How Customers And Clients Can Be Sure You’re Authentic

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff, and welcome to our podcast called Anything And Everything with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi, everybody, it's Dan Sullivan, and this is the next episode of Anything And Everything. And because I have such a great partner, Jeff Madoff, where we start today may not necessarily be where we thought we were going to end up. And Jeff, I just dropped a concept that we have in Coach that we use with the entrepreneurs that comes from my theater background. My theater background was just my background until I met you, and then I have been able to participate in your new bound-for-Broadway play, Personality, which is just knocking on the door of Broadway right now. But the whole concept of theater suggests two things: front stage and backstage. So I brought this up, and you said, let's go with that. That's an interesting topic. So, great to chat with you again.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: As always, great to chat with you. We've already been on, by the way, for an hour talking to each other about all kinds of stuff. So we decided let's invite our audience in. Yeah, because the concept of front stage and backstage is really interesting, because front stage is, of course, the audience sees what's happening. Backstage, more of a mystery and what's going on. So how do you, in your world, sort of tie those two concepts, define those two, and then tie those two together?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think that there has been, and this is my influence more so in the company, that we're never saying anything about entrepreneurism in the front stage, which is our check-writing entrepreneurs who pay to be in The Strategic Coach Program. We're never preaching what we're not practicing ourselves in the backstage of Strategic Coach, which started small in the 1980s but now we're in three countries, we have four major cities where we do our workshops, and we're in three different countries. And I think one of the reputations that I think that we have with almost 25,000 entrepreneurs who have been through our program, and that is that there's a complete consistency between what Dan says in our workshops about how you structure yourself as an entrepreneur, how you grow as an entrepreneur, that Strategic Coach itself is actually using the same principles and the same processes backstage. And that's the one area of quality control that I say there can't be any inconsistency between our backstage and what we say in the front stage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So when you say between what you say in the front stage and backstage, give me an example of that. You know, give me an example of, you know, where that consistency, you know, the messaging I know is the same, but there's often a gap between how you talk about things internally, how companies talk about things internally, and how companies then present to the public.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I don't really know too much about other companies besides what I'm told, but I've developed Spidey Sense where what the person is presenting on stage and talking about how they operate and how they operate with their team, and then you start talking to the team members and you begin to realize it's a contradiction. One sure sign for me is longevity of team members staying with an entrepreneur. Do they go through people really quickly or do they have long-standing team members? So we have probably unusually long duration with our team members. We have 25 now who've been with us more than 20 years.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Fantastic.
 
Dan Sullivan: And these are key people. These are all leadership people. They run teams and everything, but they grew from minor positions to major positions over a 20-year period. And I like good things that last forever. You know, it's just a quirk of mine. I just like good things that last forever. But then I can tell, and you've introduced us to a great entrepreneur who is going to be a featured speaker at our big conference in May of next year that... We're recording in 2023. So, Kathy Ireland, who I met, because you interviewed her in your New School marketing class. And I thought two things. I said, everything she says about growing her entrepreneurial career—she was a very famous model. I mean, more men have front covers of Sports Illustrated on their walls, but she was a very athletic looking model and she had freckles, so she was sort of the tomboy model. But everything she talked, so that was... When we saw her, she was 56. I think she's 60 now. But every single thing that she said about growing an entrepreneurial company rang true to me. It just rang true. And I said, yep, this is absolutely the real deal. And I didn't get any sense of bragging. She talked about the upside. She talked about the downside. She talked about the big entrepreneurial breakthroughs. She talked about where things ran into a wall. And I just said, this is so true. But then at the same time, that was her front stage. But the other thing I said, I think this is a really good human being. I just got a sense that this is a really good human being, that she's just being herself in the way that she grows her business. So that would suggest to me that her front stage and backstage are very consistent with each other.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I had met Kathy. Actually, my wife found the picture of Kathy and I together from like 1984, '85, something like that. I don't know for sure when it was from, where I shot her for Ralph Lauren. And when I heard about her business and thought she would be a great guest for the class, I wrote to her and I also sent her the picture so she could see that. And, you know, fortunately we hit it off great. She was a great guest and a great interview. As I've gotten to know her company better, and I certainly don't know it well, but that consistency certainly seems to be there. And she's very consistent in her messaging. And she also has a longevity with her associates, the people that she's brought on that, you know, I agree with you. I mean, I saw that with my parents. People would say, what do we have to do to work for Ralph and Lily Madoff? And the answer would be, well, somebody's got to die first. Because they treated people well. And so people wanted to be there. But that goes to another interesting thing, which is, what is that that you do—and we can talk to Kathy about this too at some point—but what is it that you think fosters that kind of dedication, which leads to the kind of longevity, which I think builds a strong business?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, in our case, we have what I call thinking tools. So the Coach Program is taking initially dozens, but now it's hundreds of different entrepreneurial situations that entrepreneurs run into all the time. And it has to do how time is managed, how money is handled, how relationships are handled, and your consistency to your purpose and all the temptations that you run into are the challenges of being consistent. But we've come up with a couple of concepts which make this easier to do. It's faster, it's easier, it's cheaper, and it produces a bigger result. And the number one concept that we have for our entrepreneurs is called Unique Ability and Unique Ability Teamwork. That what I look for in anybody that I meet is the—and we talked about this on a previous podcast—I'm looking for the thing that the person cannot not do. In other words, they will just naturally default to this way of doing things. And then I'll see, and I'm looking for somebody who's really great at the thing that they cannot not do. And then I try to remove everything else they're doing except that one thing.
 
