Casting Not Hiring

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff, and welcome to our podcast called Anything and Everything with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And you know, that's under that umbrella of anything.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hey, look, we can make adjustments, you know. Anything and everything means that you can make any kind of adjustment that actually works. But last time when we were doing our podcast a couple weeks ago, you just dropped an idea that immediately struck me as a book idea. And what you said is, you know, the problem with a lot of entrepreneurs, and we both talked to thousands of them over our lifetime, Jeff, that one of the activities that they have to do to grow their companies is hire other people. And I would say uniformly, it's not a pleasant activity for most entrepreneurs. And I've personally coached about 7,000, and you've dealt with hundreds and thousands of entrepreneurs, and we've both been lifetime entrepreneurs. And I would say that it's among the activities—the whole point of bringing on new people into your company, which is, at best, a necessary evil for a lot of entrepreneurs. And yet, you're in the theater business now, 100% in the theater business with your play, Personality, which is going to be on Broadway in a matter of looking at the schedule. And it's a real hit. It's got enormous momentum. That's been beautifully put together. So you just said, you know, if entrepreneurs would look at the whole what they call hiring from the standpoint of how theater looks at it, which is casting hiring, that makes a huge difference. And I immediately saw it because I've been deeply interested in theater all my life. I've got experience at the amateur level, not at the professional level. And I immediately got excited about this. I talked to Babs about it, and Babs said, oh, what a great idea. And she said, well, that's what we've done. That's how we put the company together. We cast it and we didn't hire. So just from your standpoint, because you've been casting all your life with video productions, with live productions, and of course now with the Broadway play in the making, what do you see casting as being radically different from the normal way that people, and this wouldn't be just entrepreneurs, it would be any organization where they call it about hiring, what strikes you as being uniquely, positively different about casting looking at it? That's the way you have to think about each new person that you bring into your company or into your production.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I think that what's interesting about casting is you first of all have to have an overall view of not just the position you're trying to fill, as if you were hiring, but also all of the people involved in this ensemble you've created that's called a business. So having someone who may have the skill set that you're looking for, but somehow doesn't fit in as a member of the cast, and I'll explain what that means, that doesn't then make any difference. They're not a desirable hire, because they have to fit in in a certain way. So that means that there is a fit, both in terms of talent, but in terms of how they interact with others. Because a well-run business, everybody needs to be reading from the same script, so to speak. Everyone needs to be moving towards the same result. And it requires an ensemble approach in a business where, I'll just speak for myself here, but I'm sure you've seen it too, but the level of work I've done with so many companies, the departments don't even talk to each other. And they're so fragmented. And the idea behind the casting is that we're all in this trying to achieve a common goal. So how do we do that in the most efficient way? And how do we cast our employees so that it is a working team, it becomes an ensemble, not a bunch of employees?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It really struck me. I mean, take me back a little bit, because first of all, you grew up in an entrepreneurial family, you know, in Akron, Ohio, a long time ago, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, your parents had a clothing store.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, women's and children's.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Now, did you require that both your employees and the customers wear shoes?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Up until the remote work, yeah, we thought that would be a good idea.
 
Dan Sullivan: I knew shoes were in there somewhere. I mean, just talk a little bit about, you know, I grew up on a farm, which is a production in itself, and you have crops, which means that at a certain point, what you're doing meets the marketplace. And you had already experimented in your basement with movie productions. I mean, you created a movie theater in your basement, and you went through the process of getting people in the chairs to watch your production and you were experimenting. So it indicates to me that, you know, sort of long, and this was before 10 years old, if I'm not mistaken, you were already experimenting with putting on a theatrical type production. Would that be true?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, it is true. And I think, you know, part of the origin of that was my grandfather, who was a fantastic storyteller. And I was always attracted to stories because I couldn't have articulated it when I was a kid. But looking back is that people much more resonate with how you make them feel than what you say to them. And that's the essence of whether you're writing a play, performing a play, or reading a book, or seeing a movie, or listening to a piece of music, it's that response. And that response is, you know, the audience. And in a business, your audience are the people that keep you in business if they either buy tickets to the show or buy the product that you're selling.
