Mitzi Perdue: Professional Public Speaker On Business | The Business Blast Podcast #369

Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Mitzi Perdue with us. She is a professional public speaker on business. So welcome to the show, Mitzi.

Oh, it's great to be with you.

Great to have you on. Uh, well, we'll dive in. The first question I have for you, Mitzi, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Hmm. All right. I have a story that has a huge, great lesson or message, but it's something that my father told me, but I'm going to count it as my message because I got it from him. My father was the founder or the co-founder of the Sheraton Hotels. That was a chain that had almost 300 hotels at the time that we sold it, which was 40 years ago. Well, I used to ask him, what is it that enabled you to grow a business with you and your roommate from college and your brother to one that at the time of, uh, that I was asking him, it had more than 100 hotels. What, how were you able to do this? And he said that at every level, it's the people who work with you that make you a success or not. And he said, and here's the story that I wanted to share, he said whenever he went into Whenever he took over a new hotel, and we're talking during the Great Depression, so there were a lot of hotels that were in bankruptcy. Whenever he took over a new hotel, he would gather all the new employees together, or all the people who had worked for the formerly bankrupt hotel. And on the day that he took it over, they'd be in the great big ballroom, hundreds and hundreds of them. And he knew that they were a demoralized group of people because they were afraid that they were going to lose their jobs. But the first thing he'd tell them when he'd stand up in front of all of them would be, tell them, every one of you gets to keep your job because I know that the success of this hotel is going to be because you know the hotel better than anybody else. Nobody could do a better job at it. And, oh, I'm going to give you the tools to show me just how good you can be. And in 2 years, you'll see this is going to be the most popular hotel in your city. Well, the en— The end result of that was that people were just so pleased. And Father said that people have a compulsion to live up to or down to your expectations. But that's not the end of the story. In the following days, if you've got a bankrupt hotel, you probably got to invest a lot of money in refurbishing it. But the first money that he ever spent on a hotel that he had taken over was on areas that the public would never see. It would be, for example, the employee dining rooms, the employee lockers, showers. And he did that, he said, to communicate to them that he knew how important they were. And I love that story because he caught on, you know, generations ahead of his time, that the soft power of persuasion, of getting people to have a better vision of themselves is much more important than just telling people, you know, shape up or you're fired. One can get maybe some compliance, but the other approach of believing in them gets lifelong commitment and engagement and loyalty.

Yes, that is huge, and that is an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that with us. Um, the next one I have for you is, what is the What's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Hmm. I guess, you know, again, it's going to get back to loyalty. I just told a story about my late father, but my late husband, Frank Perdue, he was my hero for the entire time of our marriage because I just admired him so much. He would do so much to show the people who worked with him how important they were to him. And one of the things that we did, and I played a role in this, when we first married and we'd just come back from our honeymoon, and we're talking 1988, we were walking along the beach in Newport, Rhode Island. And, you know, we have our sandals in our hands and it's, you know, kind of a warm, fun time. But I look up to him and I say, Frank, I think we should entertain every single person who works for the company. Well, this took him by, you know, took him aback because at that time there were 16,000 people who worked for the company. And so he told me, no, that's impossible. That's way too many. And I told him, I think we should start in 6 weeks. And he said, no, no, that's way too soon. And then I told him, I think we should have them at 100 at a time. And he said, no, that's way too many. But as we talked and talked with him saying no all along, and me just barreling ahead as if I didn't process the word no, he gradually began changing his attitude and sort of asking me how it could work. And in the end, he said, you know what, I like it. Let's do it. And I know what was going on in his mind because you— I'm hoping that some of you have seen the Frank Perdue commercials because he's very good at it. But in spite of those commercials, he was actually a very shy man. And the thought of having hundreds of people in his home every week. No, it was way, way, way beyond his comfort level. But on the other hand, for him, it was a way of signaling to people that they were important to him. And in the end, he liked the idea. And for our entire marriage until illness prevented him from it, 3 times a month, we would have groups of 100 people. And Frank, at these At these dinners, and there'd be buffets, Frank would wait on the people who worked with him. And they could be the truckers, the sanitation people, the veterinarians, the secretaries, everybody. And they'd come in groups of 100. He would stand behind the buffet line and he'd wait on them. And then at the end of the evening, he'd stand up in front of everybody and he'd tell them, that he knew that the entire success of the company was because of them, that the company would never be what it is today without them. And I loved that he would do this because if you want employee engagement, show people that they're important to you. Show people that you care. You go the extra mile. And I think reciprocity plays a huge role in everything. You go the extra mile for them, they go the extra mile for you.

Yes. And then the next one, it could tie in again, but what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.

