Breaking Bread with Stafford Shurden
Stafford brings lunch while his guests bring all the wisdom. Come see what happens when people sit down over a meal.
Breaking Bread with Stafford Shurden
#1 Will Bradham
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What happens when a serial entrepreneur with over 160 employees prefers a cheeseburger over renowned barbecue? Our meal on this episode is from Abe's BBQ in Clarksdale and has been open since 1924! Join us as we share a meal with my dear friend Will Bradham. We chat about our favorite dishes and swap stories from the Delta, reminiscing about local favorites like Rest Haven and Ramon's.
The episode takes flight, literally, as we dive into the thrills and challenges of piloting a small aircraft. But that's not all—Will and I explore the future of employment with AI and automation, the frustrations with self-checkout machines, and the lessons learned from the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. We round off with the joy of podcasting, reflecting on how it has connected us with listeners near and far. From Southern nostalgia to business insights, this episode offers a rich mix of humor, wisdom, and heartfelt stories.
Will and Stafford's Bites and Banter
Speaker 1Welcome to the podcast Breaking Brave with Stafford Sheridan. I'm your host, stafford Sheridan, and we have up for our very first after the new rendition of the podcast, very first podcast with the new mics and everything. Will Bradham. Will's a good friend of mine. We've been friends for a long time. He has built an incredible host of businesses. He's a serial entrepreneur. He employs about 160, 170 people now. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's just a lot of fun. Will and I always have a good time. I've been on his podcast, the Will Brighton Show, which is also fun and we're crazy misgenius. So go check him out on that. And without further ado, here is me and Will Brighton together for two and a half hours, if you think you can handle that.
Speaker 1The podcast today is brought to you by Stafford's Market. That's right. I'm supporting my own podcast with my own business, stafford's Market's in historic downtown Drew Been there for 20 years. There's Monday through Fridays for lunch, 11 until 1.30. Let me tell you they're doing the red beans and rice on Monday with fried chicken and then all through the week, stuff like meatloaf and chicken spaghetti. Then on Fridays we do the fish and spaghetti. That is this really incredible Mississippi Delta treat. But we also have short order, so you can come in and order a hamburger, or you can get the Prompt's Land croissant. It's been the number one seller for 20 years. Oh, by the way, we're also open on Sundays, where they put together this incredible buffet. We don't do short order, but it's an incredible buffet. Yeah, it's good stuff. Back to the show. Hope you enjoy the podcast. Thanks for listening. We're eating at Abe's today. Yes, we're eating at Abe's.
Speaker 1So tell me why.
Speaker 2Because I love Abe's barbecue.
Speaker 1You're from Clarksdale, though, oh, born and raised yeah, so you got the, but you got a cheeseburger, not the barbecue. I know this is going to sound bad when I say it. I don't like their barbecue, but the cheeseburger is pretty fantastic.
Speaker 2Big Ape Chili Cheese with slaw and sauce.
Speaker 1I've been, but you don't know about the ham.
Speaker 2I didn't know about the ham. I think I've seen it on the menu, but I guess I've really never when he had the one in Cleveland, that's right.
Speaker 1That's probably why that's where I got turned on to the ham, because he was like dude, if you've not had the ham, so you can get the ham just like the regular big eight. You can get it as a big eight. So instead of pulled pork you just get ham on it With the slaw and the barbecue sauce on it.
Speaker 2That's good so basically, basically, it's a plate.
Speaker 1But look, they gave me a bun. But when I tell you that, right, there is fine, I bet it is good Freaking, amazing, all right can I do something kind of shitty yeah? Can I get a fork and try that? Yeah, I want you to. All right, since you've never had it like it, you have to.
Speaker 2So it's just shaved ham is what it looks like, right.
Speaker 1Yeah, but they buy like a big ham and just like a big pit ham, but they put it on their smoker and smoke it for a little while. Dude, that's fantastic, it's really good, like don't sleep on it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2That's good have you ever tried this? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, you've had a Big Ape Chili.
Speaker 1Cheese. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, You've had a Big Abe Chili Cheese. Yeah, oh yeah. Okay, A bunch of that's one of my See, so I have a hard time going. It's going to be the ham Big Abe, usually that, or the original pulled pork Big Abe Gotcha Is usually what I'm going to get.
Speaker 2A lot of people go to Abe's. I mean just growing up there, you know, I mean, I've, I mean look how much meat they gave me.
Speaker 2That's a lot dude, that's what she said. Every time I've always gone to Abe's or growing up in Clarksville there just wasn't a lot of places to eat. There's a lot less now than there were when I was growing up, but I mean my staple spots were Rest Haven. Abe's Dad really didn't need an Aves. Dad was locked into Rest Haven. There used to be a restaurant downtown called the Den and Dad liked it. Okay. What about Rest Haven was his spot? That's he probably Raymond's. I love Raymond's. You know Raymond's is dinner only and not a lot of people know about Raymond's. They really don't. It's tucked away in the not so.
