welcome everybody to another YouTube
hangout super excited to be here I have
a special guest with me on Bernie Swain
Bernie is the co-founder of the
Washington speaker’s bureau and if you
don’t know them they’re one of the most
respected speaking houses in the world
everybody from former presidents to
athletes to thought leaders to business
people have gone through there and
Bernie has recently written a new book
called what made me who I am where is
taken from some of these leadership
experts and taking some of their best
knowledge and combined it all into one
book for us to consume and he’s here
with us today to talk about the book and
his keys to success in accomplishment
Bernie welcome aboard thank you I
appreciate your being here
so give us a little bit of context to
the people who may not be super familiar
with you a little bit more back on what
you’re all about what you’re interested
in how you came to write this book just
extra context for my entrepreneurial
audience great well I don’t know about a
lot of people in the audience but I knew
what I wanted to be when I was 16 years
old I had a mentor in high school our
athletic director and football coach and
he got me interested I’m actually the
first person my family ever to go to
college
so you know I was from a background
where my father was an orphan for a
while in West Virginia because his grant
his mother didn’t have enough money to
support him and from my mother’s side
from farmers who you know owned their
own farm and ore and lumber company so
I’m the first of my family to go to
college so he kind of encouraged me to
go to college and I wanted to become
something like him so I went for four
years as an undergraduate in physical
education
he ended up teaching at the junior high
school that I had gone to six years
before I went back got a master’s degree
at the University became the intramural
director and the assistant athletic
director was there for five years and
then two months before I was to become
the athletic director I walked away and
left it so to give you a good idea why I
left it my wife recognized in me that
that I kind of wanted to make decisions
on my own which is we should I learned a
lot of lessons from that
later on but I wanted to make decisions
on my own as she was afraid working for
the university I wouldn’t be able to I’d
be subject to committees and people
above me and I wouldn’t get the things
accomplished that I wanted to and I’d
been there for five years and she saw
some frustration and we read an article
in Fortune magazine where they were
talking about the largest lecture agency
in the world and it was Harry Walker
agency out of New York and Harry Walker
had walked into the Ford White House and
picked up him Henry Kissinger and Gerald
Ford Alexander Haig and Kissinger asked
him you know why don’t I go with one of
your competitors instead of you because
he didn’t like the 33% Commission rate
he was being charged and Harry Walker
says I have no competitors well back
then there was no internet there was no
way for us to determine is that the
truth or is that a strategic boast so my
wife said you know you want to think
about getting into this if there’s no
competitors you know at least you’ll be
making decisions on your own and I
thought she was kidding I rolled my eyes
and kind of said you know this is a I
put too much effort I put 15 years into
this career I’m certainly not going to
change because of a magazine article and
it took her about a week to convince me
to quit I quit the job and we started
with no experience and no plan we had
actually no idea what we were doing I
called a friend of mine and he had a
yeah I didn’t have space in his office
but he had a stationery closet and so my
wife and I and our business partner sat
in a stationery closet for a year and
sending out letters to famous people
asking if we could represent them and
getting letters back from lawyers who
said you know stop interfering with
existing contracts with other agencies I
found out there were five or six
different agencies up and down the East
Coast that were doing this and so it was
our way of being educated and figuring
out how to do it and about two or three
weeks before we were run out running out
of money for being able to close our
closet we got a call from a speaker the
person I had represented or person I
represented person I had helped
when I was at GW used a swimming pool he
was the his name was Steve Bell he was
named anchor man for Good Morning
America and Steve had just left his
agency and here the tradition back then
was that you would sign a contract for
one year or two years with agencies and
his contract was up they didn’t do a
good job for him and he says I’ll give
you a chance well we were so excited
with the opportunity of having our first
speaker after a year that we signed him
with a handshake without signing into a
written agreement now I justified it
afterwards by saying well you know if we
had signed him if we had done it the
right way he could have walked away
anyway and we don’t want to make
somebody unhappy and hold him to a
contract like he was before what
happened was that he Washington is a
very small little city and everybody
talks in Washington DC so he would go to
cocktail parties and he’d say you know I
just went with these guys who have a
speaker’s bureau they signed me with a
handshake and if you sign with them you
can walk away anytime you want to on one
hand what that said to us that yes we
can walk away from this we better do a
pretty good job or they will walk away
from us so that’s how we got started I
love it and now fast forward to today
you know one of the most reputable
houses in the world you’ve written this
book but maybe who I am you’ve spoken
with what Tony Blair and : powell all
these weak contributors what was the
motivation for writing this book well I
was it was interesting because one day
in our office I was I got a phone call
from Alex Haley who wrote roots and Alex
said to me you know I’d like to come
over and talk to you about representing
me and this was in about 1985 and and
we’ve been in business we’re about four
years into our growth period and we were
doing well but we weren’t doing great
but but our reputation was good because
we were taking care of those people that
had come with us and so I said he said
I’d like to come over to see you and I
said yeah when would you like to come
and he says if you look out your window
I’m in the telephone booth below so I
looked downstairs and there it was
waving at me so he came up and he used
to come to her office often and one of
the phrases he said was when roll person
dies
it’s like a library burning and I didn’t
quite get it at the time but as the time
