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 person perspective to put under your hat.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. This is the Cowboy Perspective. Did anybody catch that? I’m knocking off a little bit of that armchair expert – hey, Dax, hit me up. Maybe you want to be on the Cowboy Perspective. I’ll tell you what, I am super excited about the guest today, his name is Jeff Martin. He is a talented guy that’s been around the block in the retail side of the food business. And he’s just also a really nice person. So, I met him over breakfast one time at a food show and just had to have him on the podcast. You’re going to get to learn all about him. He and I delve into multiple things – vulnerability as well as management styles and a little bit about deer hunting and horseback riding and that kind of stuff that he and I both use as a bit of a release valve when we need to. I hope you have enjoyed the Cowboy Perspective up to this point. And I know you’re going to find a lot of value in this conversation. So here we go.
Jeff, thanks for being on the Cowboy Perspective.
Jeff Martin: Glad to be here. I’m really looking forward to chatting you guys today, Neil. It gives me an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing and hopefully share some thoughts with your audience.
Neil Dudley: I just I’m curious, I want to learn a little more or get some insights for the listeners on what you know or what you’ve experienced in your career that might be some insight, perspective that I don’t have and won’t have. I checked you out on LinkedIn a little bit and saw you spent a lot of your time with Giant, and in my research, I found out that Martin Food Stores is part of Giant, and I’m wondering was that your family?
Jeff Martin: Actually, we were related distantly to the original family that started Martins. The story goes like this: Back in the sixties, Giant Food Stores of Pennsylvania came into Maryland and wanted to operate supermarkets in the state of Maryland, and there was a company out of the Landover area called Giant of Landover that already operated. Israel Cohen owned a bunch of stores in the Baltimore Washington market. So, Giant PA bought a couple of stores from Morris Menno, who was a Mennonite in Morrison, Menno, Martin, who were Mennonites in the Hagerstown, Maryland, area. And through a distant relation, my family used to be Mennonite a few generations back, we were distantly related. I worked there, and my first store that I worked in was their old store in Hagerstown, Maryland. So, there is a connection, but it’s very loose and very long.
Neil Dudley: That’s kind of cool that you are related a bit. And then you ended up having a really nice career working for Giant, among a lot of other people. What did the VP desk at Giant teach you? Or what is some insight from that desk regarding store operations that maybe a bacon salesman could put in his knowledge base that would help me understand what the store is out to accomplish?
Jeff Martin: I think there are a couple of things that come to mind, Neil, but I think the most important lesson that I’ve learned really working with people, it goes back to the fact that if you treat people the way you want to be treated, every time you sit behind that desk, you’re sitting across from somebody that’s trying to do the exact same thing you are – trying to make a living, trying to support a company, trying to grow a business, trying to do the right thing, not only for their family, but for that business that the work for – and so many times I’ve seen in my career people that sit on the retailer side of the desk, and there is a lot of power and control there, but they treat the people on the other side not with the level of respect and personal dignity and trust that they really should in a business relationship. And I really learned pretty quickly that you’re going to run into those people again in your life, and they may have an opportunity to help you accomplish something you need to get done, or they may be somebody you pass on the way down or out some opportunity that you were connected to. And I will tell you that that lesson has been one for me that I’ve used many, many times, and I would pass on to your listeners and anybody that I get a chance. My grandfather taught me this lesson – walk a mile in that guy’s shoes and treat people like you want to be treated. That is my lesson from the desk.
Neil Dudley: Well, and that lesson plays in all walks of life. It’s one I learned without even knowing I was being taught it, just gathering cattle and working with my dad and the cowboys that I grew up with. They would teach you that lesson in not so many words. So, and it’s almost the experience that I thought your insight was really good, is you may pass them on your way down or out of some opportunity and they might be the helping hand you really need. So, treating people the right way all the time. Now, as a salesman, I think a lot of times I kind of get distracted by the desire to grow the business and go into really needing a sale or wanting to make a sale and miss the truth of the matter, which is I’ll never make a sale until we build some relationships, some understanding, and I got to understand what I can do, what my company can. Not every single time will my company or my products be a solution that is viable for this potential opportunity. So that’s something I’ve got to battle with seems like day in and day out, is you can’t make them all.