But the second part of this, they have to be good at teamwork with other people who cannot not do the thing that they do. So that, one is I'm not a manager, and Babs, who is my partner in life and my partner in business, we're not managers. We're visionaries. And Babs is the visionary for the company, and I'm the visionary for the program. So she's responsible for the whole theater. If I use theater terms here, she's responsible for the entire backstage and all the teamwork for the backstage. And I'm responsible for everything that goes on front stage. So all the programs and the workshops and the tools that we present and get paid for by the entrepreneurs who come to our program.
 
So that's what the great value creation is of Strategic Coach on the front stage. But in order to do that, that's the way we run our company backstage. And that is, we hire people for particular jobs. You know, you hire somebody because something needs to get done and we need a new person or a better person to do this. And we say, now here's the deal. You have to do what we hired you for, but in a very short period of time, we're going to see where you excel. And also you excel, and you love excelling in this area. And then we're going to show you a process where, little by little, quarter by quarter, you can remove all the activities that you're doing to get paid, and we just want you to constantly grow in the area that you love doing, you're really great at, and it fosters and multiplies the teamwork that you're working with other people who are also excelling, and everything like that.
 
So that's the way we do the backstage, but that's also what we sell in the front stage. So there's a complete congruity for it. And people ask us, and they said, how do you have such great people? And I said, well, it's a secret dispensing machine, and you just pop your credit card in and out comes a great person. But I said it's in a world where people are offering money as the main reason why you'd want to work for us, what we're going to offer you is a life ahead where you just get to do more and more of what you love doing and where you keep getting better, but not only that, you multiply your teamwork with other people. And we're going to take you seriously in what we think you do great. The question is, are you going to take yourself seriously in what you do great? But that's the same thing that we're selling to the public.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Which is a very compelling offer.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, it is to certain people. It's not to everybody. They say, I just want a job. I just want to show up at nine and work till five. I'm not here for self-improvement. And I said, well, I'll tell you what, you're really lucky because there's only one of us and there's a million places where you can do the other thing. So you have massive choice to work someplace else. But if you're going to be with us, you have to focus on this.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And it's interesting because I think the backstage, which of course doesn't have to just be an event, it can just be day-to-day behaviors in a business. And one of the things that struck me when you and I met, and I had some subsequent conversations with people in the company, and when I would call you, and I guess I probably met most of them, maybe we met at one of Joe Polish's events or whatever, but as I have met more and more members of the team, it's really interesting because there's a consistency in behavior in a very good way. That consistency doesn't mean everybody's the same. What it means is everybody's-
 
Dan Sullivan: Everybody's different, actually.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And polite, and nice, and it kind of fosters a very positive perception, no matter who it is you touch on that's part of Strategic Coach. And when I would have people at my company, the person answers the phone. That's the first contact with the company. Oh yeah. And if the person that answers the phone isn't polite, isn't friendly, isn't nice, whatever, already you're setting up something you have to overcome. And so I think that part of that backstage behavior, I think a lot of companies don't realize that encompasses everything, wherever that touchstone, and it's also the touchstones of people who work for the company with each other. So that there's ongoing support of the efforts and so on. So to me and to you, that seems pretty common knowledge. That's how you ought to deal with people. But what are the mistakes you see that companies make? Why is it so many companies have so much turnover or that people have to overcome a bad impression that maybe an employee made? What is that? And what are the errors that you see that business owners and managers make?
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it comes back to who started the company and who owns the company. You know, I have a real self-demand that I be completely consistent in public and the same person backstage. No difference to doing who I am when I'm coaching entrepreneurs or when I'm doing audios or doing videos or I'm doing interviews, that's exactly who I am backstage. And I remember one of our team members was taking a cross-Canada flight. She hadn't been to the point yet where it could be business class. She was at the point where she sat with two people on each side of her. So the two people on each side of her were actually together, but they had a person sitting in between them, but they were chatting back and forth across her. And she was sitting there, you know, trying to be as far back in the seat as she could. And one of them says, oh, I'm sorry, you know, we're being impolite here. So what do you do? And she says, well, I work at a company called Strategic Coach. And each of them says, Strategic Coach. Well, that's Dan Sullivan, isn't it? And she said, yeah, I work with Dan Sullivan. And she said, Dan's like, what's he like? And she says, Dan? Well, Dan's just Dan. And she said- I've been famous in certain circles for 30 or 40 years. And the circles that mattered to us were quite prominent. The best client I have, I don't treat that person any differently than I treat the newest employee. You know, you treat them with respect, you treat them with interest, and then you get a sense of whether they're got growth potential.
 
