Episode 256: Winning at Business and Life with Andrew Heller

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.

Well, my gosh, I do 16 bazillion things all at the same time, mostly when I'm sleeping because I don't have time during the day when I'm awake. But I predominantly right now, I focus on my writing, film and television creation, production, filming, acting, writing, directing, and producing. So my plate is always full. And I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa. I've been in the United States for 30— gosh, 37 years now. So I'm an African-Canadian American. Something like that.

Well, Andrew, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Question number 2: What is something that makes you smile and/or laugh about working in your industry?

You know, being, being on set when, when there's 500 people running around, there's only 3 in front of the camera. I mean, the frenetic energy that takes place when you're actually producing is just enjoyable. And even though you're working 12, sometimes 16-hour days It goes by very, very quickly, especially if you enjoy what you're doing. And I absolutely love what I'm doing, and people call me crazy, but then again, in this industry, you got to be a little nuts because sometimes the payoff is zero, but the joy is definitely worth the journey. Absolutely.

And I can hear the passion in your voice. I really enjoy that. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

I would say, uh, for me, The Actor's Handbook, which is one of the many books that I've written. I've actually talked to CEOs and presidents of companies, and I teach them the acting. I said, but how does that pertain to the business I'm in? And what it does is it really explains the— and it dissects the psychology and the interest of of how you come about attaching yourself to people in general. How do you dissect personalities? Because you have to understand the psychology, how— of how each person operates and what they operate by. What is the basis of which they operate by so that you can communicate on their level? People say, well, you can communicate with presidents, CEOs, and yet you can still walk out on the street and communicate with a homeless person. Well, that's because I understand the psychological breakdown of what I believe is, from an acting standpoint, is how I learned this, was that each person is driven by their emotion. That is the biggest driving force they're driven by. We're not given a whole bunch of tools when we're born except emotion, and that's how we get our parents' attention. That's how we get things, by emotion. We emote by making sounds, by making noises, because we don't know how to communicate at that point. We haven't, uh, become a social construct, a political construct, a moral or religious, you know, thing. And those things are, are taught to us as we grow older by the, the family unit, the family nucleus, and by the people around us, you know, uncles, aunts, and the historical presence of our entire history as, as a human being comes into play. So basically, we're run by emotion. The, the social, political, and moral and religious beliefs are then taught to us, and that enhances our ability to communicate and break down, you know, people as a whole. And for me, that is the most important thing, and that is the last— I'm just almost the last page in The Actor's Handbook. Which is available on my website at agiftoftheheart.com. And it explains that, uh, just simply that anybody can, can truly understand, um, you know, even, even a child can understand that because really we are born without those tools. We are given those, and those tools are all different depending on where we grew up, what country we came from, what language we spoke, and what construct the family worked in during their lifetimes, going all the way back to great-great-grandparents and cousins and so, and so, you know, and so on.

Very insightful. I can, I look forward to looking more at that book for, to find out more about that because it's quite interesting. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

Oh, well, most, most of us— well, I mean, I think— well, I would like to think most of us are philanthropic in some sense. But I think giving is probably the most powerful tool you have. And you can— most people misconstrue giving with financial gain or financial benefit. And I think that's where The message gets lost. The message to giving is not just a financial— in a financial construct. I think it's, it's what you give from your heart. It's what you give from your knowledge and how you nurture, uh, other human beings with that process in teaching them and passing on the knowledge that you have gained and garnered. Because if you die with that knowledge, there, there really has not been a benefit other than to you. And that is really wasteful. And I think anybody that has been successful will tell you that they always try to reach out and bring somebody up and pass that knowledge along. Because once you are gone, that knowledge is gone with you, and then it serves absolutely no purpose. And then we do not grow as, you know, as human beings. We do not grow, we do not benefit. And we do not progress to a better state of being, so to speak.

And I really like that too, because it's not only just in the business sense, it's on the personal sense too. Like, for example, you know, when we have some of our elderly family members who pass away and maybe we didn't hear from what happened in the family tree way back when, that is lost once they're gone. Am I reading you right with that?

