Episode 15 | Part Two: Think Big

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.

Welcome back to part 2 of my chat with Jeffrey Haislett, the host of All Business with Jeffrey Haislett and the chairman and CEO of the C-Suite Network. Jeffrey, we were talking about building your brand by writing books, and another great book you've written is titled Think Big and Act Bigger.

Yeah, that's one of my best books.

I love it. Yeah, it's really, really good. Like, this is an incredible, incredible book. Anybody that's listening should absolutely— this is a must-read. This has been a bit of a recurring theme in my podcast, right? The idea of shifting mindsets. Can you help entrepreneurs wrap their brains around building a bigger, bolder version of themselves?

Listen, getting it done is, is better than perfect, but once you've got it done, move to perfect. But the key is to get something done. So first, just put the stake in the ground and make it happen. The key thing that we do as entrepreneurs, you know, let's take business, just to back up as business. There's no difference between a business on Main Street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I'm from, or one on Wall Street. There's zero. The difference is the zeros. That's it. Same kinds of things. There's no difference in the way that we operate or do those business other than in scale. So why don't you want to be bigger? Why wouldn't you want to be bigger? Why wouldn't you want to be the biggest, boldest version of yourself or the biggest, brashest version of yourself or of that company so that you become that, that? And by the way, by the way, that's why it's important for you to have that book. That's why it's important for you to have that podcast or TV show or whatever. Because if I sell you, I sell the business. If I sell the business, I sell you, especially with entrepreneurs, more so than if I were a publicly traded company. When I'm a publicly traded company, it has a different culture, different mood, a different thing. Not always, right? Because look, go look at Elon Musk, right?

Absolutely.

Go look at Jeff Bezos. Go look at Bill Gates. Go look at some, you know, go look at Sara, you know, with Spanx or whoever it might be. Go grab some of those great entrepreneurs. they still have the same flavor of them, and you don't separate them from the company. Steve Jobs, a great example of that. So those are great examples. So why wouldn't you be that? Especially because you drink the Kool-Aid better than anybody else. And if you're drinking the Kool-Aid, you're right, who better to talk about it than the person that makes the freaking Kool-Aid?

Yeah.

So just do it bigger. I mean, what the hell? I, I, you know, I was in South Dakota for years until I realized, man, I could do business in Iowa. Oh, wow. Okay, bigger. Okay, now, you know, and then I figured out I could do it across the country. I could do it around the world. And I figured out very quickly that I could be a Fortune 100 officer. Boom. And I went and did it. This is really that simple, you know, and where I sit in rooms where I'd go like, geez, this place is screwed up. Somebody should do something about it. And then I realized that, well, that was me.

So, you know. You did something about it.

Yeah.

That's what I did with the startups. I learned about this whole 90% failure rate and why and when and all this stuff. And I, you know, The data I was telling you about, and I started Boss Startup Science to try to teach entrepreneurs how to do a startup, right, so that they understood it at a level of— from a practitioner, you know, instead of from an investor. I think you've done something like 200 podcasts on your all-business podcast, C-Suite Radio. I have a couple questions about this. First of all, what have you learned about doing a podcast and how this benefits you, you know, when you're out there as an entrepreneur building a business?

