Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Welcome to the show, folks. And in the words of Brad Lea of Brad Lea’s Dropping Bombs podcast, I got to say, he says this a lot, and of course I listen to his podcast, I’ve got a real treat. I’m serious, I got a real treat for you today. I just finished up recording a podcast with a guy named Randy Bernard. And it was just a blast. I enjoyed it. I felt blessed by it. I felt like I got some insight that was just really valuable to me. So, I’m really excited to share it with you guys. I mean, when I got done talking to Randy, I was just like pumping my fists in the air, it was so fun. Randy, thank you so much for being on the show. Ty Murray, thank you so much for introducing me to Randy. And all you guys and gals out there in the TCP Nation, thank you so much for listening. I just can’t wait to get to it. So here it is, Mr. Randy Bernard. I mean, I want to tell you who he is, but you can Google him. And he’s been the CEO of the PBR, IndyCar. He’s now managing or co-managing Garth Brooks career. I mean, he’s just a fascinating, awesome individual. So, I want you all to get to know him. Here he is.
Why don’t we jump into it? Maybe you just give the listener or me an insight into where you come from, who you are, and how your career just started and how you’ve been where all you’ve been?
Randy Bernard: Well, I grew up on a ranch in a little tiny town called [inaudible], California, there was about 500 people population. Like from kindergarten to eighth grade, we had 15-17 kids in our entire school. So, I was always intrigued, and my family didn’t come from a rodeo family, but I loved to rope. So, I really, at a young age, got into roping. And at that time, it was the ACTRA before the USTRC, and we roped a lot, and I went to college on the rodeo team. And just realized, I also had a hunting club on the side, my partners on it were Jim Everett, who was the quarterback for the Rams at the time, and Carl Ekern, who was the middle linebacker for the Rams.
Neil Dudley: How do you meet these people? Like that’s what I think your skill set is so awesome is your network. It’s like, I kind of want the listeners to think about that. I couldn’t be talking to Randy Bernard if it weren’t for my friend Ty and the network that ends up playing out.
Randy Bernard: If there’s one thing God blessed me with, it’s an amazing network. Garth kids me about it all the time. He likes to take my phone and just scroll it and stop and say, who is this? Because I think I have 23,000 contacts in my phone. But yeah, I’ve been blessed with that. Ever since I was a kid, I was 12 years old, and getting names. So Rich Saul was the first Ram that came up to the place and hunted. But when I started getting about 18 years old, 16 to 18, I started becoming really close with a bunch of the players. And I mean, we had so many of them come up there, of there of old team, from Nolan Cromwell to Jack Youngblood, Jim Youngblood, Carl [Ricksaw], Irv Pankey, Leroy Irvin.
Neil Dudley: These guys were, you got to meet them because your family had a hunting ranch or you started one?
Randy Bernard: We had just a lot of wild pig, wild boar, and a lot of deer and let them come up and go buck hunting during season and quail. And so, they’d just come up every year and we, Carl and I became like, he was like a brother to me, and he was killed in a car wreck, I think in 1992. And one of the most tragic days of my life. But I started this hunting club, and I’m realizing I’m like these guys are making, at the time Jim Everett was the second highest paid quarterback in the NFL behind Joe Montana. I think his contract was like $26 million. And I’m looking at what these rodeo guys are making, I was just, I’m like this isn’t the right path for me. At the time, I wanted to be a pro rodeo cowboy, a PRC cowboy, but I’m like, why do I want to go spend a year on the road to most of the time break even at that time. And so, I really started to get a little bit more engaged in college. And at that point, I had a, there was an exposition class, Jack Scott taught it, and he introduced me to the general manager of the Calgary Stampede and the general manager said, “Hey, why don’t you apply for the internship up there?” There’s only been one other American at the time that ever- it’s pretty hard to get because you have to prove that there’s no Canadian that is qualified.
Neil Dudley: Is that part of their social structure up there or-?
Randy Bernard: Yeah, like if I wanted to stay up there, I had to find two Canadian equivalent jobs for the same price down here, money-wise, which that’s not going to happen. But Canada does a very good job of protection, of protecting their jobs up there and making sure [inaudible]. So, I spent 1988 – it was the year right after the Olympics, so, Canada, Calgary was just booming and went up and worked for the Calgary Stampede. I fell in love. I knew at that minute what I want to do in life, and it wasn’t rodeo. It was I wanted to be in the entertainment lifestyle. I wanted to take rodeo to another level.
Neil Dudley: I think all rodeo cowboys are glad that little piece of your life happened.
Randy Bernard: I don’t know about that, but- So I came back, I worked at the California Mid State Fair, and the general manager at the time there was Maynard Potter, and he said, “Listen, our little rodeo used to be big.” And he goes, “Because there’s so many rodeos on that weekend.” I think it was the first week of August. There was like 46 rodeos across the country, and they just couldn’t get the caliber of cowboys, and its capacity was about 8,000, sits about 7,800 if you want to be exact. And I said, “Let me have it for a couple of years. I’ll grow it.” And the first thing I did was I went and talked Ty Murray and Cody Lambert into coming out and doing a match, who were number one and number two in the world in the [inaudible] at the time, doing a match on broncs and bulls. And I mean, just having those two names, I made my entire marketing campaign around them. We went from a 50% capacity to 100% capacity. I mean, we sold out and it was amazing.
Neil Dudley: What did it take to talk them into it? I mean, I’ve negotiated with Ty a little bit-
Randy Bernard: Money.
