Welcome to our live show!

We're 2 for 2, Adam.

Right.

3 actually. So we got the, uh, we had some computer problems, uh, Mike, uh, and welcome Mike Murphy, uh, he just newly, uh, arrived from, uh, Ireland from your big trip that we were talking about, uh, yesterday. So we'll definitely get into that because I, I know you said you like to put a lot of miles on your car and you like to experience, uh, the whole thing. So I was actually enjoying your story, and I felt like I was on a journey with you. But welcome, Mike, and then Adam, as always, uh, welcome as the co-host here on Drink Up.

Thanks, sir.

Let's get into it, Mike. Uh, tell me a little bit, but tell us, the audience, a little bit about who you are. How the heck did you get on Drink Up? Why would you want to join us 2 here this morning? But, uh, maybe tell a little bit about who you are, what it is that you do, and, and we'll get into it.

Well, first of all, I've enjoyed getting to know you guys. I'm Indiana born and bred, grew up in South Bend, and actually spent 10 years in the television business as a political reporter in 6 Midwestern states. And so I did a lot of on-air for 10 years, and now I do a statewide public affairs show that's in all the TV markets in Indiana. First of all, I've enjoyed getting to know you guys. And so after TV, I got into politics. worked for Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, and then I worked for 2 Fortune 500 companies in communications, uh, the Simon Company, which is now called Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls in, in the United States, and also Anthem, which is the big conglomerate, uh, which is now called Elevance, uh, Blue Cross Blue Shield businesses all over the country. And, uh, and then I became a co-owner of a 50-person full-service ad and PR agency And then 3 years ago, I started my own operation. And then in the meantime, I know this makes me sound really old, but—

When do you sleep, by the way?

Some of this was concurrent, right? So I spent 16 years in the Indiana General Assembly, and I was chairman of the board of Monarch Beverage, which at the time was the 10th largest beer and wine distributor in America based in Indianapolis. And so I've done all that and I enjoy every minute of it.

Man, the stories that you could tell, and being that you're an Irishman, you probably can tell a lot of great stories.

That's right.

I bet. So today at this moment, what is your main focus? What's your main gig?

Well, you know, the public relations business is really, is pretty simple. It's about leveraging relationships on behalf of brands and clients. And so having worked in 6 states, I have relationships, you know, all over the Midwest. I have relationships in Washington because my brother is a big-time lobbyist there, one of the biggest lobbying firms in Washington. And so, you know, we trade business, we refer to each other. You know, I got to know you through Doug Hayes. Who's a client of mine. He's a big-time warehouse developer and owner, and he's out of Chicago, but he has probably a little over a million square feet in central Indiana of not only climate-controlled but also deep-frozen warehouse space. And he's just a great operator, great guy. And so what I do is, is, uh, you know, I'm approached by clients potential clients. I find out what their interests are and I help them move, move their agenda along, whether it's a political issue. I do crisis communications. I do reputation management. You know, somebody gets accused by the newspaper or somebody, you know, for being a bad person and they really aren't. I go to bat for them.

Wow. I—

There's actually people like that in the world, huh? Oh, yeah.

I help develop brands. You know, when, you know, when I was at Anthem, before it was called Anthem, it was called the Associated Group. I did all the rebranding for Anthem, turn it from Associated Group into Anthem. You know, when you work for a big company, you have several jobs. I did communications, I did strategic planning. I was actually the co-director of Y2K, if you remember that, back in the, in the late '90s, which turned out to be just a consultant's dream. But so I've had a lot of, a lot of broad experience. When I was at Simon, I was in charge of What they call right to build. So we'd get an option on a piece of land in Austin, Texas, or Albuquerque, and I would go and figure out what the roadblocks were to getting our approvals. And I would hire a PR firm and a law firm, and I'd slowly knock the roadblocks down.

Amazing, your background. I mean, chairman of the board for Monarch Beverage to— I don't even think you've said it, but you have your— you're an Italian wine importer.

Yes.

Yes.

That you have. You were in the legislature, plus you did the news side of the legislature as well. So there's a wealth of information, Adam, that we can start digging into Mike's head here to share with everybody his knowledge, because that's what we try to— you know, Mike, you told me who's our audience. We want to be able to convey to them, like, you want to get in contact with someone like Mike if you have a crisis. But also Mike does more than just that. I mean, he, he has his own winery. He knows how the distribution system works. And it sounds like, you know, where to help get people into distribution. I know, I see you thinking again. So when Adam does his eyes up this way to the right, he's ready to come across with some questions.

Okay.

Oh, I, uh, I love how much, uh, so yeah, story for another day. Just how, how many things Sam notices about the way my brain works. I think I kind of want to start with— so I do operations for a living, and the folks who have listened to us regularly know that operations, production planning, you know, that's my core functionality. But my degree, of all things, is actually in public relations from the University of Northern Iowa, right?

Oh, really?

Really, truly. And I'll never forget when I decided— I started off as a computer science major— when I decided to switch I was talking to a friend and they said, well, what do you want to do? Or what do you like doing? Because that should inform the degree that you get. And I was like, I'm pretty good with numbers. And I like telling stories. I like sitting around and doing this. Like, this is, you know, usually one of the best parts of my week is stuff like this. And they went, you should get a PR degree. So I did. So, so my question is PR-focused for now, and I want to hear it straight from you because it's been forever since I've been in obviously school. How, you know, if you're a, if you're a new brand, if you're a brand that, you know, maybe they're not even in a crisis, but they just have something that they need to get through, right? They have an issue, they have a goal, they have a whatever. How is the PR angle on that different from maybe the sales angle or the operations angle? Right, because everybody loves to lump PR and marketing and sales, I think, into— they get very vague and they kind of all become the same function.