went by I I understand what that 50
phrase meant that each life experiences
in each life are like pages in the book
so I started paying attention to the
people we represented not just
representing them but trying to get
interested in who they were
I had great relationships with these
people so it was easy for me to sit down
and just talk about family I could share
my experiences with my family and let
them share theirs so as the years passed
when I stopped working full-time I the
idea was in my head that I wanted to
capture some of the stories that I had
heard over the years so I asked a number
of people if I could interview them to
get the facts correct I taped the
conversation I spent about two and a
half years writing the book and the book
is about the stories the powerful
influences and defining moments in their
lives the turning points in their life
is it’s not about you know unsuccessful
because I did this at the State
Department of the White House or I did
this on the playing field but what was
the personal thing in your life I
remember starting writing the book Bob
Woodward called me in because he was one
of the persons people I wanted to be in
the book and Bob said you know the
difficulty you’re going to have is to
try to get people to tell you the truth
because everybody wants to control their
image and don’t learn what they’re
really like is going to be a difficult
thing for you to do so he gave me some
hints about how what to ask people and
how to ask them and and that’s what I’ve
tried to capture in the book what were
the real turning points in their lives
I loved it and after all of these
interviews and all these one-on-one
times from what you’ve discovered from
them what would you say is is the key to
success and accomplishment I think it’s
a consciousness it’s it’s understanding
who you are I mean it’s so easy for us
to go through life and something happens
to us an event happens or a person comes
into our life or we’re thrown into a
certain circumstance and we don’t we
kind of dismiss it you know we kind of
just want to put it aside and not let it
affect us but everything affects us I
mean you know when we grow up our
childhood experiences our parents our
grandparents the when we’ve become young
adults that
the difficult times and the thinking
that we have to do to to transition from
being a teenager to an adult the people
there the jobs that we have the people
we get we marry get married to the
children we have the failures the
successes the diseases the the tragedies
and the universities all of those things
change us and there is and while they
all changes and we all need to pay
attention to us there is one thing if we
can identify that gives us a passion to
succeed and I think passion in whatever
you want to do in life it’s so much more
important even than talent the ability
to to get up every morning no matter how
difficult it is and start a new day and
have the energy to accomplish new things
and to overcome the difficult times that
you’re having a lot of these people you
know you kind of already knew I guess
through your speaking house wasn’t your
first time introducing to them but I’m
wondering you know you knew their story
a little bit you’ve heard them talk
you’ve heard their presentations so you
already had kind of a built-up plan as
to who these people were but I’m
wondering what you learned through this
process that maybe was a bit surprising
to you maybe a little bit unexpected and
going through the process of writing
that book the thing I learned I think
the most the question I get asked is you
know boy it must have been difficult
dealing with these people you know these
people you know how big egos that which
ones didn’t you like which ones were the
really tough ones to deal with and in
all honesty I found 99.9% of them to be
great people that I’d want to live next
door to so what I found was that success
we may not all be secretaries of state
or presidents of the United States or a
quarterback for a professional football
team but that’s we can have success in
our own run and that success and
accomplishment means that we’re going to
be happy with what we’re doing and what
I found as these people all came from
humble beginnings like I did they all
were chained there
lives were changed because of the same
things happen to them that happen to me
and the same thing happened to me that
happens to millions of other people and
that that success and accomplishment is
dependent on us recognizing what it is
in our life that’s important to us did
you get guidance and how to figure that
out how to understand what is actually
important to us you know it kind of is
it kind of surprised me because I went
into it kind of not kind of thinking
okay I’m going to get exactly what I
want to get and he’s kind of threw me
when Bob Woodward said you know they’re
not going to be willing to talk to you
what I found a lot of them were willing
to talk to me now that you know it
wasn’t the taping of their conversations
and the stories that I already knew
would come in pieces you know because
they they would they would talk about
something in their life and then they
would go on to something else about work
and then they for some reason they come
back to that point again and the
challenge for me was to kind of figure
out get through the clutter of all the
things that they were thinking about and
get rid of the professional stuff that
that affected them the problem I had
with the book initially was that I wrote
a hundred and forty thousand words for
this book so I got there so two books I
get an agent to buy the get to do the
book for me and and he sends it out and
people look at this book like this and I
got turned down by virtually every
publisher good publisher in the country
because they said wow that’s just
nobody’s ever gonna read something like
that right so I took all the comments of
what the publisher said to me you know
the criticisms and I took it to heart
and I spent the next seven months going
back and getting rid of all the
unnecessary things in the book except
for what was personal to them and then I
had to go back and then I had to do some
reinterviews with people because I think
I could get part of the story but I
couldn’t get all of the story so the
difficult thing for me was trying to
capture what it is
Terry Bradshaw is a very private
individual and you know Terry after he
left this where it hadn’t been back to
Pittsburgh for a long time and and he’s
a very sensitive person who kind of felt
hurt because he had a difficult time
adjusting to city life and so it took me
three interviews to get Terry to to open
up I had two the first two interviews I