Oh gosh, the podcast has just been tremendous. Well, one, it, you know, to me it's about the 3 things that I can do. And in the C-Suite Network, we practice what I call the 3 Rs, kind of like relevancy, reach, and reciprocity. And so that's what I found that the podcast is able to do. The podcast is able to give me a bigger, broader way to be able to reach the people I want to do, and I can— I get more business from it. Now, a lot of people go at podcasts, they look at more fame than fortune. I look at fortune. I want to make fortune because if I'm really good at what I do, I can make more money. And as I make more money and I do a really good job at it, I can get the fame. And if not, I can buy it, you know. But what I found is that the podcast has given me a platform to really reach out and to give my voice what it is. Now, a lot of folks look at a podcast or even books as, oh, I'm going to get famous or I'm going to do that. Let's be clear, even an average business book sells, you know, of its lifetime sells maybe 5,000 copies in its lifetime. But you can, you can break through that barrier, and then you have guys like me to sell a million or half a million or whatever it might be at any given time on our books. And, and the same thing with a podcast. There's only a few podcasts. If you're in— if you're doing more than 10,000 downloads in a show You're in the top 1% of the podcasts in the world. Now, there's, there's some of us that do 100,000 a show or a million a month or something like that. There are mine and others. There are some podcast shows that are like that. But what I tell people about podcasts is this isn't a game anymore of eyeballs and ears. Okay? It used to be that way. You used to do this, get as many people, bring them in, and then just sort them through until you get to the, you know, to the ones that really want to buy. The real key now for all of us and for everyone listening, whether you're an entrepreneur building your brand— and a brand is nothing but a promise delivered— in building that brand, it's about hearts and minds. And the same thing holds with a podcast. You don't have to have a lot of followers or listeners. You don't have to have a lot of readers of a book. You just need the right number. And the podcast gives you the credibility. The book gives you the credibility. That stands you apart from everybody else out there. That's what it means for you, is to be able to raise yourself up to make you more relevant in the audience you're trying to reach, and then gives you more reach. And then what comes from that is the reciprocity— people buying and selling from each other, people exchanging value from each other, whether it's in knowledge or dollars or whatever. And as a result, your brand rises, and that promise delivered becomes reality. And that's really what you're trying to drive.

And you are just awesome. I have to tell you that I have done some— a lot of bestselling authors, and you are just friggin awesome.

So, thank you. Thank you very much.

I want to throw that in there. Let's talk about your career and how it's evolved. You were once called Kodak's celebrity CMO. Yeah. Now you're running the C-Suite Network. Can you describe the 10 years in between?

Yeah, I was on the front cover of Forbes. Forbes is the one that named me the celebrity CMO.

I mean, that's like incredible.

I mean, yeah, well, because that was at a time in which I realized that media was a great use of OPM, which means other people's money. And I was trying to remake— we're helping to remake Kodak. And I said, look, we got to use OPM because we didn't have, you know, even though we were billions of dollars, I mean, I was trying to trim every dollar I could. And so, so what we did was we— there was a really early realization back in 2006, 2007. I said, look, We can be the brand. He goes, what's that mean? And that's my chairman at the time. I said, we gotta, you know, gonna use me, use you, use everybody else. I'm gonna name a chief blogger. I was the very first person to ever name a chief blogger. And, you know, everybody said, well, we gotta— we have to have the CEO write the blog. I said, we don't have the CEO write the blog. He sucks writing. And, you know, what we need is somebody that's reflective of the brand. Well, what's the brand of Kodak? Kodak was a very celebratory brand. So as a celebratory brand, who is that? Well, We have the Chief Memory Officer, the CMO. Who's the CMO of every household? That's the woman. She's in charge of taking pictures. Guys are going like, I don't want to take a picture. No, stand in front of the Christmas tree. We're taking a picture. That's the wife. That's the mother. So that person— so I named a woman as the Chief Blogger, first one ever. Later, I named the first Chief Listening Officer. We were one of the first brands to ever go and be on Facebook. I was one of the first 1,000 people on Twitter. Wow.

Yeah, you were. I know. I read all about this. It's just crazy. I'm so stoked that you're on the podcast.

Well, but I had great, great team members who recognized this and they just showed it to me. And then, you know, the key is to be about action, to put it in place. You know, an idea without implementation is just air. And that's what we see all the time. We see people talking up a story. I said, let's don't talk stories. Let's go make stories.

You know, and then— An idea without implementation is just air.

Yeah.

I'm going to quote that. Is that okay with you?

Yeah. Well, to be a thought leader, you want people to quote. By all means, quote it.

Yeah, fair.

How many times have you said, Greg, with people, an entrepreneur— and I was with, I was, you know, a year and a half ago, 2 years ago, I was speaking at this big event in Canada called Fireside. I love this event. Some guy come up to me and started telling me about his business, and he's doing this, and they're going to do this, and they're going to do this, they're going to do this. And pretty soon I was really listening intently, and I was realizing he's just telling me, this is bullshit, he's just telling me a story. And finally I said, how much of this have you done? And he said, and he was bragging and all this. I said, how much of this have you done? And he hadn't done any of it. I said, come back when you got a real business. Oh, this guy got mad. Oh, he got mad. And that's when I came up with that quote. I said, my friend, an idea without implementation is just air. And that's all you're doing is blowing air. Quit blowing air.