Neil Dudley: Money, yeah there you go.
Randy Bernard: I mean, and back then, it wasn’t that much. They were thrilled to ride for $10 or $15,000 a match or something like that.
Neil Dudley: Well, you had to take a risk there because, I mean, probably the rodeo wasn’t real cash flush. So, there’s something, I see in you a little bit of a guy that says, okay, I know what can happen, and I might have to put something up front here, but we can build it.
Randy Bernard: We let it roll. Everything we’ve ever done in life is we’ve taken a lot of chances, but I would say 75% were calculated chances, 25% of them weren’t.
Neil Dudley: Did any of those 25 work out?
Randy Bernard: Oh yeah. I’ll tell you about some of those later. So anyway, they came out and it wasn’t the money that impressed them the most. It was the fact that, I mean, California Mid State Fair was a big fair. We had, at the time, there was no one bigger that year than MC Hammer and George Straight in the country music – well, Garth Brooks, too, but Garth wouldn’t come to the fair. But so, I mean, we had George there.
Neil Dudley: Garth impresses me- I’m sorry, I chase these rabbits – but you learn a lot about Garth because he puts it out there. I mean, he’s just kind of an open book. You can find documentaries on him. He impresses me because his name’s George as one of his kind of influences, huge.
Randy Bernard: That is huge. He’s one of his biggest influences, and it’s one of his heroes of life. And he doesn’t call him George, he calls him King George. And Garth is very respectful to George.
Neil Dudley: If you look at the two men and their styles, they’re really different.
Randy Bernard: Oh yeah, definitely. So, what I did was, when George Strait or MC or Reba or whoever was going to be at the night at the fair, I mean, we had limousines for them, we had green rooms, we had fruit baskets. I mean, we made it where, when you came and you were going to perform, you were treated like a superstar, and which they were. And so, I took that same philosophy with cowboys, and I made their greenrooms, and I gave them limos, and I gave them beautiful suites. And I did everything I could to make sure we did that. And I think when they left, they said, “You’re the first person that’s ever treated us like what we should be treated like.” And I’ll never forget Ty saying that. He goes, “Typically we parked back behind the rodeo committee, and there’s 400 rodeo committee guys. So basically, we have to walk a half a mile to get to the-” He goes, “Nobody gives a crap about us,” and he goes, “You took good care of us.” Two years ago by, a year and a half goes by, and actually, it was the next fair – I had them come out and do another event. And they were sitting in my office, and they saw an airline ticket to Colorado Springs for that week after the fair. And they go, “What are you doing in Colorado Springs?” I said, at the time commissioner Cryer of the PRCA had asked me if I wanted to come out and talk to him. He wanted to hire me as the general manager of the for-profit part of the PRCA. And so, I told them that, and they go, “We’re just starting this PBR thing. Why don’t you come over and run that?” And I didn’t put much thought in it at that time. The fair ends. I fly straight to Colorado Springs, flights were delayed all day. I get in at like at one in the morning, and my flasher is going off on my hotel phone, and I go pick it up, ask who it was. And there was a voice recording from a gentleman by the name of Doug Quimby. Doug was their attorney, the PBR attorney. He says, “Mr. Bernard. I don’t care what time it is. Please call me when you get in, we want to talk to you.” I felt guilty. I call him late, late, late or early in the morning. And he said, “Listen, whatever you do, don’t take the job. The PBR wants to hire you.” I haven’t told these stories in- I don’t know if I’ve ever told these stories.
Neil Dudley: Man, I love it; I’m so happy. I mean, you are doing a thing I so aspire to do, which is have people just yearning for your expertise. I mean, I love it.
Randy Bernard: I don’t think they were looking for my expertise, I was 28 years of age, but I think they’re looking for my passion. One thing they knew, I had a lot of passion. I can tell you from 28 to now, I think I know less every day that goes by than when I did at that point.
Neil Dudley: Well, the world challenges fast.
Randy Bernard: We just are so naive at 28 that we just think we’re unbreakable and bulletproof. So, I went, met with Lewis Cryer, Lewis gave me an offer. These guys beat it by $10,000. Lewis went back and beat it by another $10,000. I was like, holy smokes. And I finally, I said, you know what, I said, it’s going to come down to, if I stayed at- all my friends were like, go to PRCA. You have 125 staff, you have a beautiful office. They were like what are you going to do as an [inaudible]? I don’t know. I go, but here’s the one thing that’s different: If I stay at the PRC, I’m always going to be in the shadow of Lewis Cryer. And if I go to the PBR, I had made an agreement that if I go there, I get to call the shots, and I have a board and they’ll set the policy, but I get to carry the policy out.
Neil Dudley: Can you name that board?
Randy Bernard: Oh my God, I can name all of those guys. I’ll tell you a great story about that. I went back to Lewis Cryer, and I said, “Lewis,” I said, “I am so appreciative. I want to keep a great relationship with you. And I’m not going to take the highest offer here. I’m going back to the first offer. It was $55,000.” I said, “Because what I want to do here, I’m taking this job because I get the responsibility of making the calls.” And Lewis and I had a great relationship the entire time he was there. I mean, we were competitive, but not- at that time, our total sponsorship the first year was $300,000, and they were doing like, I don’t know, $14, $15 million at the time, PRC.
Neil Dudley: Did you have the sneaking suspicion though that bull riding is what drove any PRCA success?