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, theater is, you know, when I think about it, my own involvement in, you know, acting in plays, being a cast member, and also being a producer and a director of amateur productions. What really struck me is that you have a picture of opening night, right from the beginning. You know, I did some fairly big productions, like a cast of 50, and I remember how much you were constantly thinking, who's the right person for the right role? You know, and that was not only front stage, but it was back stage. You had to be back stage so that the front stage could be good. You either have the theater instinct or you don't have it, you know, because, you know, it's not how you get to opening night. It's what opening night is in your mind at the beginning, and then you work backwards from what the response has to be on opening night of the people. And, you know, it was amateur, but people had to pay to be in their seats. And, you know, short runs, I mean, we might have five or six performances, but you constantly had that opening night, you know, not just when the curtain opens, but what are they saying when they leave the theater that night? You know, what are they saying at the breaks? You know, especially when they go to the washroom, what are they?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, that's true.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, can you believe I'm spending three hours doing this? So you talk about script, but the script really starts in your mind. You have a script because you don't have a play without a script. And I would say a deficiency that I see in the entrepreneurial world, which is an upfront requirement in the theater world, is that you're creating an experience. Can you talk a little bit, because when you went to university, you took philosophy and psychology, right?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. That was going to make you a pile. America being America.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, but then you went directly went into the fashion industry, you know, designing and producing clothes.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Can you remember back? Because this was in your twenties when you immediately wanted to do that. Did you still have that theater approach?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, it's funny. Yes. If I could remember that. And unfortunately, I can't.
 
Dan Sullivan: But, uh, you know, don't do an elderly statesman. Act as if you remember.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, see, that's part of it. It's all performance, isn't it? What I knew, and this is, again, just watching my parents, is that the people that worked in their store got along with each other and supported each other, because that would bring the best result. So yes, very early on, I was aware that you had to hire the right people. It took longer for me to understand what that meant and what is the criteria for being the right person. And what I mean by that is casting for a commercial where I was doing this commercial and it was a family and it was Christmas morning, went through our callbacks, and there was going to be a husband, wife, two kids, and a dog. And it's Christmas morning, they're opening gifts, and the kids are young, and it was down to 20-some people. And I called everybody into the room, and said, I want you to all understand one thing, because I know it's a tendency of actors, if you don't get something, that you keep second guessing. Oh, should I have dressed more like the character would have dressed? You know, what should I have done differently so I could have gotten the part? Where did I screw up? And I said, none of you screwed up. All of you could do this job. The problem is that, or the challenge is, that I've got to construct something that reasonably looks like a family, you know? So that means that I've got to really whittle it down. We know that there's one little girl, one little boy, a man and wife and their dog. The only thing we don't have to be that specific about is a dog, but I want one that's got enough of a face. We're going to get a bulldog just so it's got the right kind of face. So when we cut away to it, it's interesting. But you can all do the job. But now the conditions for that, the criteria for doing that job, means that I've got to put four people together that it's credible that they're a family unit. So I just wanted you all to know that, that none of you did anything wrong. Well, in the same way, when I'm putting together a team, whether it's a production team, for theater, whether it's a production team when I'm doing a film, when I'm working with a company for an event, a live event, whatever it is, you got to put together the right people. And those people's efforts need to complement each other. So it's not just that they have the skill, they also have to have the personality to work with others and get along. And you know, by the time you're in your forties, or even before, your resume ought to look pretty good. And on paper, it ought to look like, oh, yeah, they can do this job, no problem. Or they went to school, look at their previous experience. But that doesn't mean that they're going to play well with the others.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So the big thing here, there's a reverse engineering that I'm hearing about that. The reverse engineering, and I see this missing a lot in the entrepreneurial world. And these are successful people, so I'm not talking about failures in the entrepreneurial world. The entrepreneurs I talk to belong to the Strategic Coach. And, you know, right now you've got to be making personally $200,000 to even qualify for being in the lowest level of our program. So if you don't join the Strategic Coach, you were successful before we met you, and you're going to be successful after. But what I'm really, really interested in, what is the big future that you're looking at that everything that you've done up until now is sort of stage one of your career, and now you want to work on stage two? Okay, so I'm saying that everything you've done up until now got you to where you are that we're talking and now we want to know what is it that you want to achieve in the future that's bigger and better than everything that you've accomplished up until now. Okay, and that's what we're going to do is we're going to take your picture of the future and show you how the thinking tools that we've created support where you're going. I said you don't need our tools to stay where you are. You know, so just to translate it into the context that you gave to the people who were auditioning is a big something that you have in your mind and you want to know whether your big thing and their big thing match.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that's right. That matching is really important. But there's also, you have an interesting filtering criteria, Dan, and we've talked about it or touched on it. And that is there are people that let's say disqualify themselves, that you don't feel would play well with others or with your group. They wouldn't be a good member of the cast. And that has to do with also a certain foundation of trust. You know, how does that figure in when you are either hiring or selecting people to be, as clients, because you don't let everybody in either. They've got to be a growing part of that ensemble that is Strategic Coach.
 
Dan Sullivan: Since our workshops, there's a tremendous amount of interaction between our team and the clients, the entrepreneurial clients. But the whole teaching method is there has to be a lot of interaction among the members of the workshop, the entrepreneurs, because our workshops are anywhere from 30 to 50 people. Sweet ppot is around 40. And we have a structure, we have a script, you know, I mean, right now we're in our 35th year. So we've got 80 workshops planned out ahead. And a new one gets created every quarter. So I said, one of the things you have to understand here is that you're never going to catch up with our creativity. As much as you master in the Program, there's going to be more that's being created right now. You're going to be with us 25 years, and you still won't be complete with the Program. So I'd like to talk about that, if you think about it from a performer's standpoint, an actor. But it's not just the actors, that's the front stage quality. You also are casting for your back stage. Who's the director? Who is the choreographer? And your current play, Personality, demands three things of actors that aren't required for our theater. It requires that they be good actors. It requires that they be good dancers. And it requires that they be good singers. They have to do it. And like doing it as an ensemble. But then you have the music director back stage, you have the choreographer, you have the sound director, you have the lighting director, you have the set director, you have everything that makes that performance so that the performers can just perform, and everything else is taking the stage manager, you know, the person who deals with the contracts. So how have you approached it? I mean, most people can get it with the live performers, but it seems to me that you've taken an extra step in that. Who allows all of this to happen? So you're casting there, too.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Absolutely.
 
Dan Sullivan: You must have auditioned all the back stage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, absolutely. One of the things that I am big on is when someone is in a position of responsibility, that you give them that responsibility and allow them to do their job. So for instance, when I was doing film work, I would always have my cinematographer give me a list of their preferred crew because I don't want anybody to be felt like they were stuck with somebody and that that was imposed on them. So I want to eliminate all possible obstacles to deflecting blame to something else. Well, I wasn't working. I never worked with this person before. We don't communicate. And so I think my principle that that boils down to is you find good people through other good people. And that's the essence of building a good team. And I think that that's really critical. So I didn't hire everybody, although I met everybody in the key positions, because we wanted to make sure that there was clear communication among the different departments. So if you're a set designer, you got to work with the lighting designer, and you got to work with the costume designer, because you got to make sure that everything is lit for all the blocking of the stage, that the color palette of the clothing works with the color palette of the set. And so the more communication there is, the better the end result is going to be. That's really critical. And I think that it's also, I mean, I'm looking at this, Dan, that what we're doing now is our brainstorming about this. I don't know that this is a podcast, but it's our brainstorming on how we'll approach this, because I think there's things we're going to really hook into that you take off with, that I take off with, and then we see how those really, you know, work synchronously, which is really good because it also the employer or casting director that, how can I say this? The employer's got to ask the right questions. You just can't go through the rote. Do you have these qualifications? You got to understand that person and how well the most educated guests you can make that they're going to fit well and complement the others there, as opposed to becoming an irritant that makes it harder to do the job.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. One of the things that has been a pleasure for Babs and I to have sort of an inside look at what you've done since the first time that you put the reading script together, you know, that you would just have a reading. And I remember getting it, you know, as an email. And I went through it and I said, please, this is a really, really great play. This is a really, really great play. And the thing is that it's a play about a performer. You know, it's a play about someone who literally is the bridge from whatever existed before rock and roll. It could have been rhythm and blues. There was a lot of different musical forms in the ‘40s. And all of a sudden, in the ‘50s, it crosses a bridge. And in many ways, Lloyd Price, who's the central character and personality, and I knew him because I grew up in the ‘40s in Ohio, as you did, ‘40s and ‘50s. I knew Lloyd Price right from the beginning. I remember Lloyd Price, but the more that you talked about it and the more you introduced Lloyd Price to potential investors and to everyone else, I went back and I read the history and it came to me that this is the crossover artist who allowed all of rock and roll to follow. He was the one who really put rock and roll on the map in a number of different aspects, and one of them is he was the first black performer who got a white teenage audience. You know, in the performances right from the beginning, and it depended on the states you were doing this because you still had segregation, you know, in the early ‘50s. And the thing that was really interesting about it is he's not just a great artist, you know, he was number one in the charts and his music, you know, people may not know who Lloyd Price is, but they sure know Lloyd Price's music. And people say, Lloyd Price? Who is that? This was 30 years before I was born. And I said, the song “Personality.” And they said, oh, “Personality.” Yeah, I know that song. Well, this is the guy who not only performed it, he's the guy who wrote it. I mean, he was the lyricist and he was the composer and he was the first performer. So it seemed to me that this was a great story in itself of how much that all rock and roll that's happened over the last 70 years, you can name in one hand the people who put rock and roll on the charts, who put rock and roll on the radio stations, who took advantage of the new low cost record players in the 45s that just came in and who got the teenagers. And all that's part of the vision. Now that's part of the script. And I would say that with your back stage casting and with your front stage casting, the performers have to have an appreciation of the history here.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because like any business, you also have a mission, right? You're trying to accomplish something. It's not just more sales. I mean, that's essential for survival, of course, to have the sales. But you want, I should say I want, I want people to be aligned on that mission. that it means something to them beyond the job.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So give me an example of people who were disqualified off the bat. And again, we're talking front stage and back stage, but somebody who came in and you could tell just by interacting with them, they don't really, really get what the mission is here. They don't really get the vision. I can tell right off the bat that they're just looking for their next job.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So it was interesting. I've got, a really good example of that. So auditions for a musical, you're not only auditioning for the director and then myself as the playwright for the acting, but also for the musical director. Do they have the vocal range and is it the baritone we need or the soprano we need or whatever? And then the choreographer. So we all have to come together, you know, because they may be lacking one of those important parts and it's not going to work out. Well, this woman came in and she ran her lines. She's pretty good. Then she sang, pretty good. So Sheldon Epps, who's the director, and I look at him and I said, you know, she's pretty good. You know, we should see her again. He said, well, she'll be back for the choreography. So you'll see her then, but it's not going to work out. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you'll see, really high maintenance. And I said, really? And he said, well, let's see what happens at the choreography audition. So later that afternoon, he and I are in there, and our choreographer, who's great, Edgar Godino, is working with everybody, and this woman stops the ensemble. Says, I have a question, I have a question. Stopped it twice, and the third time she stopped it, she said, can I ask the director a question? And Sheldon was sitting right next to me. So he goes down to talk to her and her back is to me, Sheldon is, you know, facing her and our eyes catch and he goes, a little eye roll. So he comes back up and sits next to me and he said, I told you, high maintenance. And I said, how did you know? I mean, cause she's, she's certainly talented. He said, oh yeah, she's talented. but she would be disrupting the whole cast because she needs to be the center of attention for everything that's going on. And so she is going to really hurt the ensemble, and that's not the kind of person you want.
 
Dan Sullivan: She's got an entire future in theater as a one-person act.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, there is an actor whose name I won't mention who was known for doing one-man shows. And somebody who had worked with him on a regular play said, there's a reason he does one man shows.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, the thing is, it just shows you the crossover between talent and teamwork.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right. And it also experience because Sheldon sensed that from her in the get go. I can't say that I did. I was just like, oh, she's got a good voice, did pretty good with the acting. And then you realize, problem. And it was just so funny because it came out three hours later in the dance audition. He was absolutely right. She was going to disrupt. She wanted to command the attention. And as you saw this cast, we ended up with one of the comments we get from so many people in the live audience is they all seem to really enjoy doing this. Which doesn't take away from the drama of the story, but you're getting a sense that, you know, these people just work together and they all make each other better as a result. And I think every business should want that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, you've been in production. Go back right to the beginning of being in the fashion world. That's a theatrical production, too. You know, I mean, that's right. The other thing is that once you're committed and you have the courage to move forward on a project, you don't have any margin for error that the people themselves are going to be a problem as people, not as talent, but as people. This person is going to be a problem.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, and by the way, there are people that have gotten quite good over the years of masking until you really get into stuff. And some of those problem behaviors can come out.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Let me ask you, because in our company now, except for internal hires, you know, where I'm moving, putting a new role together, to use theater language, I'm putting a new role together, and I have a particular person I need in a particular position. And I have a tool that's called The 4x4, and it's got four quadrants. And the first one is, what is your attitude that you show up with? And it's all directed towards me. It says, you're going to be working directly with me. So there's four attitudes that I require. You have to be alert. You have to be curious. You have to be responsive. And you have to be resourceful. Okay? And if you're working with me, we're going through a constant process of change. Okay? And in terms of results in your role, I want to see what we're doing now done faster, easier, cheaper, with a bigger result. I write in specifically what the role is, but they get them. And then I have a third quadrant, and the third quadrant is how you can be a hero to me. So here's four things that, within the first six months after you're working with me, you can be a hero this way. I mean, you have to do all the above. You have to have the right attitude and you have to be producing results. But here's how you can be really a hero to me. And if you pull this off, I'm going to say great things about you to everybody, okay, and you know there's tangible rewards for getting better working with me, you know, payment, you know how much you make and what kind of self-initiative you get to do if you're a hero to me. And then i have a fourth quadrant, there's four ways you can drive me crazy, and I want to tell you that you can do everything in the first quadrant you can do everything in the second quadrant and you can do really great things in the third quadrant, but in the fourth quadrant, if you drive me crazy, you're gonna be gone. You're gonna be gone. And one of them is you keep me in the dark about what you're doing. And the other thing is that you're experiencing problems and you keep them to yourself so that your medium-sized problem becomes a big problem. And it's that fourth quadrant, you're going to drive me crazy. So when I related back to Sheldon, he was already picking up that she was going to drive him crazy.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's exactly right.
 
Dan Sullivan: His job was to keep other people that get hired from driving you crazy.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, when I hired Sheldon, yeah, I'd interviewed a bunch of directors, award winners. I mean, you know, I was able to attract pretty good candidates, very good candidates. And I really liked Sheldon a lot. And I said to him, there's something you need to know about me if we're going to work together. And that's that I have the no asshole rule, which is a variant about what you're talking about. And he said, well, I think I know what you mean. But why don't you tell me? And I said, if you're paying me, you can never be abusive. I won't tolerate it. But you can be an asshole if you're paying me enough. But if I'm paying you, you can't be.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's right.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Which is essentially your quadrants.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah. You've reduced my four quadrants down to one line.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I said, you know, I've got just an amazing person who's worked hand in hand with me for 20 years. She's the one who creates all the workshops for the people that I don't coach. So I create all the tools, but she reconfigures them and she works directly with the 17 other coaches that we have. I'm one coach. And I'm the lead coach and I'm the trailblazing coach. I'm the one who creates new stuff and tries them out. And I said, and I don't want to know anything that you're doing, okay? Because I don't have time to think about what you're doing. But I'll know with renewals and I'll know with feedback from the clients that you're doing a good job. But you have to see everything. You have to be in every one of my workshops, and you have to see what I'm doing so you're getting the context of what I'm doing with the most advanced clients in the Program. And these people are all making in the millions. So they're not beginning entrepreneurs in our program. I worked with her for about 10 years. We were just out at dinner, no special reason for the dinner, we were just chatting. And I said, I just want to give you a compliment, and I hope you take it as a compliment. And her name's Cathy Davis. And I said, Cathy, I just want you to know, I never think about you. I said, you know, when I'm on Free Days at nighttime, I want to tell you, there's a topic that never comes up in my thoughts, and that's whether you're doing a good job or not. And I want you to take that as a compliment. And she said, I do. And that means I'm not looking over her shoulder, I'm not supervising, I'm not checking up. You know how to do what you're doing, and I trust that you're gonna get better at it, and that we'll see the results in the numbers. You don't wanna think about these people at night. Right.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, or having to solve problems they've created. You hire people to resolve problems, not add to them.
 
Dan Sullivan: In just the outline of the idea of Casting, Not Hiring, as a book, I was saying that there's a resemblance between theater and entrepreneurism, and the first thing is they're productions for an audience that have a front stage and a back stage. And that's true for every entrepreneurial company. And there's skin in the game with both of them. I mean, people have tremendous skin in the game. It's not like there's corporate jobs where people get and they have no skin in the game you know they're they're hired guns and they're big corporations and basically their career is their business it's not that the business of who they're working for is their career and you know and we're all in that position but that becomes the main occupation, you know, do I get a job do I get benefits, do I have the right size office, do I have everything else. But here, you're always bringing them back. What's the whole picture here of what we're trying to create and what we're going to produce? And we can only do a 50% job. The audience has to do the other 50%. They're partners, too. The audience is a partner. So the big thing, I mean, just offhand, if you have a great back stage cast, who does a good job of creating a front stage cast, what don't you have to think about?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, it's interesting. I've never thought about it that way. What don't I have to think about? Because by nature, I'm always thinking about how I can make the production better. That goes down to my writing, to how it's being visualized, how performances are happening, the discussions that not only Sheldon and I have every day, but also with the choreographer and with the musical director. There were enhancements we want to do. There's always tweaking and stuff that you want to do. So to me, if I can only concentrate and what requires my attention is how do we make it better? How do we do it better? So we're starting at a good foundation. And then it's during this whole rehearsal period, then a preview period. How do we make it better? What else can we do? How do we make it better? Because if somebody is causing problems, then to me, and I've had to do this, is letting the person go. I did not see that there was going to be a way out of this. It was going to work because my priority is to the mission and people that are taking the show forward and my investors. You have to be mindful of that too.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and I think the big thing right from the beginning that there are outside audiences that are crucial. I mean, there's obviously the people who show up as paying customers, but there are the investors who are pre-financing the ultimate success. And then the other thing is the word of mouth in the, there's a whole theater community, which is global. As we've talked about before, the two epicenters of the theater world are London and New York. You know, those are the two. This is the essence of theater talent. Most of the production is geared with that sort of in mind. But it seems to me that you're responsible for that the vision becomes real. That's your number one responsibility, that the vision becomes real.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh, that's right. And that realizing that vision, which is also Sheldon's responsibility, is, you know, making that happen every night in front of an audience, all the different players in there. It's that what you're talking about. That's the interesting thing about theater, because in a way, every day you're starting over again with a new audience and you don't know how they're going to respond. You know, you have a reasonable idea. Oh, this always gets a laugh. There's always an idiosyncrasies that happen. And that's part of the unpredictability and the excitement.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's the magic of theater is that to a certain extent, you're starting with a new play every night.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You know, I went to the Shakespeare Theatre, the Stratford, in Great Britain in 1964, so it's 60 years ago. The main Globe Theatre, not the Globe Theatre because that's in London, but the main playhouse in Stratford, is actually very intimate. It sort of wraps around, you know, if you're sitting in the back row in Stratford, you're in row number 30. So you're very, very close to the action all the time. We saw the history plays. It was the year when they put all the history plays in order, you know, starting with Richard II. The interesting part about it was that there were people who became very, very famous who were just doing their first year in Stratford. Vanessa Redgrave, it was her first year. Ian Holm, it was his first year. Anthony Quayle. And these all became major, major stars afterwards. But it's an ensemble company, and you just got to fit in as a team member, and oftentimes not in the necessarily most important roles. These people were 19 and 20 years old, some of them, you know, when I was watching. And I was so struck by the fact that everything's on the line for everybody every night.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You don't want to be the cast member who screws up the company.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: There's the line I'm blanking on who said it, but there are no small roles. There's only small actors. And it's really true. You know, when you're watching a terrific group, and I think Chicago so far is the best cast we've had. It was phenomenal.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because I've seen all three. I've seen them at the Playhouse Malvern, but you also saw the ones in New York.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, at the Orbach Theater and then at the workshop you saw.
 
Dan Sullivan: The workshop. I was so struck because the musicians you had for the workshop, they never saw the music until the night before. They just brought it in and they played like they'd been playing it for five years. I was just sitting there and I said, you know, you know you're in the epicenter of the theater world where you can just hire five guys and they come in and it sounds like they've been rehearsing for you know, they're just sitting there, they're just playing the music. And, you know, after two or three days, they're playing in a club, they're doing this and everything else. I like to watch at the end how the performers themselves are experiencing it. And the musicians were really excited what they had been brought in for the two or three hours that you had them. Yeah, so anyway, we got down about five lines in the introduction, the outline I put together on this. The next time, what I'd like to deal with is what the radical difference between bringing people on as production members, if they're just being hired, because we talked about the similarity between theater and entrepreneurism, but this one term, casting, as opposed to hiring, makes all the difference in the world. It's a radical difference. And it's very, very important, obviously, for people in theater to understand the radical. They're not being hired. They're being cast. But what a radical difference it would be for the entrepreneurial world to understand. You've got to stop thinking in terms of hiring and start thinking in terms of casting.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. Yeah. And I think that along with that, to me, goes the idea of we may have really strong ideas of how something should be done. But if you've hired somebody, at least to me, it's why would you hire somebody whose opinions you don't respect? So those people who are in the trenches, so to speak, who may have a better idea, that also goes towards building community, building a bond among everyone, because everyone feels valued. And that's an important thing for the business owners, for the people doing hiring. You know, they've got to set that tone. It's not just like what those people you're hiring have to live up to. I think you also have to present something that makes it clear that you value the people that you are bringing on board. I think that's critical. I can give a real world example of that, you know, with what happened with St. Aubyn and just the amazing bit that he tried in rehearsal. And Sheldon and I said, man, that was fantastic. Let's do it. And so, you know, I think that being open to, I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a management side of it from those who are doing the hiring, that also they've got to change their game in terms of, you know, what are you looking for? What are you basing that on? Because, you know, again, by the time you're in your late thirties, you ought to have a pretty solid resume on paper, but that doesn't mean that you're somebody we'd want to work with.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, wrapping up this episode of Casting Not Hiring, which is a subset of Anything and Everything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Or the Infinite Universe Theory.
 
Dan Sullivan: What has occurred to you in your thinking at the end of this first episode that is new to you?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I think that this is a two-way street. It's not just the person who's holding the cards by doing the hiring, that they have to be open to a new way of looking at those people that they would be hiring. And how do you determine who is best? Because it's not just about their resume and it's not just about their skills in terms of the job, it's also about their personality. And I think that's really important. What about yourself?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think the big thing I really picked up from this, and probably it was your story about Sheldon Epps, it has to do with how much the people's experience before you're engaging with essentially being partners in a production, how much that history is really, really important. You know, and that you're solving a particular problem, but Sheldon has solved this problem for 40 years.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And he's giving you an immediate feedback: As talented as she is, it's not going to work when she does this dancing audition. You'll see what I meant.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. That's right. And that comes down to trust. I have to trust Sheldon, which I do. And trust is earned, right? So, you know, he's also got to trust me that I'm not going to be hard to work with. You know, so it's that value and trust. And what does that come down to ultimately? Relationships.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: How do you build relationships? I think we're on for next week, aren't we?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yep, yep, we are.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Terrific.
 
Dan Sullivan: Okay. Thank you. Goodbye.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Bye.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: 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.