I know entrepreneurs who are very famous, but they have no growth potential. They hit their ceiling a long time ago, and now they're just riding on their reputation. They're not riding on any future value creation or taking on new projects. And the same thing happens with team members. They'll really grow to a certain point, and then they've got a little bit of status in the company, and then they start relying on their status. And I said, no, no, you're gone. You either grow or you go. And that goes for people in my program, entrepreneurs. And we'll tell people, you're not growing anymore, so you shouldn't come back for the program. You shouldn't come back next year because you're having a negative influence on the other entrepreneurs in the program. You've stopped growing, and now you're starting to have a negative influence on the other entrepreneurs. And the same thing happens backstage. So what we try to do is create a duplicate. I mean, there's a backstage that has to happen, and there's many more, as you know from your play. The amount of activity backstage is 10 times what the activity is on front stage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And that's, of course, the part you don't want the audience to see.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, there's no magic. However, I've noticed a big change. There was an experiment done with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. And they had people walk the streets and they gave away 50 tickets to this or 50 tickets to that. And the 50 tickets, the first one was to an opening performance of the Metropolitan Opera upcoming production. And the other 50 was the week before dress rehearsal, rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera, where the director would stop and he'd say, no, no, no, let's do this again. And they found that the majority of people, if they had to choose between the performance, it was even, that 50 chose backstage and 50 chose front stage. So I think there's more and more of an intriguing entertainment value to getting an inside look on how things happen backstage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, in my production business, I did a lot of that because I felt, and this was before it was called content, you know, it was, what are the stories that we can tell them that are going to be credible and fun to watch? And it was interesting with Victoria's Secret when we would do the casting videos, they would get millions and millions of views from the casting sessions, which were candid and interesting, but it was also only a small part of what goes into putting together their annual big show. So when I said, you know, we've got a story here that is not being told. And yeah, the auditions, it's like, you know, typical reality TV, you know, some people get the part, some people don't get the part, how much it means to them to have gotten it, the disappointment, you know, all of that kind of thing. And it was an interesting story. But I said, there's so much more. You know, you work with designers, we're working with designers this season that are in Milan, Paris, London, and New York and Los Angeles and Las Vegas and all of these different talents that are coming together and how this whole show happens is a really good story.
 
Well, I wasn't successful selling that idea the first time. Tried the second time, wasn't successful in selling it. I said, well, this is stuff that, you know, there's things that happen that we don't want people to see. Well, that's why you do editing. You know, that's an easy solution. But I think that this could be a regular feature of the show, and it would get huge response. Well, I finally convinced them to do it. And it was tremendously successful. For the reason you're saying is the appetite to see how things come together, how things work, the behind the scenes is huge. And it is interesting. And it's informative. One of the main things in theater, but I think this translates into business, and I'd be curious to see your opinion of this. Really good acting is not performing, it's behaving. And it's the behavior that makes an actor's part credible. So if you are behaving, what you are going to see is the same thing in business, backstage and front stage, because there should be a consistency in the person's behavior. If it's performance, it's an artifice that's put up and not quite real. Do you see that translation in the business also?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I see the opposite too. I see so much fakery, which in some cases can be criminal fraud. I mean, the borderline between faking something and actually having the authorities after you isn't that wide. I was really struck by the recent court case with Sam Bankman-Fried, where he developed this persona of the slightly wacko entrepreneur who would play video games, you know, at the same time he's doing a pitch to a big private equity firm. And the people at the equity firm saying, ah, I love this guy, I love this guy, because he wasn't putting on the kind of performance that they were used to receiving, where they have a deck, and the person goes through the deck, and it's all in favor of the production. He was saying, yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, we're doing this, and we're doing this, so just a minute, I got it, okay, I'm okay with the game. And he'd do this, and he was sloppy, and he was slovenly, and he looked like he was absent-minded. But that was just as rehearsed as another performance. He just differentiated himself with his performance. I mean, backstage he was slightly tyrannical. And, you know, there's a word that I don't like because it's one of those buzzwords, but authenticity. That's been used over the last 10 years. You can be so authentic that after a while it becomes inauthentic. It's like people who try so hard to be inoffensive, after a while are very offensive. Oh, geez. I mean, why don't you just be offensive for a few minutes? Because it's really good. But the thing is that so much is presentation, so much is hype today that people are looking deeper and saying, you know, is this really real? You know, is this really real? And I think it was easier to fool people 25 years ago, some people who had a bit of discernment, it was easier to fool them 25 years ago than it is today with high-tech tricks. But if you get a sense that something's rehearsed, immediately you're on your guard.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: It's interesting, you know, because you talk about Fried, you talk about Elizabeth Holmes with Theranos, talk about Adam Neumann with WeWork.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's a trifecta right there.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right, although he walked away, I don't know how he did it, but he walked away with a couple billion, I'm talking about Adam Neumann, walked away apparently with a couple billion dollars. It's astounding to me. But what's interesting to me is the people that they are deceiving, extremely wealthy, putting up tons of money, and I don't know if it's once you've invested, you even convince yourself more that you did the right thing. So you buy into the bullshit.
 