Yeah.

So for you, how do you, how do you explain to folks that PR has a very specific value add? Because I believe it does, right? But it can sometimes be difficult to explain.

Well, first of all, I differentiate between marketing and sales in this way. marketing is creating the demand for the product and sales is selling the product once there's a product demand. I mean, that's a simplistic way of looking at it.

Sure.

Public relations supports all those things. I mean, generally speaking, public relations, as I said, is, you know, I have very extensive relationships in the media business, whether it's digital, broadcast, print. I leverage those relationships. I spend a lot of time helping young reporters when they come into the state of Indiana or Louisville.

Oh, cool.

To develop their own careers.

Sure.

And I act as a resource. I don't want to get quoted myself. I want my clients quoted, right?

Sure.

And so I develop relationships and help the young people with their careers, and they come to me for advice, you know, especially if they're new to a market, they don't know anybody. I keep a, I keep an Excel spreadsheet of 2,000 phone, uh, cell phone numbers.

Holy cow.

And, uh, you know, amazing. He needs to find out how to get a hold of somebody, right? You know, I give him the cell phone number and said, just don't tell him I gave him your cell phone number. And so that helps them do a better job as a reporter. And eventually, then when it comes time for me to ask them for a favor, do a story on one of my clients or whatever, or go easy on my clients, they're not bad people. Then, you know, it's a game of mutual use is what it is.

Sure.

The reporters need to fill space, fill time. I can help them do that. And then I need help from them for exposure for my clients or my issue. And that's really, really the way it works. Fortunately, because I worked for 2 Fortune 500 companies and was in the General Assembly, I also have extensive relationships in the business community, the corporate community, and also obviously the political community. And so I can go to any county in Indiana, most counties in Kentucky, some in Illinois, Michigan. I lived in Grand Rapids for 4 and a half years, did TV, for example.

Okay.

And so I can go to them and make connections, not for me so much as on behalf of my clients. And, and ultimately it's all about storytelling.

Sure. Wow.

Sure.

I'm curious, just kind of on the same— well, I don't know, I just had this just popped in my head.

No. Yeah, go for it.

You spent time in the legislature and I'm going to steal it back into the beverage business because you also sat on the side of the beverage business. I'm curious how it really works. Like, how do like laws get on the books? Like, how does— I think, I mean, you have to go too detailed, but like, I want to Sure. Open up, go from a dry county to a wet county, or—

Sure.

I want to get— you guys know, how does it work?

After the 21st Amendment was passed, you know, the federal government said, okay, we're going to really federalize this, and every state gets to pretty much regulate it the way they want to. In some states, the state owned the liquor stores, right? Ohio, not too long ago, switched from being state-owned to the free, you know, private market. In Indiana, we have the traditional 3-tier system. You know, there's the producers, the distributors, and the retailers, and you cannot have an ownership interest in more than one tier, right?

Right.

So it diffuses the power. It keeps people from becoming monopolists, so to speak. But we have an Alcohol Tobacco Commission. I know every single member of them. Some of them I've worked with in the legislature or worked with them at Anthem or whatever. And so it's a small state and you get to know everybody. And the Republicans generally get along with the Democrats. And, you know, you help each other over time. You have mutual respect. And so to answer your original question, it can happen a million ways. It can be, you know, me as a legislator having an idea. It can be a constituent coming to me and saying, would you please do this? Or what did you think about doing this? It can be a special interest. It can be the state chamber. It can be the hospital association. It can be some group that represents a constituency, right? Or it can be the media raises an issue and says, boy, this is really wrong. This needs to be fixed. And you may pick up on that and try to fix it. The one thing that people remember, special interest to me is not a bad word. Everybody has a special interest.

Sure.

So Sam and Adam, I could— I could talk to you for 2 minutes and I could figure out for each of you 6 different ways you are a special interest. What church you go to, your kids are in Little League, you know, you own a certain kind of car. You know, you're— there's— everybody is a special interest multiple ways. And so interesting, while the media likes to make it a bad word, it's not. It's just a— it's just your interests are.

Sure. Yeah. So, so speaking of special interests, then taking a hard left, What the hell, with everything you have going on, made you decide to get into importing wine?

Well, it started off as a fun idea and it's developed into a business. So I'm not the majority owner, I'm a minority owner, and the majority owners are friends of mine, Doris Ann Sadler and Tim Sadler, very well connected in the state of Indiana, and they're great entrepreneurs. They own nursing homes in Puerto Rico, they do golf course development. They do a bunch of things, right? And so they have a franchise for a concept called the World Trade Center. And it's in cities all over the world. I've been to the World Trade Center in Cartagena, Colombia before. And it's an economic development pipeline, I guess it is, where they help internationally connect businesses and to do business with each other. And And economically, I've had dinner at their house with the Secretary of Trade for the country of Hungary. I've met with Indian investors. I've done all kinds of things where I've developed relationships because of that.

Mm-hmm.

So what happened is Doris Ann developed a relationship with the World Trade Center in Trieste, Italy. And they were looking for ways to get some of their— there's a co-op there. They're looking for ways to get some of their members of the co-op, who are mostly small family wineries who cannot afford to come to the United States and market their wines. And they said, would you be interested in being a distributor for the co-op? And they said, absolutely. And so— and we are a small company. We can't afford to go all over Italy and talk to 1,000 wineries.

Right.

And so they are our middleman and they recommend wines to us. Right now we're offering 11 Italian wines. The name of the company is Cosimo Wines, C-O-S-I-M-O Wines. And, you know, we have a website, cosimowines.com, and it shows you the wines we feature. And so we are the outlet for these family wineries in the United States. And, uh, so we're just getting started, but, uh, so far it's working out well. And as long as the tariffs don't ruin everything, then I think we're on a growth path.