Jeff Martin: No, that’s right. And all the folks that you deal with in sales or folks that work in the corporate office, and some of those folks who spent a day or two or maybe they spent a career out in the stores, working directly with customers and having an opportunity to really have the personal power to impact a brand. Then I would tell you that every time that I woke up in the morning, I try to make sure as a manager of the company that I worked for, that I did the right thing to support those, in our case, 300,000 people across the world that were working real hard to try to keep our brands alive because everybody at store level for the people that your customers are interacting with every day, and ultimately they’re the customers that are going to represent your brand, your meat products to that consumer when they have an opportunity to talk about the brand. So, I always like to suggest to folks that are in sales, whatever you can do any time, to pop into a store, talk to a meat manager, or provide some information that helps someone understand just a bit more about who your business is and who you are and what you guys are trying to accomplish, it just helps them ultimately help both of our customers and making sure they get the right experience.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Jeff Hackett, the other Jeff on the podcast at the moment, which I didn’t even introduce Jeff Hackett. Hey everybody, I’m at Jeff Hackett’s house. He’s a guy that does what Jeff Martin was just talking about a little bit. We’ll talk about Jeff a lot today, but Jeff has played the role for our company in doing product demonstrations and being in stores and talking to those meat market managers. And Jeff is a great resource for us, although he probably doesn’t feel like we’re listening a lot of times because we’ll get together, and he is passionate about what he does, and he can tell you, these guys at this store need this, they want this, it will work for them. And sometimes selling that up to the buyer or figuring out exactly how to get up the chain without stepping on toes is a bit kind of a minefield at times, but we’ve found a lot of value in exactly what you said – having that relationship at the stores. Because at the end of the day, we’re all selling the same person, that’s the mom or dad or kid that’s going home and eating the food or using the goods and services that maybe the retailer’s selling.
Jeff Hackett: Yeah, you’re speaking my language, Mr. Martin, when you’re talking about getting in the trenches and talking to the management, the managers at the store level, getting to know them and seeing what their needs are.
Jeff Martin: -Jeff that the best ideas that I’ve gotten in my career and the best lessons that I’ve probably learned about fixing problems that we have come from the people that are interacting with our customers and doing the job every day. You can sit in a conference room somewhere and theorize all you want about how to fix a potential problem, and you might come up with technologies or find solutions to help make their journey easier, but at the end of the day, they’re the people that execute it and they can best tell you how to fix it. So, when somebody like you comes to me or comes to one of my people, when I was in the business, and shares those ideas, you had my ear. I wanted to hear what they had to say.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, you guys are making me think of how important the really heartbeat of almost all companies are the people in the trenches, making business go day in and day out. It reminds me of a story my dad tells about. In his youth, they were gathering cattle and trying to put them in the pen so they can work them. And his dad and his uncle kind of owned the ranch and were in charge. And he was out helping the cowboys gather, and well there, his dad and his uncle are kind of in the gate, like telling them, “Get those damn cattle in here. Hurry up over here, over there!” In a minute, one of those cowboys run over there, jumped off his horse, and said, “We’ll get this damn job done if y’all get the hell out of the gate.” So sometimes the people up at the top really, not necessarily intentionally, they’re trying to be leaders, they are trying to do the best they can, they’re trying to drive things forward, but sometimes they’re just in the way. And you just can’t know that without being in those trenches a little bit. I see, just happened to be that I can see you and behind you are some mounts, so it looks like a black buck and maybe is that a mule deer? So, I think it’s really important, for me, a thing that really centers me is to just saddle a horse and go ride. It will fix a lot of things in my life if I’ll do that once in a while. I’m curious, does deer hunting do a similar thing for you?