Oh, absolutely. And here's the thing. And then this is where I've found the greatest benefit for me is the joy that you get from giving to others. There is an immense joy that you get when you, when you see them smile, when you see their, their just their truthful response of graciousness and happiness and thankfulness of doing the simplest thing like opening a door, uh, saying you're welcome or can I help you across the street. It may sound redundant in this day and age, but it really, it isn't. It's a It's things that I think have been lost. I think chivalry has been lost to a certain extent, and, and anybody can have that chivalry, you know. You don't have to be a man, woman, animal, or whatever. Just opening your heart and doing a kind thing or a gesture can make a person's whole day. You don't know what they're going through during that day, and to see them go from a hunched over position, or perhaps being depressed, you don't know, and just that simple little act of kindness of giving and saying, "Have a blessed day. Have a great day. I hope you really enjoy your day. Let me hold the door for you," or you just hold the door and they say, "Thank you." You say, "You're welcome." And the smile and the joy, it makes my hair stand up. I get a kick out of that.

And I do, too. It's just one of my favorite sayings is, "Be the reason that someone smiles today." And it really, if you can pass that on, as you're saying, It's a real positive. And for me, I just make sure I don't have an expectation. Like if you open the door for someone, I don't expect them to say thank you. But when they do, and most of them will, it's like the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.

It is, absolutely. It's, well, the latest ice cream I've fallen in love with is mint chocolate chip. So yeah, that would be like, Putting a little extra cream on top of that when they say, "No, thank you," and you go, "You're welcome." They feel good, you feel good, and it's such a simple gesture. It doesn't mean you have to give them money. Just the simplest thing can give you a lot of joy, and you can give someone else a lot of joy just by, you know, being human, you know, maintaining that ability.

Absolutely. I absolutely love that. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

I would like to acknowledge, uh, we're not friends and we haven't met, although I would really love to meet him because he's got a lot of money. But that's besides the point. I'm actually joking, really. Uh, it's not the money, his, his intellect and his vision of how he got from being a child growing up in Cape Town, South Africa, which is our commonality, which is where I'm from originally, and him being Elon Musk now, and in, you know, being a multi-billionaire and controlling this massive industry, and his vision and his dream that he has managed to create, you know, what, what did he encounter along the way? What were his failures? Where, at what point did he feel like he was not— that there was a possibility he wasn't going to get there? Because any successful person will tell you that you get nothing if you do nothing. You have to do something, and nothing just magically works out. So you don't just magically become a multi-billionaire and all of a sudden the world's smartest and richest person. You have a lot of losses and you have a lot of failures along the way. It's how you learn from those and how you adapt. And for me, watching him, that would be a very interesting person to, to talk to because I'd like to know You know, what holes did you fall in and what did you do to get out of those holes so that you could continue forward and succeed as you have so fantastically well?

And he'd be a great one for being on the show. So I'll reach out to him. Thank you for that suggestion. And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.

Oh my gosh. You know, we discussed this earlier and I really had to think hard about it and I thought, well, Is he asking me about my first job where I was actually working for somebody and getting paid, or is he actually asking me about my really, my very, very, very first job? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, you know, there's not a lot of people that know this, but I actually started working when I was 9 years old. And the whole reason, it was my father's fault. Although he was a very smart man, very intelligent man, And, uh, you know, my family wasn't very rich, but they weren't very poor either. A very middle-class family. And I went to my dad at 9 years old because I wanted to go to the movies with some school friends on the weekend. And I went to my dad and I said, can I have some pocket money? Uh, and he said no. And I looked at him wide-eyed and I went, what? And he said, no, uh, you, you may not. And I said, well, I'm gonna go to Mom. And he said, well, you can go to Mom, but Mom's gonna tell you no as well. And I said, really? So I went to my mother and she said, what did your father say? And he said no. And she said, well, then I guess you're out of luck. And I was, I was just stunned. So I went back to my father and I said, okay, so exactly how am I supposed to, at 9 years old, get the money to go to the movies with my friends? And he said, figure it out. And I was like, okay, so what exactly are you trying to get me to do here? He said, if you can learn to survive at your age and figure things out, he said, you will never ever be broke. And I was like, of course, at 9 years old, I'm thinking that that's Japanese, that's Chinese, that's Russian, that's— this is a language I am not familiar with.

At all.