had somebody on the phone that he knew
was taping the conversation the last
interview I had to tape it myself where
he knew he was only talking to me that
was the that was the challenge that I
had this was to get him open up and for
the people to really tell what was
really behind or change it and I guess
that’s a meanness of all leaders face is
an entrepreneurs face is getting the
people around them to open up and tell
them the truth the people under them
their customers or suppliers their
investors the real truth not just the
service-level answers do you have advice
for people who are trying to make
breakthroughs with other people to get
to the real truth so they can address a
situation how do you get there faster
how do you make them feel more
comfortable how do you get at the real
answers well I think I think it all
starts with you I mean I don’t think I
don’t think you can be a leader unless
you understand yourself the strengths
and weaknesses of who you are first and
and and so I spend a lot of time trying
to sit down and think how did they get
from place a to place B to place see and
I think that’s the first thing we all
have to do I think for entrepreneurs who
are going to be employing others and
working and be leading other people that
that is a priority to success I mean
that that is the basic thing that you
have to learn is that you have to
understand yourself and when you
understand yourself you can better
understand others I I remember my wife
Paula wanted me to change jobs because
she said I want to make decisions on my
own well the first thing I did was say
okay and that was my chance to make
decisions on my own and I’m gonna tell
people what to do well what I first
discovered was that like I was in that
old situation at the university the
people that were going to work for me
wanted to make decisions on their own
too
so good leaders good leaders are people
who set a moral standard establish a
guideline and then give the people that
they’re taking care of the people that
are working for them the opportunity to
make decisions on their own what that
did was surprisingly to me was that we
hired some good people at the beginning
in the early about eight or nine years
after we began and by giving these
people a moral standard and a guideline
and then allowing them to make decisions
and take risks and be an entrepreneur
even though they’re working for me on
their own created ten star agents we’ll
all individuals and all who make all the
decisions and by doing that the people
that we were providing speakers for
wanted to work well I only want to work
for Tony or I want only what I want to
work for this agent because they develop
a rapport and they could trust the event
and these people had the opportunity to
to excel on their own and be satisfied
with what they were doing eleven so
we’ve got a live audience watched and on
us going through here they’re loving
what you’re saying number they’re asking
questions I want to kind of acknowledge
and recognize them
AJ’s writing in to say Bernie how can we
deal with our doubt you know I think I
think we all have doubts I think part of
it is just understanding first
understanding who we are I mean I think
we have doubts when we don’t trust
ourselves when we don’t you know believe
in ourselves and and when that happens
there’s something bothering us I think
I’m I’m not a psychiatrist you know or
somebody that’s going to kind of figure
out who you are necessarily but but what
I do understand that that we have to
have to be comfortable with who we are
in order to be confident in ourselves
and I think and that just takes it takes
some time just to sit down and think you
know okay how did I how do I feel about
the people that are in my life
how do I feel about what events in my
life took place and what did they say
and do to me
you know and where am i right now and
and what is my passion I think I had I
started in an industry I knew nothing
about
I remember going into the first day and
asking my wife Paul who was in there
okay explain to me again who do we
provide these speakers for and I had
thought I was okay maybe Boy Scouts Girl
Scouts I wasn’t quite sure what we were
doing that’s how stupid I was now it’s
easy to have a doubt when you’re that
naive about what you’re doing and you go
home when you think yeah I can’t glue
that tomorrow and but I had a passion
for what I was wanted to do so that
passion said overcame all the doubts
that I am I got up every morning and the
day before we could have sat in her
closet and nobody talked to us and and
after after 12 months of sitting in that
closet and nobody nobody signing with us
and nobody caught up answering our
telephone calls you have a lot of doubts
well I own that 12 month I was waking up
excited about life because I had a
passion for what I was doing and then
that overcomes the doubts that you have
and so what was that passion wasn’t the
idea of building a speaking house was it
the ability to share knowledge and and
disseminate great ideas because you know
most people if they’re working on the
business for a year and have quit their
jobs you know if it’s not that’s not
working out they’re not getting
customers or sales they’re gonna they’re
gonna pack it in so what was that
passion that kept you going – I think
you know I I’m worried about
entrepreneurism right now because on
occasion you read about more failures
and successes and and I don’t think
we’re giving entrepreneurs economically
business-wise enough opportunity enough
chances to succeed so that does bother
me and so I my passion I think was just
to create something I was proud of you
know I think
I think if you set a high standard if
you go for something right at the top
then everything below kind of fills
itself in and I just wanted to create
something I was proud of even though
people weren’t talking to us or saying
they were telling us well no you don’t
represent anybody I’m not going to work
with you I was always nice and polite to
them
I was always networking and building
friendships and that all started to come
together once we got a few speakers
because people people said you know hey
you know this is the I’m not Tooting my
own horn because there were a lot of
great people in my company but this is a
good guy who wants to just do good
things and that’s all I ever wanted to
do I said just says I i standard for
what I wanted to do and accomplish and
everything below kind of just filled
itself in I think if you you know it was
easy it was easy for me to cut corners I
think if you’re in it in this industry
if you’re in a lecture agency or a
Hollywood agency or any agency in the
industry really if you’re in there long
enough you learn how to do it and you