Jeff Martin: Yeah, I will tell you that, and you know this Neil, you guys are in the trenches, you’re banging away at it every day, you’re going 150 miles an hour, you’re in the throes of the business, and you’re taking the shots as they come. And when I was in the trenches and doing it every day, sitting there at the desk and banging away, you don’t really realize when you’re 10, 11, 12 hours into a day, and you’ve been stressed from six in the morning until six at night that you really haven’t given yourself a lot of time to sit back and reflect. You just act and move on. And one of the things similar to your jump on a horse and taking a ride was sitting in a tree stand. It gives me a chance to do a couple of things. It gives me a chance to reflect on myself as a person. It gives me a chance to reflect on my faith, and make sure that I’m keeping the right balance between myself and the big guy upstairs. It gives me a chance to reflect on my family. And then it also gave me a chance to clear my head and think about the business and really what was I doing to make it better? What was I doing not to screw up the business today? And what ideas might I bring back to the table that would help us in the future? And my people used to say, holy cow, Jeff’s going away for a week of deer hunting, and he’s going to come back with a book for ideas. I would. I would come back to camp at night and grab a cold beer and sit down and scribble down to three or four great ideas that I thought I had from the day and reflect on them all week long and come back with a dozen things I thought we ought to do or try or suggestions I might have. And along the way, hopefully if I was slightly off track in one of the other things that talked about, I could pull myself back to center and get myself back on track. It really was a time for me to sit back, slow down, and reflect.
Neil Dudley: That’s one thing, if you are listening and you’re building a business or in a job, I would argue probably none of them don’t have a certain level of stress and heartache or blood, sweat, and tears that come along with it. Be sure you find a little time to do that thing that can give you that little release. I think Hackett, he plays tennis. That’s kind of I would guess his thing that he kind of gets to hit the release valve with.
Jeff Hackett: Most definitely.
Neil Dudley: Tell me something, or do you have a story in mind that you like to tell that illustrates just either something fun, interesting from your tenure, either could have been a success, could have been a wild, awesome success, could have been a wild, crazy failure. I think a lot of times we learn as much from the failures, if not exponentially more from the failures than we do from the successes.
Jeff Martin: Accurate that. Yeah, I would say one of my favorite stories started early in my career. I was in the storage for many, many years, and I got an opportunity to go out on the road and actually take on a supervisory position. At the time, I was what they called a product specialist at Giant Food Stores. And they gave us three departments. I had produce, bakery, and floral as departments that I was able to supervise department managers on, provide help and guidance. And of course, I had grown up thinking that management was about tough direction and going out and telling people what to do and raising hell with them when they hadn’t done something right, and all this high level of accountability. And quite frankly, at the end of the day, what I really, really learned was that I was doing it way wrong. I was doing all the things that I could do not to get people to follow along. And one day, a good friend of mine who just happened to turn out to one day be my supervisor, said to me, “Jeff, where do you bury all your dead people?” And I said, “What in the heck are you talking about? Bury all my dead people?” And he said, “I’ve been watching you a bit, and I’ve got to tell you,” he said, “you’re not going to be long for this job. If you keep talking to and treating people the way that you are.” He said, “Let me give you a couple of examples.” And he went through three or four examples just that day of where I thought I was doing the right thing and where I had totally alienated the folks and really not treated them the right way. So, I’m not sure every supervisor would have given me that lesson. It just so happened that this gentleman happened to not only be my boss, but to be my friend. And quite frankly, probably helped steer my career in a direction where I could learn to be more of a people person and to treat people with greater respect than I certainly was early in my career. And, Lord, I know if I wouldn’t have had that guidance and probably wouldn’t have got that smack in the face, I may not have had an opportunity to enjoy some of the success I did. So always thankful for getting hit upside the head with a baseball bat.
Neil Dudley: Well, and it makes you feel a little better whenever you find a chance to do that for somebody. I always- I couldn’t even count the amount of times people have said, “What an idiot move.” And it hurts initially. Because everybody’s got a big enough ego and pride and self-respect, you’re just think, eh, well, I know what I’m doing. But if you can learn to take a little bit of that direction from even sometimes the most unlikely sources, I think it does play really well into getting you to another level and not necessarily always a step up the ring at the company or more money in your pocket. It might just be an internal feeling that, oh, you know what? I’m a better person today or now than I was before.