Speaker 1So the only reason I know is because, reading Wright's stuff, he talks about it in his writing and so I'm reading it and for those that don't know, it's spelled Ramones there's no D on the end of it. So I asked Wright, I said tell me about Ramones, and he said okay, Redneck, it's Raymond's Right.
Speaker 2And I was like my mother worked there as a waitress when she was growing up. That's hilarious and the lady.
Speaker 1So I ended up going in there and getting like the go-to stuff, the onion rings and fried shrimp you didn't do fried catfish.
Speaker 2I did not do the fried catfish. The fried catfish is great. I'm not a huge fried catfish fan. They're a catch.
Speaker 1It's good, isn't it? That's so funny to me.
Speaker 2We were talking about the other night with Avery and Vance and the only way to have that drink is out of a can. The bottle, to me, is not good, it's different.
Speaker 1It didn't used to be that way either.
Speaker 2The bottle used to be the good one, you would think so. You should not get that old metallic taste. I haven't had a peach knee high since I was in probably five years.
Speaker 1Peach and grape that was the go-to back then and orange Well, I guess orange too, you know.
Speaker 2Well, I told April, I said hey go, do me a favor, I'm going to get you two peach knee highs.
Speaker 2I gave her a $10 bill and she was like, uh, if we put it in the machine it's going to give you all back quarters. And I was like, what do you mean the machine? The stores don't have them. She said I don't think so. You had to go to the vending machine in front of Kroger. Really. She said she knew they had them there. She was going to run around checking them everywhere else. Call Homer, I'm sure they do. I just like I said I haven't had one in so long I don't really go into a convenienceord will appreciate a peach knee-high.
Speaker 1I keep a cooler in my truck so I've got to wear it. I just keep drinks in my truck all the time, Right Now, when I'm at the restaurant I drink knee-high because I mean, like I like Diet Coconut. They have a great product, but their service is so terrible I mean, it's one of the worst corporate services in the country. How they like, if Warren Buffett knew he might sell stock, I don't know. And then you call Homer and them and it's like lickety-split Anything you need.
Speaker 2When I took over Lenny's, we had a Coke machine in there, obviously, and they were on a corporate contract and I mean I took it over three months before I opened it and we're calling these, we're calling it Coke. Yeah, can't get them to do anything. This machine is shit and I need a new one. And I also need another box for you know, bottles and drinks and a new one. And I also need another box for you know bottles, drinks and stuff like that.
Speaker 2Stafford, it was literally the night before we opened they put the new machine in there and I'm talking about I had to get corporate involved and everything else, but I begged them. I said y'all, this is an RC knee-high bottle in company town. Let me put RC in here. And I said and I had even called Homer and that's how Johnny on the spot they are. I said, homer, how quick can y'all get me a machine Eight head, whatever Tomorrow? We almost put it in this afternoon and I was like, are you shitting me? Coke's going to be begging Coke. But you know why they don't have to have good service, because it's Coke.
Speaker 1Well, that's what they basically told me. If you don't want to do, business with us.
Speaker 2Don't do business with us. We're the number one beverage out there. If you don't want to do it, that's fine.
Speaker 1What was crazy is like I know the owner of Clark Beverage Good guy, steve Clark. He's a good dude. We went to college together. He came in the restaurant one day to eat and he said I'll be honest with you. I would have to call the same number. I own Clark Beverage and I would have to call the same 1-800 number. You called to get service. They don't have to give a shit. That's insane.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean they've got the number one beverage out there. Steve's a good dude Sometimes you get too big and service goes out the window. Did I ever tell you this story? We were talking about it the other day. Pepsi was invented by a guy named Caleb Bradham.
Speaker 1No, Tell me that story. You've got some entrepreneurship in your blood, dude man who knows how this?
Speaker 2dude's related to me but last name's.
Speaker 2Bradham we came, dad got on this real big kick towards the end of his life. I say the end of his life and I say the end of his life. He didn't know he was going to get cancer and die, but probably the last 10 years he was alive he was on this real big kick about family and trying to, you know, look at lineages and everything else. And he kept getting stonewalled at his great-grandfather, who we knew was Wilkes, which is my son's name after and that's my middle name, dude was kind of a nomad. I mean just I think we all have those, yeah, but we just don't know anything about him. So we don't know who his dad was. Bradham's not a very obvious everyday name and you think if you hit a Bradham?
Speaker 2they're related, gotta be. And then there's a little different variations too. But in Marion, south Carolina, dad traced it back to there's this town and like every other damn street sign is Bradham Lane, bradham Avenue. My dad's just thinking it's the greatest thing in the world, because he didn't know a lot of his family growing up yeah.