I could barely speak English at 9. So, you know, my mom and dad had a fur company, and they made fur coats for Europe at the time. And I used to spend a fair amount of time there in the afternoons doing my schoolwork and watching all these little pieces of real fur being thrown away. And one day it hit me. I was like, that's just going to the garbage. But there were some good pieces. There's, you know, one, you know, 1 foot, 18 inches, 16 inches, 8 inches wide. I'm thinking hats, gloves. There's all kinds of little things you can make with all these little pieces. Um, so I started bagging up these pieces, and my mom asked me, she says, what are you doing with those? And I laughingly said, I'm gonna go door to door and sell them. And she giggled, and my dad just kind of chuckled and walked away. Well, within a week, every afternoon after school, I would go with that bag of little pieces of fur and knock on doors. And these ladies would come to the door, you know, house moms, and they'd go, "Oh, hi!" You know, what are they going to say to a 9-year-old, right? I just have this big old smile on my face, and I hold up a piece and go, "Would you like to buy a piece of this for a buck?" And then I got— so I started, I started making my own money to go to the movies. My dad would say that, well, do you want some money to go to the movies? I go, no, I don't need it. And he said, well, how much do you have? So I would say, well, I got $50. So he said, well, let me look. So I'd hand it to him, not thinking anything of it, and he'd take it and he'd give me back $10. And I go, but you just took $40 of my money. He said, yes. Now comes the second lesson. I'm going to put it in savings when you really need it. You don't need any more than that for this weekend. I said, but how do I make more money if I can't touch that? He said, you'll figure it out. So, so the next thing is I got tired of selling the fur, and I thought, well, you know, I got a whole market at school. So I would go out and buy, uh, M&Ms. In, in South Africa at the time, they called them Smarties. I go out, uh, for $5, I could buy a massive bag of Smarties, and I get little, little manila envelopes, little tiny ones, and I'd put like 50 of them in each envelope, and I, I could multiply my money 10 times. So for $5, I could make $50 by selling them to the kids at school. Oh, everybody's got a buck for, for, for, you know, for M&M's, and kids eat candy like, you know, it's easy. So I just went to school, I started doing that, but then I had to start sneaking money, and my dad would say, okay, how much have you got? I go 30. He'd go, come here. What? He said, I want to look at your pockets. So, so I had to figure out another place to hide my money because my dad would find it. He'd take it from me and put it in a savings account. When I, when I got older into my teens and, and started working and becoming very, very independent, he was like, here, here's your passbook. And it was a nice little, little chunk of change in there. And I used that to, to get my— to put a down payment on my first car. So it was kind of nice to have that because I just kind of gave up on it, you know, fighting my dad over it. But he taught me all those things by the simplistic way of saying, "You'll figure it out." You know, what's the line? I think it's necessity. Gosh, I can't remember the rest of it. But, you know, you really go out to fulfill your dream because there's a necessity. And it's just, it's survival. You, you do it because you have to, because there's no other way. There's nobody there to help you, there's nobody to do anything for you, so you figure it out. And that's— I guess that's what he taught me, you know.

That's a great story, and I, and I love the— all the different learnings that you have in there, and, uh, you know, figuring out how to go from, you know, selling the scrap fur to the candy at different markets and everything, and then getting, getting the money for the car at the end from a, you know, a savings license that you got from your dad. It's great.

It just seemed like a natural transition. And there was so many different little nuances in there that he was teaching me that I had no clue he was doing it and why he was doing it. And then as I got older, if I ever needed his help or the dad, you know, Mom, I need your help. They're like, okay, what do you need? It was a non-issue, but I'd already learned all those things so that they knew when I came to them with a request, one, I wouldn't request more than I needed. More help than I needed. And they always knew they would get it back regardless, uh, 10 times. And I would never ever ask. So they knew if I did open my mouth that things were not easy at that moment.

So it's a great lesson, and good, good for your parents for teaching you that. And Andrew, thank you so much for being on the show. How could people find you?

Oh my gosh, uh, best place to find me is at agiftoftheheart.com. It's a giftoftheheart.com. Some people say from, and I go, no, it's of. You know, I don't, I don't want to correct you, but it's of. Otherwise you're going to go to some place I have no idea, in Guatemala probably, I don't know. But that's the place to go. There's, uh, you know, we sell Gifts of the Heart stuff. Our whole mission is to help kids with cancer, families in need. We have a purpose behind our film. And the good news is, as of Oh golly, 2 days ago is— we are going to actually finally, after 6 years of hard work, we're going to actually be shooting the film A Gift of the Heart next year. So hopefully it'll be out for Christmas next year. That's our goal. Um, so I'm very excited about that. The book is out. There's other books there about A Gift of the Heart. It talks about our mission. It talks about the people we've spoken to. And we also have merchandise, and all that money goes to, you know, is going to go— all the net proceeds will go to kids with cancer and families in need. That's how— that's our whole purpose behind that whole, that whole project is giving, which we discussed earlier.

And that's really wonderful. And congratulations on the upcoming film. I'm looking forward to seeing it myself. And this is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Find hundreds of previous episodes on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.