Episode 476: Why Major League Baseball Players Love Peanut Butter with Clint Greenleaf

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Weidell, and let's get going. I'm here with Clint Greenleaf and we're having a ball talking about winning, success, his experiences in the wonderful world of winning in business and life and make, you know, once you get past the great thing Clint is, once you get, if you're willing to work like a maniac early on, relentlessly, without any hope of it, you know, and eventually you start to see the clouds break, you have some success. You get to where you get to have the enjoyment of helping other people and, you know, spreading it around. And the payoff is that you also get to meet a lot of people, more fun people, and get involved in other projects that maybe you never thought you would get involved in. And I'm curious, that's what you're doing with your Greenleaf groups. It looks like you're on a lifetime adventure of plowing through a whole lot of industries and everything. And so I'm really curious about how you created the home plate moonshot brands and the home plate peanut butter thing. How did you go from content creation, publishing this, that and the other to peanut butter?

Yeah, that's a good question. That was a fun one for me. It was kind of out of left field, pun intended. So I had a couple good friends who I was having lunch with one day shortly after I sold Greenleaf. And they said, what are you up to next? I said, I don't know, but my wife really wants me out of the house during the day. She said, for better, Obviously, yes. For worse, you betcha. But there's no for lunch. You need to get out of the house and go do something. And my non competent publishing was still intact at the time. So he said, look, one of my good friends Danny said to me, I want to start a peanut butter company. And I said, that's kind of random. He's like, no, no, but it's better than that. I want to start a baseball themed peanut butter company. Okay, that's kind of specific and strange. And when he explained to me he was a professional baseball player, and he explained that baseball players eat a ton of peanut butter because it's heat stable, right? You can leave it in your bag and it won't go bad. It's cheap as hell. And most of these guys, when they're playing minor leagues, don't make a lot of money. And it's super high in protein. So some of these guys would eat 5, 6 PB and JS a day. And the problem is, at the time, you could either buy really, really yummy peanut butter full of chemicals, right, like the big major brands, or you could buy the natural stuff that had two inches of oil on top that was gross and you had to stir it up and it tasted kind of yucky, but it was good for you. So he wanted to figure out how to create a good for you, easy to spread, good tasting peanut butter. So we launched home plate peanut butter. We ended up serving every major league clubhouse. The brand continues this day. We sold it in 2019, but it was a fun company that we ran for a while. Got to meet a lot of great people and really enjoyed the food business when I was in it.

Now, how do you go from had he already pushed this idea along where he figured out all of the ins and outs, or did you have to go through another baton death March of interviewing 700 people and reading or reading 700 books on peanut butter and interviewing 1500 experts to get yourself going in that area?

Yeah, luckily I didn't have to do that. I got lucky in this part. I realized that you can go through that process like a maniac and plow through it all or you can go to smart people who know more. So I found a couple shortcuts. I have a buddy who ran a couple different food companies and I went to him directly and he knew who to reach out to. So we started looking at the major peanut butter manufacturers. We found a co packer, which is a co manufacturer who does multiple different brands, found the right co packer in Georgia and they helped us create the right product. We went through a couple different varieties, but that's kind of fun. You go to the factory and try 36 different kinds of peanut butter with honey in it and you pick your favorite one and we're able to launch that.

And how long did that take?

It was about six months and probably 20 pounds of extra weight in the midsection for me.

Well, that's a pretty big, a pretty fast track.

It was, yeah. Again, I got really, really lucky by knowing the right people to go to. And to your point, success begets success, right? So if you're able to know good smart people and you're able to know which questions to ask when you can cut through a lot of the garbage. Early days of publishing, I had no idea what I was doing. And I went through tons of editors who couldn't edit and designers who couldn't design and marketers who couldn't market. And as I got more successful, I was in better circles with more people who knew what they were doing. And it made it easier for me to make those choices. And I was able to leapfrog a lot of the dumb mistakes that I made early by having better help along the way.

Well, you know, in my book I talk about the cycles of winning. What's unique about people who go from one success to another, like yourself, and what they do is they run through the finish line and keep their eyes up for the next opportunity that maybe probably was not going to be available to them if they hadn't gotten that thing done. Like you built a company, you sold it. And when you got your next idea, what happens is that people don't realize the reason why to stay on track, like keep your butt on the plane in the middle seat doing those things to do the 700 bucks, plow through it, grind it out. Sure, there's a smarter way, but you don't know what it is right now. And then you know, do what you do know to do right now you are making progress. But the thing is, what happens when you get the job done, you get through it. You realize I've developed a lot of skills I never had before. I developed a lot of contacts. I never, I know a lot of people, I never. I've got a lot of support now that I never had before. And as a result, and plus that marries in with the new opportunities that I have now that I never had before and allows you to do. If you're going to do the same thing, do it quicker, faster, better, which I'm not so sure you're not going to do another publishing company. I don't know what you're going to do. But if you were to do another publishing company now, quicker, faster, better, bigger, and because of the first grind it out type experience of getting your real education.

Well, and that's what content capital is. Right. So it's a new, different kind of content sharing company. It's not focused on books per se, but we do books. It's not focused on a medium. It's more focused on the net end goal. But no, I think that's exactly right. The struggles early kind of inform that I'm on a bank board because I helped start a bank here in Austin and a buddy of mine, Jeff, was starting it, wanted to put it together along the way. We're now three and a half years into this. I've learned a heck of a lot about banking. I never knew early on, I've learned a lot about real estate. I've learned a lot about businesses outside of the bank itself. Got to meet a lot of great people and it ends up being kind of virtuous Circle. Right. If you can help with one thing you can bring to the table, you can learn more that you can bring to the table. And on the board of a multifamily real estate company, which is great. And having banking contacts is quite helpful there too. A lot of these become more successful because of the success that I've had before. And to your point, I'd love to tell you that it's because I have some crazy gifts. Really the only gift I think I've got is that I'm willing to keep on working harder and try and figure that part out. So if I don't know something, I'm going to go learn it as best I can or talk to smart people who can teach me how to do it. And I'm probably going to fail six or seven times. But eventually, if I pick myself up off the ground, it doesn't matter that I fell down 19 times. If I stand up 20, I'll get there. So each day is about standing back up?