Jeff Martin: Yeah, totally agree with that comment.
Neil Dudley: Do you gift books? Do you read a lot? What’s one of the things you play in your life to improve or get better?
Jeff Martin: Yeah. So, I love to stay connected with the trade. I’m a terrible reader. I will tell you, if I pick up a book, I get to about page four and the snoring and starts and I’m falling over in the chair. But I do find that I can get up in the morning and spend a good bit of time with the trade publications and reading things that are applicable to my type of business, like supermarket news or some of the produce or meat trade websites that keep you kind of up to speed on what’s happening with retail and in the world. And I think that keeping yourself kind of versed on what’s shaking and baking out there, it is important to stay connected with what’s happening at retail. And you take that learning and that information, and what I do is I go out still to this day, even though I’m not active at Ahold anymore, I go visit supermarkets and I go look around the stores and I look at what they’re doing, and I try to take the things that I’ve heard and learned and see if they’re applying them, or if they’re thinking about those things or acting on those trends and changes that are going on in the marketplace. And I think if people allow themselves just to be influenced a bit about what’s happening in there, whatever their swim lane is, if you will, you can learn a lot by opening your mind to different perspectives. And that kind of goes back to I get some of that from the meat department manager. I get some of that from the meat trade publications. And I get some of that from people like you that I get a chance to talk to. And probably like a good CEO – you listen to six different opinions, and if four of the six are guiding you in one direction, you follow that. That’s what I try to do, and in life and have always done is find multiple sources of information sometimes that are in conflict to come up with the best possible course.
Neil Dudley: Well, and that just makes me think, I haven’t talked much about Martin Consulting. Tell us a little bit about that.
Jeff Martin: So, Martin Consulting, really I formed a business when I left my second executive vice president role at Utz Quality Foods, and I wanted to take a bit of the 35 years of retail experience that I had and the four years on the CPG side and tie them together, and try to be able to go out and help people that are growing brands or businesses and provide some expertise, if you will, on what I’ve learned along the way. Certainly, in a big company, Ahold was a $25 billion business, we got to interact with some big firms that gave us a lot of business process information or organizational design or strategy information and processes. And I’m able to take some of those learnings and translate them in a way for smaller businesses to be able to grow and expand and do some executive coaching and some speaking, and just trying to utilize that information to help businesses grow. So, if you’re thinking of strategy, marketing, merchandising, building brands, or changing brands, those are all things that I have experience in. And so, if there’s somebody out there that has a need or a desire to want to grow their business and get a perspective from an old retailer, we can have some pretty fun and interesting conversations.
Neil Dudley: Certainly, strikes me as fun. Probably, I don’t know how long we had breakfast together there and pretty quickly I was like, I think there’s a lot of good information in this gentleman’s brain. And as long as he’s willing to talk to me, I’m going to listen.
Jeff Martin: Well, vice versa.
Neil Dudley: Okay, so you didn’t really have a favorite book. You kind of spend more time in the periodicals or the trade magazines, that kind of thing. I’m very similar to you in the fact that I probably, until the last about a year ago, I hadn’t read a book cover to cover ever. I got into listening to books. I have a commute, so I’m listening to books and podcasts all the time. And it’s just turned out to be one of the things I enjoy so much. Well, I want to get sad about it because I sit here and I think, dang, how good could I be if I’d have been putting some of this knowledge in my brain over these 40 years, instead of just the last year? But I think also God thinks about that kind of stuff too. And he knew my brain wasn’t ready for that knowledge until about a year ago. So, I just try to move forward every day and realize I’m no perfect person, I’m just wanting to do the best I can.
Jeff Martin: Understand, not a bad way to look at it and not a bad perspective about when you’re ready to learn and you’re ready to learn in a different way, you’ll be ready for it then. That’s a great plan.
Neil Dudley: Alright, tell me in your mind, what’s the value of a dollar or a Bitcoin?
