I could possibly know that I need to know to tell this person, on my idea, if you, if you're woefully short of the knowledge of your product, you're woefully short of the knowledge of your product. You're woefully short of the knowledge of the person you're trying to sell something to the ability, you don't know where they're coming from. Usually, usually, when you're selling, you don't know all their hardships, you don't know all their problems, and so you have to have an attuned ear and ask questions. You don't want to come right out and say what's your biggest problem. You want to get them encouraged to talk about their problems. One way to do that is to ask questions. What would you do in certain certain deal? You know, if this, this and this, how would you think about?
Speaker 1:that Would you say? Another way of saying that, like you need to learn about the customer base, learn about who your customer is going to be, and understand the customer base and what the need is in the market.
Speaker 2:Maybe yeah, you got it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Once you've got that done, then your next step is to determine okay, what can I do? Knowing that, what steps do I take to make sure that I don't lose?
Speaker 1:money doing it. If I was going to give a top three things, I would probably say you have to have an idea of the business that you want to go into and be an expert in that business and that industry. And then, number two, I think you need a form of business plan that includes how to be profitable. And number three is you have to have faith. I love the way Earl Nightingale talks about that and for people who don't know, earl Nightingale is kind of like a Tony Robbins person. I know Earl Nightingale, oh, I know you do, but people listening may not know who that is.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, but look up the Strangest.
Speaker 1:Secret on YouTube by Earl Nightingale and you'll know who. That is okay, okay, but look up the strangest secret on youtube by earl nightingale and you'll know who he is. But he, he says that, uh, you need to have persistence, and he says that faith is just another word for persistence, because you would never persist if you didn't have faith. So you have to have faith in yourself and then faith in the idea for the business, like for me. If I don't have faith that my business has a need and a purpose, then how on earth could I go to work every day and try to sell somebody else on it? That's true. So, um, well, I think that's a good place to to close. Um, do you have any other parting words of wisdom before we close out the podcast?
Speaker 2:No, looking forward to coming to see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be great.