Dan Sullivan: Certainly a confirmation bias there.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, that's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You don't want to question your investment.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. None of these people were behaving. But they were performing. And that gap between the two tells you a lot about that person. Then we look for the person to vilify, right? So if you find the right person to vilify, when in fact, I wonder about, so who are all the suckers that were taken in by something that you or I might have found totally repellent and thought the person was just totally full of it? And these are people that are bankrolling them into the billions of dollars. How does that happen?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I would use the same description. They were performing, not behaving, and they wanted to be seen in a room as an investor with other people who are great investors. And the fraudster gave him a chance to be in the same room together. What was interesting about Elizabeth Holmes, she had, I think, two secretaries, former secretaries of state. I mean, people who, you know, I think they made their reputations on being very discerning in their profession, you know, and she just beguiled them. But she didn't have one person who had any medical knowledge. It was a who's who, but not one of them had the knowledge that would detect whether what she was doing was real or not.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that's right. And so what's interesting about what you're saying to me is, they're not selling a product at that point or a service at that point. They're selling who they sold. Right? I mean, they're selling who they sold. You want to be in with this group, look who we have here, you know? And so it comes into the old FOMO, the fear of missing out, because all these smart investors are investing, and you ought to invest in what? Well, a machine that, never mind, doesn't really work. But let me tell you who we sold on this.
 
Dan Sullivan: I was saying to someone who's deeply involved in the high-tech world, and I said, you're not actually selling a new product, are you? You're selling a bet on a new product. And you're betting on the bet. Can you get early and get out fast enough before it's discovered that the thing doesn't work? And he said, it started off as Silicon Valley, but it's resembling more and more Las Vegas. You just want to be the house.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that's right. And I think that, you know, look, all startups are bets.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's all guesses and bets.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But the interesting thing is, if someone has a product with merit or a service with merit, I mean, if what Theranos built was actually functional, that would be a good thing. But after getting attention, with a hyperbola about what this could do, to people who have no idea how complicated an actual blood test analysis is. And so then it becomes the performative aspect. And that performative aspect, which seduces some, then also that's when you start selling from who you sold, because once you've got some big names in there, all of a sudden that attracts other people that want to invest in it to become a part of that club.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So it was very, very interesting with Theranos. I remember, I don't know anything about this stuff, but I do know people who would know something about this. And one of them is a friend of ours. He's a longtime client of mine in Strategic Coach, Steven Palter, who's one of the top IVF doctors in the world. So in vitro fertilization. He says, I help other men's wives have babies, sometimes five times before breakfast. And I remember I said, what about this one-prick blood? He said, I have to tell you, it's phony. He said, I can tell you it's absolutely phony. He says, because I have to do blood tests. And sometimes I need 17 different vials because there's 17 different tests that you have to do. And you have to put all the tests together to get an accurate picture of what the whole looks like. Okay, and he says, it's impossible. He says, it's totally impossible. Okay, first of all, there isn't enough sample there to get a broad picture.
 
And I remember right off in the early days, and then it went skyrocketing and people said, what a breakthrough. And she sold Walgreen into this, the biggest drugstore pharmaceutical company in the United States. And they bought totally into it. But it was when they did the autopsy on why this colossally bad decision had been made, they found out that the guy at Walgreen was just charmed to be in the room with all these investors. And look, if they bet billions of dollars on this, we don't want to miss the train here. And she was a con artist, you know, and she's got a lot of time to contemplate, horizon or fall because she's in prison now and Sam Bankman-Fried. I think the WeWork guy got away without prison.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And a lot of money.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. So he'll write courses now on how to... He'll create a course and he'll be on stage and he'll do videos on how to pull this off. You know, this is how you pull this off.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So the question I have, because these are good examples is, so there's the front stage. There's a charismatic leader who was able to seduce and beguile potential investors. Do you think they know what they're doing? What's that backstage?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think all of them have legitimately done something to get famous and get rich, you know, over a long stretch of time. You know, I mean, they've obviously did some legitimate thing, but that was just in their area of specialty. And you brought up a topic before we went on, you talked about how you can be fantastically bright and talented and successful in one area of activity and a complete idiot when you're delving into another area. And I think this is not widely appreciated in today's society. If you're really smart, I mean, why wouldn't Michael Jordan know about marketing new products and everything else? Because he's a basketball player. He's a great basketball player. He's devoted most of his life to being a great basketball player. He missed all the other classes. It was like Stephen Hawking, you know, Stephen Hawking is honored as a great physicist because he explained how black holes perform. And this is a very, very important part of astrophysics and how the universe operates. And then he starts talking about politics. You know, he doesn't know anything about politics, you know, but he's got, well, if Stephen Hawking thinks this, it must be true. You take anything that Stephen Hawking talked about that wasn't his area of specialty, then it was instantly forgettable. It was instantly forgettable. I mean, he had nothing important to say, you know?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, we have a player on the main stage now, Elon Musk. Okay. Musk made some brilliant business moves. Arguably, he is a visionary in certain areas. I don't really believe anybody's a visionary. I think some people have really good ideas. They're built on top of other ideas. Even Tesla wasn't started by him. The notion of the electric car is not new, but he did it and did it amazingly well. The problem is, I think, that people seem to assume that if you are, A, a celebrity, and B, if you at least give the appearance, and in Musk's case, it gave a lot more of the appearance. He was hugely financially successful. But people then assume that that knowledge spills over into other areas. And that is not necessarily true and usually isn't. So I think it's really interesting because it goes back to P.T. Barnum and the sucker is born every minute because the people that continue to invest in certain things. And especially if you're investing because of the other people who have invested. That comes to another area, which I think is so important and so lacking in our contemporary culture, which is critical thinking. You know, how would Musk be regarded in buying Twitter considering it's, what's it lost, $46 billion or something like that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, that's what he paid. So I don't know if...
 
Jeffrey Madoff: He's lost more than the value is, I think it's 19 billion now or something. Goes back to also something we're talking about before we started, which is, why do people do certain things? Because they can.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the other thing is, I was talking to Peter Diamandis about Musk, because he knows Musk. According to Peter, he's known him for a long time, from his younger years. And I was talking about Tesla, and I said, by any standard of how automobile companies are evaluated, this one is valued at 10 times what it should be, given the number of cars that they're producing. And other factors, he doesn't have really a dealership, a standard dealership. We have one, we have the X model, the SUV, and it's not a 10 times better car, okay? I don't care what kind of car you have, congestion treats all fairly. You know, traffic congestion treats a supercar just as much as it creates a… you can't go any faster in a supercar. But I said, the thing is that Tesla isn't the stock that they're investing in. Elon Musk is the stock that they're investing in. He's pulled off the great trade, and I think Steve Jobs did this. He pulled it off where he was actually the stock that people are investing in. It wasn't what he was creating.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: The thing that's interesting, though, Jobs focused on one product. And arguably then it became two with the iPhone. Yeah. But you know, the iPhone is basically a computer with a phone in it. And I think that, I mean, it's really interesting because arguably Tim Cook is a better CEO.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah. Far better. They're 3 trillion right now, give or take the quarter that you're in. And they were 300 million when Steve Jobs died. So they're 10 times. But Steve left a lot on the shelf when he died. I mean, there hasn't been a great Apple breakthrough since the iPhone, since 2008. Okay, so we're 15 years. But first of all, they've got a niche that they can always be the most expensive and profitable product. You know, I've been Apple since 1987, and I wouldn't think of having another system. Our whole company has been Apple. And the reason is because they don't complicate things. And I think Tim Cook's great genius is that he didn't make simple things complicated. I remember once they changed the configuration of the keyboard. I mean, you don't fool around with the keyboard, you know, and people are making mistakes and their little finger was hitting the wrong button, and they just got massive backlash and they went right back to what they had. I said, if you want to create enemies, complicate something simple that really works.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, so we have now a comparison. And this is again, front stage and backstage. Arguably, or not so arguably, Steve Jobs was equivalent to a cult leader. And I'm not saying that with any negative tones. It's just that he had devoted followers who didn't question.
 
Dan Sullivan: A good cult is hard to find.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. And harder to question. And his, you know, product launches became industry legend. Tim Cook, you know, is he a great presenter and charismatic? No. Has he phenomenally built that business and parlayed assets that they have in new ways? Yes. How would you compare the backstage and front stage of Apple?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, Steve Jobs was the great front stage. I mean, he wasn't an engineer. You know, I mean, he wasn't a technician. What he was, he had a phenomenal nose where the market would probably be going. And he said, let's create something that people didn't know they needed until we presented it to them. So I think he had amazing marketing instincts and phenomenal packaging. I remember, we're talking about friends stage backstage, they created the iPod, that was their first departure from straight-line computers, was the iPod MP3 player. It was beautiful. All Apple products, from a standpoint of industrial design, are beautiful products. If they have a technology museum, and I'm sure they exist, I bet half the technology products after the 1980s are, from a design standpoint, are Apple products. There are some other famous companies. Braun is another one, a German company.
 
So Steve Jobs said to the technicians and the people who put the whole thing together, let's see what it looks like on the inside. The head product guy says, well, what's it matter? Nobody's gonna see the inside. And he said, no, but we'll know. So he says, it's not beautiful enough on the inside, so make it more beautiful on the inside. Now, that's locked in place. You never see the inside of an Apple product. If you open up an Apple product, you might as well throw it in the trash, you know, because you're screwing it up. But his instinct for the front stage-backstage consistency was impeccable. He wasn't a content guy. He was a context guy. He was a master of context of, why do you want the thing that we've just created? He was fired from Apple. He was fired from Apple. And he went out and he did a lot of exploration. He was one of the early founding investors and I think a founding visionary for Pixar. And he was a founder of NeXT, which would have been a fabulous... It was an operating system five years, 10 years ahead of the market. And when he came back to Apple, he just brought back the next operating system and that took Apple to another level.
 
So my sense is, start to finish, I think Steve Jobs was a totally congruent, consistent front stage guy. I remember a story when the iPhone got created. He was against the iPhone. And the reason was the iPod was such a great product. And he says, if we create the iPhone and you have all these features in the iPhone, it's going to kill the iPod. And the winning argument that brought him over to it was, whoever was the head of product in Apple, he says, well, either you can kill the iPod or somebody else is going to kill the iPod because this phone is coming. He says, good, let's bring the iPhone up. That was the argument. He immediately understood the context.
 
But he destroyed the record industry as it existed, that if you wanted to buy one song, you had to buy 12 songs. And that industry just went away immediately. And he said, I don't know. He said, when I was out there for a couple of years, I'd go in, and I'd want to buy a song. And I'd go into the record store, and they said, well, here's the album. The song's on this album. But he says, why can't I just buy the song? And he said, well, no, that's not the way it works. And he said, well, doesn't work for who? And he said, does that mean that a recording artist who creates a great song has to have 11 others before they can get an album? And they said, yeah, well, that's the way the industry works. Well, that's the way the industry works for the accountants and lawyers who now run the recording industry. But it doesn't work for the listener and it doesn't work for the performer. So he says, why don't we just simplify that, get rid of the 11 other song requirement in the middle, and we've got an MP3 player, the internet is now there. Why don't we just put all the music in the internet and you can download for a buck a piece? And I discovered that the artists only got paid five cents on the dollar. Why don't we give them 60 cents on the dollar? That great rushing sound you hear is every artist in the world wanting to get one song on iTunes.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, well, it's interesting because it also actually harkens back to how recording started. And it was singles.
 