Speaker 2And he went with one of the people that's a Bradham, is a historian and wrote a book on Bradham genealogy and we've never been able to tie anything back together. We know that we're related to them, but how, we don't know. So anyway, I remember a little piece of knowledge. She was like, well, you've got family that had been in pepsi and I'm just sitting there like whatever, sure as shit. He did and lost the um, had to sell the formula. It was during the depression, it was called. He called it brad's Really.
Speaker 2And then he changed it to Pepsi and he started producing it very small scale. And then, during the Depression, sugar went like everything else went through the roof. His only choice was to sell it.
Speaker 1Before you, full corn syrup was readily available. Oh, it was well. Sugar was a it was a what would you say a? Luxury bag man. Oh sure yeah.
Speaker 2Especially during the Depression. I mean that wasn't a necessity.
Speaker 1My cousin, steve Sheridan, started the same kind of thing. He started getting real interested in all that and he could never connect a bunch of Sheridans together, right, which also, again, is just like your name. It's not real common. So you assume you run into Sheridan, we're probably related. But there was a George Sheridan in Georgia that had a bunch of kids and then he kind of the wife dies. He kind of falls out of nobody knows what happened to him About that same time he disappears. There's a George Sheridan in Alabama, has a bunch of kids with a wife. She dies. He kind of disappears off the voter roll. And then there's George Sheridan in Mississippi appears about that time. So the theory is that this guy, his wife, just kept dying. So he just kept moving, stayed over and started a new family. John, how many kids did he have? Like 16? I don't know. And then I had Granddaddy George. Was he Roman Catholic? Then there was Granddaddy George, and Granddaddy George had 18 kids with his wife. Good God, man, which would have been my great-grandfather.
Speaker 2So yeah it was nine boys and nine girls. I always thought the massive families was more of a Catholic thing and then more of the Irish and the Italians, because my mom's family is ridiculously massive.
Speaker 1So we're Irish, but I think too, back then school cost nothing. Nobody went to college If you had a kid.
Speaker 3they worked on the farm, it was not Like now you're like can we really afford another kid?
Speaker 1That didn't even cross their mind back then, whether they could afford it or not. Yeah, throw another mattress in the spare room over there Some more help on the farm.
Speaker 2Exactly yeah, we got another tractor driver, or mule puller, or whatever you want to call it mule steer.
Speaker 1Let me tell you something the best cotton pickers were kids, because they were low to the ground, and that's a fact. That's true. Yeah, they didn't have to bend over to pick cotton. But I remember my Aunt Nell was the shortest in the family. She was a little bitty woman and she told me she said I got to out-pick all the boys because I was so short. I didn't have to bend over to pick cotton. That does make sense, though they would pay them for how much they picked. She could make more money than any of the little boys out there. I mean, dad handpicked when they lived in Midnight, don't you know? I never had to do that, god, I didn't either. Thank God, we missed it on that.
Speaker 2Thank God I'll tell the kids stories, sometimes about working for their grand, working for their granddaddy, and I mean dad was a hard ass but I get it because he grew up in a very rough environment. And but you know, I've looked back at things and gone. Man, I had it. I mean, I had it easy, I mean was I working my ass off?
Speaker 2working for dad? Yeah, I did. He worked me like a rented mule but God I had it easy. Compared to how they had it, I mean theirs. Was we got to work and do all this so that we can eat? Yeah, or we don't eat Mine. Was I got to work and do all this so that I can go goof off with my friends and, you know, afford to buy cigarettes and things like that, when I wasn't supposed to? I was buying luxury stuff where they were doing it just to exist.
Speaker 1I remember when I was about 13 or 14, my dad took me to the side and he said you know, you don't ride to work with me anymore, you're going to ride to work with everybody else because you're just one of the labor this summer. I was not old enough to have my own vehicle, so I had to be 13, 14. And so John Henry Johnson was one of our farm managers and he had a four-door pickup and he would pick me up at the end of the driveway with the house every morning and he would take me home every afternoon. And back then, and back then there really wasn't any home computers, wasn't any office computers around. We're talking about mid-'80s and we had this guy named Billy Williams that did our bookkeeping and he would pay us in cash. He would go to the bank and he would get these little manila envelopes to the penny and it had a thing on the front that said you know what you base pay would, what you're social security held out and all that stuff.
Speaker 1So every Friday I got paid just like everybody else did, and we'd get off tractors and they'd give us an envelope with our cash money in it, so you didn't have to go cash a check. But I remember when they finally, when I moved from, you know, it was $1 an hour and it wasn't worth $1 an hour, you know and they moved me to $2 an hour, you know, and they moved me to $2 an hour I was driving a tractor spraying Johnson grass and finally they gave me minimum wage, which was $3.35 back then I remember that.