Randy Bernard: At the time, yeah, you had all the greats over there and you had [PRO] fractured off and they’re trying to do their thing over here. So, they hired me. It was Cody, Ty, and Tuff. They go, “Hey, we have an event in Guthrie, Oklahoma. It’s going to be the first one of the yeah, fly in, and we want you to- you can meet the rest of the board.” And said, fantastic. So, Brian McDonald and Sam Applebaum were still there at the time. They were being told everything and I walk into the board meeting and David [Cuneia] goes, “Hey, what are you doing here?” And he’s on the board. The rest of the board looked at me like, what are you doing here? Nobody told them that they’d hired me. Doug Quimby goes, “I guess we got to first thing to do is get Randy officially hired.” I’m like, oh my God. My second board meeting was at MGM Grand, and Tuff pointed at Cody. Cody said, “You point at me again, I’m gonna get up and kick the shit out of you.” And that’s pretty much, I mean, it broke into a fight. I mean, Tuff pointed at him again. And Cody throws a chair across the table, goes in-between- well, it was a little bit more toward Tuff, of course, and breaks it and it crashes against the floor. And I mean, huge hole in the wall. They go outside, massive. Next night is the night Tuff gets slammed by Bodacious. I mean, that’s the night that Cody Lambert and Ty and I sat in the hotel room the whole night. They took care of him. It’s like they never did fight the day before. But it was like the Wild West is what I’m trying to get to.
Neil Dudley: It sounds like it. I think it took that to make it happen.
Randy Bernard: The passion that these guys had. At that time, it wasn’t who had the most logic or who thought it out most methodical on what we wanted, it was the guy that would scream the loudest, want to fight the hardest, that had the most passion that would drive his idea through. And I saw time and time and time again at the beginning. And these guys, for Tom Teague later, when he was on the board, he said, “I sit on some of the Fortune 500 companies, and our boards don’t ask us as intelligent questions as these cowboys do.” These cowboys were in tune, and they were focused on making sure that this took off.
Neil Dudley: They were scraping and scrounging, they were building it from the dirt. I mean, I just so wish I could have sat in some of those meetings or just been a fly-
Randy Bernard: I don’t know if you would have wanted to.
Neil Dudley: Well, I mean, if it took a punch in the gut just to get to sit in there and experience that, it would have been valuable to me in my life, along the way somewhere, I guarantee it.
Randy Bernard: Yeah, it was fun. I loved it.
Neil Dudley: I’ll tell you, like, I’ve been around Ty and Jim a lot, and just, I love it when they just kind of get to telling stories about just the stuff they did. I mean, most of it’s not very repeatable, and they’re good storytellers.
Randy Bernard: Amazing storytellers. And these guys don’t get enough credit for what they did. They, as guys that were hellions outside and loved to party, on the inside of these meetings, they were serious. And I mean, I remember a meeting in Colorado Springs that started at 6:00 PM at night, that was during Denver, and we finished the next morning at 7:30. And I mean, there was no alcohol. There was some pretty darn good discussions. No fighting, thank God. But that’s the night we changed our entire rule book. We went through every single rule and made so many changes to it. And that was really the foundation of the rule book of the PBR. These guys, they drank coffee. I mean, we didn’t sleep for 24 hours, and they got up from the table and we went, everybody took showers, and we went straight up to Denver. Some of them had to do [inaudible], some of them had to do autograph signings. It was a pretty amazing how focused they were on this, all of them.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. That’s a great insight for anybody listening, just what it represents to- they started this thing and the amount of focus and tenacity and stick to it there had to be there to see it become what ultimately the PBR is today, which, I mean, I could just talk to you for 12 hours straight about all the things you’ve seen go from small to big. You have no way of knowing this, but Ty and I were just riding one day on his ranch, and he took a call from you and y’all were talking about something important that was going on. I just have always thought, man, that Randy Bernard must be somebody, because Ty treated you with a lot of respect, from at least from an outsider watching.
Randy Bernard: I love Ty and I love Cody – I love them all. But Ty and Cody and I were like brothers. I mean, we were connected at the hip on every decision. I talked to them every day. And they wanted to be talked with. I think, I don’t think sometimes Ty and Cody get as much credit as they deserve, because I mean, they deserve a lot of credit on, of course, what happened. And I mean, we didn’t always get along. Cody Lambert and I, we would go to battle sometimes on an issue.
Neil Dudley: Give me an example, like what kind of philosophy or perspective would y’all maybe differ on? Or is it it’s not that easy?
Randy Bernard: I wish I would have been more prepared; I could have given you some. But it was typically about a rule or something that we’d want to change or something that we’d want to do. And what would happen would be three weeks later, first week him and I maybe wouldn’t talk. And to this day, Cody and I are still as close and tight as you could ever imagine. But we would back off, not talk for a week, and then we’d always come back together and figure out what was- we’d always agree on something in the middle. And it always was the best decision. And Ty was so supportive. He would think about it, and when I wanted to sell the PBR, it was a great example. When I wanted to sell the PBR, I don’t want to get into the names, but there was a couple of board members, there was one board that just absolutely didn’t want to sell it.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, sure. I think anybody that knows it can guess that one probably.