start cutting corners and soon as you
start cutting corners then you start
giving away the the honesty and trust
that that you want to build in the
company so the great thing for us is
when you don’t know anything you start
from the beginning you draw a map from A
to B and in that map you’re just
figuring out how to do it with common
sense not cutting corners so the most
important thing for me I wanted to build
something I was just proud of done and I
will say in our business you know the
lecture agencies like Hollywood if you
look at Hollywood agencies like CAA and
those others they’re really hot for ten
years and then somebody comes along and
knocks them off and somebody else is
really hot well there’s a reason for
that
my my opinion personal opinion
is that you start you do start cutting
corners and do not start taking chances
that you shouldn’t be taking and so
somebody else comes along that seems a
little shinier well you know we became
the number one agency in the world and
like 1980
rathalu sign Ronald Reagan in that
market Thatcher and we’ve stayed that
for 27 years that’s the longest of any
lecture agency in the history and and
those lecture agencies started back in
the Civil War
you know when Mark Twain was was signed
by us the first lecture agent so I think
great pride in the fact that we that we
we’ve lasted so long just because we’ve
tried tried our hardest
we’ve always asked the question is this
the right thing to do and we’ve tried
your hardest to live up to that 11 so so
your book what made me who I am comes
out next week on Tuesday it does it’s 34
short stories they’re all personal short
stories in it you know tony blair was a
long-haired musician who hitchhiked from
his hometown in England to London and
worked in a music store and that’s all
he he I remember him telling me the
story that there was a story about the
brother of the chauffeur of the Beatles
got a hot date and that convinced him
that he wanted to be in the music
business for the rest of his life and
here he is Prime Minister and at what
changed in his life and Bob Woodward
became an investigative journalist
because he was a janitor in his father’s
law firm and it was a very kind of
Mayberry corner kind of town where
nothing ever was was wrong there was
always good people and he started
reading the depositions on his father’s
desk about some person that did
something and somebody else who did
something and he realized that there was
truth behind the truth that was told I
don’t know whether you I don’t know
whether you know Robert rice or not he
was the Secretary of Labor Robert rice
is very liberal and believes fights hard
for equality for everyone
what he when he was a during college he
had no interest at all his current
events and he’s only four foot eleven so
from the time he was in kindergarten he
was teased and bullied and and his
mechanism was that he used to get people
boys of older grades to protect him and
he walked along with them and nobody
would bother one of the boys that
protected him during the summer was a
guy named Mickey Schwimmer and Mickey
wanted to be a veterinarian but somehow
got derailed and ended up at Columbia to
get in in criminal justice and it was in
the 1960s when all the civil Wyatt civil
wars civil riots were going on in the
south and so Mickey Schwimmer and two
other people went south they were killed
by a local sheriff and their deputies
the bodies were hid for a month they
were found and when Robert rice heard
this story with no interest in current
events decided to change his life in
honor of that person and that is how it
became who he was he ended up be
president of a sophomore junior class
went work work for Robert Kennedy and
and became secretary of labor for Bill
Clinton I love it so many great stories
so it comes out on Tuesday are you doing
pre-orders now or I’m doing pre-orders
now Amazon Barnes and Noble and and as
you know it’s it for me for somebody
who’s relatively unknown it’s it’s hard
to do a book because publishers you know
like track records and they like people
these are and these are good little
stories these are good positive stories
and I think I wrote the book especially
for people starting out in life today
hoping they could see what I had learned
and what others had learned in their
lives and they could understand it the
defining moments in their lives and that
you know maybe that would change the
life or two so my hope is that it does
well I like it I’ll read it and and the
library won’t die with you I hope but
when one last question is know where
we’re coming up on time my audience a
lot of them there
Ranieri Oh a lot of them have to learn
to lead themselves before they worry
about leading the team to get themselves
with the discipline and the strength and
the courage to go where they need to go
what’s one lesson they’re gonna learn in
the book about how they can lead
themselves better well I think the key
to the book is is that just to find the
passion and it’s not easy to find the
passion it’s easy to say you know I have
a talent in art or I have a talent in
this or I like this and therefore I have
a passion and it’s not always true I
mean it’s I found it very hard my wife
had to tell me that I wanted to make
decisions on my own I didn’t think about
it
I didn’t realize it that and if it
hadn’t been for her and had meant for
Alex healing I wouldn’t have understood
the power of passion and I think if
there’s one thing I leave with with
anybody who’s starting out in business
today it’s just sit down and think don’t
sit down and think for a day sit down
and just concentrate on what’s important
for you and talk to other people and see
if other people other people who love
you and are with you all the time can
say to you you know what you know while
you may be interested in this I see a
passion in your life and this and if we
can be conscious of who we are and find
a passion I just it just it’s a way to
make us happy I know I know once I
started doing this of an industry I’d
never heard of when I started until I
read that Fortune magazine article I’ve
loved every minute of it because I ended
up having a passion for it and so I
think that’s the key to it I love it
well the people in the comments are love
we knew their scene I’m going to
pre-order it right now so guys go check
it out what made me who I am pre-order
now comes out on Tuesday Bernie thank
you so much your time thank you I really
enjoy this my first video podcast there
we go we broke your YouTube virginity
here I love it well thank you very much
you get a great reputation that I love
being with you thank you I appreciate
that thank you Bernie thank you guys for
watching and continue to believe and
we’ll see you soon