Speaker 1And so I'm driving home one Friday and John Henry looks at me and he says, well, you're going to do with all that money. And I never really had given it any thought. But I was making the same thing. Some of those other guys were making. I mean, they were making over minimum wage, but not much, right? And they still had to pay rent and buy groceries and you know, and I got to realize how fortunate I thought I'm being. Like you said, I'm getting the hell worked out of me out there, but that was 100% plague money for me. That's pretty good plague money back in the day. You know, you work a hundred hour week. Sometimes we work 80, 90 hours. Yeah, well, I mean, you got, I'd go home with $250 cash oh yeah, couldn't talk to you.
Speaker 1You had so much money yeah, and I don't even have a driver's license. You know that's crazy and is you know I? There's a picture of my grandfather with his first pickup truck and in the background is his house and it's a two-room shack. It's not a nice house. It's what we would call a tenant house. That's what he was living in then.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you just think about that generation, which is that's the World War II generation, what they were raised in and what they, the world they died in for the most part, I mean, they saw it go from where it was hard for everybody to where it was nearly easy for everybody in one generation. That's pretty crazy, yeah it's you're talking about.
Speaker 2you're getting your money in that envelope. My dad did not. Literally I have it in there in my office framed. It's the first actual paycheck I got from Southside Auto Parts. It was in 1997. You know how old I was in 1997? You weren't a child, I was 18. He didn't pay me.
Speaker 1He didn't pay me much until, but I mean they. You know, I remember doing stuff, like all my friends would go do stuff at spring break. When we were in high school we always loaded out rice on spring break and so I would load out rice.
Speaker 2Dad would take us on vacations. He liked to vacation, but we weren't. You know, now it's like, almost like, and this isn't us, but it's like the picture perfect family now goes on four vacations. We got to do something on spring break, we got to do something on fall break, we want somewhere on Christmas, we want somewhere during the summer, and we may go on two trips during the summer.
Speaker 1We were like every other year.
Speaker 2Right, if I had looked at Red Bradham and said, can we go to the beach a couple times this summer, he'd be like, well, who the hell's going to run the store? I mean really, I mean that was the thing.
Speaker 1Well, and if you're farming, who's going to run the farm in the summertime? Right?
Speaker 1We didn't do summer stuff we went to. Really, I only remember a couple of vacations. I remember him taking us to the coast, the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We just stayed in a hotel room a couple of days, but back in those days a lot of my parents, they went on vacation and left us at home. Oh, there was a lot of that going on. Oh, 100%, but that's a generational thing. But they didn't take us out to eat. We may have talked about this before, but my parents would go out to eat with their friends. They would hire a babysitter to leave us at the house.
Speaker 2Dad was always good about eating Him and Mom went somewhere. I went Because I mean, I basically grew up like an only child. I mean, what's this drink? I basically grew up like an only child. My sister, damn it. That was good. This is dude, dude. I hadn't had a big egg of chili cheese in probably six months. I bet I ate that sandwich right there three, maybe four times a week when I was living and working in Clarksdale as a kid.
Speaker 1So nostalgia, for sure, is part of it with that right, oh, 100%.
Speaker 2You know, I thought when you first called me about this and I would have been fine with this.
Speaker 3I don't know if they would have let us do it there and we could have talked to Pat.
Speaker 2Pat probably wouldn't have given a shit he wouldn't have cared. It might have been bad if they had been real busy. We wouldn't have been able to get very good sound and stuff like that in there.
Memories of Clarksdale Nostalgia
Speaker 1People would have been bugging the shit out of us. We could have done it in the middle of the afternoon or something. Sure we could have.
Speaker 2That place brings back so many memories, so does Rest Haven, some of my first memories growing up. Like I said, dad did not go to Abe's. He was not. He would get us to get him Abe's and he liked it, but he wouldn't go in there. Um, I don't know why he just he just didn't, but he would go to. I mean, he went to Rest Haven three, three to four times a day. Some of my earliest memories one that I can remember as vivid as anything and I don't know if they've still got them in there or if they've taken them out, but they had the bar stools that set up at the bar area and they were the round ones that spun and I would get in there and play with those.
Speaker 2I mean just sitting there and spin the shit out of them. I annoyed everybody in there, but I remember one time I spun it too much and it came off. No, it didn't. Did you unscrew it? Is that what happened? Yes, the top hit the ground. It made this loud noise. I was probably three or four and was mortified because everybody in there looked at me.
Speaker 1Yeah, you were just under my attention.
Speaker 2I didn't mean to do it. Dad thought it was funny. And look at you now Huh. And look at you now. No shit, right, doesn't bother you a bit Doesn't bother me a damn bit.