Dan Sullivan: And then it was doubles because you had to have an A-side and a B-side.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Which plays a prominent part in your new Broadway musical, Personality. If he had only had "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," but nothing else, he wouldn't have gotten a record contract.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right. But, you know, it was essentially you were buying singles. And by the way, in some cases with Lloyd, it was really interesting is that B-side, when he recorded "Stagger Lee," he didn't think that he had a hit. And it was the B-side. And he got a call from a DJ in Washington. He started playing the B-side, which is "Stagger Lee," and sales went through the roof. And he said to Lloyd, you're playing the wrong side of the record. You're having the wrong side played. So it was kind of fascinating because sometimes you don't know. And then I think of, by the way, when you talk about buying the one song at a time, because there's a compelling argument that says, you know, I'm only interested in this one song. But then I think of something like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." You really should listen to the entire record. You know, it's an integrated masterpiece. And although all the individual songs are fantastic, together, it creates this aural universe, which is amazing.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, and they had gotten to the point where you knew that their buyers wanted all 11 songs or 12 songs. Because their quality was so consistently high for such a long period of time. And what'd they have? 50 number one hits over four or five years. So you knew everything was going to be great. Right up until the end of The Beatles, they produced first-class, memorable work.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Did you hear "Then and Now," which is their newest?
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I liked it.
 
Dan Sullivan: I liked it, but it wasn't the best they ever did.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: No. No.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, the audience has changed too.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: True. True.
 
Dan Sullivan: First of all, you can understand the words on their song.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it tells a story. I'm dating myself here, but I don't want to hear about someone's inner anguish.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I mean, obviously, there's also different, you know, maybe when you're a teenager, you want to hear about somebody's inner anguish if it relates to your inner anguish about a breakup or whatever. I don't even think it's arguable that Lennon and McCartney were two of the greatest songwriters, lyricists. They're up there as high as you can go.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah. Leonard Bernstein made that point. He said these are two of the greatest music composers and performers of the 20th century.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. And the fact that now they're all 80 to 82. Well, they're all, that's that's just Ringo and Paul now.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think Ringo is going to tell the real history.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And that's, you know, another interesting front stage/backstage because they were truly performative, but there's also a lot of footage that exists of the backstage. Of course, it depends on how it's edited and in what we see, but it's a unique window on the creative process and the collaboration and discovery that happens there, which is really cool.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Talk about front stage, backstage. Charlie Trotter, the restaurateur in Chicago, was the first chef who made the tasting menu famous across the United States. He wasn't trained as a chef or anything. He was just a really good chef. And he started off catering to private customers. And he would cater and he would present a meal. And that's where he got the idea of the tasting menu, because people would say, I'm having a dinner party and could you put together a complete dinner from start to finish? And he got the idea. And the fact was, he had never had restaurant experience at all. But he was in the right side of Chicago. He was on the north side of Chicago along the lake, starting with the Gold Coast at the top of the Miracle Mile. And he just got 50 to 100 clients who loved what he did. So he said, I'm going to do a restaurant. And he opened a restaurant in the Lincoln Park area, which is a good section. And it just became famous because he just took what he was doing as a caterer and brought it over to the restaurant and nobody else was doing that. No, it's a la carte, you know, you pick this, you pick this. And he said, no, we'll just charge, you know, a hundred bucks for the entire meal and we'll give them two menus. They can choose one or the other.
 
And it just solved a lot of restaurant problems just by having that consistency. And then he would change up, you know, every month or so, he would change it so people would come back. What's Charlie doing? Also, when he really became famous is when we started going to Chicago, which was the early 1990s. And we went, and it was fabulous. The food was amazing. The service was amazing. And then he created this whole notion of a table in the kitchen where you would be eating when Charlie was and his chefs, he had all these different chefs that worked for him. I did it once and I would never do it again because he was a shouter, and he would shout at all the people. And he completely ignored the guests that were there. He never once came over and acknowledged us or anything. And he was 15 feet away, and he would shout, you're late with that, you're late with this. And it gave me a totally, unfavorable image of Charlie Trotter. And I said, you just made the backstage into a front stage, but you've forgotten that what pays for all this is the people sitting at the table. I went back three or four times afterwards, but even being out in the regular restaurant was no longer enjoyable because I knew there was an inconsistency between the way I got treated when it was performance and what was happening backstage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I wouldn't say inconsistency in terms of that's what offended you. I would say the deception.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Because it's a bit of a con job if you make people believe one thing and this is what it's like. And in fact, when you see that backstage point of view, you realize that guy's nothing like that. I think of a movie that I think is brilliant, which stars Andy Griffith. It's called A Face in the Crowd. You're familiar with the film, right?
 