hangout super excited to be here I have
a special guest with me on Bernie Swain
Bernie is the co-founder of the
Washington speaker’s bureau and if you
don’t know them they’re one of the most
respected speaking houses in the world
everybody from former presidents to
athletes to thought leaders to business
people have gone through there and
Bernie has recently written a new book
called what made me who I am where is
taken from some of these leadership
experts and taking some of their best
knowledge and combined it all into one
book for us to consume and he’s here
with us today to talk about the book and
his keys to success in accomplishment
Bernie welcome aboard thank you I
appreciate your being here
so give us a little bit of context to
the people who may not be super familiar
with you a little bit more back on what
you’re all about what you’re interested
in how you came to write this book just
extra context for my entrepreneurial
audience great well I don’t know about a
lot of people in the audience but I knew
what I wanted to be when I was 16 years
old I had a mentor in high school our
athletic director and football coach and
he got me interested I’m actually the
first person my family ever to go to
college
so you know I was from a background
where my father was an orphan for a
while in West Virginia because his grant
his mother didn’t have enough money to
support him and from my mother’s side
from farmers who you know owned their
own farm and ore and lumber company so
I’m the first of my family to go to
college so he kind of encouraged me to
go to college and I wanted to become
something like him so I went for four
years as an undergraduate in physical
education
he ended up teaching at the junior high
school that I had gone to six years
before I went back got a master’s degree
at the University became the intramural
director and the assistant athletic
director was there for five years and
then two months before I was to become
the athletic director I walked away and
left it so to give you a good idea why I
left it my wife recognized in me that
that I kind of wanted to make decisions
on my own which is we should I learned a
lot of lessons from that
later on but I wanted to make decisions
on my own as she was afraid working for
the university I wouldn’t be able to I’d
be subject to committees and people
above me and I wouldn’t get the things
accomplished that I wanted to and I’d
been there for five years and she saw
some frustration and we read an article
in Fortune magazine where they were
talking about the largest lecture agency
in the world and it was Harry Walker
agency out of New York and Harry Walker
had walked into the Ford White House and
picked up him Henry Kissinger and Gerald
Ford Alexander Haig and Kissinger asked
him you know why don’t I go with one of
your competitors instead of you because
he didn’t like the 33% Commission rate
he was being charged and Harry Walker
says I have no competitors well back
then there was no internet there was no
way for us to determine is that the
truth or is that a strategic boast so my
wife said you know you want to think
about getting into this if there’s no
competitors you know at least you’ll be
making decisions on your own and I
thought she was kidding I rolled my eyes
and kind of said you know this is a I
put too much effort I put 15 years into
this career I’m certainly not going to
change because of a magazine article and
it took her about a week to convince me
to quit I quit the job and we started
with no experience and no plan we had
actually no idea what we were doing I
called a friend of mine and he had a
yeah I didn’t have space in his office
but he had a stationery closet and so my
wife and I and our business partner sat
in a stationery closet for a year and
sending out letters to famous people
asking if we could represent them and
getting letters back from lawyers who
said you know stop interfering with
existing contracts with other agencies I
found out there were five or six
different agencies up and down the East
Coast that were doing this and so it was
our way of being educated and figuring
out how to do it and about two or three
weeks before we were run out running out
of money for being able to close our
closet we got a call from a speaker the
person I had represented or person I
represented person I had helped
when I was at GW used a swimming pool he
was the his name was Steve Bell he was
named anchor man for Good Morning
America and Steve had just left his
agency and here the tradition back then
was that you would sign a contract for
one year or two years with agencies and
his contract was up they didn’t do a
good job for him and he says I’ll give
you a chance well we were so excited
with the opportunity of having our first
speaker after a year that we signed him
with a handshake without signing into a
written agreement now I justified it
afterwards by saying well you know if we
had signed him if we had done it the
right way he could have walked away
anyway and we don’t want to make
somebody unhappy and hold him to a
contract like he was before what
happened was that he Washington is a
very small little city and everybody
talks in Washington DC so he would go to
cocktail parties and he’d say you know I
just went with these guys who have a
speaker’s bureau they signed me with a
handshake and if you sign with them you
can walk away anytime you want to on one
hand what that said to us that yes we
can walk away from this we better do a
pretty good job or they will walk away
from us so that’s how we got started I
love it and now fast forward to today
you know one of the most reputable
houses in the world you’ve written this
book but maybe who I am you’ve spoken
with what Tony Blair and : powell all
these weak contributors what was the
motivation for writing this book well I
was it was interesting because one day
in our office I was I got a phone call
from Alex Haley who wrote roots and Alex
said to me you know I’d like to come
over and talk to you about representing
me and this was in about 1985 and and
we’ve been in business we’re about four
years into our growth period and we were
doing well but we weren’t doing great
but but our reputation was good because
we were taking care of those people that
had come with us and so I said he said
I’d like to come over to see you and I
said yeah when would you like to come
and he says if you look out your window
I’m in the telephone booth below so I
looked downstairs and there it was
waving at me so he came up and he used
to come to her office often and one of
the phrases he said was when roll person
dies
it’s like a library burning and I didn’t
quite get it at the time but as the time