Speaker 2But yeah, it's all nostalgia with those places. I mean, there's been new places there that I enjoy going to eat at from time to time Not the same dude. But if I go to Clarksdale and, like I said, you're doing the same thing, I'm getting to that age where you've got to watch what you eat, try to work out better and everything else there. For the longest time I couldn't pull through Clarksdale Mississippi without. I didn't want to stop and pick up. I wanted to go in rest. Haven sit at one of the tables my dad sat at.
Speaker 2Breakfast. At rest haven dude Fantastic.
Speaker 1And there's nothing special about it it's breakfast. Well, you can do the kiwi omelet, and you can't just get that Right. Right. Right, that's what I usually would get.
Speaker 2Very good point. I'll go in there and get a cup of black coffee. I would sit there with people that my dad used to sit there with and visit with them Now that I'm a grown man, and I'd have a piece of coconut cream pie and you know their pie is fantastic. It is, but that was my, that was kind of my. I'm in for a Jero too. Yeah, we went to the ranch a good bit, but it was um God dog in the heyday man, you had to make reservations for ribs.
Speaker 1We used to go to track meets because Lee had to track.
Speaker 2You told me about you wearing those damn.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I was like seventh grade and I'd never. I mean I'm seventh grade. I was kind of deprived on the food part growing up. Yeah.
Speaker 1My mom was a good cook at what she cooked but she had like her go-to four or five meals and that's what we ate, yeah. So you know I didn't eat. Like I said, they didn't take us out to eat much so I didn't eat ribs and stuff like that. Drew Country Club was pretty much it and we had our. So we didn't go in Abe's much because we had Sullivan's Barbecue, which was the same kind of feel If it was still there. I've been like, yeah, I'd much rather be eating her place than mine. Yeah, but it's been gone since the 90s. But yeah, we go in there and I eat a slab of ribs and I was like, if you can order me another slab of those ribs, that would be great. And I'm like 110 pounds, you know, in seventh grade.
Speaker 2They used to blow through. I mean I can remember going to the Ranchero. I mean I can remember going to the Ranchero. My dad was real big on whatever he wore, it was going to look sharp. I mean he was going to have it ironed.
Speaker 1It was going to be, you know that's a generational thing too, because my dad wore pressed like pressed from the dry cleaner, dry cleaner press yeah, dad was you know eight years in the military so I mean that's ingrained
Speaker 2in your DNA at that point. But black shoes always polished. But when we went to the ranch Dad would like put on a dress shirt and a sport coat and I know that wasn't him growing up but I don't know what it was. But when we went there that was more of a social experience To go to the Ranchero and to be able to have reserved three racks of ribs for the table and you know, and then order London broil that they had up there.
Speaker 1I'm guessing they named that place after the Ranchero Casino in Vegas, right? I mean, surely that's where I don't know, or did the casino name themselves after that?
Speaker 2It could have been either one. I remember Mr Nelms Mitchell that owned it, a great guy, super nice guy, but he was real big friends with Chuck and Charlie Connolly played for the Giants and it burned a couple times and they lost a ton of memorabilia Because Charlie, his roommate, was Frank Gifford. I didn't know that they were and Frank obviously came down here all the day. I saw him several times All the damn time and they would wherever they go.
Speaker 1What is it? You know it's so weird because I have so many friends from Clarksdale that have done well. That's abnormal. I mean, it's a lot of people from Clarksdale that, if you look at, are well-known or have done well in business and I'm not talking about people living there, but I mean it really is, have you ever thought about that.
Speaker 2Not really, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1I'm not including myself in this. I'm including you in it, gently in debt.
Speaker 2Look great on paper, man.
Speaker 1I owe my soul to Platterback. I owe my soul to the company store.
Speaker 2There is a lot. You know some of my dad's best friends and God love them. Two of them are still living Bobby Huggins, who started Yarber Produce and he had the Apple man, which was like a.
Speaker 1I remember the Apple man, yeah.
Speaker 2Yarber's a great business. They're still running, and his other best friend was Jimmy Walker Sr. That had Walker Welding and then he sold it all to a company called Airgas. Now, yeah, then he's got Safety.
Speaker 1Cart. Yeah, you know, I have one of the original Safety Carts, like the one that they put the hook in and lift it up on top of a skyscraper to weld, yeah, so I got a big hoist in my shop and when I want to load it up in the truck by myself I literally hook it to that hook and hoist it up. People say that'll hold them. I say, man, that thing's a safety car. It's made to go up on top of a skyscraper.
Speaker 2Mr Jimmy is still. He stopped by here not long ago but in my opinion he's a genius. My dad would have said Jimmy Walker is one of the smartest people I've ever met. And I thought my dad was one of the smartest people I'd ever met, not education-wise, but just common sense smart. He said Jimmy was one of the smartest people he ever met. And Jimmy has invented so many things and got patents on it.