Jeff Martin: Well, I’ll put it to you this way. A dollar today I can hold in my hand, and I can look at it, and I can take it down the street and I can get a hot dog. A Bitcoin, I’m not exactly sure I know what it is. They say it’s got a high, a lot of value. I know that this this currency is probably going to be interesting in the future and they sure cost a heck of a lot of money. I don’t think I got 1200 bucks to go out and spend for one. With a dollar, I can go down the street and get me a hot dog.
Neil Dudley: Awesome. That’s great. To me, it’s one of those things I’m trying to- like you were mentioning, keep an eye out for what’s happening in the market or in the world. Bitcoin seems to be an interesting thing. To me, it’s really abstract. I don’t understand blockchain, and a lot of the stuff, they talk about what runs it. And it’s turning out these cryptocurrencies, there’s millions of them, and it may actually develop where every single thing you do has its own cryptocurrency. So maybe you’re paying for insurance with the State Farm cryptocurrency, and then you’re buying your groceries with the Giant Ahold cryptocurrency. Who knows what it’s going to ultimately be, and it might just disappear. But I like asking the question. I haven’t ran into a single guest yet that said, well, I can tell you about Bitcoin. But they all have a pretty good idea of what they feel like the value of a dollar is. I like asking the question because Peterson’s, almost everybody is voting with a dollar. Peterson’s wants your vote, and that dollar, you had to come up with it somehow. So, it has a certain value to our company, to the whole market as a whole, and those dollars, I like to think of them as votes a lot of time – hey, I’m voting for your company because you have the right kind of quality, the right kind of story, the right kind of integrity. And I’ll take this thing that I can’t get very easily and vote for you.
Jeff Martin: [inaudible 25:43] vote with their wallets, that’s for sure.
Neil Dudley: Yes, sir. I was interested, you talked about one of the things you’ve learned in your career is maybe how you dealt with people and initially thinking that a heavy-handed approach would be the way you did it. At least in my experience, I’ll see something and maybe misinterpret it. So, I think that’s the way you have to be in business when it just turns out that’s not it all. What’s your take there?
Jeff Martin: Yeah. So, I think a lot of us probably particularly back in the day that I grew up, when I went to work in the late seventies, people were still kind of dealing with the old management style, as I’d like to call it, out there. People were taskmasters and they’d grown up in the supermarket business, which was particularly tough and focused on how people didn’t really understand how to manage people well. So, you’ll learned by example. And that example wasn’t necessarily the right one. I saw people getting things done, both at the department manager or the store manager level, through a lot of times fear and intimidation. And I thought fear and intimidation was the way that you needed to get people to get the work you needed done, done. And quite frankly, it wasn’t really part of my style. I wouldn’t say that it was necessarily who I was as an individual, but it became my management style early on, because that is what I experienced. And I would tell you that thank goodness somebody gave me an opportunity to rethink that position and correct it, because I probably wouldn’t have went as far in my career as I did without somebody helping me adjust my attitude, if you will.
Neil Dudley: Maybe I just notice it more nowadays, just sayings or quotes or just information out there that is people do a lot more for somebody when they feel appreciated than they do when they just feel like I have to do this, or I’m going to take another tongue lashing.
Jeff Martin: It’s a difference between appreciated and intimidated. People, particularly today, and the folks that you’re going to manage today, folks that are older, that came up through that type of management style have to realize today, too, if you’re working with millennials or gen-Zers in your business, you’re not going to be able to even communicate with them in a style like that. They’re not looking to hang out with anybody that acts that way. So, you really have to figure out how to communicate with people on a different level. And, very interestingly enough, part of that lesson is how to communicate with people from different backgrounds – socioeconomic backgrounds, demographic backgrounds – and understanding how to communicate with them in a language and in a way that is meaningful and impactful to them, too, is critical.
Neil Dudley: And that kind of parlays a bit to explore vulnerability a little bit. Tell us a little bit about what role you feel like vulnerability plays in management or even business.