Dan Sullivan: I'm not.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh my God, it's brilliant. You got to see it. It could be made today with a little bit of updating, it could be made today. And it's an absolutely brilliant, brilliant film. Andy Griffith is this kind of a drifter and there's a radio program that's kind of like "On The Road." Patricia Neal, who is one of the co-stars in it, along with Walter Matthau. And he becomes a national celebrity. And he has nothing but disdain and contempt for his audience. He gets tremendous power. He is brought to Washington to teach the senators how to use this new medium called television. I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say that the ending is not unlike the ending you described. The ending is so inconsistent with the way he presents to the public, kind of an aw shucks Will Rogers type, to who he really is, which is a tyrant.
 
Dan Sullivan: And a prick.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, exactly. It's kind of tyrant, prick kind of goes along.
 
Dan Sullivan: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right. But the other interesting thing is that in our contemporary culture, that the backstage has become the front stage. Whether you're talking about all the different cooking show competitions and all that sort of thing, the runway fashion shows, Project Runway, all the making of has become now the front stage. So there's almost another backstage, which we don't see, which is, you know, you don't know what the footage was, then the drama that's artificially infused into it through editing and prompting and so on. But the backstage has become very much part of the front stage now in so many areas.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I read several books on the movie studio system, MGM, Warner Brothers. One of the things I've noticed is the loss of stature of actors that's happened in our own age when you know so much about their personal lives. It was the same in the old days, except the studio protected the image of the actors.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And managed it.
 
Dan Sullivan: And managed it. So as flawed human beings that they were, the studios showed you that these were globally admirable aristocrats. These were the new aristocrats in movie society. And the political, as The Face in the Crowd does, the politicians were very, very interested in that because they have a front stage and a backstage too, you know. All occupations have a front stage and a backstage. Yeah. But my sense is that if you make them consistent, then you don't have to worry about people seeing your backstage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that's right. You don't have to remember, you know, what lie did I tell you?
 
Dan Sullivan: Another great Harry Truman line, one of my favorite presidents, and he said, you know, always tell the truth. He says it's more economical. You only have to remember one version.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. Exactly. Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Same version backstage, same version front stage. It's easier. It's easier on your brain. You don't have to worry at night. You don't have to worry, what did I tell this person that, you know, I told somebody else something different?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And the interesting thing now also, because everybody's carrying around a camera now, which is their phone, everyone's got their own distribution platform, which is Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and so on, that if you are flying the friendly skies of United, and then you show footage of them dragging this guy out of the airplane, it's gonna hurt your business, you know?
 
Dan Sullivan: Which it did.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. So the thing about, before social media, it was a good friend of mine, Jim Lenihan, who was head of consumer marketing for McNeil Labs. And this was back in the '80s when the, you remember the Tylenol scare?
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And so Jim said, you know, we've gotta pull this off the shelf everywhere until we discover what's going on here. And we need to be honest with the consumers. We don't know what's going on. We're going to find out. We're going to make sure that you are safe. We're going to pull all product that has been distributed within this time. We're going to pull it all off the shelves. And he had to get the ultimate blessing from the CEO, which he did. And his handling of that became...
 
Dan Sullivan: The textbook.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's exactly right. Exactly right. The interesting thing about that, I said to Jim, so why don't companies follow that? And this was on the heels of what happened in the United Airlines and with Volkswagen lying about their diesel mileage and pollution and all this stuff. And he said, because of just arrogance and that these people think they can get away with it. So here was a backstage behavior which became front stage. And it was honest, it didn't attempt to be deceptive, to deflect anything. But also people oftentimes just don't learn. And I think that that's really interesting. And I think if there's something to learn from what we've been talking about for the past hour is, the truth is a great solution. And that if you are consistent, which means you're not trying to deceive or con, your backstage and your front stage, that can lead to longevity, not only with your employees, but I think with your clients too.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, because consumers are guessing and betting too. In any field where you have customers and they're paying money, they would like to find brands that they can just bet on. Because life is very complex, and reducing the number of choices you have to make is really important. I remember a story of twin sisters who were born in Germany, which ended up being East Germany. The one got out just before the wall, one of the sisters, these are twins inseparable from birth, but one of them got into West Germany just before the wall went up. And they were separated. And then that was in the 1960s. And then they never met again until the wall fell. And they were able to see each other. They saw each other. And then the one sister moved to Iowa. The West German sister moved to Iowa. Because that's a natural progression, West Germany to Iowa. There's a lot of trend in that way.
 
So anyway, she invited the sister who had grown up entirely in East Germany and then was still... East Germany, West Germany, the poverty and the backwardness is still there in East Germany. Okay, just because of bad habits over a long period of time. So she went to Iowa, and they picked her up at the airport. And then they took her to, you know, outlying area from whatever city it was, and they were going through it, and it was what we consider just to be a neighborhood. And the East German sister said, is this where all the rich people? And she says, no, no, this is just a normal neighborhood there, which was a shock to her. And then they said, but on the way home, we have to stop at the supermarket, we have to pick up some things.
 