Speaker 2But can you imagine I mean, I aspire to this Can you imagine starting a company that you sell to the largest tank welder acetylene torch distributors in the world? For God knows, I heard the world. For God knows, I heard the number at one time I'm not going to say it and then, instead of just going, I'm done. And my dad would have been 88. So Jimmy is about the same age. Not just going, I'm done, I'm going to retire, I'm going to enjoy my grandkids and everything else. Yeah, no, no, no, start another company. But are you'm going to retire? I'm going to enjoy my grandkids and everything else? No, no, no, start another company. But are you ever going to quit? Never, you'll find me. I'll be slumped over.
Speaker 2It doesn't matter how much money you make, you're not quitting. I'll be slumped over somewhere. I don't think I ever could. Stafford, I lose my mind.
Speaker 1I understand I love my children.
Speaker 2When I take them to school, I'm up at 4 o'clock. I pack lunches, I cook breakfast, I get them up, get them ready, I drive them to their school, which is 18 miles from my house. I come home it's almost like depression sits in for me. I'm bored, I can't sit still and I don't have, I don't even like being at home.
Speaker 2I don't have the big office, I don't have the employees coming in and wanting to shoot the shit and things that I can sit here and talk about. I've got my laptop that I can look at some spreadsheets and I can call them on the phone, but I am bored to tears. I have to find something to do over in Oxford and I'll talk to you about that later, because there is something that I am looking at over there. We already had a feeling. I've got two businesses over there that are operating over there right now. But I don't have my.
Speaker 2I like controlled chaos and over there I have peace and quiet, and I can't stand it.
Speaker 1I think a lot that they say why don't the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? But I think the same kind of person it takes to get rich doesn't know how to just call it quits, or doesn't want to because it's the game. It's about playing that game.
Speaker 2I don't understand retirement. I don't either. I don't understand it. I get that when you get to that age and you're at that level. If you want to go take off a couple days and go fish or go play golf or whatever dude, when I'm on vacation, I can genuinely relax and be okay with it for a couple days, and then I'll get antsy and then I'm starting to think like I need to be. Oh God, did I do that? Oh trust me.
Speaker 1Oh God, I forgot to, and sometimes it's hours in when that happens.
Speaker 2Yeah, I forgot to send off a payment for something, or let me call. They can run this thing, whether I was here every day of the week or gone for six months. They're going to be fine, they're good. I got good folks. But I will literally have something pop in my head like we're supposed to get a new client. I don't even shoot emails. I can't stand waiting on a response. I can't even stand a text message response. I call and I'll go hey, did we get so-and-so client? Yeah, we got a Monday. Okay, great, tell me again how many hours it is. Well, it's this many hours. Okay, great, and I'll go and I'll talk to you later. On one client, I'll talk to you later. Yeah, but if another one hits by and they know it too, they'll call me and be like hey, you busy, I'm like what you got? Well, you know we're picking up so-and-so in this apartment complex or whatever else. So we had this big, huge catering and I just get excited about it, like it's the first damn client we ever got.
Speaker 1No, that's what keeps you going, though, man, is that the secret to success is staying excited about it all the time.
Speaker 2maybe, I think, so I walked into Dave.
Speaker 1Stafford, because sometimes I get the opposite. Sometimes I'm like you know, there's this great clip from Yellowstone where what's his name drives up Good yeah, and he rolls the window down and they immediately start in on him. He said can I have just one fucking minute to myself please? And I do feel like that some days.
Speaker 2I'm like I just got here, dude. I give them shit about barging in my office, but I love it Because I know if they're coming in my office. It's one of two things it's bad and it's a problem we've got to solve and fix, which I love that, or it's great and dude. I still get excited about new clients and new business, just like I did 20 years ago.
Speaker 1So you're talking about techs. At the restaurant we have a group tech that everybody's in on the group tech. So anytime they're doing a catering or something, if if one of them needs to tell another one something, they text it to the group tech. So I kind of know what's going on, which is great for me because I can see the back and forth, what's happening.
Speaker 1Oh so-and-so, wants to feed 75 people on Tuesday and he wants to know. You know, his budget's different than it used to be. He literally just got this text a little while ago. You know what can we do? So I just watch them work it out over text messages, which is pretty. I like, yeah, that's fun for me and I will chime in every now and then I'm like, hey, this is bottom line on that. We can't go any lower than that. So you know, if that ain't in his budget, we can't help him.
Speaker 2I know every week because I've got the computer programs, everything's cloud-based stuff now so I watch everything we do and I can watch it in real time, but I can see it. So I know at the end of the week this is what we're getting in on Wednesday as far as a payment from the state, or this is what we do at the restaurant or whatever else. But they still want to text me hey, this is what we did last week. That's a good thing, it's great buy-in. I love it. I never say anything to them. Maybe they won't listen to this. I don't tell them that I'm sitting there watching the stuff.