went by I I understand what that 50
phrase meant that each life experiences
in each life are like pages in the book
so I started paying attention to the
people we represented not just
representing them but trying to get
interested in who they were
I had great relationships with these
people so it was easy for me to sit down
and just talk about family I could share
my experiences with my family and let
them share theirs so as the years passed
when I stopped working full-time I the
idea was in my head that I wanted to
capture some of the stories that I had
heard over the years so I asked a number
of people if I could interview them to
get the facts correct I taped the
conversation I spent about two and a
half years writing the book and the book
is about the stories the powerful
influences and defining moments in their
lives the turning points in their life
is it’s not about you know unsuccessful
because I did this at the State
Department of the White House or I did
this on the playing field but what was
the personal thing in your life I
remember starting writing the book Bob
Woodward called me in because he was one
of the persons people I wanted to be in
the book and Bob said you know the
difficulty you’re going to have is to
try to get people to tell you the truth
because everybody wants to control their
image and don’t learn what they’re
really like is going to be a difficult
thing for you to do so he gave me some
hints about how what to ask people and
how to ask them and and that’s what I’ve
tried to capture in the book what were
the real turning points in their lives
I loved it and after all of these
interviews and all these one-on-one
times from what you’ve discovered from
them what would you say is is the key to
success and accomplishment I think it’s
a consciousness it’s it’s understanding
who you are I mean it’s so easy for us
to go through life and something happens
to us an event happens or a person comes
into our life or we’re thrown into a
certain circumstance and we don’t we
kind of dismiss it you know we kind of
just want to put it aside and not let it
affect us but everything affects us I
mean you know when we grow up our
childhood experiences our parents our
grandparents the when we’ve become young
adults that
the difficult times and the thinking
that we have to do to to transition from
being a teenager to an adult the people
there the jobs that we have the people
we get we marry get married to the
children we have the failures the
successes the diseases the the tragedies
and the universities all of those things
change us and there is and while they
all changes and we all need to pay
attention to us there is one thing if we
can identify that gives us a passion to
succeed and I think passion in whatever
you want to do in life it’s so much more
important even than talent the ability
to to get up every morning no matter how
difficult it is and start a new day and
have the energy to accomplish new things
and to overcome the difficult times that
you’re having a lot of these people you
know you kind of already knew I guess
through your speaking house wasn’t your
first time introducing to them but I’m
wondering you know you knew their story
a little bit you’ve heard them talk
you’ve heard their presentations so you
already had kind of a built-up plan as
to who these people were but I’m
wondering what you learned through this
process that maybe was a bit surprising
to you maybe a little bit unexpected and
going through the process of writing
that book the thing I learned I think
the most the question I get asked is you
know boy it must have been difficult
dealing with these people you know these
people you know how big egos that which
ones didn’t you like which ones were the
really tough ones to deal with and in
all honesty I found 99.9% of them to be
great people that I’d want to live next
door to so what I found was that success
we may not all be secretaries of state
or presidents of the United States or a
quarterback for a professional football
team but that’s we can have success in
our own run and that success and
accomplishment means that we’re going to
be happy with what we’re doing and what
I found as these people all came from
humble beginnings like I did they all
were chained there
lives were changed because of the same
things happen to them that happen to me
and the same thing happened to me that
happens to millions of other people and
that that success and accomplishment is
dependent on us recognizing what it is
in our life that’s important to us did
you get guidance and how to figure that
out how to understand what is actually
important to us you know it kind of is
it kind of surprised me because I went
into it kind of not kind of thinking
okay I’m going to get exactly what I
want to get and he’s kind of threw me
when Bob Woodward said you know they’re
not going to be willing to talk to you
what I found a lot of them were willing
to talk to me now that you know it
wasn’t the taping of their conversations
and the stories that I already knew
would come in pieces you know because
they they would they would talk about
something in their life and then they
would go on to something else about work
and then they for some reason they come
back to that point again and the
challenge for me was to kind of figure
out get through the clutter of all the
things that they were thinking about and
get rid of the professional stuff that
that affected them the problem I had
with the book initially was that I wrote
a hundred and forty thousand words for
this book so I got there so two books I
get an agent to buy the get to do the
book for me and and he sends it out and
people look at this book like this and I
got turned down by virtually every
publisher good publisher in the country
because they said wow that’s just
nobody’s ever gonna read something like
that right so I took all the comments of
what the publisher said to me you know
the criticisms and I took it to heart
and I spent the next seven months going
back and getting rid of all the
unnecessary things in the book except
for what was personal to them and then I
had to go back and then I had to do some
reinterviews with people because I think
I could get part of the story but I
couldn’t get all of the story so the
difficult thing for me was trying to
capture what it is
Terry Bradshaw is a very private
individual and you know Terry after he
left this where it hadn’t been back to
Pittsburgh for a long time and and he’s
a very sensitive person who kind of felt
hurt because he had a difficult time
adjusting to city life and so it took me
three interviews to get Terry to to open
up I had two the first two interviews I
had somebody on the phone that he knew