Jeff Martin: I think you have to understand there’s a balance probably for a good successful leader in vulnerability. I mean, you have to allow some of it to happen because I think it provides a realism, I would say to you as a person when you allow your vulnerabilities to be opened up a bit to a team. And I found myself being much more comfortable as I kind of grew in my management style, allowing my vulnerabilities to be in a more open place. I think a lot of people have trouble with that because they don’t want people to think that they have situations, problems, issues, maybe they don’t have an understanding of the area of the business that they’re managing quite the way that they should. And all of those things, both internal and external, affect us at work. So, I think if you can find a way to open yourself up when the time is right, it adds a real genuine appeal to people, your personal character. But there’s also a time when you need to probably hold those vulnerabilities back, when your team needs you to step up and lead, even if you’re feeling intimidated or vulnerable, you need to step into the machine gun fire, if you will, sometimes and take the first hits for your team in order to gain their respect and their appreciation as well. So, it is a balance.
Neil Dudley: I think all humans have this kind of innate ability or innate understanding that we all mess up, we all have issues. And the second you kind of try to represent that you don’t, it immediately brings down your level of trust.
Jeff Martin: I think one of the things that was really interesting for me, I went through an executive leadership course in Oxford University in England. And I worked with a professor there that did a lot of profile work on me as a person and really spent a lot of time exposing my vulnerabilities, where my weaknesses were, and the things that I was good at and the things that I wasn’t good at. And it was quite an intimidating week that I spent with them. But, by the end of it, what I really, really realized is that great managers that grow up in business to hold leadership positions confront their vulnerabilities openly and find people that have capabilities that they don’t, and they surround themselves with those people. And boy, did I really accelerate my ability to get things done when I started to put people around me that complimented my weaknesses. And boy, oh boy, I tell you, if you can teach anybody that earlier in their career, I could see so many people going much further faster and being more effective by doing that.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I read a book or listened to a book recently called Rocket Fuel, and it talks about visionaries and integrators and a lot of the most successful companies, and even people that you hear about and know about are a lot of times the visionary, but there’s a partner in crime that is way behind the scenes really making the thing go where there’s no way to achieve the same amount of success without both players. It’s a lot of fun too. I think when you get that marriage between a couple of people that have those skillsets, and it turns the accomplishments into what I think is a more fun kind of thing.
Jeff Martin: And that’s a definite situation where one plus one equals three, because in a lot of cases, when you don’t have that chemistry, it’s one minus one and that’s zero. But when you have that chemistry, it’s definitely a multiplier to the results.
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Hey, everybody. I wanted to just jump in real quick and catch you up because we’re fixing to go into a second interview that I did with Jeff. We finished the first interview, and I was driving away just thinking, man, my interview skills still have a lot of growing, and we didn’t explore nearly as in-depth as I think what we could have or should have if I had done my job right. So, Jeff was kind enough to do a second interview. And what you get from this point forward is going to be the second time Jeff and I talk, and we just dive a little bit deeper into some of the stuff we had talked about the first time. So, thank you, Jeff, for doing that again for me. And to everybody listening, I promise I am trying to improve these interview skills so we don’t do a lot of circling back, and we also delve deep and get all the value we can when we’re having a conversation. Onward and upward.
So, let’s explore a little bit more about like who you are and where you came from.
Jeff Martin: Right. Well, that’s kind of an interesting story. My mom and dad raised me in Hagerstown, Maryland. Our family for generations had been dairy farmers, and my grandfather ran the last full-fledged farm that we had as a family. And my dad, he was not extremely successful at his business. I guess the one thing that I will say, he taught me a lot about working hard and how to have a very, very strong work ethic, but he wasn’t a great businessman. So, I also learned how not to do things in a lot of cases by working with my dad. But my real influence in my youth was my grandfather. He was a very intelligent, self-taught man, was a quality control engineer and he worked at a place for a long time called Fairchild Aircraft. And for any of the aircraft buffs here, he was a quality control engineer on the 810 Warthog when it was being built. This experience in my life where I had my dad not really that successful, we were pretty poor, didn’t have a lot growing up, a lot of extra stuff, but learned how to work really, really hard, and then the influence of my grandfather who was very intelligent, very balanced, very poised self-made man that really had an opportunity to think about life and share those experiences and challenge me as I was growing and developing in my career. And along the way, had a mother who was just, I could do anything, she was amazing. So, my childhood was interesting, and my parents, they really hadn’t encouraged me to go to college. And so, I went right to work out of high school and I was taking college preparatory courses all through high school. And I was going to go to work for a company called Standard Building Systems in Point of Rocks, Maryland, as a learning engineer. I was going to work on estimating steel girders for buildings, and about the same time that job came to me, I had announced to the Giant Food Stores folks where I was working parttime that I was going to leave. They offered me a full-time job, 50 cents more an hour than the folks in Point of Rocks were going to offer me. And the next thing you know, I’m in the supermarket business and the rest is history. And my journey was a great one. I started in 1978 as a part-time produce clerk, and 34 years later, through a lot of help and guidance from a lot of great people in the business, I retired from Ahold USA, which is the parent company of a number of brands in the Northeast, Giant Food Stores, Giant Landover Stop and Shop as the executive vice-president of sales and merchandising for the US business. So, it was quite a journey and really thanks to a lot of great people along the way that helped me, I had an opportunity to really probably fulfill a dream that a lot of people would like to have.