Speaker 1I'm not micromanaging it, but you just want to know what's happening.
Speaker 2I knew what they did for health care last week. I can pull it up on a program. It's very simple, but sure enough, I got a text message from two of them. Hey, guess how much we did last week. And I'm like how? And I'll go how'd we do? I have no idea and I know to a quarter of an hour what we did.
Speaker 1We have a new register system at the restaurant and the old one there was an app and I could pull up in real time the register on the app, which I loved, and now you've got to actually log in through a website. I don't like that as much, but I still do the same thing. I'll log in through my computer and keep up with it. But it was nice. I mean I could literally. I mean you could call me and want a receipt and I could send you the actual receipt right off the register on my phone. And that was fun. I like that.
Speaker 1It was Shopkick, but they got bought out by somebody different. But yeah, this cloud-based stuff is. I mean I don't think we could have done. Our fathers couldn't have done the amount of different stuff we do. I don't think so either With the technology.
Speaker 1So, like I wonder a lot of my dad would have, because I know he had talked about one time buying a Ford place in Drew and he talked about some other things, but he was just so glued in on agriculture and farming but he didn't have the tools then to do. You can't do it without technology. Yeah, I don't think you can't. Well, just think about just having a cell phone. But if you did own the four place and you were out on the farm and they couldn't get in touch with you, they really did need something. And now it's like snap it. When I was judge it was so easy for them. Before the judges pretty much had to stay and have office hours all the time. I never had office hours as a judge. Man, I just, if you need me, call me and I'll be there.
Speaker 2And that really freed me up Some of it I don't like and I'll be there, yeah, and that really freed me up Some of it. I don't like the constant direct access kind of gets to me sometimes. I understand it's like, but but it goes both ways.
Speaker 1They probably get tired of you direct accessing them too. You know what I mean. You know, and I think I've tried to think about that. And then I've got a good friend, stephanie Stuckey.
Speaker 3You, know who I'm talking about she owns Stuckey's. Oh the gas station.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're anyway all her emails and she's like me and you, she'll email you at 9 o'clock at night and at the bottom of it it says I don't expect you to work the same hours as me. Respond back at your convenience, because I am the worst person about emailing my Cisco rep or texting them on a Saturday night, you know, because it's on my mind and they go. It's Saturday night, they're not going to answer.
Speaker 2You had one rep that would respond to you. I know that.
Speaker 1I did and I have one now that will respond. And I tell her I'm like, look, when I text that it's so because I'll forget, I don't expect you to respond to me. You can respond Monday is fine, but my Monday I will have forgotten about it. And right now it's a great idea.
Speaker 2You know, I have to go through my emails, through my, and I still have a Yahoo account. I'm so old school, but it's been the same one since. I got Gmail 15.
Speaker 2I'm just not changing it, but we went to an internal system about a year ago and it's just us. You can send me stuff there and I can respond back to you. But it got to where I have to go through my email, my Yahoo account, probably four or five times a day and delete all the bullshit that I get. Even if I unsubscribe from it, it somehow just keeps churning. So we went to that system for a couple reasons because we're dealing with a lot of HIPAA-regulated stuff and people's personal information, their addresses, maybe their payment information, just things like that that I didn't want floating around in the stratosphere or having a fear of getting hacked, so these technically can't be hacked. We have an internal email system and an internal text message system. It's a completely different app on my phone. One of them is called Zoho and one of them is called Click. And talking about the excited part, like I know when I get something on click like it's not, hey, what you doing.
Speaker 1It's business.
Speaker 2It's business and it's normally knock on wood, it's normally good. But we really liked that because nobody from outside of our system like you said, I know it's business outside of our system. Like you said, I know it's business because the only people that can text me on the Click app work in this building or they work for me in some capacity. We love it. Love it, it's great, it's a great communication tool for us and so it's just independently shared calendar as well. So you know, I go in there at the beginning of the week and I'll say, hey, I'm gonna be, you know like this morning.
Speaker 2I'm flying at nine o'clock. I'm flying from just 8 30 to 10 30, 11 o'clock. I'm unreachable, so don't you know. So I send it to everybody in the in. The company so they know so they know, but it's shared on my show.
Speaker 1Are you loving that? What fly? Learning to fly.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's very intimidating and I don't get intimidated by stuff. It's very intimidating, which is different for me, but I love it.
Speaker 1Is that why you love?
Speaker 2it. Yeah, yeah, it's just a new challenge.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know I'm not going to say I'm too old to run a marathon or an Ironman or all these other things, but I've been wanting to learn how to fly for a while and it's just time kind of hit right. The finances kind of hit right. Instructor's cool.
Speaker 1Are you doing it out here in Cleveland?
