Scott Duffy interviews Rudy Ruettiger, Football Legend, Business & Burgers: Season 2 Ep. 12

I'm Alan Taylor.

My buddy Scott Duffy and I are in search of the best burger in America.

Each month we visit a new city.

To try some of the top restaurants, pubs, and brewhouses while sitting down for a candid conversation with some of the top entrepreneurs, athletes, entertainers, and celebrities. I don't know about you, but I love talking business over a burger. Welcome to business and burgers.

Today we're getting our food on the go in Salt Lake City, Utah. We're trying not one, but two burgers, courtesy of Black Sliders Air. Aaron Black started his food truck with the goal of offering the highest quality farm to truck foods at a price point that everyone could afford. After a battle with cancer, Aaron realized the importance of a healthy diet stripped of chemicals and processed foods and brought that healthy mindset to the menu. At Black Sliders, we've been told their food is as delicious as it is healthy, and we can't wait to sink our teeth in. Joining us is football legend Rudy Rudiger, guest from the movie Rudy to discuss something that both football players and entrepreneurs can relate to. Overcoming the odds. Rudy has traveled the world telling his amazing underdog story and has made it his mission in life to give people hope. It's the tough times that have shaped Rudy into the man he is today, and we're lucky to get to share a burger with him.

Rudy, awesome.

Alan, I want to introduce you to.

My good friend Rudy Rudiger.

Good to meet you.

Alan Taylor.

I've heard a little bit about your story. It's just an honor to meet you.

It's a American story. It's really a story about someone with a dream who said they couldn't have it.

I've always looked at you as the ultimate underdog.

Talk to us about that.

I had everything going against me and really, I mean, because I wanted to go to Notre Dame. You had to have grades. I didn't have the grades. One of 14. Dad worked 14 kids.

You have four, 14 kids.

So my parents were blue collar and my athletic skills were not on the top of the candidate list to go to Notre Dame.

And you're not the tallest guy in the world.

Not the tallest, but I had a dream, and I always looked at myself as someone 6 foot 5, not 5 foot 6. And that's how I perceived myself. It's how you look at yourself as what you become. I had dyslexia. I didn't know I had it until I went in the Navy. But the dyslexia held me back from really getting help in School, I was held back and I was focusing on my negative side instead of my positive side. So that's why I graduated third of my class from the bottom. Well, you know what?

Third from the bottom.

I was going to say the average.

Sat at Notre Dame is 1440. You think they want a kid like me? Yeah, I don't think so.

But your worst, I guess just attributes that you thought were your worst things were probably the challenge that you needed in life to do what you needed to do to become the man that.

You are today called the edge. We all need an edge. If you don't have that edge, you can't become that man. You all need that. You can't do it or you can't have it. And you question to yourself, why not? Why can't I? And when you believe in yourself, that's a God given talent in itself.

You know, character, I think, comes out every single day in the Entrepreneur. It's really revealed and we all have highs and lows and I think it's really during those down times when we really see who a person is and what they're made of.

Yeah, because you could see, you know, them stepping back from the challenge or stepping up to the challenge. Now I learned too, every setback means. What did I learn from that? From that setback? And you go back and fix it.

And that perseverance that a person has to have that they find deep down in the. In the core of who they really are. And your story is like, perfect. Is a perfect showcase of that.

Right before the game, they gave me a jersey with no name. I was the last guy to put on the roster that day. What happens is when you walk down that tunnel, looking at that stadium, you hear people, hey, Rudy, take us out in the field. That's because of respect. They respected and they knew your dreams, so they brought you out and you lit. Led the team out. Now once you go run out of that tunnel and there's 60,000 people cheering for those kids and you're one of them and you're going, wow, this. And you think differently now. Now you think, wow, am I glad I didn't quit. Then you wanted to play. But realistically, you can't play because you're not one of the first 48 players or 22 players. You're the last of the last. Well, because of relationships, I built a lot of relationships with my friends at Notre Dame and they found out I was dressing, they start chanting my name and the whole stadium started chanting. And the team says, get them in get them in. And it was 27 seconds and we were on. Actually, we were on offense at the time. I wouldn't go in the minute. I thought that said that they scored. Now I'm on defense.

Now. You go into that zone, the zone, you don't hear the noise. You just complete focus. You've been practicing and preparing for this moment. Now you're ready. And as the clock ended, I got the tackle, and there's a group of guys that came out, carried me off the field. I'm embarrassed. Said, what are you doing? Drop me, man. No, man, you're the man. He kept saying, you're the man. I didn't understand that till later. You don't know the people that you touched the through your hard work. That's why hard work's important. And doing the work, you tell people to do the work. You're doing the work, they follow you. That's why it works.

That's the ripple effect.

That's the ripple effect.

It's interesting. You said, you know, you were the last of the last, and I think it's interesting. It's okay to be last. There's something special about opening the door for people and letting everybody know the.

Other thing for kids, I tell kids this all the time. Number one, you don't have to be the smartest kid in class to be somebody. Remember that. You don't have to be the best athlete to be somebody. Know that. Be a great contributor, be a great teammate. You'll be the leader. You'll be hiring those guys.

I think that's a great stop for the burgers.

Ooh, burgers.

With two awesome burgers to choose from, it's hard to know where to begin. I could start with Black's classic beef slider topped with cheddar cheese and caramelized onions. Or if I'm in the mood, I could go with Black's deluxe slider with sliced Roma tomatoes on a Tuscan bun. Either way, it's a win.

Win. A little bird told me that you actually have a story, too. I'd like to hear that.

Okay. Well, my wife was six months pregnant, and I got the news I had cancer. So with that being said, it kind of changes the way you view your life. So I got going. I ended up building my own truck, which is right out front. Now I have two trucks, and I'm opening up a restaurant. And it's been, you know, really wild. Three years. I'm doing good, cancer wise. So that is great. I have another son now, so it's really been quite a blessing for me and my family.

So when you heard you had cancer, did you feel like giving up or did you know that that was your shift gears and keep going?

I don't think giving up is in the story. When your wife's six months pregnant and you need to be a daddy, it's a whole different ball game. I think health was what I really, really needed to focus on. So that's how the hormone antibiotic free serving, you know, we call it conscious consumerism to really, you know, tailor to the health for the community as a whole, be able to go out there, serve high quality food, fresh food that's healthy. And a kind of motto with me and my crew is don't serve the food unless it's something you're going to serve to your mom or your significant other.

Chef Black, you rock, bro.

You rock.

Awesome.

You're the real deal.

Sliders.

Enjoy your lunch, guys.

All right, man. Thank you.

So one of the things I like most about these burgers is the size of the slider. It's not too big. It's not too small.

Well, as Rudy has proved, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Isn't that the truth? Look at that, guys.

It is.

So how has all of this helped to position you in life?

Inspiration is the key. You need to be inspired. Dreams just don't fall out of the sky, as you know. You don't pick a dream out. Once you're inspired by somebody or something or what someone did, then you connect to that. You say, that's what I want, Then what you do, you need to see it. You got to really see it and start planning it. The hard thing, once you plan, you got to do it now. You got to position yourself around people to keep you going as you're doing it. The more you position yourself around the when guy, the guy that says, when we gonna do it and get rid of the why guy, you're gonna find out you go a lot faster, and things are gonna be now it's not work anymore. It's almost like a gift that you have. The gift of work. I work because I love it, not because I have to. And that's the gift.

It's interesting, too, that when you have that gift, you have endless energy.

Endless.

I find myself working into the middle of the night. I've actually worked through the entire night. My wife brought me dinner, and then my kid brought me breakfast. I'm still working. Nobody was telling me to work. I just loved what I was doing.

How.

How did you position yourself when it came to making the movie?

Like, how did that happen?

Well, first of all, you go through a lot of why guys? You gotta go through that to find that other guy.

So actually, I'm gonna stop you there, because I've had people tell me in my life, I'm gonna make you rich.

Right.

I always take a step back when I hear that.

Well, it goes right back to believing in you.

That's right.

That's the key. Once you believe in you, you won't buy into that, but take some bumps to start believing in you. And that edge I talk about, so you're gonna go through that, but you need that as well.

When you're on stage talking, is there a theme to what you like to talk about? I mean, does it start somewhere? Do you have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Yes.

You've got to find your connection immediately. You got about 30 seconds. And you find that connection with somebody in that audience, and you connect. Next thing you want to do, you want to give them hope. How are you going to give these people hope? Tell your story. But it's their story and the end of it. You want that crescendo. You want that victory. And the victory is, yes, I can. I can do this. That's the victory.

So, Rudy, we have a few questions have come in through Facebook and our friends at Entrepreneur, and the first is from Matty Greenberg. And Mattie wants to ask you, what is the best lesson you learned from football that helps you in your business ventures?

Get up. When you get knocked down, get up, because everybody wants to see you stay down. It's when you get up. And now people start recognizing your character at that point.

You know, there's hundreds of thousands of businesses that are started every single year, and the reality is most of them are going to fail. And there's a lot of people out there that they feel like they're entrepreneurs, they want to be business owners, and maybe didn't work the first time or the second time, but they're embarrassed or.

They'Re trying to hide from.

They don't want to get back up. What advice would you give to them?

They'll probably fail on three things that they thought they wanted to do. When they fail, they're going to find out what they want to do, and you got to go back at that, what you really want to do. Maybe it's not having a business. Maybe they thought, or maybe it's another business. I'll tell you, it's better to fail than to win right away, because you learn a lot from failing.

Wait, that's really powerful. Better to fail than to win right away. That is really powerful.

You know, I remember at a point in my business life, they changed some laws, and things just kind of went down and bad, and it didn't go my way. I sold everything I owned, and I had to move in with my dad for a little while. And I thought, I'm a complete failure. My brother one time was going through a tough time, and I said, you know, I wasn't truly happy till I had nothing, because then I started to reevaluate life.

Gratitude.

I learned to appreciate my wife, my children, the littlest things in life. So failure is really not failure. It's actually winning if you deal with it right.

If you deal with it right. Positive. Positive thinking is the key.

Yeah. So I pivoted, moved on. Here I am right now with you and my buddy Scott.

I can't wait till you see the movie Rudy.

I know, I know, right?

Wait till you see the.

The movie called Alan.

Yeah, they do have a movie called Alan. It flopped.

Oh, well.

All right, get some more questions from Facebook.

All right, so here's another question from Facebook, and this one is from Kaylee McGee, and she's with Scipio, and she asks, how did you overcome opposition in football and in business and keep such a positive attitude going?

I remember when my best friend died, I said, why is this happening? And I learned I can't live in regret. Life is too short. So you move on. And you have to move on. You can't live in that moment, but you got to move on and grieve, but move on. And that was an important lesson I learned.

And I think these journeys in life are so heavy. And if you're bitter, if you're angry, if you don't learn from what's happening in the moment, if you close your eyes and just go, you don't learn it. We've all had our tough times.

We all have.

If there's a person in the world that has not had a tough time, I've not met them yet.

I haven't met him either.

And I think that's one of the things that I've learned the most through doing this show, is that everybody has a story. And I think that there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there, and there's a lot of people that dream, and they have a big vision, but they feel like they're all alone. I think what we really need to learn how to do is to really take anything that's happened with us and repackage it into a way that's positive, a lesson that can help to move us forward. And if you feel alone, because sometimes being an entrepreneur is a really lonely job.

It's lonely.

It's a really. It can be a really lonely job. If you feel that you're alone. Go out and become a part of groups. You know, go out and become a part of networking things and. And have a burger.

Rudy. So talking about lessons.

Yes.

A lot of people watch this show and we love to try and have two or three great lessons that live on beyond you. When you're gone, these lessons are going to be there. What would you like that to be?

Well, I think the first lesson is, and like in anything, get that dream. When you fulfill your dream, you can give another person a dream. So dreams are important. Empower people. Don't look at their negative side. Look at their positive side and you'll be very successful.

What do you think your purpose is in life?

Give hope.

Give hope.

Yep.

That's awesome. Well, you've given me hope. You really have. You give me and millions of you.

We gave you a burger, too.

Let me give you.

I'm not trying to be funny. It's awesome. We met for a reason.

Exactly.

I guarantee you, brother. Good to see you. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Rudy shared some inspirational life lessons that apply both on and off the field. Here's some food for thought. When you get knocked down, get back up. It's up to you to prove your credits wrong. It's better to fail than to win right away. Some of the best life lessons come from failure. Don't be afraid to dream big. Do what inspires you and you will inspire others next time. Scott and I sit down with Randy Garn and Nick Greer of Scipio, an app that helps businesses reach their customers through personalized text messaging. Buddy since college, Randy and Nick prove that you can go into business with your friends and be successful. In fact, they've made it their mission to help their clients cultivate authentic relationships that will keep their customers engaged and business booming. That's next time right here on Business and Burgers.

Burgers.

Check out more episodes of Business and Burgers and our B and B blog at our website, businessandburgers.com and don't forget, visit Business Burgers on Facebook and give us a big thumbs up. We'll see you next time right here on Business and Burgers.