was taping the conversation the last
interview I had to tape it myself where
he knew he was only talking to me that
was the that was the challenge that I
had this was to get him open up and for
the people to really tell what was
really behind or change it and I guess
that’s a meanness of all leaders face is
an entrepreneurs face is getting the
people around them to open up and tell
them the truth the people under them
their customers or suppliers their
investors the real truth not just the
service-level answers do you have advice
for people who are trying to make
breakthroughs with other people to get
to the real truth so they can address a
situation how do you get there faster
how do you make them feel more
comfortable how do you get at the real
answers well I think I think it all
starts with you I mean I don’t think I
don’t think you can be a leader unless
you understand yourself the strengths
and weaknesses of who you are first and
and and so I spend a lot of time trying
to sit down and think how did they get
from place a to place B to place see and
I think that’s the first thing we all
have to do I think for entrepreneurs who
are going to be employing others and
working and be leading other people that
that is a priority to success I mean
that that is the basic thing that you
have to learn is that you have to
understand yourself and when you
understand yourself you can better
understand others I I remember my wife
Paula wanted me to change jobs because
she said I want to make decisions on my
own well the first thing I did was say
okay and that was my chance to make
decisions on my own and I’m gonna tell
people what to do well what I first
discovered was that like I was in that
old situation at the university the
people that were going to work for me
wanted to make decisions on their own
too
so good leaders good leaders are people
who set a moral standard establish a
guideline and then give the people that
they’re taking care of the people that
are working for them the opportunity to
make decisions on their own what that
did was surprisingly to me was that we
hired some good people at the beginning
in the early about eight or nine years
after we began and by giving these
people a moral standard and a guideline
and then allowing them to make decisions
and take risks and be an entrepreneur
even though they’re working for me on
their own created ten star agents we’ll
all individuals and all who make all the
decisions and by doing that the people
that we were providing speakers for
wanted to work well I only want to work
for Tony or I want only what I want to
work for this agent because they develop
a rapport and they could trust the event
and these people had the opportunity to
to excel on their own and be satisfied
with what they were doing eleven so
we’ve got a live audience watched and on
us going through here they’re loving
what you’re saying number they’re asking
questions I want to kind of acknowledge
and recognize them
AJ’s writing in to say Bernie how can we
deal with our doubt you know I think I
think we all have doubts I think part of
it is just understanding first
understanding who we are I mean I think
we have doubts when we don’t trust
ourselves when we don’t you know believe
in ourselves and and when that happens
there’s something bothering us I think
I’m I’m not a psychiatrist you know or
somebody that’s going to kind of figure
out who you are necessarily but but what
I do understand that that we have to
have to be comfortable with who we are
in order to be confident in ourselves
and I think and that just takes it takes
some time just to sit down and think you
know okay how did I how do I feel about
the people that are in my life
how do I feel about what events in my
life took place and what did they say
and do to me
you know and where am i right now and
and what is my passion I think I had I
started in an industry I knew nothing
about
I remember going into the first day and
asking my wife Paul who was in there
okay explain to me again who do we
provide these speakers for and I had
thought I was okay maybe Boy Scouts Girl
Scouts I wasn’t quite sure what we were
doing that’s how stupid I was now it’s
easy to have a doubt when you’re that
naive about what you’re doing and you go
home when you think yeah I can’t glue
that tomorrow and but I had a passion
for what I was wanted to do so that
passion said overcame all the doubts
that I am I got up every morning and the
day before we could have sat in her
closet and nobody talked to us and and
after after 12 months of sitting in that
closet and nobody nobody signing with us
and nobody caught up answering our
telephone calls you have a lot of doubts
well I own that 12 month I was waking up
excited about life because I had a
passion for what I was doing and then
that overcomes the doubts that you have
and so what was that passion wasn’t the
idea of building a speaking house was it
the ability to share knowledge and and
disseminate great ideas because you know
most people if they’re working on the
business for a year and have quit their
jobs you know if it’s not that’s not
working out they’re not getting
customers or sales they’re gonna they’re
gonna pack it in so what was that
passion that kept you going – I think
you know I I’m worried about
entrepreneurism right now because on
occasion you read about more failures
and successes and and I don’t think
we’re giving entrepreneurs economically
business-wise enough opportunity enough
chances to succeed so that does bother
me and so I my passion I think was just
to create something I was proud of you
know I think
I think if you set a high standard if
you go for something right at the top
then everything below kind of fills
itself in and I just wanted to create
something I was proud of even though
people weren’t talking to us or saying
they were telling us well no you don’t
represent anybody I’m not going to work
with you I was always nice and polite to
them
I was always networking and building
friendships and that all started to come
together once we got a few speakers
because people people said you know hey
you know this is the I’m not Tooting my
own horn because there were a lot of
great people in my company but this is a
good guy who wants to just do good
things and that’s all I ever wanted to
do I said just says I i standard for
what I wanted to do and accomplish and
everything below kind of just filled
itself in I think if you you know it was
easy it was easy for me to cut corners I
think if you’re in it in this industry
if you’re in a lecture agency or a
Hollywood agency or any agency in the
industry really if you’re in there long
enough you learn how to do it and you
start cutting corners and soon as you