I mean, talk about implementation. You're a Fortune 100 CMO, the author of 4 bestselling books. I want to just name off the books. We talked about Think Big and Act Bigger, The Rewards of Being Relentless, Running the Gauntlet, The Mirror Test, and The Hero Factor. So, I have read all these books, right? So, I'm a huge fan. I'm like just fangirling all over the place right now because I'm just happy to have you on the podcast. This is such an honor. You were also one of the first corporate executives I remember to embrace social media, as you said. And so, my question around that is how much has it changed from when you first started to where it is now? And it seems like it's becoming dangerous now. People tend to tread into bad areas and you have this like Trump situation happening. And how would you explain to entrepreneurs how to thread that needle of staying in social media but not getting yourself diluted with all the surface noise? Yeah.

You got to remember, it's not a destination. A lot of people look at things like this as destinations. They look at podcasts as destination, a book as destination. They look at social media as the destination, like that's the game. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. And the key is to look back at yourself in the mirror. Let's go back to my first book, The Mirror Test. Who are you? What are you? What are you trying to deliver? What problem are you trying to solve? And keep your focus there and not so much on living of taking a picture of your meal and posting it, right? Not so much of the other stuff, you know. And I get this all the time and, you know, people ask me to do things all the time. I go, nope, not doing it. And they go like, why? Well, because I don't want to, you know. So I make it real. It's what I want to do the way I want to do it. And so I use them in the way that I need to. There is some dangerous pieces of it. I mean, there's certainly dangerous in terms of, you know, I have my profile taken all the time, my picture taken all the time. There's people cheating people out of money utilizing my images, or I'm on all the dating sites as different people. I had some woman I was on the BBC with who was taken. Some guy took her for $600,000.

Oh my goodness, that's horrible.

Well, there's that dangerous side. At the same time, there's this dangerous side that the social platforms need to do a lot better job. They need to protect Protecting people like for that, but at the same time now they're censoring, which is absolutely. I don't want to swear on your show, but it's just BS. This will be their downfall. They social media, in my opinion, should not have a slant, should not have a position that way. They should uphold what the Constitution says, and I don't care if you are batshit crazy and if you want to put out tweets that that to me are just divisive and. Whatever, you have every right to do that, just as I have every right or someone else to, to go and tell the truth or to put forth it. But when the media or when the platform becomes the regulatory body for what we should hear or see, therein lies the issue.

That's a very good point. That's a very good point. You changed my perspective on that. I used to think, you know, that we shouldn't let people do certain things in social media largely because of the—

No, let them do it all. The problem is we only see what we see. I mean, The way in which they have framed it. I mean, let's imagine you got 5,000 friends on Facebook. You don't see 5,000 friends. You only see the things that they want you to see and they narrow you in to see. And I mean, if I, God forbid, I click on something about a cabbage, I'm gonna see cabbages for weeks.

Yes, I've had that happen.

Right, that's not to me a fair use of the media. That's restricting to the point where all I'm going to see is cabbages. Or if I say something and it hears it because it picks it up. And, and if you don't think this stuff is going on, you're nuts. So what you have to do is you have to work very hard. And that's what we have to keep in mind as humans, as people, as citizens. That's our responsibility to not believe the bullshit and for us to, to always educate ourselves and to educate Everybody else. The problem that I worry about is the generation that's growing up on it, and what can we do to have them open up and see what it was like and what it should be like and the way in which information should be disseminated. And it's just very important that we've— and this has been going on for more than just social media. It's been going on for 20 years with Fox and CNN and everything.

Yeah.

You know, to say that there's a fair— there's fair media on media today, it's not. It doesn't exist.

Yeah, totally agree with you. It's absolutely— it's insane to even say that. I mean, so during this whole last situation, for lack of better words, with the former president— I don't even like to use his name— I was watching, I had all the different news channels on my phone, my computer, and the TV. And I was watching it and I could not believe the difference. I mean, we're talking about they were saying things like they were fact and they were just fiction. And it was just unbelievable. Just—

Yeah, I host a Scotch night every Sunday. And so I host a big event for, you know, upwards of 300 people that love to drink Scotch or any brown liquid. And anyone's welcome. You just drop me a note if you You'd like to go. The, the, um, because I love Scotch and I love Irish whiskey and so forth. And so we get together every Sunday, we talk politics and everything. But we did election night where everybody got on election night, and we had the CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN, uh, we had, uh, everything on, and everybody was like reporting. And when you put all those across all your screens and see those, it's It's scary. It's just, it's actually, it makes you sad.

It is scary. You're right. It was actually terrifying. I was like, man, people are watching this.

This is incredible. Yeah. You know, like, you know, one saying, you know, Biden's winning and then this one saying Trump's winning and, and, or, you know, this is this or this. I mean, it gets to be scary. So.

All right. So, you brought up scotch. I'm just curious, what's your favorite scotch?

Oh, Glenfiddich. Glenfiddich, Caol Ila, anything from Speyside. I love Speyside. By the way, I never drank— like 4 or 5 years ago, I never even touched Scotch. But now I can't imagine a day that goes by that I can't have it. Not because I'm an alcoholic or anything. Don't think that. No letters, please. No emails. No interventions. I just enjoy drinking it.

I think people listening to this are probably standing back going, yeah, this guy's probably Yeah, I hope so.

I hope so.

So, I have a question. This is my last question to you. I have this passion for helping entrepreneurs. The failure rate for the last 10 years is like 90%.

Sure.

And I've studied this now for 5 years. And about 20% of them fail in the first year, 30% in the second, 50% in the fifth year. So, most of them fail within the first 5 years. And that's Investopedia specifically, that piece of data. There's a lot of different data about it, but I'm curious, if you're talking to entrepreneurs and you're looking at these numbers and that failure rate, what would you tell them as a bit of advice to not become one of those statistics?

Capture customer behavior. Most people think, oh, I'm going to go do this and think about this or do this. And then they take it to their mom and they take it to other people and their mom thinks, oh, it's a wonderful idea. You know, and they start believing their own stuff rather than going out and looking at what they have and see, does that capture the way people buy? Does it capture the way people spend their money? Does it capture the way people act? And rather, they try to build, you know, they try to build a baseball field in the middle of Iowa. Well, that's great, but no one's going to go. Okay, no one's going. All right, it's just going to be a baseball field in the middle of Iowa. Listen, I tried to corner— you know, I started a business years ago. I tried to corner the market on pheasants. I got into the pheasant farming business, all right, until I realized there wasn't a market for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's in my next book. Okay, we've all done those things, and, and it's real important for you to ground that. And, and by the way, the best thing an entrepreneur can go ground that is go sell it, go do it, make it happen. Don't just think of the idea. You can think of an idea into success. That's the problem. But will you make it a success? Will you add enough significance to it to make it work? And that's what you got to go try and do. And I think that's important for people to keep in mind as you look to start that business. As you said, 90% of all businesses fail in the first 5 years. Of that, only 10% ever, ever succeed out of that. And only 10% of those will succeed in the next 10 years. And out of that, only 1% of that 10% will ever see an exit. And think about that. So once in a blue moon, that's what you get. So to be that, what do you want to do to be that 1%? And to think about how that is. If you follow the tenets that a lot of experts give to you, if you know what I mean, and do those things, and you're not out there alone. There's a lot of resources, a lot of great ways to be able to get it. You know, Greg and others are providing that kind of insight for you. You better grab the brass ring and take it.

Jeffrey, this was an honor for me. I truly mean that. Like, I'm a huge fan, so it's a, it's a huge honor. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to get on the podcast. I really hope that I can reach out to you and just try to be a friend.

Fabulous. Well, let's do it. Let's make it. Let's go have a glass of scotch. Or hey, how about a bottle? They're better yet. Let's do that.

All right, fair enough. Thank you again. I appreciate it.

My pleasure.

And make sure you follow Jeffrey's aforementioned Twitter account @JeffreyHazelit. You can also find him on LinkedIn and online at hazelit.com. That's it for this episode. Until next time, namaste, my friends.

Learn more about the Boss business operating support system at bossstartupsience.com, or you can reach Gregory Shepard at gregoryshepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books.