Randy Bernard: Yeah. And so, Ty and Cody put their faith in me. And I didn’t have to, there was a time where I did look back. I was doing more research and trying to cover my butt more than I was on looking forward. And when Ty became the president and Cody Lambert, when I had both of them on both sides of me, I never looked back. I knew they always had my back. So, I could just look at the future and focus, and I can’t tell you how big that was. And that’s when we took off. I mean, all of a sudden, there’s this little company that started with $20,000 and we’re doing $20 million in sponsorship in a year. We’re doing massive network ratings. And it wasn’t all overnight. People might think it was just so quick. I’m telling you, those first couple of years, we had no money. I bought a chair – my office was, I’m going to guess, was 12 by 12, maybe 10 by 10. I had a folding chair, and I had a card table as my desk. I was the secretary. I was the toilet cleaner. I was the ticket taker, I had to hand out all the tickets. I did everything. Doug Quimby did our legal, and I was the only employee. And I went and bought a chair for $340 because I was tired of sitting in a folding chair. You would have thought I bought the Empire State Building. I took so much crap from those guys.
Neil Dudley: I can only imagine.
Randy Bernard: I mean, they’re like, “What do you need this fancy chair for?” On the other flip side of that though, so we’ll fast forward, that was ’95, in 2000 and I think it was ’09, I started to build a massive, beautiful new PBR headquarters, I said, “Listen, I’m not going to take any crap for what I buy.” I said, “You guys are going to have faith in me.” And I mean, it was a $12.5 million-dollar facility we built, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. And my whole goal was we’re going to make this work. If we have a sponsor walk in or whoever walks in, it’s as nice as the NFL headquarters or any other headquarters.
Neil Dudley: You’re touching on something that’s so valuable, I just want to highlight it for the listeners, Randy has a common thread that I hear a lot here, and it is make people’s experience great. Like anybody that you want to work with, make their experience great. Okay, sorry, Randy, but I just want people to hear that because- I mean, do you disagree with that? Is that one of your core values?
Randy Bernard: I would say that’s one of the most important things you do. I mean, I call it the wow factor. If fans don’t walk away with the wow factor, then will they come back? I mean, you put them in the 50/50 category. If they leave with the wow factor, they’ll be back every time. And bull riding at the time was very small. So, you had a lot of people come, a lot of city people, when we first started going to big cities, they were like kind of hesitant. And then they hear that rock and roll and then they would see that first ride and they were getting into it. My favorite event ever was, still is, Madison Square Garden. To me, it’s such a young, awesome, enthusiastic crowd. They don’t even know what they’re cheering for. I mean, they’ll cheer if the roper misses a bull.
Neil Dudley: Man, thank you so much for sharing all that. That’s just a great insight, and it gives the listeners a chance to get some feel for what it was like for you. I mean, you’ve built this career now, but you had to be willing to sit in a folding chair on a card table desk initially. I mean, people have to realize you’ve got to get in the dirt to build things.
Randy Bernard: You have to get in the dirt to build anything. And there was no one that was involved with us from the beginning – my philosophy from day one, and it comes from Rick Pitino’s book, he said he never hired anyone that he didn’t have a PHD. And I always used that as my reference when I hired someone. I’d sit back and say, does he have that PHD? And it stood for passion, hunger, and drive. I didn’t care if they had a degree. I didn’t care if they were from a rodeo family. I wanted them that were passionate about our sport, hungry, and that are driven to make this thing grow. And we had the best team in the world. I mean, I’m close with a lot of our people still that we hired back in 1994, ’95. And I keep up with them and love to see where they’re going, because they were all, they had that passionate. They’ve all been very successful.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I mean, you, that’s another thing I want to emulate about you is like you care about the people. So, I think that’s part of, just from an outsider, to me, that has to be a piece of your success. When somebody knows you truly care about them, they want to give you- and they’ll let you be honest with them and vulnerable and just say, look, no, this won’t cut it, you got to do better.
Randy Bernard: If you were too good to answer the phone or pick up a piece of paper, you weren’t probably going to be for us. There was no job that you shouldn’t be able to do. And there was no arrogance in our office. We all chipped in and did everything we could. And we grew it. And I look back on those 18 years – I don’t even know how many years I was there, I think it was 15 actually – and I’m just like, they’re the greatest times of my life. And we did so much, and it was just, it just kept taking off. But those first seven years, miserable. Absolutely, I would never quit, but if I was a quitter, there were a lot of times that I would have quit. And I’m going to tell you right now, there were a lot of nights at two in the morning, I’d get up and be throwing up, not from drinking, but just sick to my stomach whether we can make it work. Cause we took chances. I mean, these guys were bull riders. They’re gamblers. When we had our first World Finals and put up a million dollars, that wasn’t MGM putting up a million dollars. We had to sell that in tickets. And so, we introduced it. And so, we took a ton of chances, and I, my fear was if I couldn’t make it work, then I had to let people go, and I just never wanted to let anyone go. And I didn’t like to borrow- We never borrowed money. Everything we did was with cash up until we bought our television rights, which was another whole story.
Neil Dudley: Oh my goodness.
Quick pause just to say, I hope you know who Peterson Natural Farms is. If you don’t, go check them out, www.petersonsfarms.com. If you have any questions, hit me up. I’ve been working with Peterson’s and my best friend since kindergarten, and his wife, my wife, and a whole bunch of other really great people for about 20 years now, building a brand and a bunch of products that we think really add value to people’s healthy lives styles. And I like to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is a labor of love that I kind of do in my spare time. And I hope to just bring value, tell stories about people that affect me and give me the perspective I have. And I don’t want to steal that labor of love line from Mr. Douglas Burdett, the host of the Marketing Book Podcast, without giving him some credit. Here’s another something I’d tell you, if you are into building a brand or an entrepreneur of any sort, or salesperson of any sort, go listen to the Marketing Book Podcasts. He reviews great authors’ books about sales and marketing. So, Peterson Natural Farms, go check them out. Thank you for listening to the Cowboy Perspective.