Yeah, each day is about standing back up. And as you, you know, what happens is that you kind of turn. You know, we've all seen Shark Tank and wondered, you know, these guys, the big heroes are sitting out there investing their money and all. In a sense, when you start achieving some successes in your life, build a successful company, get involved in other type things, over time you become your own version of one of the sharks.

That's right.

You have the resources, you have the contacts, you know what to do when you see an opportunity. And not only are you becoming successful in one business, you, you're on track to becoming a shark. And I don't know if you thought about that early on when you were grinding it out, going through that thing, but I mean, we should tell people now like this is the reason to keep your butt excited and driving and to get up every day because that's how you become a shark yourself. And it's not that you have to make all the money in the world, but the way it's just more exciting when you have more options, you have more success, you're able to help more people and have more positive impacts, you know?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, and to clarify, I've been incredibly lucky. I was given a wonderful home, my parents are still involved deeply into my life and my kids lives. My parents are awesome people, super smart, really hardworking. They taught me the value of work ethic. They drove me at a very young age to try and create more than I've been given. And that's a hard job because I was given a great life by two wonderful for people, my extended family, my grandparents worked their butts off to try and make it easier for me to have what I've got. And I will tell you that that lesson gets inborn at a pretty young age that you don't stop just because you made it to a waypoint. And there's really, you know, the problem with the society we've got. People think of the minute and a half of a TikTok video or the half hour of a TV sitcom and that everything has these nice little bows tied around them. But there's really no stop point to it. The last day is your last day. Until then, you keep on going.

And the reason, and the reason, there's a logical reason for that. And it's not like you're punished, but it's just like you, you just simply made the decision that you like winning, you know? You know, people say, why do you keep on going? It's like, why do I want to start losing now? You know, the thing is you, you know, you grow or die in life, you know, you know, you get in shape, you get in better shape, or you get out out of shape, you know, you're get, you know, you're. You're moving forward or moving back in your relationships and your everything. And it's just like once you get the taste of winning, you know, you don't want to start losing again. I mean, it's pretty simple.

Yeah. My wife likes to joke that when we first met, she figured out that pretty early on there is no off switch for me. Right. There's no way to stop this. And at first that kind of annoyed her, and then she got used to it. I'm sure it still annoys her, frankly. But more importantly, she's kind of used to it in the sense that my off switch will be in effect when I'm finally dead and gone. Until then, I don't see any reason to stop. I love what I'm doing. I feel like I can finally start adding real value to others, not just me. And it's not about me at this point now. It's about adding value to the rest of the community and being able to do good things. And that's really what drives me going forward.

But if, you know, we all wind up doing what we want to do. And if it wasn't so incorporated, incredibly rewarding. And, you know, there's still, you know, incredible amount of work we all have to do and frustrating things we have to put up with. But you got that when you go on vacation, too. You know what I'm saying? There's no way to get away from the irritations of life just simply by not working hard. So the thing is, you can stub.

Your toe in a hotel room, too. That's the hard part that people don't remember. Right.

Yeah. You could close your finger on the door of a Lamborghini just as a G to Yoda or something, you know.

Yep. Ferrari's getting fender benders, too. Right. Those are all parts of life. Yeah.

And so, you know, the thing is that once you taste success, there's just no reason not to keep going forward because, like, you know, the thing is, I'm sure the price of success, you know, that big price of success and doing something great, there's a price. Yeah. But there's a price for failure and mediocrity, too, without question.

Yeah. You're paying something every day, whether it's for success or failure. You're paying a price every day.

Yeah. If I've got to pay a price, let me pay the price of greatness rather than inadvertently pay the default price of mediocrity and greatness and never have any kind of splash of exhilaration and fun and payoff, you know.

Well, the front of the back of a check, but you're still writing your name. Right?

Right. Well, I'm proud of what you're doing and the impact you're making.

And thank you very much.

It's great to find the person behind the publishing company, even though it's sold and down the road. And so I wish you the best going forward.

Thank you, Larry. Appreciate it. Good luck with your next bit of content out there. And I love the. Love what you're doing here. I think that this message of sharing winning is great because we hear about winning as if there's an end of it. The reality is, and I think you've done a great job of explaining this in other podcasts, you've done as well, that it's about the journey. It's about, in a moment, feeling like you're not actually winning, pick yourself back up. And that in itself is the win. Getting back up after a failure is the win.

And the thing is that I hope to pass on the idea to people who plug into this that one of the benefits is that you wind up having a network of friends that are successful that kind of feed you emotionally, mentally, whatever. And when I started this, Clint, I had no idea how many people I knew that were super successful and that would bring interesting stories. But the thing, Clint, that I'm excited about having you on at this stage of your life is I've got you on record now and for your kids, for your family, your parents. The things we've talked about here are the kinds of things we never talk about because we're talking to people about their problems. We're talking about a company, a situation, how to get around it. And people come to us, they're explaining their issues and looking for and then we give them the feedback. But you can spend, you can spend 20, 30 hours a week forever with people and never get around for them to never get around and hear this kind of content or hear you speak on these things. And so I'm glad to get you. Looking forward to having you back down the road. We can talk about your next adventures. And this is going to be fun, man.

Thanks, Larry. Really appreciate it. Look forward to it next time.

Thank you. Appreciate it. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelowinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening. And do it big.