You should— you should meet our friend Marius. He's in the background there, um, but he's a Frenchman that has a distillery. It'd be interesting for you to actually, um, Adam, make that connection with the World Trade Center.

I will. I'll, uh, I'll tag, uh, I'll tag Marius on the post. But it's so funny, he just came in. So I'm in my kitchen He came into the kitchen listening to the podcast on his phone as he's walking into the podcast being recorded live.

That's funny. You know, and again, every state's different, and Indiana has some horribly archaic liquor laws. For example, in Indiana, you can distribute beer and wine together, and you can distribute wine and liquor together, But it's against the law to distribute beer and liquor together.

Sure.

I mean, it's like crazy. But yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, a lot of people get pretty moralistic about spirits, right? And, uh, you know, they think you're, you're all going to hell if, you know, you distribute liquor and beer out of the same—

I've been doing it for 40 years, man. I just made people happy, God.

Well, here's another crazy example. And every state has their stories.

Yeah.

But in Indiana, you're only allowed to have one warehouse for the entire state. So what we did was at Monarch, what we did was we took big semi-trucks down to southern Indiana to Evansville. And we rented a parking lot. And we would, you know, at 4 or 5 in the morning, the bay trucks would come and offload like the Semi trucks with a mothership, but the Alcohol Tobacco Commission was willing to look the other way and not consider that to be a second warehouse. I mean, it's just silly. It's so waste a lot of effort.

It's very silly.

Cost cost the whole system more money. Yeah.

That's some that's that's that's an amazing journey. We have also another friend, Ryan Bot. Ryan Bot does something with bananas, and he lost a lot. He lost five million. And funding. It was like 400 or 500 jobs dissipated overnight. But he does something with bananas or something. He's a food guy. He's a formulator. I'm probably doing him an injustice, but I don't even— I can't remember the country he was in. But it'd be an interesting discussion there as well.

Yes, he's, um, I'll just, I'll just keep tagging people on the LinkedIn. Um, he, uh, so Ryan does a lot of work from, from past lives, but still does a lot of work with countries in South and Central America for, I mean, everything from coffee to more standard, you know, standard produce. So bananas is one of them, corn is another, you know, mangoes and other fruits. Like, he's really trying in his own way. Again, his expertise is formulation and technical R&D, as well as, as kind of facility development and understanding the equipment that you need to process those organic components, right? He's, he's trying to use his expertise to help groups in those countries, even the playing field in the sense of, you know, we're all relatively familiar with coffee and how lopsided it can be in terms of where the money's made. Right? So the folks actually farming the beans and doing those things are typically making pennies as compared to folks further along in the supply chain. He's like, I'm not trying to, you know, have anybody be living on such meager income. Like, I kind of want to level out the income across the board so that everybody can live a sustainable life, right?

Yeah.

But that's the side of the supply chain he's approaching is the actual— the farm components, I guess, if you will. So yeah, he could be another really interesting conversation on that world trade piece.

Well, you know, one of the concepts that was built to help with that is the whole concept of the fair trade system, right? So that people are not indentured servants in the coffee fields of Colombia or wherever. And I think that's helped to some degree, but I'm sure they can always do more to even things out.

Totally.

Pretty amazing story he was telling me at breakfast yesterday. And I was like, wow. And it's like help, straight up helping people. And I'm all about that. I love to help people. Our premise, Mike, as you know, Bev Assets was founded for 2 reasons. One is to help people find work, and 2 is to do right by brands. That's what we create. That's every— it informs our destination where we're going, and that destination informs the mission we execute every day in order to get there. That's what we do. And your life kind of to move. So you're obviously, I would call yourself a Renaissance man. You do several things. You do. I mean, which is—

Yeah, I would agree. Yeah.

Like, how did you— I mean, is it just your personality trait that you want to do these several things? How did you land in— I mean, the legislature, news, and beverages are 3 totally different things in PR.

4 different things. And here's an add-on. I also wrote a book on this. I wrote a book on the Civil War that was a finalist for a national award.

I think you told me that in our first conversation. Holy cow.

Yeah. So I've done a lot of things. I probably, you know, some psychologist examining me, they'd say, well, you've got ADHD, you know. I would be bored to death if I just had one thing going on. And so I tend to become interested in something And dig into it, and then when I get into something, I go all out because I'm a very competitive person. And it's like you know, not to get go too far off the subject here, but you know, I started running when I was like thirty-two. I had played I played sports in high school and college, but I'd let myself go, and all of a sudden because I am competitive within a few years I was running marathons. You know, even though when I first started running I couldn't.

You're a marathon runner, you're a book writer, you're an award-winning author, newscaster. So ADHD may be a trait that makes a successful entrepreneur, would you say?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, my friend Tim Sadler, you know, I just talked about him a few minutes ago. You know, he's, he's into nursing homes, he's into all kinds of things, you know, golf course development, you know, and Yeah, he has the same attributes in a way. He's a very successful entrepreneur, as is his wife. And yeah, you have to, you have to be able to manage a lot of things in your head at once and recognize opportunities.

Mm-hmm.

And, and what you do and what I do in a different, from a different angle, is help people develop their ideas or their opportunities or their brand into something that's profitable. Got it.

But let's, let's get into some brands a little bit. I mean, given your background and stuff, if I'm a new brand coming to market, like what, like what, what are the things that you, from, from your every angle, from news to PR to going to distributor to legislature, these are really good knowledge bases. How would a brand approach those, those things?

Well, it depends how regulated you are because first of all, you have to get the permission to do the business, right?

Yeah.