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Okay so, just so we can explore some other things you’ve done, PBR is definitely this, we could just stay there this whole podcast and there’s lots of value, but talk about, and in my research, I felt like I owe it to you a little bit to you to get to know you better since we’re not just friends to begin with. So, I’m researching a little bit. Talk to me a little bit about IndyCar. I mean, one of the headlines read: Randy Bernard fired or controversial, something like that. Was that true? Or what happened there?
Randy Bernard: Well, let me go back one step. So, when we sold the Professional Bull Riders and all those guys became millionaires, I had a commitment of three years, and then I had an option on the fourth year. And I chose mostly stock in those first three years. And on that fourth year, I went to the guys and said, “Hey,” to the new owners, I said, “I have enough stock. I don’t want anymore. And so, we need to renegotiate my contract,” which I had the right to. I mean, this was nothing, I wasn’t contractually bound. That was the option I had on that fourth year. And one of the guys looked straight in my eyes and said, “You’ll never leave the PBR. And you’ll never find anything that will beat it.” And Ty looks right back at him and goes, “That was not the thing to say to Randy.” It wasn’t, Neil, it wasn’t four days later, Chris Cox calls me. I mean, of all people, Chris Cox, one of the greatest horsemen in the world. He goes, “Hey,” he goes, “I was having a clinic up in Indianapolis and I had an owner there and they want to talk to you about consulting them.” I’m like surely you didn’t have actual owner of the Indianapolis 500 or IndyCar. And sure enough, he goes, “Can I give him your number?” They called me and said, “We’d like to meet with you. We’d like to hire you to be a consultant.” This was December. So, I said, listen, I’ve got to be in Madison Square Garden on I think the seventh. I said, “I’ll fly in there on the fifth and meet with you. And then I’ll go on.” Well, I met with these guys. I go on to Madison Square Garden, land at LaGuardia, and get in the car on the way. And they call me, and they said, “We don’t want you as a consultant. We want you to CEO. Name your price.” And I’m like, I mean, I had seven more days to make a decision whether I was staying, I had to honor my fourth year. I threw a number out the next day. Within 15 minutes, they accepted it.
Neil Dudley: Why’d you go so low?
Randy Bernard: Well, I didn’t. I did very, very well. I wasn’t going to work for free, I’ll tell you that. I did that before. I did that with Ty and Cody and all those guys.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, there’s a little bit of a bond there that can never be broken, just from building that deal together.
Randy Bernard: Yeah. So, when the word got back to the owners of the PBR, they were in Aspen at the time, they chartered a plane, because I was in LA, and they flew out and said, “Please, don’t go. Please stay.” And I’m like, I don’t care what you offer me now. I went to you guys, and you didn’t believe in me. You didn’t give me a fair shake. And I’m not going to stay with anyone that doesn’t believe in me or give me a fair shake. You thought I was stuck here. And so, I’ve made my decision. And I left. And when I went to IndyCar – I think most of this is public, I know it is, I’ve read some of it – but in the papers, you can find that between IndyCar and CART racing, there was two fractions that had, they split at 15 years before. It was IRL and CART. And IRL was what I took over and CART had gone away, but both of them had lost about a half a billion dollars. IRL was losing about 30 million a year for 15 straight years. So, when I came in, my goal was I needed to make some massive changes quick. First one I had to make was our car was eight years old, and I wanted a new car and that was a complete cluster. I mean, we flew around the world. I took a couple of guys with me, and we literally met with every racing F1 car manufacturers, all around the world. And I had that going. I was changing the name of IRL to IndyCar. I was, I mean, I had so many things going. And we had some great years. We went from losing millions to making it, doing very, very well. And that’s probably confidential so I have to keep that. But in three short years, we changed the financial position of IndyCar and that I can say. And I was very proud of that. And they were very proud of it. But there were just some things that went on that I didn’t believe in. And I had done a massive sponsorship with a tire manufacturer, and it was going to be around $36 million – Continental. And Firestone was paying very little. They gave a lot of tires to the owners, which you have to take that at value. And they had some endorsement deals, which they were paying a lot of money. But the industry, the sports property, wasn’t making it. And so, I really dug my feet in the ground on that and I lost. And I’ll never forget because it was during the PBR world finals. And we had had a major blow up on this the month before, and we went into a closed session, and they asked me to stay because they were going to see if they wanted to keep me or not. And I had a great contract. I was like, dude, they’re going to have to pay me regardless. I was staying set. This is a game changer for the industry, and they didn’t- They kept me in that first meeting in September I think it was. In October, Garth has his big shows out the Wynn.
Neil Dudley: Oh, that was a great show.
Randy Bernard: It was so good. And so, he calls me, he goes, “Hey, what are you doing today? Why don’t you come over and watch some football?” It was a Saturday, college. So, I went over, and we watched football. He goes out, “I’ll walk you down to the car.” So, as we’re getting into the elevator, he goes, “I’m going to be going back on tour.” He goes, “Would you ever be interested in coming on to manage me?” I go, “No.” I said, “I don’t know the entertainment world, I mean, the music world.” I said, “I just don’t feel I could do you a great job. I love you as a friend,” I said-
Neil Dudley: How’d you get to be his friend?
Randy Bernard: Long story short, It was, I was in Nolan Ryan’s office-
Neil Dudley: How did you get to know Nolan Ryan? You just know everybody, man.
Randy Bernard: Jamie Adams and I were in his office. Jamie took me in there, and it was funnier than heck because President Bush called Jamie, I mean called Nolan. And I go, “Why don’t we walk out?” He goes, “No, no, just stay right there.” And so, then I just talked to Nolan about this at the NFR. I said, “Do you remember that?” And he goes, “Yeah, I do.” And then after he picks up the phone and calls Garth and says, “You need to meet Randy. Randy’s a good guy. You’re a good guy.” He goes, “Yyou guys will be friends forever.” Sure enough, the next time I went to Oklahoma, Tulsa, I looked him up. We went over and spent couple hours at his house, had dinner there. And we’ve become very close. I went on his foundation. And so, I didn’t accept working for him for a couple of years. And then when I did- Well, so back to that elevator, he goes, “I hear you’re probably going to get fired.” And I’m like, “Garth,” I said, “don’t worry about that. They said that last month, it’s not going to happen.” Literally, by the time I got down from the elevator and got in my car, the executive, the trustee is calling me and goes, “Hey man, it’s not going to work this time.” So, it wasn’t a big deal. I mean, they honored the contract. We did our deal. I signed the termination deal. I was literally sitting in the fourth row at the PBR World Finals when they texted me and said, “Is there a fax number we can fax it to? Because this is going to leak to the press, and we don’t want this to hurt you.” I got a fax number from Sean, and I went and signed it during the- right before the short go and then went back down and sat down. And so, I loved IndyCar, but the biggest lesson I learned in that, Neil, was even though I loved it and I loved the challenge of it, of trying to make it profitable and building awareness and exposure and brand and changing things around, it wasn’t my passion. My passion is in the Western lifestyle. And that’s what I love. So, when Garth was asking me this, “I can’t do it. I wouldn’t be fair to you, Garth.” So, I flew down to Mexico for a couple of weeks, and Patrick Gottsch called me from RFD and said, “Hey, would you like to come be our CEO?” I went and met with him, and it was in the Western industry. I loved it. It was an amazing experience, but again, it wasn’t close enough to what I wanted. And when Garth came back to me, and said, “Hey,” he texts me, he goes, “My plane’s at the airport.” He goes, “Go get on it.” He goes, “Come have dinner with us. I’ll have you back by midnight.” I think two days later, I’m still in the same clothes, I was still at his house, and I accepted going to work for him.
Neil Dudley: That’s a great story. I mean, it’s just beautiful.
Randy Bernard: And the best decision I ever made in my life. Garth Brooks is the most amazing human being. I’ve learned more from him as a human, as a good human, then I have anyone else. And I mean, I love my dad, I love my grandpa, I learned a lot from them, but there’s a different perspective from someone like Garth.
Neil Dudley: Oh, his experience reach is so broad.
Randy Bernard: But Garth Brooks, when he walks off that stage, he is back to just himself. And I don’t care if you’re 12 years old or if you’re 50 or 100, if you’re in his path when he’s walking from the stage, he’s going to give you a hug and he’s going to hear you out. And that’s just how Garth is.
Neil Dudley: I feel like it’s just a blessing from God that he has that ability. It just, he feels like his fame is irrelevant to him. It just totally leaves him. And I think that’s hard, it’s a real hard reality to live.
Randy Bernard: Yeah, it really is. I mean, I’ve been around a lot of celebrities, but no one handles their celebrity life like Garth and Trisha. They are so down to earth and caring. I mean, they are the most caring people on this earth. I mean, they’re so humble. You’ll never see Garth being braggadocious or anything. He’s very humble and just sincere. I mean, quite honestly, I would never want to go anywhere else. This is the place- I told Garth one time, I said, “I should be paying you.” I love this.
Neil Dudley: That’s true though. I heard a little bit of a podcast you did for somebody down in Atlanta, I can’t remember the name of the podcast, but you were talking about Garth and his, the way he’s worrying about songwriters. And he wants to, like they used to sell records, so a lot of songwriters were able to make a living. Now they’re kind of just selling singles. Tell me a little bit about that. And part of why I’m so interested is my wife plugged songs in Nashville for a little while. She worked for Don Light. Anyway, she’s really passionate about it. I think right now on TV, one of the most, one of the best things that we’re getting into is watching some of these songwriter documentary type things where they’re documenting the Bluebird. Well, Garth’s in all those, because he’s huge. I mean, his story with The Dance and the Bluebird is really awesome. Well, anyways, tell us about that.
Randy Bernard: He’s a major advocate on songwriting. And you want to talk about storytelling, I think Garth Brooks may be the most, the greatest storyteller of all time. And I mean, you just listen to his songs and you’ll know that. But I mean, you listen to a Sirius XM channel, and you’ll also hear so many stories. And I mean, I wish I had a tape recorder every day because I mean, the stories you hear. And he’s got a mind, he doesn’t forget. I mean, I’m getting off track here, but this is important. We were at the Cosmopolitan for a very private little function about four years ago when we did some shows out in Vegas, and there was this one gal at the end of it – it was just for his song writers – and he said, just pay the songwriters some good money and I’ll come in for the last 30 minutes and say hi and maybe do a couple of songs. But he comes in and sits down with the songwriters. Amazing day, amazing couple of hours. But at the end, he opened it up, he says, “What would you guys like to hear?” And this little gal stands up – not little, I mean, she was not like young, but I’m going to guess middle age – and she said, “Mr. Brooks, you’re not going to remember me, but I was at your concert when you were here 15 or 17 years ago,” whatever it was. And he looks at her and he goes, “Yes, I do remember you.” And he said, “I believe either your aunt or your mother was sick at the time.” And she just started breaking down crying; she goes, “Yes, it was my aunt.” And I mean, his memory is like he doesn’t forget faces, he doesn’t forget a story. If you tell him that you have three kids, the next time he sees you and 10 years from now, he’s going to ask about all three of your kids. I mean, it’s just the most amazing thing in the world, and that’s just how he is.