And you know, American supermarkets are twice the size of a football field. You know, you got 26 rows and, you know, you can almost see the curvature of the Earth. I mean, it wasn't anything special. It was just a supermarket. That's what supermarkets are supposed to be. They're supposed to be super. And anyway, they got there, and she says, is there anything I can do? And she says, see the row numbers? If you go to row 13 and you turn right, the cereal is there. And what we want is cornflakes. And she spoke English, so she could read cornflakes. And we'll meet back here in 20 minutes. And she had a watch. So they got there, and she's not there. So they went down to row 13, and she's just standing. And she said, how do I choose? There's six different kinds of cornflakes. She says, how do I know which one? She says, they're all good. But this is our favorite, so you can do that. And she came and she was supposed to spend two weeks and she had to go back after. She said, I just don't know how you deal with the choice. And so Americans are always figuring out in their choosing the one that you choose all the time because it simplifies your life. And authenticity, that's always good, it's always dependable, you can always count on it plays a big part of what people choose and bet on for life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And where that translates again, interestingly, into front stage and backstage, there's the possibility of new legislation because of all of the faked online reviews. Now, the model for online reviews was word of mouth. You know, used to be over the back fence, you'd say, oh, I've got the greatest cleaning product, whatever the hell it is, because people go by what their friends suggest to them, seems vetted, makes their life easier, and it becomes making a decision seem simple. Because Dan told me this was a great movie, and I know his taste in movies, gonna go see that. The number of reviews on Amazon, Google, all these individual sites, Yelp, and so on, is as high as 40 to 60% fake reviews done by bots. So in trying to create the backstage, which is, this is what people actually think of the product, it's become a whole new arena for marketing, and it's deceptive because it isn't. So I think that there's also, in many ways, because we have so many choices, we also need to be more informed. And like what you were saying, it's about context, and it's about one's perception of, so what is authentic? Where is there the smallest gap or no gap between the backstage and the front? Because if there is no gap, I'm not going to be conned. I'm not going to be deceived.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Babs has been meeting with Kathy Ireland and her team. And I have a sense they really protect her and protect her image from not meeting the wrong people, you know. There was a noticeable change in our relationship when their research department had done a complete internet check of Strategic Coach and we came up five star, we came up five star. And they have a way of doing this, of knowing, you know, layer down, layer down, layer down, layer down. We don't know that because we've never done it for ourselves. But somebody asked me about that, you know, almost anybody that they've talked to that's worked in the company are actually clients or customers. And they said, you know, how is it that you have such a positive image? And I said, well, part of the reason is how we treat people when they leave us, when team members leave us, and when clients leave us.
 
I mean, people do things for their reasons, not ours. And everybody's got their own reasons. And what you're hoping is for a period of time, and maybe for a long time, you're going on parallel paths and it works for them. But I said, you know, it's everybody's choice whether they want to stay or whether they want to leave. But we always, unless it's been really negative, and we have very few cases where it's been negative, when a team member leaves and we see them five years from now, we treat them as if they're still a member of the company. And we have clients who have been out for 10 years. We still treat them as if they're still going to the program. So what we're sending them, you're the same to us, whether you're paying us or we're paying you as thing. You're just a person we appreciated the time together. And we just talk to them. We don't talk to them like they're strangers, you know, especially rejected strangers and everything. And I think it's the way we treat people when they leave us that our reputation is actually based on.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, which touches on another area, and I'll just give the top note of it. I'm often asked when I do some of these conferences and so on about personal branding. And you just summed it up. A personal brand is your reputation. What do people in the room say after you leave? And if you are consistent in your behavior, in a good way, that you respect others.
 
Dan Sullivan: Back to behaving.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right, exactly right. Because if you treat people like crap if they're no longer clients, what you're really saying is there's only one thing we care about, that's your money. And if we're not getting that, we don't care, you're not worth our time.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or your labor.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, right, exactly. So I think that the front stage/backstage we've been talking about is a fantastic litmus test, not only for businesses, but for individuals. You know, in their lives. Do they pass that test? Have they bridged the gap between their backstage and their front stage to present authentically, honestly, not deceptively, who they are? And if they have done that, I think that they are accomplishing something that is tremendously important in life.
 
Dan Sullivan: I come back to who the owner is and who the founder is. Are they consistent as individuals? Because I think everything else in the company takes their cues from their, you know, whoever started it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh, I think that's right. I think that's right. If you are paying attention, which you have done over the decades, is you're building the business you want to build because that's the kind of business you want to work in and the kind of people you want around you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Seems rather simple, but you can complicate it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I think that that's a good note to end our current episode of Anything And Everything. We've let you guys in on backstage and front stage, sometimes at the exact same time simultaneously.
 
Dan Sullivan: Sometimes taking different roles and sometimes… Anyway, one of the things that really struck me early about you, Jeff, as I got to know you through Joe Polish and then visiting with you in New York, you know, having lunch, having breakfast, having dinner, and then being involved with you as an investor participant, but also just a big fan of the play that you've put together, is that you really struck me that what you see is what you get with Jeff. There's no other Jeff. There's no secret Jeff. There's no other Jeff. And I hope I've come across the same way.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I never confused you with me. So you didn't come across the same way. I think as our friendship has deepened, as our exposure to each other has increased, if anything, it's reinforced all the positive aspects of, I think, what we share, which is...
 
Dan Sullivan: Anything and everything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Anything and everything. That's it. Can't top that. I think you're right. Well, thank you for those kind words.
 
Thanks for joining us today on our show Anything and everything, if you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.