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We cover topics on physical and mental healing, health, happiness, growing wealth and living wise in a world that often sabotages you.
From Health to Wealth with topics covering Cradle to Grave. We got you.
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Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy.
I have with us today Don Kurz from Nashville and he is an author of a new book called Do the Hustle, Life Lessons from Studio 54, The Championship, La Crosse Field, and also The Boardroom.
So Don is kind of that mix of business and creative which is super fun.
And I just want to say welcome, Don.
We have a podcast sponsor, Mindy, M-I-N-D-I-I-I.
They are an IT company who can do full stack, everything development, build hardware, and do all the different things on the back end also with data.
So welcome.
I was talking to Don before we started about I spent 20 years in Nashville and now he's been there for five years.
Made the LA to Nashville jump.
As we said, I'm not the only one who's done that.
No, no.
Nashville is such a fun, creative city for sure.
So Don, this book is fascinating.
It just sounds like your life experience has spanned a lot of different things with ballroom dance, sports, different businesses that have gone well, gone sideways from your bio.
Do you care if I read a little bit of your bio?
Please, sure.
Okay, I'm going to do that a little bit because it is pretty fascinating.
So you're an entrepreneur, former championship athlete and dance instructor.
Don has been a senior partner at a major international consulting firm, successfully taken a company public on NASDAQ, started a hedge fund and currently is the executive board chair and principal shareholder of a leading creative agency at LLC.
So Don served for 12 years on the John Hopkins University Board of Trustees and subsequently was elected a trustee emeritus for life.
Impressive.
He was awarded the John Hopkins Heritage Award for exceptional lifelong service to an institution and he has endowed the Kurtz Family Scholarship to provide tuition support for low income students.
He was a key player on the John Hopkins University NCAA lacrosse championship team in 1974.
Through two serious knee injuries permanently ended the lacrosse career in 1976.
Don is currently an active member of the student athletes at Hopkins.
He was voted the outstanding athlete at Elmont Memorial High School senior year and has recently been inducted to the school's Athletic Hall of Fame.
Don was a dance instructor for Arthur Murray dance studios and was a regular at New York iconic disco Studio 54 in the late 1970s.
Don has served as an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Business and has been a guest speaker on a variety of topics at John Hopkins, the Anderson School of Management at UCLA and the Young Presidents Organization.
He has previously been a board member of Gang Violence Prevention Organization and Better LA, a donor and guest teacher for Teach for America and donor and advisor of Project Angel Food in Los Angeles.
He is an emeritus advisory board member having recently completed two terms on the board for John Hopkins affiliate.
I don't know how to say this.
Japaygo.
Japaygo.
Nobody can pronounce it.
I'm like, Ooh, that's not good.
JHP is not, it's not something we typically see for starting us that word.
So that provides critical healthcare services to women and families in over 30 countries around the globe.
Here it is, BA from John Hopkins University and an MBA from Columbia University.
So the book, Do the Hustle, Life Lessons from Studio 54, The Championship Lacrosse Field and the Boardroom.
Yay.
Ooh, that's a lot.
That's a mouthful.
Yeah.
You've just been not doing much your whole life, apparently.
So you stayed busy.
So let's start with the book.
How did the book come about?
Yeah.
Mary, as many of us, we think about a book, you know, over as we evolve in our life, in our career and the proverbial, I have a book in me.
I just need to get it out and I'm no different.
But I never really seriously embarked on, on writing a book because it's, as you can imagine, it's fairly daunting to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, even though you have lots of ideas.
And what actually prompted the writing is I got called about two and a half years ago by Forbes, the big business publisher who looks at people's background on LinkedIn and gets referrals and references from others and approached me about my interest in writing a book for their publishing platform.
And I said, well, that's interesting.
So I embarked on what's called a book plan, a detailed outline of what the book would be about, the table of contents, the theme, the target market, all of that stuff.
At the end of the process, it took about two to three months.
It was fine.
It was well written, but it didn't really have any soul or didn't really inspire me.
It was a traditional kind of do's and don'ts of business, which I have my views on, but there are certainly other people who can opine probably better than, than I can on that.
So I thanked them and said, you know, I'm going to pass on this.
But it got me kind of thinking about doing the book.
And so I just started taking detailed notes over the course of, I don't know, three or four months, everything that came in my mind that I thought was interesting about what I've learned in life, my background, my interactions.
And after, I don't know, again, three or four months, I had 11 or 12 pages in a Google Doc running of bullet points.
And I read it and I saw this kind of theme of sports, dancing, and business.
And of course, there are plenty of people in each of those three verticals, but not a lot that I'm aware of that kind of had that trifecta.
So that's kind of interesting.
And of course, it wasn't, none of this was well planned.
It evolved through circumstances, sometimes detours in life, like getting, you know, devastating knee injuries that ended my sports career.
And then somehow the disco craze emerged, and I found myself in the middle of it.
Again, you can't plan this stuff.
So I said, there's a book in me, and then I embarked on, on writing it.
Yeah.
Well, it is very, very interesting.
I read the first little bit of it yesterday, because I'm like, well, I want to like, I wish I could have read the whole thing prior to this, but it's not a typical business book.
It is pretty fascinating, for sure.
Yeah.
I love that interaction of the creative world and the business world, because I certainly have done that myself, and it's fun.
But I know with this podcast, we talk a lot about like life pivots, when things get hard, and how you make the changes, and you certainly have done a lot of that in your life.
So with business, going to that side of it, you've had companies that you've started and have gone big.
But you know, even before that, let's go back.
How did you, how did you pivot from dance instructor into the business world?
That's, that's kind of fascinating.
Well, Mary, as I mentioned, I pivoted from lacrosse or sports in college, where I was really gearing up for, for, you know, hopefully to be an All-American my junior year.
And then I got that proverbial ACL and MCL anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligament tear on one of the first Astra-Turf fields at the University of Pennsylvania.
And back then, really dating myself between disco and the first Astra-Turf field, they didn't have arthroscopic surgery, they didn't have even MRIs to really diagnose things accurately and quickly.
So they put me in a cast, which is the last thing they would do these days, because your leg really atrophies and, and you don't get any movement.
And I tried to come back because I heard it at the beginning of the season for the playoffs four months later, and I re-ripped both of those ligaments.
So it was like, I'm done, because I'm not a very big guy.
My entire game was speed and agility.
And, you know, you lose a step when your knee is not a hundred percent.
But I, I'm from New York originally, and Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, which where I was going to school.
So I went home after the season, and right then the disco craze was emerging.
And I met a young lady who taught dancing at New York Hustle Inc.
You can't make this stuff up.
You think of New York and you think of hustling, but you don't think of dancing.
You think of people trying to manipulate you in some way.
So she taught me steps and I was just recovering with my knee, but I could, you know, go and do basic things on a dance floor.
And then my senior year, I went down to Hopkins and nobody had heard of disco there.
So being a, maybe a budding entrepreneur, I started teaching to the students, putting up flyers around not just Hopkins, but the surrounding colleges as well.
And I was all of a sudden getting a fair number of students and charging $10 an hour for group lessons and making some reasonable money.
And then Arthur Murray, and I'm not sure you or the listeners are necessarily familiar with what that is.
It's a national ballroom dance chain.
They saw me dancing at one of the local discos and they said, what are you doing there?
You know, I described this in the book and I said, I'm dancing.
I said, what kind of dance is that?
Because they were teaching the fox trot and the cha-cha and, you know, the rumba, and they weren't teaching disco and they had a very, you know, older audience that they were catering to and they wanted to attract younger folks.
So I made a deal with them.
I'll teach them those steps.
I did a video for their national, you know, use.
And I learned all the ballroom dancing.
So I'm a hit at weddings and bar mitzvahs now.
And then I just became, I became a disc jockey and then Studio 54 happened.
I went to Columbia to get my MBA, which of course is in New York city.
And then I ended up teaching dancing there and then becoming a regular at Studio 54 and some of the other clubs.
So this is a really long winded way.
I apologize to get back.
Did I get into this thing?
Yeah, so Columbia is, I got my MBA and of course, a master's in business.
And, uh, cause I didn't know what I wanted to do.
So I figured business is a kind of general thing.
And, uh, uh, somehow I, I'm not even sure how I got into Columbia cause my grades weren't great.
And, um, I think they were intrigued with sports and dancing cause nobody else, everyone else had good grades and SAT or, or the GMATs, the graduate, uh, but not a lot of dancers and sports people.
So, uh, and then I just embarked on a business career starting in management consulting, which is a really good training ground for people who are not quite sure what they want to do because you get good analytical skills.
You're, you work for a big company, they train you and you're constantly put into situations where you, uh, don't necessarily know the industry and you're forced to be able to analyze and, and crunch numbers and, and draw your conclusions without having a lot of experience became an entrepreneur after 10 years doing that.
Okay.
So it started with that business.
So somewhere along the line, did you just kind of let the dance instruction go when we've been, yeah, I mean, I, again, I described this in the book.
There was a moment after my first semester at Columbia, right when studio 54 opened, which was 1977.
And I, I was really between teaching dancing and going out cause the clubs started maybe 11 PM or midnight and I would be going there and my grades were really bad.
And I was paying through a loans for part of my education.
My father and parents were paying the rest and my father sat me dances, you know, in colorful language that I won't use here.
I ain't paying for this.
If you're going to be dancing all the time and getting a lousy grade, you can, you know, you can drop out or, or, you know, pay for it yourself.
Cause it's really a struggle to, to, you know, pay this.
And so I, I had this realization, not terribly profound that I'm not going to be a dance instructor from the rest of my life.
And I better get serious.
And I did buckle down.
I still went out, but I, I became a relatively good student.
And, you know, I finally got a little serious, but I needed a slap in the face.
Yeah.
Dads are good at that, right?
Yeah, literally and figuratively.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you, you were, uh, come to the business consult.
Yeah.
Management consulting.
Yeah.
Management consulting for a decade.
Yeah.
And, and, and pardon me, go ahead.
Sorry.
I interrupted you.
Oh, no, no.
I was going to let you go, but I was just going to ask then you transitioned into being an entrepreneur.
Yeah.
So I, I worked initially for Cooper's and Librarian, which is now Price Waterhouse Cooper is one of the big four accounting consulting firms, which was again, a good training round.
And, uh, then went with my boss to a similar type of consulting firm, uh, which is now Bullish Towers Watson and became a partner and ran the New York office.
And it was, I was doing well, making a good living.
Um, but I knew I didn't want to be a consultant the rest of my life, which is really, you're there advising others on how to run their business, but I wanted to see if I could actually do it myself rather than just, uh, advise people.
And a friend of mine, um, who's a creative person, uh, had this small promotional marketing company.
This was all in New York city.
And, uh, he said, listen, I, you know, the company's doing pretty well.
I don't, I don't know how to run something once it gets past two or three people.
Um, I'd love to cash out if I can.
And, you know, he was literally an artist.
He wants to go bank some money and then paint.
And, um, I wasn't married or didn't have any kids, so I could take a financial risk.
So I, I left my job, took a large pay cut, took a little bit of equity.
And the goal was if I liked the business and I seemed like I had an aptitude for it, I would try to buy them out after a year or two.
And that's what happened.
Myself and one other person, we ended up buying out, uh, the company.
Um, and, uh, this is the early nineties and we ended up taking it public on NASDAQ because it grew very fast and, uh, moved it from New York city to LA because it was in the entertainment marketing space.
So being in LA was, uh, you know, a better location.
Yeah.
And you, you, in some ways, then you bridge that creative, creative kind of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you, of course, as you know, as an entrepreneur yourself, you've got to have a, you've got to understand numbers well enough, but you also have to be creative in terms of your offering and separating yourself from others and all that stuff.
Yeah.
And I'm an actor too.
I think when I moved to Reno, I left, uh, the good agent, you know, the top.
Yeah.
So did a little song writing.
So I certainly have that creative, uh, bent, but I think, uh, if you're creative, you, you almost have to add business or like you just have to add something because it's such an, in that part of it is such an inconsistent, uh, it is.
And, you know, depending on what path you want to go, it's just business and understanding business and financials, you know, in at least a foundational level is, is really helpful no matter what you do.
And, uh, to really take advantage of your talent, the business acumen is really helpful.
Yeah.
And I do think it's very hard for creatives to bridge that gap into business and sometimes hard for business people to bridge the gap and to understand the creative.
It's usually, you know, I get confused which is left brain and which is right brain, but they're, they're kind of separate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So then you move the business to LA and that's how the LA, uh, yes.
And I lived there for 25 years.
Oh, wow.
So tell me more about that business.
So that was business was, uh, ended up being called equity marketing, um, listed on NASDAQ.
And we did very well, um, you know, growing quite rapidly.
The stock did well.
And, um, uh, we were in the primary business of what we call borrowing equity from entertainment studios, primarily kids and family.
Um, so Disney Warner brothers, we were very big with all the Disney movies that work in the nineties, you know, from beauty and the beast to Pocahontas to toy story and, and Lion King.
We did promotions with those properties largely with fast food companies.
You, you, everyone knows the McDonald's happy meal.
Well, we worked for Burger King.
They have their equivalent, the kids meal.
So we secured the intellectual property.
We then designed and manufactured the premiums, the free toys you'd get with the, um, with the meals and, uh, did the promotion in store, you know, the point of purchase, the tray liners, the advertising, et cetera.
So it was, it was actually a fairly sophisticated business.
It sounds, you know, not that way, but to get Disney to give you the license and get approval for stuff and then manufacture the toys safe for all ages and, and make millions and millions of toys within a six week period and ship them clear customs, get it into the stores.
There was a lot to it.
And we were very good at it.
I had really good folks that were incredibly creative.
And then we had engineers to design the toys and great manufacturing folks.
So it was a fun business and it did, it did very well.
Oh, it sounds very complex to me, but of course I think everyone who's, you know, older than 30 would remember all that, you know, that was a very, you know, big, big time of all the, the, um, you know, all the Disney movies.
And then you go get the fun meal or yeah.
It was, it was very, uh, big.
Yeah.
You say, you mentioned you had kids there, very few kids who didn't pull their parents into, uh, one of the fast food stores, cause they would see the advertising on Saturday morning.
Um, and, uh, you know, it got to the point where there was a backlash because they felt the Saturday morning cartoons were just advertising for, you know, kids meals and toys.
And they were probably not too far from the truth there.
Yeah.
Well, that's the sounds like marketing.
So that's, uh, that's, that's, you know, it's a really interesting how, you know, there is this, there has to be a cross between creative and, um, all the logistics manufacturing.
Well, exactly.
It's like, you know, it is one, one big pot and we don't look at it like that.
We look at it like all the separate things.
Yeah.
And I'll give you a great quick example of that just with that business.
See, if you had just creative people, they could design incredible toys, you know, backflipping, you know, doing whatever they're going to do, except if they aren't correctly engineered, and it's not, as we said, designed for manufacturability, meaning it can be mass produced at the target price point and be safe for all ages.
So that low piece didn't come out if the kid put it in their mouth and be a choking hazard.
So the creatives on their own couldn't do that.
But of course the manufacturing and engineers on their own would make just a static piece of plastic.
It wouldn't be fun.
It wouldn't look like the character.
So they would have to work together and very iteratively say, okay, I want, you know, the hand to be posable in eight poses and the manufacturing can only do four poses because then we'd have to have another mole to add on.
It would add to the price and we can't afford it.
And they'd be working back and forth.
So it's a great illustration of what you're saying, of how creative and business and manufacturing, one without the other doesn't work.
Yeah, very true.
Yeah.
And I say that in part because it just doesn't feel like even in one organization where everyone's doing the one thing that people in different departments or management, employees, along, everyone argues no one likes each other.
No, it seems like that's across the board.
People just don't understand each other.
And, you know, it's one of those things where you just, you kind of got to learn that people just, just because they have a different language of mentality based on their thing doesn't mean they're wrong.
No, not at all.
And, you know, you're an actor, so you understand film production.
It's the same.
If there isn't creative tension, then nobody's pushing enough.
So producers, you know, oh, wouldn't this be great if we, you know, do this scene in the Maldives because it's got the nicest beaches in the world.
They say, yeah, we don't have a budget to fly the crew to the Maldives.
We can go, I don't know, to Redondo Beach in LA and get a permit or, and now they might even be saying, we'll use AI to, you know, configure it.
So it's, it's, there's always a trade-off and there's healthy tension and then there's tension that's unhealthy.
But creative tension is, is healthy.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So how long did that, how did, how long did that business go?
It went with my involvement for 15 years until 2005.
And of course, it went through plenty of ups and downs during the, you know, when you're a public company, your stock goes up and down.
And sometimes it's company specific, sometimes it's economic.
Of course, the dot-com crash, even when we weren't, we weren't a dot-com type company, everybody got hit in the market.
And then of course, 9-11 was devastating for the market.
So we went through some ups and downs and where the end came, and it's one of these less pleasant conversations for me, I deal with in my book.
After, in the early 2000s, after the dot-com crash, the government came in pretty hard about fraud in financial reporting, because there are companies, if you remember WorldCom and Enron, that were, you know, having fraudulent accounting and accountants were signing off on the books, and then investors, the companies went bankrupt, investors lost a lot of money.
So they put in, they passed a law called Sarbanes-Oxley, which is a law that really tightened up the accounting and financial reporting, which I get the philosophy of that.
The problem is for a smaller company with no real manufacturing inventory, it was overkill.
But it added a million and a half, I think it was, to our annual cost to be public.
And it was crazy to spend that kind of money just to comply with, you know, the company rules.
On top of the million dollars, we were also already spending for listing fees and all the other stuff of being public.
And I approached the board with a backer, a private equity company, to take it private, which basically means you buy all this public stock, and it becomes a private company, not a public company.
And the board was split, they felt, the majority of them, that I, you know, kind of went around them and was trying to get the company at a low price and whatever.
And, you know, the bottom line is I got fired, got fired basically from my own company.
And talk about, you know, a gut punch after, you know, leading it for 15 years and growing it.
And it ended up leading to litigation.
And this is where I learned a lot of lessons I share in the book that lasted a couple of years.
And ultimately, the company went bankrupt and sold some of the remnants in different pieces.
And I lost on paper, you know, over $50 million.
And yeah, that's, it's a lot of money today was a lot of money back then.
And yeah, and I take full responsibility.
I, you know, there's a lot which we don't have time to get into that goes in the book, as lessons I learned and, and perspective I got, which has been really helpful for the rest of my life, but it was a painful, painful period.
How do you pivot out of that?
It feels like the main artist pivot.
Boy, it's, there's no education that prepares you for that.
And it's ultimately, it took me a couple of years to let go.
So I didn't do a very good job, honestly, that's where I instituted litigation, what's called a proxy contest to try to take control over the board.
And I spent a couple of years and I don't know, a million and a half dollars of my own money on the litigation, on top of losing all that public company stock, and winning a bunch of the lawsuits, but then there's always an appeal and it ended up just dragging on and dragging on.
And meanwhile, my life was kind of frozen.
It was a very unpleasant way to live.
And my marriage, my first marriage, which ended in divorce, was obviously suffering from it.
And, and I finally got the realization, you know, and, and it literally is one of those things.
It wasn't, you know, somebody giving me advice.
I just realized I got to stop this.
And I got on a plane, flew across the country to Washington, DC, where the head of the board's office was.
And I said, we got to stop this because we were litigating against each other.
And he said, okay.
Because he, you know, I've been trying to tell you this is fruitless and just stop the litigation.
And you know, learned, and it was a big weight lifted off, but I was now down to very small amount of net worth.
And I had ignored all these other job opportunities to run other companies.
And, you know, it just was a big, big mistake.
I learned, I was, I believe to this day, I was right legally and intellectually.
I mean, I got kind of screwed and the company should have gone private and everyone would have made a lot more money.
But there are times where you just have to not seek justice and just know when it's time to pivot and pivot.
I had to do because ultimately I kill myself through ulcers or some other stress related, or just go bankrupt myself.
So you're kind of forced to make some hard decisions.
And now I'm much better at seeing around the corner and knowing where to pick the battles.
Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
I just think the thing is life is real, you know, it just, and it doesn't, you know, you think you have a handbook to tell you how to handle something like that, but there isn't necessarily that.
You just make your way through a pile of junk, I think is a little bit more.
Yeah.
And the human condition is many of us, certainly I just learn, need to learn the hard way.
Intellectually, we can all say, oh, Mary, you should do this and not that.
And they don't know what you're going through.
I mean, Mike Tyson, the boxer had a great saying, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face.
And that's true.
And, you know, I was very stubborn and, you know, I paid for it, but I am, got a lot of wisdom from it.
And my, the rest of my life has been certainly not just one straight line, smooth, but it's, I've had a lot more wisdom in perspective.
Sure.
And I, you know, that's just that, and again, I appreciate it because sharing wisdom from hard situations that others go through and learning from it can, you know, give everyone some insight into different ways of handling difficult things.
At the same time, you know, like when you go through hard stuff, sometimes you just, there's no way around it.
You're not going to make, no one's going to make it through life without going through some hard things.
No, no, then you're not taking any risk.
Then you can't, without taking risk, you, you're, you're just, you know, you're, this is, it's not real.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what was your next venture after that?
So after that, I worked for an investment bank.
This was actually during the litigation, a couple of years of litigation, just to get some cash and just keep, you know, keep in the game.
But then I, with a partner started a hedge fund, which is totally different than the marketing business we were talking about before, you know, having the MBA, I had a reasonable and running a public company, I had a reasonable background in finance, and my partner was a very good investor.
So back in the 2006, 2007 era, hedge funds were really emerging on the scene as a, you know, cool new tool for investors, but also a very lucrative path if you want to make a bunch of money.
And I certainly needed to rebuild my net worth.
So we started this hedge fund, did well for the first two years.
And then of course, many of you will remember the 2008 financial crisis when Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers went under the markets crash.
And then many of you will remember the name Bernie Madoff, the fraudster Ponzi scheme that tanked the market.
And we had some investments tied into one of his underlying funds.
So the thing just really, like everything hit it down, and I decided to pull the plug, not keep it running and hoping it would turn.
It just, it was too much momentum.
And I, so I, in 2009, spent the year closing the fund.
So talk about, you know, one, two combo punch between, you know, my public company and that.
And there I lost basically the rest of my liquidity, a total of $4 million on that hedge fund.
So you know, people are going to watch this and say, I'm not investing with this guy.
But I obviously had enough skill to make the money to start with.
And then the hedge fund really was something I, you know, I couldn't control because that was a, it wasn't our fund specifically.
It was the market that just pulled everything.
And we didn't have enough size and ballast and momentum and a brand name to survive it in my opinion.
Maybe we could have, I just didn't want to take the chance.
Understandable.
Yeah.
I just like, damn, I'm, you know, I'm running out of money.
And I, but I wasn't going to go work for a big company or I just, you know, I had the entrepreneurial bug.
So Omelette, which is my current company, emerged right around that timeframe.
And I'm not the founder of the company.
I'm the principal owner now, but a couple of friends of mine started this company.
It's a pure creative agency in advertising, marketing in related areas.
And I joined the board and was an advisor to them.
And then, you know, they ran into some financial difficulties that they needed a cash infusion, but that kind of company, it's a pure people business, small, you can't raise third party capital for it.
It's, you know, it doesn't have enough of a story and substance.
So I put literally my last $200,000 into it and took a majority stake.
And then if this is in 2011 and fortunately proceeded, you know, I had to cut a bunch of calls.
I probably cut the overhead by 50%.
And then we won a couple of clients relatively quickly.
And then it's been, you know, it's been a good ride since.
So that's been my focus since 2011.
Yeah.
The website for this is so cool.
So it is one of the most creative website.
So I'm like, I imagine it's, it's, you know, everything the creative agency side is.
It's fun.
We have great creatives.
Yeah.
And don't give me credit for the creative.
We have great creative folks that I'm lucky enough to, you know, to work with.
And we have a lot of fun.
It's, it's a, it's a good company.
We have great clients like Google and, and border brothers and, and, you know, big, big companies, we do some fun stuff for them.
That's great.
So with all of this, to me, this is a very, it's a good story of overcoming adversity.
Cause those are some, and the thing is you don't really see 9 11 coming, you don't see the, you don't see the bubble of 2008 coming.
You only, it's only in retrospect.
Yeah, exactly.
So yeah.
And in 2020 was okay for some people and devastating for others that are, you know, so it's just, the creative community is devastating.
Like that was the one in the, for the actor community.
It's like, give me, I mean, forget it.
And you can't plan or anticipate this.
No, you, you, you, you just, you just can't, but, you know, the, the lessons that the key is when you get a setback, whether it's of your own doing, sometimes, you know, we make mistakes and other times it's imposed on you like COVID or, or, you know, the market crashing.
And what I've learned, and again, it doesn't sound terribly profound, but it's, it's an, I underscore it in the book that, you know, the accept and embrace philosophy and that you just have to accept the brutal reality of what the situation is and not fight it.
Even though it's unfair, even though, why is Mary not impacted by this?
And I am why, why me?
Why do I get the knee injury?
Why, you know, and you're right, it isn't fair.
And you can spend a lot of time and money and whatever, trying to rectify situations that aren't there.
And occasionally, maybe you can do it, but most often you can't.
And you just have to accept that's part of the journey and truly look it in the eye.
Don't sugar coat it.
As I say, don't paint, paint red flags green.
It is what it is.
My knee is screwed up.
It could be my marriage is over.
It could be, I got a bad medical diagnosis and I'm going to have to deal with this.
It could be again, my business is heading down because until you really accept that reality, you can't move forward.
And the way to move forward, I found is not grudgingly, okay, I guess I better move on because I have to earn a living.
It has to be with enthusiasm and passion for what you're next endeavor and trust that this next path is going to be a good one.
And in fact, hopefully better.
And that's just part of your journey.
And you don't know why, but it is.
And that's been my experience.
The knee injury led to this incredible thing called dancing and being in the height of the disco craze at Studio 54, and then to a great business career, the joy of taking a company public and doing all that, and then the devastation of it ending.
And then the hedge fund, but now Omelette is a wonderful business.
It does well.
It's a fun company.
I'm proud of how we operate.
And I'm on my second marriage and hopefully this is forever.
And you just have to smile at life's journey.
And when you look back, the pieces kind of come together.
But when you're in the middle of a difficult situation, you have to trust it's going to work out, but you have to do your part.
You can't just sit there and lay on the couch and watch Netflix and eat bonbons.
You have to work very hard.
You have to act ethically.
You have to be kind to people.
And you have to take initiative to make things happen.
If you do those things, it will work out.
I guarantee it.
Maybe not as you plan that it'll work out for the best.
And that's my experience.
Yeah, that's fabulous advice.
So on that same line, do you feel like there's anything you did for the emotional part of it?
Because I know that is it the take action?
Is that what helped with some of the emotional heaviness at all?
I was not very good at handling emotions, meaning not outwardly, but I would just keep things to myself.
I was raised, you know, in an era, you know, and by parents who were wonderful.
That, you know, particularly guys, you tough it out.
You don't complain.
You don't whine.
And that's certainly how sports was, particularly football and lacrosse contact sports.
You played through injuries and you played when you were sick and you went to work when you're sick and you just don't show weakness and emotion because and of course, this is all exactly wrong.
But that's how I viewed it.
So I kept a lot of stuff internally.
And that is not healthy.
It manifests itself physically into stomach problems and neck pain and back pain.
It's, you know, I talk a little bit about and of course, there are experts on this, the mind-body connection.
I am one thousand percent on board with how your mind and body are so interlinked and that they have to get, you know, in sync and why your gut ultimately tells you what you need to do if you let it listen to it.
Most of us, and that was me, would subordinate the gut feeling.
It's like, oh, I don't like that.
It's telling me to move on.
I want to fight and win or don't go out and play.
Your knee is in bed.
You're going to re-injure it.
So I would dismiss it and subordinate it.
Or this marriage is not going to work.
Oh, God, I can't even imagine the pain of a divorce and the cost of a divorce.
I didn't have kids.
So it was not as traumatic as for some.
But it's so unpleasant to think of.
You just tell yourself, it'll be all right.
It'll be all right.
You know, particularly if there's no big blow up, it's just like it ain't working, you know.
And I found your gut is right.
It's the only one you can count on in this world to have your best interest at heart.
And if you will allow yourself to truly listen to it, it will guide you.
And I'm good at that now.
I'm good.
I listen.
I welcome uneasy feelings because it's giving me some wisdom.
And I say, why did I hang up the phone?
And I don't feel, you know, nothing was wrong, but doesn't feel right.
And then I say, you know what?
Mary said this and it kind of bothers me.
Now, maybe I don't do anything about it, but I feel better because I'm not just walking around with this funny feeling.
And as a guy who is very analytical and taught to hold my emotions, and I'm pretty, I don't know, pretty spiritual about all this now.
Yeah, well, that's that's actually fabulous advice, in my opinion, too.
And I know if you're a little bit of this, it's, you know, you use your brain, you some emotions are to be suppressed, completely suppressed.
They are of no value, they will ruin you.
Yeah.
And then people will think you're weak, which of course, is the exact opposite of reality, but that's what you say.
Right.
And I think that led to all kinds of bad behavior with abuse and narcissism and all kinds of people were, you know, just pushing it aside and, and taking advantage of people, because you can do that if you're not using your emotions.
But it doesn't last.
It's not sustainable.
It just, it doesn't.
And whether again, you will be physically impacted such that you literally, if you want to keep living and get your blood pressure below 200 or your stomach to not have to get removed because you're burning holes in it, it just there's no escape from it, you can fool yourself for a fairly long period of time.
And you can power through and be successful on paper for a period of time.
But it will it will crumble down, it just will.
And it's so much better if you can realize that upfront.
But again, many of us have to learn the hard way.
Yeah.
Oh, I certainly have different things where you know, the gut instinct is to not do it, but your brain can't figure out why.
So you don't know why I wouldn't say yes to that.
So I guess, yes to it.
And then you're like, I've even been some 25 years later, it's still going on why I wish I would have listened to my feeling way, way back, you know, but it literally in my experience, it's 100% right.
Yeah, it's just it's I call it in the book, the gut algorithm.
And of course, that's a made up phrase.
But there's some way it's processing data, hard data, and emotions, and probabilities.
If you do this, this is going to happen.
And it just like almost spits out a little piece of paper from your mouth and you read it and say, do this.
But it's not just pure emotion.
It's quantifying the data also somehow.
I don't know how it works.
But it is unbelievable how accurate it is.
And to avoid, just avoid things that on paper seem right.
Like people make investments like this, their friends are doing it, the stock market keeps going up, I better, you know, put more money in or this company is doing great, let me do it.
And your gut is saying, you don't know anything about this company.
And, you know, why is everyone telling you to buy it?
You know, they're probably selling stock, so you can buy their stock.
I don't know it just and, you know, the peer pressure, but, you know, as kids and even as young adults, your friends are doing it or everyone's getting married by this age, you know, well, she's a great lady and your parents like her.
But your gut is saying, not saying this is my marriage, but your gut is saying, I don't know.
But everyone's like, oh, she's great.
I love her.
And your gut and it doesn't work, you know, because your gut told you, but you didn't want to listen because everyone wanted you to get married.
Yeah.
So it applies to everything.
It does.
It's that's all the same thing.
It's imperfect information and making decisions.
So you'll never get perfect information.
So it's just when do you have enough and what are the probabilities?
You know, I think your gut is constantly toggling probabilities.
If I go this way, this is going to happen probably.
And if I go this way and I mean, the most obvious thing, I was never like a top top skier, but I was a competent skier.
And this proverbial, you know, the last, I don't know if you're a skier, Mary, but you're your last day.
Well, Reno has some great skiing.
Has some great skiing.
Yes.
And I'm asked all the time if I ski and I'm like, maybe I'll get to that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But it's, you know, this proverbial, you know, it's late in the day.
It's icy.
You know, most people are off the mountain.
It's like, okay, because I didn't ski that often.
And I was in Colorado, like, I'm going to go up to the top of the mountain.
It's kind of dusky.
And my gut's saying, don't do this.
You know, you've already skied all day.
Everyone's having cocktails go down and, but nope, I go up.
And sure enough, I tear my gastrocs and two other muscles, like a worst painful injury.
And then it's my gut was telling, why are you doing this?
You know, it's not fun because you're not going up there with anyone.
You're literally like the last one.
And it's like, oh, it'll be fun.
And it's slippery.
And again, I was good, but not great.
So you get a tiny bit off balance and you're flying.
So that's just, that's kind of an obvious example.
It's kind of linear.
It's like, do this or don't.
It's like the risk reward.
There's a lot of risk and no reward for doing that.
Yeah.
Well, I'm going to take this into my week as a reminder to be better at listening to my gut.
Cause I know it.
I know to listen to my gut, but it's really easy to override that.
Well, because when it's, when there's dissonance and it doesn't conform to what your head kind of wants to do.
Right.
And in life is busy and you're not as I know we've been talking a while, just tell me a little bit more about Omelette.
And like, why would, why would a company work with you?
What's your target company?
We're, we're a creative agency.
So we do strategy tends to be for big companies.
We're particularly strong in tech, entertainment and video games, but we do other, other companies outside that.
And we do strategy.
So we, you know, assess the operating environment competitors, who their customers should be, et cetera.
Then we design creative campaigns or ongoing kinds of, you know, one-time campaigns or ongoing work based on the strategic insight of who they're targeting.
And again, what the metrics are, do they want to drive sales?
Are they trying to build their brand?
What, what, what they're trying to do.
And then we have a production department that actually makes a film, you know, we shoot, or we sometimes use a third party production company or we'll do it in house.
And those three legs of the stool, we do not buy media.
So we don't place the media.
We have partners who do it or our company, our clients tend to be big and they do it a lot of that themselves.
So we are, I think our competitive advantage, which is the exact right question.
You know, there's a lot of creative agencies out there.
Why Omelette?
We have very senior folks who do the work.
We're privately held.
So we're not at the mercy of the public companies or we don't have a big parent company we answer to.
And so we're staffed in kind of a barbell, very senior people, and then junior people, not a lot of middle layers.
So when you hire us, you'll get people who have 15, 20 years of experience, not, you know, junior folks.
And we're also quite facile with AI now.
So we figured out how to integrate AI to make ourselves more productive, but integrate that with the human touch.
So we're not a firm that does AI and produces anywhere near the final product, but it helps us get ideas and form things and helps us with the strategy because it does desk research really efficiently.
And so our senior people know how to prompt AI, use it as a tool.
So our productivity has really gone up and our end work product is still 100% human because AI, which is obviously very efficient if we use it, it's just an amalgamation of millions of inputs.
It's nothing original.
And you have to predict me for creative stuff, for breakthrough, it's just going to give you averages.
And sometimes that's good enough.
If you're doing, you know, a digital campaign and, you know, you're not trying to change the world, you're just trying to get a simple message out, that's probably fine.
But the types of stuff we do, which needs to be groundbreaking, it doesn't come near what has to get done.
You need the human experience.
So I think our big advantage is the senior level hands-on type of care that we take with all the work.
Yeah.
I've had a little bit of AI conversation with so many guests and I would 100% agree that, you know, do something to make the systems go faster, but people want people.
And if we try to think, oh, AI is going to take over and eliminate humans, humans don't want that.
They don't want it, and it really can't.
No, and it can't, particularly for creative stuff, because it's just averaging everything.
But can it do spreadsheets better?
Absolutely.
And that's, you know, there are jobs, and this is true in history, there'll be disruption, a lot of disruption, but hopefully there'll be a lot better high paying jobs that emerge.
Like, you know, everyone was worried about, as you remember with online shopping, there'll be no more stores.
And, you know, then you start to say, well, I miss going in, you know, trying on the clothes.
I miss, you know, the experience of walking around the store and getting, you know, prompted versus just the task of sitting and going on Amazon and shopping.
So I think everyone, and this is the world we live in, there's hysteria, that's how news organizations and websites get clicks because everything is apocalyptic.
But AI will have its use, but humans aren't going anywhere.
No, I very much agree.
And I use AI with, you know, the podcast to get the show notes and stuff like that.
Yeah, it's great to take notes.
And then you might, yeah, but you'll have to, you have to read it and deploy it and misunderstood that or, you know, doctors evidently use it.
You go in to see your doctor and AI, you know, because they have to take, you know, their notes for the file.
And I asked my doctor, do you just like, no, no, you have to go and edit the notes because sometimes, yeah, it didn't hear you right, or it misunderstood.
And all of a sudden, you know, your file has something that's totally wrong in it.
So but there's a it's an example of a use but a limited use.
Yeah, I just I, I've used it less and less, I feel like for different things, because it's just like, oh, I don't like it.
And you find out it's not that much more productive.
If you spend a lot of time editing the notes, and it's not really written the way you'd want it, just do it yourself.
And it ends up taking the most the same time.
Yeah, that's my experience anyway.
Yeah, helpful and not helpful, depending on how we do it.
So, yeah.
So your book, how can people get your book?
Um, well, it's speaking of Amazon, it's it's on amazon.com Barnes and noble.com.
It's in a bunch of bookstores, anywhere you can get online, it's there.
I have a website, Don Kerr's author d-o-n-k-u-r-z, author.com, which has a lot more about the book, podcasts, this one will be on it soon.
Articles I've written that relate to the book, there's one that might be interesting.
I might just point out that just got posted to the website from authority magazine about how to be authentic and vulnerable, just something we were touching on, and where I really get into vulnerability and how that's actually a strength and a superpower to be vulnerable, which is exactly the opposite of what we're of what we're taught.
And it has, you know, more backstories about pictures and stuff.
So it's kind of fun.
And again, it has a link to buy the book, but people seem to like the book, the reviews have been good.
And I was on some morning shows last week.
And so it's been fun.
And again, the goal was to try to share some of my lessons, some of them, as we talked about the hard way, but if people can benefit, that would be a good thing.
Oh, for sure.
Well, I know we're about the vulnerability or whatever else you'd like to share.
Yeah, as I said, in this in this piece for authority magazine, it is so counterintuitive to what I would how I was raised.
And again, my parents were wonderful.
It's not like they raised me, you know, in a way that wasn't the way you raised kids then, particularly boys, particularly boys who were interested in sports.
And it's just this greatest facade that you're, you know, everything and that you're tough and you don't complain and you don't have any problems and whatever.
And nobody believes that and why trying to hold this facade and particularly when you elevate in the world, whether you're running a company, you know, you're, you're in charge of whatever it is, and you have employees and you have this notion that you're supposed to have all the answers because you're the boss, you know, that's why you're the boss.
And it's absolutely not what the case is.
Your job as a boss of a company is to make sure there are good answers to the questions.
It's not to come up with it yourself.
The fact that Mary is really smart and has a different background than me, she's going to have great input.
And then John over here comes from another background and my job as the leader is to catalyze everyone together and synthesize and then come up with the strategy, come up with the plan.
And that plan will be much more effective if everyone who's got to implement it is part of it.
So this notion that you had to do everything yourself is just a false one.
And then when there's a problem to suggest, okay, don't worry, Don's got it.
I will take care of it.
I know how we're going to deal with 2008.
The fact is, I don't know how to deal with it because nobody's ever been through it.
And to say, you know what, Mary, I don't really know how we're going to deal with this.
I do know we'll work hard about it.
I do know we're going to get through it as a team if we hang together and whatever other words.
And people really rally to you when you express you need help as a leader and that you don't have the answers.
They say, okay, let's figure this out together team.
And that they feel empowered and that they feel, you know, that this is their company, not just your company.
And it's just so counter to how I was raised.
And again, it's not Machiavellian that it's a super power.
Now I'm going to manipulate you by being vulnerable.
It's just humans don't have the answers.
And it's so much more fun to come up with things as a team than to try to do it yourself anyway.
And I say in the book, and I'm not being, you know, falsely humble.
I'm not that smart.
I'm smart, but I ain't that smart.
But I'm smart enough to surround myself with really good people and to listen to them and to be a good kind of amalgamator of stuff.
And it's a lot more fun that way.
And you can be a lot more successful.
And, yeah, and a good example, I've always had really long tenured employees.
And that's something I've been proud of because people like working at these companies because they're really empowered.
And they can make mistakes.
They don't get their head chopped off or get fired for making as long as they're honest, you know, mistakes with good intention.
And so that's another lesson I learned that's so counterintuitive to what I originally thought.
Yeah.
And that would be so helpful, I think, across the board and business managers and business leaders had that concept of authenticity and openness, humility, however, you know, you state it.
It's so much more powerful and it's so much more real.
Who believes anyone has all the answers?
Nobody believes that.
Right.
And there's also the, you know, the ones that are like, well, this is how we did it in the 90s.
So it's how we do it forever.
And it's like, that doesn't really feel right.
Right.
And by the way, you were really lucky in the 90s.
It wasn't because you were so smart.
You literally caught a wave, you know, and you had great employees and don't even think about trying that again.
But that's exactly this is how we always did it.
And that's the classic way to trip up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've had that experience and just the different things because you pair something, you pair on a paired entrepreneurship and sales with the, with the acting to, to make it, you know, through.
And I've experienced that a couple.
Yeah.
Well, that's a great combination.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it is a great combination.
It's a great combination with the right, the right tracks to run on, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Don, thank you so much for this wisdom and it's so helpful.
And I'm so glad you wrote this book and thank you for doing that and sharing all this life wisdom with us.
So appreciate you.
Yeah.
Well, I thank you so much.
I really enjoyed this, Mary.
I think we have a lot in common and yeah, I hope to interact with you again.
And if any of your readers want to get in contact, the website has my contact and I welcome chatting with people all the time.
Great.
And tell us the website again.
Don Kerr is author.com, D-O-N-K-U-R-Z, author.com.
All right.
Thank you, Don.
Thank you, Mary.
Take care.
Bye.
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