start cutting corners then you start
giving away the the honesty and trust
that that you want to build in the
company so the great thing for us is
when you don’t know anything you start
from the beginning you draw a map from A
to B and in that map you’re just
figuring out how to do it with common
sense not cutting corners so the most
important thing for me I wanted to build
something I was just proud of done and I
will say in our business you know the
lecture agencies like Hollywood if you
look at Hollywood agencies like CAA and
those others they’re really hot for ten
years and then somebody comes along and
knocks them off and somebody else is
really hot well there’s a reason for
that
my my opinion personal opinion
is that you start you do start cutting
corners and do not start taking chances
that you shouldn’t be taking and so
somebody else comes along that seems a
little shinier well you know we became
the number one agency in the world and
like 1980
rathalu sign Ronald Reagan in that
market Thatcher and we’ve stayed that
for 27 years that’s the longest of any
lecture agency in the history and and
those lecture agencies started back in
the Civil War
you know when Mark Twain was was signed
by us the first lecture agent so I think
great pride in the fact that we that we
we’ve lasted so long just because we’ve
tried tried our hardest
we’ve always asked the question is this
the right thing to do and we’ve tried
your hardest to live up to that 11 so so
your book what made me who I am comes
out next week on Tuesday it does it’s 34
short stories they’re all personal short
stories in it you know tony blair was a
long-haired musician who hitchhiked from
his hometown in England to London and
worked in a music store and that’s all
he he I remember him telling me the
story that there was a story about the
brother of the chauffeur of the Beatles
got a hot date and that convinced him
that he wanted to be in the music
business for the rest of his life and
here he is Prime Minister and at what
changed in his life and Bob Woodward
became an investigative journalist
because he was a janitor in his father’s
law firm and it was a very kind of
Mayberry corner kind of town where
nothing ever was was wrong there was
always good people and he started
reading the depositions on his father’s
desk about some person that did
something and somebody else who did
something and he realized that there was
truth behind the truth that was told I
don’t know whether you I don’t know
whether you know Robert rice or not he
was the Secretary of Labor Robert rice
is very liberal and believes fights hard
for equality for everyone
what he when he was a during college he
had no interest at all his current
events and he’s only four foot eleven so
from the time he was in kindergarten he
was teased and bullied and and his
mechanism was that he used to get people
boys of older grades to protect him and
he walked along with them and nobody
would bother one of the boys that
protected him during the summer was a
guy named Mickey Schwimmer and Mickey
wanted to be a veterinarian but somehow
got derailed and ended up at Columbia to
get in in criminal justice and it was in
the 1960s when all the civil Wyatt civil
wars civil riots were going on in the
south and so Mickey Schwimmer and two
other people went south they were killed
by a local sheriff and their deputies
the bodies were hid for a month they
were found and when Robert rice heard
this story with no interest in current
events decided to change his life in
honor of that person and that is how it
became who he was he ended up be
president of a sophomore junior class
went work work for Robert Kennedy and
and became secretary of labor for Bill
Clinton I love it so many great stories
so it comes out on Tuesday are you doing
pre-orders now or I’m doing pre-orders
now Amazon Barnes and Noble and and as
you know it’s it for me for somebody
who’s relatively unknown it’s it’s hard
to do a book because publishers you know
like track records and they like people
these are and these are good little
stories these are good positive stories
and I think I wrote the book especially
for people starting out in life today
hoping they could see what I had learned
and what others had learned in their
lives and they could understand it the
defining moments in their lives and that
you know maybe that would change the
life or two so my hope is that it does
well I like it I’ll read it and and the
library won’t die with you I hope but
when one last question is know where
we’re coming up on time my audience a
lot of them there
Ranieri Oh a lot of them have to learn
to lead themselves before they worry
about leading the team to get themselves
with the discipline and the strength and
the courage to go where they need to go
what’s one lesson they’re gonna learn in
the book about how they can lead
themselves better well I think the key
to the book is is that just to find the
passion and it’s not easy to find the
passion it’s easy to say you know I have
a talent in art or I have a talent in
this or I like this and therefore I have
a passion and it’s not always true I
mean it’s I found it very hard my wife
had to tell me that I wanted to make
decisions on my own I didn’t think about
it
I didn’t realize it that and if it
hadn’t been for her and had meant for
Alex healing I wouldn’t have understood
the power of passion and I think if
there’s one thing I leave with with
anybody who’s starting out in business
today it’s just sit down and think don’t
sit down and think for a day sit down
and just concentrate on what’s important
for you and talk to other people and see
if other people other people who love
you and are with you all the time can
say to you you know what you know while
you may be interested in this I see a
passion in your life and this and if we
can be conscious of who we are and find
a passion I just it just it’s a way to
make us happy I know I know once I
started doing this of an industry I’d
never heard of when I started until I
read that Fortune magazine article I’ve
loved every minute of it because I ended
up having a passion for it and so I
think that’s the key to it I love it
well the people in the comments are love
we knew their scene I’m going to
pre-order it right now so guys go check
it out what made me who I am pre-order
now comes out on Tuesday Bernie thank
you so much your time thank you I really
enjoy this my first video podcast there
we go we broke your YouTube virginity
here I love it well thank you very much
you get a great reputation that I love
being with you thank you I appreciate
that thank you Bernie thank you guys for
watching and continue to believe and
we’ll see you soon
Please follow and like us: