Neil Dudley: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, another episode brought to you by the Cowboy Perspective. Today, we’re talking about one degree of separation. Have you ever thought, I hope you understand, I want you to know the people who have the knowledge, expertise, network, insight, capability to help you accomplish any and everything you want are within your one degree of separation. They may not be exactly who you think they are. They may not be the person that is famous for building a big business or becoming an actor or actress or being the greatest athlete. I mean, I don’t know what you’re after or what you want, but I will guarantee you if you look, if you’re willing to think about this statement, everything you want to learn can be found within the people that are within one degree of separation or are just right next to you. I know this is true for me – my mom, my dad, my father-in-law, mother-in-law, friends, best friends, business acquaintances, all of these people have the knowledge and the ability to help me get where I want to be. The question is am I willing to ask for it? Am I willing to accept it? Am I willing to implement it? When I say it, I mean that knowledge, that strategy, whatever the thing is that would take me there. I have to be willing to ask and hear and then act. Okay so that’s for me. I understand my perspective so well because I live it. I want to put myself in your shoes. Maybe you’re not a cowboy or not Neil Dudley who grew up with the greatest parents, the greatest grandparents, and the greatest friends. That could be true. So, does this advice apply to you? I can’t say for sure. I don’t know. I didn’t live your life. I’m not living your life. There’s no way for that to ever happen. But I would be very confident that if you look hard enough, it’s within your reach. You may have to choose to change where you look. I mean, if your group of people that are in your life every day aren’t rooting for you, holding you accountable, offering you assistance, offering you knowledge, offering you insight, then you might need to look in a different place for those kinds of people. But I believe they’re everywhere and get with them, listen to them, find out those things that you’re looking for. I’ve included or I’m going to have Johnny include several excerpts from previous episodes. We’re going to put in an excerpt from the Dove Hunting with friends episode, we talk about hiring and elevating great talent. We’re going to put in an excerpt from my father-in-law Kenneth Harvick’s episode where we talk a little bit about the freedom to fail. Also, we’re going to put some of Cole Parks’ thoughts about wealth, God, and good banking partners. And also, from my very first podcast ever, Ty Murray, lessons in negotiation and the importance of quality food. All of these people, they are in my life every day. They are are people I can reach out to, drive over and see, and they’ve got so much good insight, and they’re willing to share it. They’re rooting for me. They want me to win. That kind of truth is just so valuable to me. I want each and every one of you to have everything you want and think that you could get. So, this is me trying to help you get there. Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, one degree of separation, folks, think about it. Okay, here come the excerpts. I hope you enjoy them.
Okay so, here’s the topic for this morning. Everybody’s in business of some sort and works either with people, for people, hiring, thinking about how you’re going to build your company. So maybe I’ll start with, I don’t know, who wants to take it? Raise your hand if you’d be interested or have an opinion. What kind of people, let’s say we’ve got listeners and they might want to build their business or be a part of a growing business, what kind of people are you guys looking for to hire and to help grow your business? Lee?
Lee Gore: I suggest we put a spin on this, and we ask someone like more or less over here with Andy and with someone that works with people, what kind of people he wants to work with to build a team, to be part of a great team. Instead of us being from the inside out, let’s go from the outside in perspective.
Neil Dudley: Well, yeah, I think we’ve got all of those perspectives here. Andy, as you’re kind of- you guys have an interesting relationship because you work together for real. The rest of us are kind of all done our own things, or we don’t have parts of our team here. What’s your perspective on that?
Andy Moore: That was the spin I was going to take it. Integrity is huge, having like a boss or fellow employees having your back. But it goes back to integrity and just somebody that you trust, whether it be a friendship or relationship, you got to be able to trust somebody. If you’re going to do business with somebody, people want to do business with people they trust, people they like. It’s all in a relationship. And like Lee and I’s relationship, we knew each other prior to me going to work for him. And we were actually somewhat competitors. And we work in the same circle of people and just word travels.
Neil Dudley: Well, as you know, I’m out there looking to hire people pretty much 24/7, all the time. Because in order to grow, what’s your number one asset? That’s the people within a company. So, I’m curious, does anybody have an opinion on whether or not the people you work with or hire, look to hire, need to have a college degree? Yes, no? I mean, I can give you mine, but I’d be interested in what y’all think.
Cole Parks: I’ll jump in there. And our office doesn’t require a college degree. We do require licensing to go in there. But no, we don’t require a college degree. We actually don’t even ask. If they offer great, but-
Neil Dudley: Why not?
Cole Parks: It’s one of those things that there’s different types of people out there. And in today’s marketplace, I’ve had a lot more success hiring people without a college degree that recognized they could come out of high school and find an opportunity making six figures without the degree. They have gumption, they had drive. And I’m not saying anything against people that have a college degree. They have a lot of skillsets that come also, but that doesn’t necessarily give you a leg up. I can tell you on the flip side of that, I’ve seen people that we’ve hired with college degrees that are more entitled, and they’re expecting to do a lot of things just because they have that degree that they’re not ready for.
Neil Dudley: I would- I think I want to say, I think the world has changed a lot. The perspective of business owners might be that that education really doesn’t- and especially now with the COVID and all this kind of remote stuff, how much are people really learning. Brett, what do you think about that? So, in what you do, you’re dealing with a lot of, I don’t know, what’s the turnover like at your job and how does that work?
Brett Wilson: I’ll tell you, the turnover in my department has been very scarce. There’s not a lot of turnover, which is great. We’re thinking about employee retention here and how do you retain these guys? And it starts from the top I think in the workplace. And I was telling my wife just the other day, it’s like, man, I spend more time at work with these people than I spend at home with you guys. Typically, I get home at 5:30 and in bed by 10:00. I’m at work 10 hours a day. So, having those employees, we are kind of like a close-knit family, I would say, at work, and we all get along great. Like I said, the turnover, we just don’t have any, which is great. I enjoy my staff and we all just get through it. And talking about really hiring these guys and what you’re looking for, I’m thinking that, and I always tell these new guys, and a lot of them are younger, late twenties, early thirties, we’re striving to be better. This is what we do. We got to stay on the cutting edge of technology. And we’re always learning.
Neil Dudley: Let’s move a little bit more over into talking about business or that Pure Milk side of things, and as you guys have built a dairy, and maybe talk about Joe a little bit. How was it? What was it like working for your father-in-law? I’m not in that position so I’d be curious, there’s probably other people out there.
Kenneth Harvack: Really, it was a great opportunity for me. The business was big enough at the time that they needed help, and they needed help from young people that could still work and were aggressive. So, when I come along, I spent a lot of time initially just in so-called hospital pens. We were freshening a lot of cows every day. So, I spent my time there. A cow would have a calf, we’d tend to the calf, get that cow ready and send them on their way to a dairy to be in the milking string then for that next nine to twelve months. So, Joe allowed me to fit that role and to really grow as a young person and learn the industry, the milking industry from the ground up as it pertained to Gore’s Inc. And he was a good mentor to me. He was tied up a lot in those days, I guess if you will, he had the help that allowed him to go do some other things. He was involved with a cooperative effort in ANPI. So, he was gone some time and putting together a trucking operation and that type of thing. So, it worked out well that there was plenty of room for me to grow and roam and not crossing paths every thirty minutes or an hour. And I think in family relationships, I think it’s very important that while working side-by-side, there’s lots to be said for that, you need time alone that you can find your own way, especially as young person. Mentoring is one thing, but you need to find your own way and let it be known that you’re capable of doing that. So, I think that’s the type of a relationship that we had and I enjoyed.
Neil Dudley: I think it’s really paramount that, at least in my experience, growing, building Pederson’s, that kind of thing, we had a lot of room to fail, and we got really good because we were allowed that. I think sometimes in family businesses or even businesses that are just really young, they don’t have cash, it’s tough, you can’t really- you’re scared of a failure, it could hurt financially. So, a lot of those reins are pulled up pretty tight, and I think it hinders what somebody, well, at least I perceive, as an opportunity for me to become somebody that’s valuable to the company, even valuable to the economy, period, the whole country and generating business and making this capitalist thing flow.
Cole Parks: What I have noticed, again after being in the business as long as I have, is the Lord, and I don’t know if we can talk about religion.
Neil Dudley: Sure, I want to. You bet. I mean, we just, I mentioned a minute ago, we go to Sunday school together. I think anybody that listens to the Cowboy Perspective, I feel sad if you don’t know I’m a born-again Christian. And I believe that God has a plan in my life. I believe that this podcast is a part of that plan. So, you bet, address it.
Cole Parks: Yeah. So, the Lord will only bless you with the wealth that you can handle, and it’s one of those things when I was making bad decisions in my life, he’s not going to put me in a situation that I can’t handle. And wealth is the same way. And when you talk about financial planning, I always tie it back to there’s one grand architect. There’s one phenomenal planner out there that I’ll never be as good at as he is.
Neil Dudley: Oh, it makes life, to me, that faith, that true belief that I will go to Heaven, there is a Heaven. I will go there. I can’t tell you what it is, or I don’t have any of the specifics, but I truly, truly believe that all the way to my core. Then when things don’t play out the way I want them to, and this has just been the truth in my career, 99.9% of the time, if not a hundred percent of the time, when things don’t play out the way I wanted them to, expect, I’m sad, man, we missed that business, ah, I just spent a bunch of money on an advertisement that didn’t return anything, it all actually was just what it needed to be. And it turns out on the other side of a couple of days or a couple of years, you are looking back saying, wow, so glad that didn’t happen the way I wanted it to. Like that Garth Brooks song, the Greatest Gifts Are Unanswered Prayers. By gosh, I wish I could get Garth on here. I wish he’d come on here and ride around like this.
I’m just sitting here thinking I can’t go without telling this story. You don’t really grab on to entrepreneur, but I perceive you as one of the most entrepreneurial people out there. And I guess the word entrepreneur has lots of different definitions or maybe is a little bit gray in what is that. So, maybe my definition could be a little different than yours. But I’ll never forget, we’re at where me and Kurt lived in the old trailer house. We’re sitting around there, and I get this bright idea, I’m fixing to run down to the road and back in 13 minutes. It is a bad idea to start with, but I thought I could do it, and I’d been kind of working out and in shape. And the entrepreneur in you couldn’t help it. You were trying to negotiate me a better deal. I mean, just immediately, you jumped in and said, “No, Neil, let’s make it 20 minutes.” And at that time, my maturity level, and maybe blood alcohol content level, was at a place where I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t understand and just say Ty’s doing me a solid here. Yeah, whatever Ty negotiates for me, that’s the deal I want. So, that was a real learning experience for me.
Ty Murray: We got pictures of that somewhere – you dying on the way back.
Neil Dudley: I think I remember leaving the house, and you said, “You know, you need to be down to the road in seven minutes or six minutes if you want to get back.” And I said, “Oh, I can do it. No problem.” That’s where you just, you got to learn stuff from that or you’re in trouble. You don’t want to do that every day.
Ty Murray: That’s right. We’ve had a lot of fun with stuff like that over the years.
Neil Dudley: All right so, since I do want to touch on food a little bit, just randomly, or maybe not so randomly, what role do you think your diet, let’s say when you were at the height of your competitive bull riding career, what kind of role did you put diet in, or has it ever been, still not? What’s your thoughts on diet?
Ty Murray: Diet has always been very important to me, and I always trained hard for my sport. And when I started training at my hardest was six world titles in, and I became injured, and I started trying to train harder to come back from those injuries, and I was working out two hours a day, six days a week, and I was eating five meals a day. And luckily, I feel better when I eat good. I’m not talking about trying to eat non-sugar this and low-fat that – that’s not what I’m talking about. I try to eat real food, not all the processed stuff. And luckily, my wife is a great cook, and she loves good, healthy nutrition as well. I’m just not a guy that craves the fatty stuff and the stuff that’s bad and the stuff that’s processed. I can noticeably tell that I feel better when I eat right. And I’ve really tried to do that my whole life, and I can still tell that it benefits me. And I’m 48 years old, I still have the same belt size I had when I was 21, and I can do whatever I want. And that’s even with every limb on my body being operated on.
Neil Dudley: Now that we’re done with those excerpts, if any of that interested you, go back, listen to the full episode. These people are very insightful, important to me, trustworthy, all those things that I think are paramount when you start considering who you’re going to listen to, who you’re going to allow to have input into your brain. So, if that strikes you, go listen to them. Hey, if you loved it, let me know. If you didn’t, let me know. Matter of fact, if you loved it, tell somebody else, it might be good for them. Go subscribe, all the jib jab that everybody always asks on these podcasts. Truth is I really don’t care if you go subscribe, I’d love for you to, but at the end of the day, I’m doing this because I feel called to do it and I enjoy it. So, love y’all, have a good one. Catch you next time.
I hope you guys found some value in this quick conversation. I’m going to be doing these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, trying to nail down some specific things on topics for everyone so you get a little quicker listen. And if you want to get deeper, you can listen to these full episodes. Thanks everybody for listening.
Hey, if you like what we’re doing here, go to the website, thecowboyperspective.com and check out all the people that sponsor the podcast. They help me make this thing happen. If you have some need that they might be able to fulfil, I’d appreciate you doing some business with them. Thank you.
Now for your listening pleasure, a little Traversing the Trail from Mr. Byron Hill.