Neil Dudley: It almost – it’s not almost – it paints a picture of the American dream. You got into a business, did a good job, so they started promoting you. So, there you go. Your opportunities come, you build on those, and you do what you can to learn. So, I think it paints a picture for anybody out there that says, I’d like to have something different. It’s possible.
Jeff Martin: I’ve heard a lot of people say this, and they say you go to college and get your education, but the real education in anything that you do in this world comes when you get out and you actually experience it. And I became a student of the industry that I was in, and I tried to really learn things and stick my nose into things that probably didn’t necessarily apply to my job and interest me. And I would just encourage people who are out making their way in the world to not look up on the wall at the college degree that they have, but to look around them at the smart people that they’re working with and do everything they can to learn from them.
Neil Dudley: That’s a great piece of advice. Hope you’re listening, everybody. Jeff hit it nail on the head. I still probably tap into a few of those learnings that I got in college, just basic economics and that kind of thing, but the lion’s share of anything I pretend or actually do know about business came from experience doing it. So don’t let it hold you back if you can’t afford college. I’m not bashing college. It plays a great role. And for certain things, you probably can’t avoid college, going to have to have a certain amount of just things taught to you there to get there. I mean, probably doctors and that kind of thing can’t just go start doing surgeries and figure it out as you go. But in a lot of businesses, you can.
Jeff Martin: Yup. That’s very true. I think you painted it right. I mean, there’s specialized education that you need along the way. But quite frankly, I got a lot of it as I got into business, but it affords you the opportunity when you start to get into something that you want to learn about, the more that you can learn from the people that are around you, particularly those that have experienced it or bring new ideas to the table, it just expands your horizons exponentially. So, take advantage of what’s right in front of you.
Neil Dudley: Yes, sir. Well, hey, I appreciate your time. That got a little bit more meat off the bone, let’s say, on some of those topics that I didn’t feel like I led us down the road quite far enough in the first conversation.
Jeff Martin: Great. Well, now, I think it’s interesting what you’re working on here, Neil. And I think your own story is a good one and I think, you’re continuing to bring different perspectives, point of views to folks and sharing your views on how people can improve themselves or learn a little bit more about topics, which is pretty cool. So, keep doing what you’re doing, man. It’s been a pleasure to meet you and a pleasure to see the things that you’re doing in your life and with Peterson’s. And I just wish you the best of luck there and your continued growth.
Neil Dudley: Well, I appreciate that. We’ll be seeing you around. Thanks for your time.
Well, that wraps up another jaunt around the jolly good giant bean stock. I was just going to say ride around the pasture, and I thought I can’t do that every single time. I got to make it something different. So, you got jaunt around the jolly green giant beanstalk. Thanks for listening. I hope you found value. The Cowboy Perspective is here for you. So please, if you like it, tell a friend. If you don’t like it, tell me; I want to improve it. Keep coming back. We’re putting one out every month. It needs to be valuable for you. I love doing it, but that’s not enough. So, until next time, God bless.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up podcast. Graphics are done by Root and Roam Creative Studio, and the music is by Byron Hill Music.