Hmm. Well, I can take an example from my late father, my late husband, and myself, and that is both of them, and to some extent myself, We did so much, I think, to transcend our natural limitations. Both my father and my husband were extremely shy people. In fact, my late father was told by a career guidance counselor that, you know, you're a smart guy, but you have no social skills, and you're a huge introvert. You should spend the rest of your life as a scientist behind, you know, in a laboratory pretty much by yourself. And yet he became one of the really the most successful hosts. I think there are few politicians who interacted with as many people as he did. But he took the Dale Carnegie course on how to win friends and influence people, and he studied how to be an extrovert and how to be a good host. Frank Perdue was also somebody who was just tremendously shy. He told me when he was like in his 20s, He had a job as a salesman and he was so shy that all he could look at was— he was selling feed grain. All he could do was look at his feet or his field boots and he couldn't even look his prospect in the eye. But he, like my father, took the Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People course, the public speaking course. And in the end, he became one of the world's best marketers. He transcended himself. Both transcended their limitations. In my own case, I guess I'm a natural extrovert, but I did have something that was holding me back. And that is, at age, I guess it was 38, I wanted a job in television. I had a job at a local show, but I wanted to have it nationally syndicated. And I was held back by a great big overwhelming amazing problem. And that was, I had a lisp. I didn't have just a little itty-bitty lisp. I had a great big one so that on television it was disqualifying because a lisp can be something that you see as well as hear. Well, I wanted this national job. But how do you go about getting rid of a lisp at age 38? Well, I went to 3 different speech therapists. And the first told me that by your age, nobody has ever overcome a lisp. 'You can't do it.' The third one said, 'You can't do it, but I'd be charmed to take your money.' And so for almost a year, I had speech therapy like once a week, and it meant traveling to a pretty far-off city. It was a 2-hour round trip, but once a week I had this speech therapy. And for the first 9 months, we didn't make any progress at all. I couldn't hear the difference. I didn't know how to make— I just didn't know how to make the sound. It was just like Mission Impossible. But finally, at 9 months, I could sort of hear the difference. And by a year, I'd gotten over it and I got the dream job of my life. But I think in my case, just an absolute stubborn unwillingness to give up took me a long way.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Okay, I'm not sure this applies to other people, but, but it's one that I think applies to me. I think, golly, you know, this is a hard question, but I think that I was having been the daughter of a hotel heiress. My father was the founder of the Sheraton Hotels. There were 300 of them at the time of his death. I had a great compulsion for the first, like, 90% of my life to try completely to do it on my own. I wanted a career in writing and in television that wasn't one that Daddy had gotten for me, that I'd earned on my own. But looking back on it, I'm sorry that I took that approach. It was kind of an ego approach. Instead, I wish I had been more grateful to what my parents provided for me. And, you know, it's as if they gave me some ACEs and I refused to play them. So I think that I'd advise people, if you've gotten some ACEs, if you've been lucky enough to have some because maybe they gave you a great education or great advice, Play those aces. Don't let a stubborn ego keep you in the way of being all you can be.

And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

Ah, to me, happiness is giving more than you take. My mother used to say that the— give me one second to deal with a phone call.

Yeah, no worries.

Why is it still ringing if I took it off the hook? Magic. Okay, something else to try. Okay, let's— can we start over again on that answer?

Yeah, of course.

All right. My mother used to say, the givers of the world are happy, the takers of the world are miserable. And what she meant by takers are the people who who exploit others, while the people who do things for others are happy. And I don't want to get too biblical, but I really think it's true that it's more blessed to give than to receive. That if you want to be happy, think what you can do for somebody else. If you want to be miserable, think what's owed to you.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

Oh, golly, do I dare say this? I personally love a book that I wrote on Frank Perdue. His life was just so exciting that I think I learned more from writing it and reading it than many of the popular books that you might come across. Actually, it was fairly popular. It made number 5 on Amazon's business biography. So, I'm happy with it. But the big lesson that I got both from reading the book and from writing it was that success didn't drop in his lap. He was the kind of person who actually was an echo of what my father used to say. Both men would try against the odds. The kind of thing where somebody else would give up or say it's impossible. That go plugging on with just amazing persistence. And so I love my own book because I think it's just a huge example of the persistence and vision that it takes to be a success.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

Oh, let's see. I think I'm going to go right back to one that I've already said. My favorite quote is from my late mother. If you want to be happy— actually, my father shared it too— if you want to be happy, think what you can do for somebody else. If you want to be miserable, think what's owed to you.

I love it. Thank you so much, Mitzi. This was an awesome interview. The last question that I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to connect or find you online?

Ah, go to MitziPerdue.com. And Perdue is spelled P-E-R-D-U-E, like chicken, not like the university. So MitziPerdue.com. And oh, I'd love to have people visit my website. Oh, and gosh, if you're of a mind, please leave me a note. I'd love to know how you liked this. I'd love feedback.

Perfect. Thank you again, Mitzi. We really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

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