Neil Dudley: I think that’s why his career is as big as it is. Because he like, that is, I mean, I don’t know, I’m terrible to speculate on it because it’d be almost kind of unfair to Garth’s career for me to speculate on it. But the way he relates to people I think is what makes him so popular.
Randy Bernard: No doubt. And his library in his brain of music, you will never stump him. I mean, we’ll sit around and play music and like songs, like surely you don’t know that. And I mean, he’ll get his guitar and play it. I mean, both Trisha and him are like that. But it’s amazing how, I mean, when it comes to country – and not even country, I mean, it’s-
Neil Dudley: Well, we went to his acoustic show at the Wynn, my wife and I, we go out for the NFR every year. We like to stay at the Wynn. Anyways, we went there, and it was the best entertainment I’ve had in forever. And he’s talking about all of his influences, playing John Denver songs and Beatles songs. And it was just really awesome.
Randy Bernard: Oh yeah. I mean, that’s a great show. I mean, it always influences, that’s one of my favorite shows in the whole world. So, let’s go back to the songwriters. So, when Napster came and then Spotify, and Spotify of course, was helped from Napster. Napster was a crook, but if you know anything about Napster-
Neil Dudley: Well, I do actually, Stacey talks about it all the time. That’s my wife. She was living in Nashville right when Napster popped, and that’s part of, she learned a lot about marketing and what it might take to recover from that kind of rapid, immediate, complete turn on the head of your business or your lifestyle.
Randy Bernard: And so, you got to remember, before streaming, you bought an album. Before Apple, you bought an album. And so, let’s say Garth, he was going to have a number one hit on that album, you didn’t buy that single, you bought that album. So, if there’s 20 writers on that entire album, they all got paid because that album was sold 20 million times, 10 million times. But I don’t think a lot of people understand how many albums Garth sold. There’s only one band in the world that has sold more albums than Garth in North America. And that’s the Beatles. But I mean, Garth is the largest selling solo artist in the world, and he’s number two right now behind the Beatles. And he’s still going so, I mean, he could beat them. And Elvis is number three, who’s one of my all-time favorites, too, so I got to throw that in.
Neil Dudley: I mean, that’s the great thing about music, too, is that it lives, it continues. even though Elvis isn’t around anymore, his music is still alive.
Randy Bernard: But so you take these poor writers, all of a sudden, instead of 20 of them making money, now there’s just one making money. And it really put a damper on the amount of writers in this town. And there’s hearsay that up to 75% of the writers left because there’s just, the money dried up. And a lot of them became teachers, a lot of them they have other jobs.
Neil Dudley: And I think Garth has the foresight to understand that that 75%, there was greatness in there that now the music’s going to miss. I could see somebody thinking, oh, that’s not good.
Randy Bernard: There’s no doubt about that. Yeah so, I mean, Garth is a phenomenal advocate for the songwriter. I mean, a lot of decisions he makes is how’s this affect the songwriters? And he takes very good care of his songwriters. Garth is a big songwriter too. I just want to make sure that, I mean, he’s a co-writer on everything.
Neil Dudley: Well, and that’s what’s crazy about him is like he won’t even say that. He will only talk about the other person. So, it’s just, it’s a great representation of a person that is at the pinnacle, has done things that nobody else has been able to do, and his attitude and thought process is so humble. It’s just really awesome.
Randy Bernard: The song that Chris LeDoux had that Garth did it, Ride Cowboy Ride. We were just talking about this, and he’s like, he’s mentioned that he wrote that. And I said, “Well, you’re not even on the credits of it.” He goes, “Yeah, there were so many songwriters on it, it didn’t bother me.” But yeah, he was one of the major writers on that song.
Neil Dudley: I love that, he made Chris LeDoux his career, from my perspective, in the music business anyway.
Randy Bernard: Yeah, he loved Chris and Chris’s entertainment value. He picked up on that a lot. So, I mean, he was a big fan of Chris LeDoux.
Neil Dudley: Okay, real quick just so everybody gets a little bit of this insight, tell us, what do you do to keep growing professionally, personally, in faith? What role does faith play? And I don’t want to keep you on here for two hours, but just a quick glimpse into that for us.
Randy Bernard: Well, I mean, every day you get up, you got to count your blessings. And when things are thrown at you, as COVID is, it changes your life dramatically, especially when you’re in the entertainment world, but you just count the wonderful things that you have. I mean, my God, I’m healthy, I’ve got a great family, I have so much to be thankful for, great friends, that you just don’t really, I’m not one that dwells on the negativity.
Neil Dudley: Well, how would you help somebody that doesn’t have all those things? I mean, I got to believe there’s somebody listening that doesn’t have any money, kind of a shy person, maybe not a lot of friends, maybe doesn’t even know who God is or what that’s all about, do you have any advice for that kind of person?
Randy Bernard: Yeah, I think you start by reading the Bible or by picking up one of these prayer.com and listen to the Bible and start just learning. And I think don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and start at the bottom. If I lost everything today, I know I could get a job at McDonald’s.
Neil Dudley: Oh, I said that exact same thing to my wife last night. We’re watching this Undercover Billionaire where these billionaires go and just get dropped off in a random city with a hundred bucks and they’re supposed to build a- find a company and build it to a million. It was like, that’s what- I mean, it’s probably not all edited exactly true. I mean, they may not actually be sleeping in their trucks, but maybe they are, but that attitude you just mentioned is true.
Randy Bernard: I think the most important thing I did for my kids in their life, I talk about this a lot, besides to give them love and hugs and kisses and just support, is I think on the other side, the tough love was when I said, okay, you’re 16 years old, you’re going to get a job. And I mean, you’re going to get a real job. I want you to be the waitress. And my oldest cried. She did not want to do it. Three years later, her confidence was so- she had a purpose in life, and she knew she could work. She knew that nothing was beyond her, that she could start from anything. And I think it was so important for my kids to really, it gave them purpose in life that they knew they could work. If you can work at a McDonald’s, you can work anywhere. And I just think that it’s important to not forget that you don’t start at the top of anything you do. And PBR would have never been so successful, I don’t believe, if I hadn’t had every responsibility. I mean, from the cleaning the toilets to the ticket taking, I mean, it was, you learn it, and you learn it from every single way you can.
Neil Dudley: There’s nothing about the PBR somebody could ask you that you didn’t know. I mean, because you just – what kind of toilet you have? Well, Kohler – you knew everything.
Randy Bernard: And it was like, I really wanted to, I mean, you just, you had it, we didn’t have a choice. And I mean, we were going to make it work. And I think that’s the most important thing in life – I think is believing in God and reading the Bible and understanding that everything that’s getting thrown at you, probably 50% of it isn’t going to be that good, but don’t dwell on it. I can guarantee, I’ve never- I remember when Ty had both of his shoulder surgeries and his knee surgeries, and they said, and the stories were he’ll never win his seventh World Title. And I’ll never forget how hard he worked. He hired that [Nippon] instructor. I probably just screwed that name up, but, and his workout, one time I worked out with him, and he did like 2000 sit-ups with me hitting him in the stomach for five minutes. The workouts were, I mean, like Superman. I mean, he’d take a surgical tube, tie it, and double it, and he’d tell you to stick it out here and do a hundred of these. And at 95, I made a face. He reached out and slapped me and says, “That’s not going to do you any good; that’s bad energy!” And he takes, it does 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, does 500 back down and does 500 back up. That’s 1500 of them. And I’m like, good God.
Neil Dudley: Ty’s kind of a, oh, he’s a bit of an anomaly because I’ve seen him just take a pair of pliers trying to fix a fence and break the pliers.
Randy Bernard: He’s so strong. But my point to it is everybody looked at Ty when he won the seventh World Title, he’s just lucky. He’s just, he’s got it in his genes. Nobody, nobody realized how much work he put in. Nobody realized how much work Michael Jordan, nobody realized the work Wayne Gretzky puts it into it. I don’t care who you are, I guarantee you there’s just as many tears in those first years coming up as there is great. And I think some people lose their passion and lose their focus and just they don’t have the drive. And I think it’s those that stick with it and truly believe in it, they’re going to be successful someway. They’ll make it work. That might not be where they started, but they’ll figure it out.
Neil Dudley: Look at yourself in the mirror and say am I ready to grind this for 10 years, every day with no progress?
Randy Bernard: Seven years, it took us seven years at PBR, before we started seeing significant progress.
Neil Dudley: Randy, thank you so much for your time. Go have a blessed day. You’ve blessed me. You’ve blessed my listeners. I appreciate you so much for that. And thanks, Ty. Thanks for introducing us and getting us together and giving me a chance to give everybody some insight into Mr. Randy Bernard.
Randy Bernard: Neil, it was nice talking to you.
Neil Dudley: Yep. Have a good one. Appreciate it very much.
Randy Bernard: You bet. Bye-bye.
Neil Dudley: Man, I hate that that had to end, but I just couldn’t keep, I just didn’t feel right about keeping Randy, monopolizing his time on the day – he promised me he enjoyed it. There was no big deal. But I just know he has things going. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to everything. I mean, after the episode, I went and ate lunch and I’m sitting there at lunch just thinking of all the things I wish I would’ve got to talk to Randy about. So, I may have to beg him into a second episode if I can. I mean, we just didn’t even hardly touch on the American, which is the most lucrative rodeo, one day rodeo in the world, his family. I mean, there’s just a million pieces, kind of nice little nuggets of things that I know Randy would add great perspective on that we didn’t get to touch on. But I am glad that I got to spend that time standing at my desk, having a conversation with Randy about his career and telling stories. And I just, I enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it the same, just the same. So, for more Cowboy Perspective stuff, go check out my website, www.thecowboyperspective.com. We’ll have Johnny put a lot of show notes down in the show notes of the show to just make sure you guys have links to different things that were mentioned in the show and some more information into Randy. I believe there might be somebody listening that says, wow, what a career, I want to be that guy. Study Randy. Emulate him. I’m going to, there’s a lot of things in there that I learned. Thank you all so much for being a part of the Cowboy Perspective. And until next time, God bless you.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root & Roam Creative Studio. And the music is by Byron Hill Music.