Just to be in business. And so I'll give you an example. I was hired by PepsiCo, okay? And they had a division called Blue Cloud, which they were developing with Boston Beer Company, a hard Mountain Dew. and a hard Lipton tea. And those, those kind of, you know, hybrid drinks are big, everything from White Claw, and you guys know all this stuff as well as I do.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, and so the hard lemonades and all those kinds of things. So I helped them in Indiana work with the Alcohol Tobacco Commission and to lay out the parameters for what it would take to do business in Indiana. And They are involved in many states now. And I haven't— they're not a client of mine anymore, so I haven't exactly kept up on where their distribution networks are right now. But that's an example. So I had relationships in the business community. I had relationships in the media. I had relationships with the regulators. And I apply each of those relationships— again, leverage relationships— make sure that Blue Cloud had the best opportunity, the best chance to be successful in Indiana. So that's a very regulated business. But another company comes into Indiana, maybe they have— maybe there's— maybe they're an auto manufacturer, maybe they're— maybe they're pushing an issue, you know, like diabetes education or a new pharmaceutical product or something like that, one of the things you do is— one of the things I tell people is when you're coming into a market, one of the most important things you can do is to buy goodwill because people love people who come in and invest in the community.

Ah.

And if I can get them to— I'll give you an example. I had a company out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania called Recovery Centers of America. that was into— they did, you know, addiction treatment, residential addiction treatment for all kinds of things. And they wanted to, you know, establish a hole, so to speak, a niche in the very competitive market. And so the first thing I had them do was join the Mental Health Association of Indiana, become a sponsor. I had them— I went to my friends who owned the AAA baseball team in Indianapolis. And, you know, May is Mental Health Month, and I said we need to do Mental Health Day at the Indianapolis Indians, have my client be the sponsor. And we got on— we got my client on the on-air broadcast to do interviews. We had video screens in the outfield. We got the right to hand out tchotchkes to all the, you know, 14,000.

I got introduced to my friend Derek over at Even or Samantha or, you know, Evan at Remix or I'm thinking brands like, okay, I'm going to buy goodwill in a community, become part of it. If you're familiar with the brand Tito's?

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Well, Tito's, he gives, I don't, I think he gives a lot of his wealth away. He gives back to the communities. I think, I believe he's, I don't think he does it, he does it intentionally. I mean, not to buy goodwill, but to give away, but he buys goodwill.

Sure. Absolutely. And then you combine that with media relations, right? Getting those people to do a story, find interesting stories about the owners or the mission or the product. You get it in the media and you do TV and eventually you build this, you start to build brand equity. First, it's brand awareness is number one. And then you move from brand awareness to brand equity. And then you continue to try to build that brand equity so it doesn't become diffused, so to speak, or doesn't become weakened. And I'll tell you, if you have a second, I'll tell you a quick Monarch story.

We got all the time in the world for you, Mike.

So Monarch was family-owned. And since 1947, as a lot of alcohol distribution companies Certainly in Indiana and other states have been. And great, great community people. It was the French family, their name was, and—

or is.

And any nonprofit, a church, you know, a church festival, a community group, whatever, that wanted— needed wine or beer for their church festival to make you know, take away the cost, the fixed cost of a church festival, we would provide for free. All they had to do is call us, when's your festival, how many people are you going to have, you know, and we would figure out how many kegs, you know, how many cases of wine, whatever, and we would provide it for free. We were known as being very community-oriented. Now, our big competitor was called Zink Distributors.

Zink Distributors.

distributing and they were the Anheuser-Busch house, right? And we were the MillerCoors house. And then 80% of our wine was, was, was Gallaudet. So just to give you a sense of scale, we did about 1 million cases of wine a year and 16 million cases of beer only in the state of Indiana. And so we dominated the— certainly the MillerCoors business and we were very competitive with the our friends at the Anheuser-Busch distributor. And when we sold to the Reyes brothers, which is a multi-billion-dollar family-owned distributor, owns, you know, they dominate many big markets.

Buying everybody and getting everybody.

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. But they, with all due respect, and I've never met the Reyes family, but they made one big mistake. when they came into Indianapolis, they dropped all community relations. They don't give out a free bottle of beer to any church in town. And they just don't do it. And so my friend Jim Zink, who's been in the Anheuser-Busch business forever and actually used to work for Anheuser-Busch corporate in St. Louis, he said to me not long ago, he goes, God, I am so glad you guys sold to I said, why? Because he said, we could not compete against your relationships.

And everybody loves the beer guy, right? So now that you left, they can step in and become their new best friend.

Exactly. And Reyes, he says, has no community relations. They don't care about the community. They want to sell beer and wine, obviously. And so that has given Jim Zink and his sons a new opening to kind of gain a little upper hand where they couldn't do it before. The other thing Monarch did, and I don't know how many distributors do it, is we would go in and we would offer— we'd go into liquor stores and we would do their setup for them. And we would even, we would even place the Budweiser product too. And, you know, there's a whole psychology about when you walk down an aisle, what you, what you see first, right? At what level you place the product and all that kind of stuff, which I'm not an expert on. But where we would place the Anheuser-Busch product, of course we would place our product in an advantageous position in the store, end caps and things like that. And Indianapolis 500 time came around, we would bring in Indy 500 cars and put them in our favorite liquor stores' lobbies, if you want to call them that. Build some Indy 500, you know, spirit, so to speak, and we'd benefit from that. And, uh, so anyhow, so, so buying goodwill is very important, whether you're putting out cash or just giving out free product, because you become a part of the community and people are loyal to you and they want to buy their beer or their wine from Monarch, or they used to As opposed to zinc. And now zinc is gaining the upper hand.

I love that because you could be a small brand and go into a community and be very targeted where you buy your goodwill, right?

100%. 100%. And, and I, I'm— I think I'm pretty good at making recommendations on the best way to invest in a community and get the most bang for your buck. And just—

We're on to something here now, Adam. You're like, your brain— mine's racing. You have several brands that you work with as well as I do. It's like they need to meet Mike. So I'm assuming we can connect a brand with you. I'm coming, I'm having— I'm struggling in Indianapolis. I'm trying to build this brand, but it's not going. I'm with Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits. I've put feet on the street, but still the consumer's not coming. What you're telling me is you can bring— you can create the pool because you're going to build those relations with the community with what you do.

Exactly. Exactly. And it benefits them. It doesn't benefit me. I mean, it benefits me because I help my clients become successful, right?

Yeah.

And hopefully if I help them be successful, they stay on as a client of mine. But, you know, in the public relations business, you know, part of the success, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, is Eventually they don't need you, right? And that's one of the exciting things about my business is you're always picking up new clients. You know, I, I've worked for BlackRock, which is the largest financial services company in the world. I worked for Davidson Kempner, which is a hedge fund that's very involved in the US Steel-Nippon Steel merger, which now apparently is back on. It was on and off and back on.

There's something going on with steel. They're like a 25% tariff coming? Not going political here, but there's some—

Oh yeah, I think it's 50%. Yeah, so you never know what Trump's going to do next. But, but, but I was hired by Davidson Kempner out of New York to do work in Indiana and Illinois because 2 of U.S. Steel's largest facilities are— one was in Granite City, Illinois, and one's in Gary, Indiana. And my job was to help convince the political class of those 2 cities to be in favor of the merger. And then of course the federal regulators get involved and things fell apart for a while. Now maybe they're back on, who knows.

But this is— this whole conversation is really interesting to me. I'm learning. So every time we do this, to let you know, it's like almost like Adam and I go to school, right? And we're like literally learning, yeah, like what the possibilities are in our industry, because everything you're saying has applications into what we do. Because I was—

Exactly.

The big push right now is we talk about direct-to-consumer. You got to get your social media going to drive the consumer. I had no— I wasn't thinking about the goodwill in the community, and it's much deeper than that. I mean, I kind of knew it because I always knew that the beer guy was the person's best friend. We always say they play with the mayor, they play softball with the mayor, they're in the bar mitzvahs. Buzz, the whole bit. And they— and people tend to want to—

100% people, right? And when it comes to— and when it comes to politicians who are doing fundraisers, golf court, golf tournaments and things, yeah, you know, they call us and say, hey, can we get 30 cases of beer for our fundraiser? Of course you can. We don't care. Bipartisan. We do it for Republicans, we do it for Democrats. Doesn't matter.

Yeah, we used to do that at Breakthrough They would come in, people like you would come and make a visit, right? And it would be Democrat or Republican, we didn't care. And we would, at the end, we'd write them a check and say thanks for stopping by, because we had lobbyists obviously at the local level as well as the national level for our business. So it was really important to keep those relations up with those folks.

I had a friend of mine that ran the Chiropractors Association in Indiana. He said, Mike, I never say no. I always— somebody comes and asks me for money, I always give them money. And that may not be a lot of money, but at least they know that I said yes.

Yeah, I mean, they think about you during their vote.

That's for sure.

They'll pick up if you need something. Okay, Adam, you're thinking, you're deep staring into the screen like, okay, what's the next question? We got this author here on the Civil War. We can get into that. Or we can go down the path. His trip to Ireland, he put— how many kilometers did you put on your—

1,900 kilometers in 2 weeks. I did.

Holy shit.

I, I started in Dublin a few days. Of course, I parked my car and sampled all the, all the great bars of Dublin. And, uh, and I actually, uh, got to know a guy who was former, uh, uh, cabinet member for 2 different prime ministers. His name is Paudie Coffey, P-A-U-D-I-E. And he eventually retired from politics and started a similar business to mine. So I think we're going to have a cross— across the pond professional relationship. So I can refer business to him in the United States and he can refer business to me, or the other way around, in Ireland and just, you know, trade clients back and forth between the two countries. Very well connected, guy in Ireland. And so I did a counterclockwise tour of Northern Ireland— Belfast, Giant's Causeway, Donegal, and back around. Then I took the ferry over the Irish Sea and spent several days in Wales, and I just had a blast.

Wow. And you did some business while you were there, so that's a write-off, by the way.

And Aer Lingus just established A direct flight from Indianapolis to Dublin.

It did.

You fly out of Indianapolis 4 times a week now, so I'll be going there a lot. I—

so it's funny you mentioned that. We took my grandmother— she's— she, she was, uh, turning 80, and so for her 80th birthday, I told her— and I, I love this woman more than, more than most anybody else on the planet— and I said, where do you want to go? Anywhere in the world. And she said Ireland. Right. And so last April, we took her to Ireland for 2 weeks. And I laugh about the flights because we had to connect from Minneapolis to Chicago and then go from Chicago to Dublin. And about a month or 2 after we booked it, they opened up direct flights from Minneapolis to Dublin. Like, you got to be kidding. Come on, dude. Come on.

And so you bypass Chicago. You waste 5 or 6 hours, right, by the time you get to that airport.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yep.

And also, you may remember this, maybe not, but in Dublin, if you're coming back to the United States, all the American flights, you're going from Dublin to the United States, you go through US Customs at the Dublin airport. So when you get back to Minneapolis, you just go right to the luggage carousel and out the door. It's great.

A couple people have joined us. I just want to call them out. Sometimes we're active, sometimes we're not. People aren't as active this morning, but Marius, thanks for chiming in. He said, that really changed my perspective. I think he's talking about the, the community aspect on what we're, what we're doing at Verdecor with our cultural center, Goodwill Unmarked, so building goodwill. And then Mason joined us. this morning. So hello, Mason, as well as Alicia Vargo. Um, I'm just, uh, uh, you're in my thoughts this morning, my friend. Uh, she has some things going on at home, and, uh, but I'm glad that you could take the time and join us. So thank you very much.

Yeah, I mean, the— I don't know if there's a question at the end of this, but, but it seems like every week we continue to talk in some way about— we, we mentioned it with Sal last week, and I'm pretty Yeah, a few days ago, and it's been mentioned a few times of, especially if you're a new brand and you have a product that, that, you know, anybody who's crazy enough to make a product believes that that product is going to provide value in some way in people's lives. Otherwise you wouldn't have done it, right?

Yeah.

But the, the lesson, I guess you could call it, that, that so many of the brand owners I talk to now and over the years skip over in, in trying to grow the brand is just start by making friends, right? Meet people.

Yes, relationships drive the world.

Everything. I mean, so it's, it's that, and I've said for years, um, I mean, this goes back to, to early days after college. It took me a while, it took me until I was in my mid-20s to realize, you know, you can learn as much as you want in terms of of whether it's things about the Civil War or again, I said I was good with numbers, you know, math, science, whatever. You can learn as much as you want there. But it took me until my mid-20s to realize, like, there is a skill and a muscle and a habit, whatever you want to call it, to be built around your effort and the way you build relationships. Right. And so, you know, it's one thing to know how to fix your car. Right.

Mm-hmm.

It's another thing to know who to call to help you fix your car. Right.

Exactly right. And who's gonna get— who's gonna be honest and give you the right advice about fixing the car, right?

Right. And so it's, it's— I, I love, you know, with, with all the different business ventures you have going on, the common thread, you know, as you talk about the education that Sam and I get every week, is just in be open to hearing what people are doing, learn about them, learn, you know, be interested in seeing how you can help. Like, again, make friends. Yeah.

The other thing I always tell young— I advise a lot of young people. One of the things I really enjoy doing is helping young people build their careers, because when I get really old, I think maybe someday these young people will hire me to write a press release, you know, when I'm not worth anything else.

But that's why I keep Adam close, because I'm the old man of the show.

I always tell young people that success is not complicated. You do 2 things: you return your phone calls and you do what you say you're going to do. Because unfortunately most people don't do that.

That's the soundbite anymore.

No one—

that's the soundbite for this week, Sam. Answer the phone and do what you say you're gonna do. That's the, that's the soundbite for this week.

Yes, please.

If you have a second, I'll tell you a quick little story. In the mid-'80s, I was, I was working in Grand Rapids TV. This is before the internet, before cell phones, and I was sitting in the newsroom one night and I had this like question, burning question. And remember, I was doing political reporting. And I thought, I bet you I know who could answer this question. And it was the general counsel for the Reagan administration. And so I called the White House operator and I said, you know, I need to talk to the general counsel.

Oh.

And she said, well, he's not in right now, but I'll get a message to him. And an hour later, like 9 o'clock at night, He calls back and he said, you called me?

Amazing.

And I said, yeah. And here's a guy— and so I tell young people all the time, I was a, I was a 24-year-old punk reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, middle, middle-sized market, right? I was not New York or Chicago, right? But the fact that he returned my call, sure, I, I— impressed me so much.

Sure.

That— and he became a member of the 9/11 Commission and everything else, you know. So I tell— I use that example all the time, that if he, the White House General Counsel, can return the call of a 24-year-old reporter in the Midwest, you can return your calls.

I love that story. And by the way, I'm going to be rinsing— this is the— I'm going to be rinsing and repeating this segment of this podcast. Just to let you know, because I found something new. I found Mike Murphy to tell the story versus Steve Jobs, because Steve Jobs talks about that. By the way, Mike, I've seen the video clip. Everybody plays it all over the internet, but he basically said when he was 12 years old, he called Bill Hewlett, and Bill Hewlett answered the phone. Yeah, he asked Bill for a job, and Bill gave him a job. And then Steve proceeds to say, because I know you're just like Steve Jobs, and your personality in terms of if someone called you, Mike, you're going to call them back because that, that the general counsel for Reagan administration called you. I'm assuming you would do that. If I called you out of the blue and you didn't know me, I'm assuming you'd call me. Well, you did. I called you and you called me back. I think we lost Mike.

Yeah, I think he froze up a little bit, but yeah.

Yeah.

So, so, okay. So for both of you then, my favorite So, all right, so I'm gonna be the, uh, oh, I don't know if devil's advocate's the right word here.

Uh, well, you're, you're what, 30-something? Yeah, you guys don't answer the phone.

Okay.

Well, so here's— it's so, it's, it's funny, and I, I, uh, I'll, I'll call on, uh, a quick story to inform a question. So there's a couple people I know. One's Bob Williams, who's still at ThubSource. The other one's Nate Smith, who owns Lockersmith, and They do can printing and sleeving and all sorts of things. But both of them, Nate specifically, when we started working together, he told me one day, he goes, man, you're weird. And I said, okay, thank you. What do you mean? And he goes, you call me. I said, yeah. He goes, nobody your age calls me.

Okay.

Right now, I don't know what, you know, made me the way I am, but I still, you know, for even being 35, like, I still prefer for the most part to call people instead of texting them, right, if I truly need an answer. Um, so my question that comes from that is for you two, as you're working with— or maybe, you know, maybe for you, Mike, from a PR standpoint, I mean, whatever it is, like How do you take that ethos, if you will, of, of, you know, build relationships, make the connection, answer the phone, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, and try to translate it in a way that, you know, a 22-year-old brand owner today can understand and start to think that way, even though they've grown up in the era of send a text, send an email, You know, watch a, you know, interact on social media, that kind of thing. How do you not get them to completely change, but how do you get them to just expand their understanding of ways to connect with people?

I think you just show it. You show them, just like everybody is interested in themselves, you show them how it helps their self-interest and how if you're going to deal with, you know, if a 24-year-old today is going to try to get a job with a 55-year-old, You know, it probably does involve email or, or, uh, or phone. My son's 35 years old and he tells me, he says, Dad, I don't respond to emails. I don't respond. I never check my voicemail. I don't respond to voicemails. If you want to get a hold of me, you text me or DM me.

You know, that's so crazy.

And he's my son.

And that's why no one's responding to me. I'm sending emails and no one's responding.

LinkedIn has come in to fill some of that void, right? It's at least it's a digitally based kind of a system. But, um, it's— yeah, it's amazing. But it's, you know, it— you know, I'm a baby boomer and I need to adapt to that generation also. And so—

Yeah, sure.

I need to understand Instagram and TikTok and, and, you know, Snapchat and all those Those, uh, you know, communications, uh, you know, channels that I may not normally have any interest in. Because if I want to deal with the, you know, the younger generations, I need to understand how to communicate. So it goes both ways. They need to understand how to communicate with my generation. I need to understand how to communicate with their generation. Otherwise, there's going to be a chasm that's never bridged.

Yeah, it's amazing. I put my phone number right out on LinkedIn. I'm like, Just pick up the phone is my whole battle cry. Very few people call me, which is amazing to me. It's out there. They'll— I get a lot of emails like, hey, is it okay to call you? I'm like, I put my phone number out there.

You can call me anytime you want.

You don't have to ask permission.

When I was a politician, some of this was kind of PR on my part, but every mailer I sent out, every single mailer had my cell phone on it. Now, how many politicians do that? Most of them try to hide from their constituents. But I also knew, I knew that people would be impressed by the fact that my cell phone number was on these flyers and these mailers. But I knew that people wouldn't want to bother me because they'd say, wow, he has his cell phone number, but I'm not going to bother him on a weekend. So I got the benefit without any of the cost, right?

That's so funny.

It's reverse psychology.

Yeah, that's totally— that's so funny.

Murphy's the only politician I know that puts his cell phone on everything.

Who does that? It's amazing.

Amazing. Well, so a couple of things. So with the last 10 minutes or so, Mike, we ask everybody this question.

Okay.

Adam, I'm gonna like actually ask that you ask the question, actually.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're teeing up. So shortest, shortest way to say it, in your experience, Mike, or with, you know, your background, what is the difference or what's been the difference between Work ethic and—

work ethic and ethics. You don't succeed, especially in a small state or in a small community, you don't succeed for very long if you're dishonest, unethical.

Sure.

Or you go back on your word. You know, in the Indiana Statehouse, for example, where I was for many years, you know, the kind of the mantra was, Once you break your word with somebody, you're done. You might as well leave the state house because you can't be trusted anymore. And so you have to be ethical and you have to have work ethic and helping other people helps yourself ultimately, right?

Totally.

And that's part of building relationships. So I think that's the most important.

I love that.

I was thinking about the Zig Ziglar quote I always use. And Zig's like, he goes out there and just gives. If you give all back to the community, it just comes back to you. It's karma, as my partner Alicia Vargo says. It's amazing. I kind of started the path. I asked the question with, well, I think everybody should give me the same answer, but no one's actually given me the exact same answer, which is— some people say it's a learning. Some people, work ethic is brand new to us. I've never heard that. All the conversations we had in ethics, work ethic and ethics. That's so important because if you, if you don't take care of people and you screw them over and you do opposite what you say you're going to do, then you're just like, you're just not a good— you're just not a good person. Sorry.

Yeah. Success, you know, success does not come in over the transom, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you work for it. And I'll tell you a couple other, you know, I guess principles I'm fond of is I always say that character is not made, it's revealed. And you can't just— you just can't, you know, develop character in 24 hours, right? You can't switch from being a bad person to a good person in 24 hours.

I might have gotten in a debate with someone. I'm like, you can't teach care, you can't teach good, you can't teach to be emotionally You know, empathy, you can't teach to be empathy. Either have empathy or you don't have empathy.

Sure. Yeah.

But people are like, all these classes, like how to become empathy. I'm like, you either, you either care or you don't care. That's just the reality. So figure out what it is you do. And I'm not trying to question anybody out there what they do, but find out who you are and then do it and do it well.

And you learn that, you learn that from your mom when you're 2 and 3 and 4 years old.

Right? Yeah.

And so we don't give enough credit to our mothers, frankly, for how we all turn out. But one of my favorite sayings— I'm a big fan of Winston Churchill. And another— I think it's really important, too, to work for what you believe in no matter what the outcome, because people will respect you. Even the opposition will respect you if they know you're working for what you believe in. And Winston Churchill said one time, he said, you have enemies. That's good. That means you believe in something. Because if you don't have any opponents or enemies, it means what you, what you're working for really isn't that important because everybody agrees with it. If it's a good idea, somebody's going to disagree with it.

I love that. I love that, Mike, because I had a person that, you know, said I wasn't real for some reason. I think I told you the story. I won't say the person's name, but anyway, just said I wasn't real. I'm like, what does that mean? But, you know, But that's good. Maybe there's going to be things that we say here today that people aren't going to agree with me, Adam, or you, Mike. They have a totally different point of view. I mean, there's a billion people on LinkedIn, and so not everybody's going to agree. So that's probably a good thing, right?

Sure. Mitch Daniels, one of my favorite people, one of my mentors in life, who was Indiana governor and he was the OMB director for George Bush and senior executive Eli Lilly and everything. And when he ran for governor, I mean, he did not attack the Democrats. He said, we don't have enemies, we have opponents. You know, we should respect people with different ideas and they should respect us. And there's no need to get personal or, you know, deep dive into somebody's personal life or anything like that. Let's talk about ideas and we'll have a good debate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of good things being shared here. Said you stopped recording, but we can still hear you. We can still see you, but you froze on the screen, just to let you know, Mike. But now you're back.

Now there we go. Yeah, for some reason my, my screen keeps timing out for some reason.

Yeah, that's okay. It'll still capture it because it's actually recording locally. So as we replay this, it'll all be there. But in the live session, it'll probably just stop a little bit and it'll freeze or whatever. Okay. Um, with the last few minutes, a couple things. One is I want to I want to give Adam a chance to say his, uh, his thoughts in closing moments. And then I want to have you, uh, what you want to leave with everybody here. Um, and if you're happy to actually— we want to put people in contact with you if you want to do that.

Sure.

We would love to do that. So maybe share how people get in contact with you. So Adam, why don't you kind of give your closing thoughts? And then after both of you guys go, I'll kind of end up. And then please stay on the line, both of you.

Yeah, totally. Like, A, before I forget, for anybody who's listening or watching this later, if anyone knows somebody who can teach us TikTok, please make an introduction. I have a contact there who does onboarding for brands. Her name's Yvonne. She's very nice. But I don't want to burden her time with having to teach, you know, us, you know, uninitiated. But I would truly love to learn how to make the most. And to Mike's point, connect with people properly on that platform, because I do not know it. But yeah, I mean, beyond that, I think the— I'm super interested to hear Mike give us kind of a rundown on the best way to connect with him. And, you know, as you guys were talking about the Winston Churchill quotes and things like that, it reminded me of the— it's an Einstein— it was an interview. So I don't know if you totally call it a quote. But there was a book that was written basically disputing his theory of relativity. And it was, you know, 100 Physicists Dispute Einstein's Theory of Relativity. And that was the title of the book, or the title of the research paper. And in an interview, Einstein was asked, you know, what do you think of that? And he's like, well, if I was wrong, it would have only taken one, you wouldn't need 100. So I don't care, right?

That's good.

And I just, again, like, I think that's where it's, you know, we don't have enemies, we have opponents, like all of that, the attitude, you know, the work ethic, the ethos, the ethics around it all. I think it all ties together. So whatever the point I'm trying to make in that is, I've really enjoyed the conversation. And yeah, looking forward to your closing thoughts, Mike.

Great. Well, first of all, I'll make my own pitch here. I'm the CEO of a company called the Kumarsad Group. Now, what I, you know, You know, what is a Cumharsacht? It's not a thing, it's a concept. And Cumharsacht is Irish for communications. And so I decided to build my company around my Irish heritage. My logo is the Irish harp. And again, I use my writing ability, my photography ability, my team-building ability to benefit clients across the board, whether it's, you know, the beverage industry, The financial services industry, you know, addiction treatment industry, public education, I mean, warehousing. I have a broad set of interests and I can, I can help you build your brand.

Wow, that's awesome.

Very cool.

We'll put the contact information to people to get in touch with you as well.

Great. Yeah, I'm gonna appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm gonna grab the website and throw it in the LinkedIn chat here real quick.

Please, that'd be great. That would be awesome. Thanks, Adam. Well, first of all, I learned a lot this morning as well. First of all, um, you know, building goodwill in a community, that really sat with me, um, this morning. So giving it a lot of thought about brands and, and actually from a PR perspective, actually putting those brands in contact with someone like yourself, actually put them in contact with you.

Thank you.

I think you could probably help many of our brands, especially if you focus on the Indianapolis market or any other market across North America. I'm assuming you have expertise there. And then your answer to the question about the difference between success and failure hit home with me as well, because you said something that I didn't really think about is integrity, doing what you say you're going to do and work ethic, you know, because every— we always say the difference between success and failure is not giving up, but that's work ethic to me.

That's right.

You know, um, and you can't, you can't teach work ethic either. Maybe your mom teaches you. We should obviously give our moms credit here.

Yeah.

But, uh, but either, either, either work ethic or not. Either have a heart or you don't. Either have intelligence or you don't.

And, and these principles, Sam, they are universal and They're not restricted to state borders or country borders or languages or anything else. I mean, those principles are universal.

Yeah, they sure are. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

For joining us, Mike. It's been a pleasure. We're forever friends now, by the way. And now that I have your cell phone, which is dangerous in my world, I'll be calling I'm calling you on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings. I just, I just roll. I'm like, I, I just, I just call. If I'm out for a walk, I always call someone. I'm like, you know what, they're either going to answer it or not. I don't book appointments. So this is—

No, no, I'm the same way. But you know, when you're in the PR business, one thing you learn quickly is your phone is with you 24/7. It's next to me, literally on the, on the bed stand, you know. And, uh, that's the way— that's, you know, it's again part of work ethic. You respond to your clients.

I love that. We met a gentleman, I won't name was, but he goes he doesn't answer the phone and the only way to get a hold of him is make appointments. I don't know if you can remember who that was, Adam. I was, I was blown away by it. It was like, it was the exact opposite of me. I couldn't get my head wrapped around. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna go with it. But it works for him, which is fine. So I'm not—

it works for him.

Super, super good guy, by the way. But you have to make an appointment about 6 months out if you want to get a hold of him. So I'm like, okay, I'll talk to you in 6 months, which doesn't, doesn't, uh, doesn't work for me. So thanks everybody for joining us. Have a great weekend. Uh, Mike and Adam, thank you as well. I'll remain on the line and, uh, everybody have a beautiful weekend.

Thank you very much.

Thanks everyone.