Speaker 2Yeah, I do it through Blue Air. It's Phil Krasner. He has a very odd last name but he has a guy that flies in from Jackson Brandon every day. Really, he's got his own little plane. It's a cool little plane. It looks like an old school World War II plane.
Speaker 1It hauls ass, it does like 200 miles an hour. Not going to hit the top of a cotton picker.
Speaker 2He probably could.
Speaker 1Do you know that story? Do you even know the story? No, oh well, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but a cotton picker got hit by knocking the landing gear off a plane last year out here. No shit, oh yeah, I'm not going to say who it was, because we know them. I'll tell you when we're not recording, I bet I could guess you could guess.
Speaker 2But I'm not going to guess right now. They wore leather helmets, okay.
Speaker 1That tells you all you need to know.
Speaker 2I narrowed it down to the only one I know.
Speaker 1It was two of them flying and one flies over the trees and he's going to dip down and watch them pick cotton and the other guy comes over the trees and is following. He's not looking at the pickers which is what he's supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1From what I understand, I've never flown a plane so I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but he hits the top of the cotton picker and knocks the landing gear off the plane and it just so happens. Somebody films it. You can find it on YouTube, I think. Good God, it was a bad deal and from what I understand they got them. They got both planes landed. Well, the first plane didn't hit anything and that's the guy we know. They got them both landed and got that one up on a truck and got it back to the hangar before anybody came looking. But I feel sure there was an investigation on that.
Speaker 2Oh wow, Cotton picker wasn't moving.
Speaker 1Oh no, it was picking cotton. Oh shit there was a guy flying Can you imagine? He was also getting buzzed and hit. You can't get hit by an airplane.
Speaker 2That's got to be a weird feeling, that's probably an instant shit your pants moment You've got to be. I love it. What's surprising to me, because I knew so little about aircraft and flying, is how simple I mean simplistic these planes are, like there's not. You know, when I think of an airplane before all this I'm thinking of switches everywhere, gauges and all that Lit up like it's Top Gun and gauges and whistles and flip this and flip that and shoot your.
Speaker 2You know. I mean just all this shit. Honestly, there's probably like five or six things in these damn planes that really mean like something to you as far as flying the plane. But the engines are simplistic. I mean the controlling's fairly simplistic. I'm not great at it. I'm not downgrading any of this On a scale of one to shitty pilots. I'm a shitty pilot. I'm still new.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're not shitty, you're just new.
Intimidation of Flying and Landing
Speaker 2But it's. You know, when you think of flying through the air, you would think, man, there's a lot more to this and it doesn't seem to me like it really is. It's just very simple.
Speaker 1I would imagine flying in a big airport is what would be really intimidating.
Speaker 2Oh, dude, I'm telling you I am a genuine nervous when I get up in that plane ground I'm fine, we're doing all our flight checks and you know, run it up to 2,300 RPMs or whatever else, and let's see what this is doing and check your brakes and all that stuff. I'm. I'm good, even in the plane. I'm fine. At takeoff I'm fine. It.
Speaker 2It makes me my most nervous part is landing and that kind of it sketches me out like we did touch and goes today for probably an hour and a half. So all we did was do a. It's like a big square pattern around the airport. We would go out to, like the water tower area. You bank it on to your left. You'd come back over here. You'd bank it back over, turn around, you'd get ready for your approach, and we're going over that trailer park that's out there near the airport, yeah, and here you go, hit 1-8. And we would power back up, back up in the sky. And we probably did that 10 times today and he's been working with me on my taxiing where you're just going down.
Speaker 2This is what gets me, and then we don't have to talk about flying anymore. Our brains are so wired when you've got a steering wheel, essentially the yoke in front of you, that that's how you steer everything and you're so used to it. Overcompensating, making a sharp turn, doing this. That damn thing don't do shit for steering. It does when you're in the air and it does when you're on the ground and you've got the motor moving, the motor running. It does the ailerons a little bit, but it's up and down and a little bit of side to side, but it won't bank quickly with that. You'd have to use your pedals, is that?
Speaker 1the runner.
Speaker 2That's how you steer. Yeah, I'm sorry, hit your foot. That's how you steer left to right. Higher up on the top you go with the pedal the more it banks. Lower down you go, the less it banks. But those pedals are also the brakes when you're on the ground. So when you're on the ground and you're just trying to taxi down the thing, what's your first thought? I'll just grab the yoke and I'll taxi it on down, like I do my car. You know, Uh-uh, that ain't doing shit. You have to do it with your feet to stay straight and do everything else. Same thing with landing and stuff like that. I mean, I can see where shit.
Speaker 1So overriding all the years of driving a car, every bit of it. That programming takes a little while to get over.
Speaker 2When you drove over there. And then you get in the airplane and you're like okay, let's go.
Speaker 1Totally different. Oh, look at me.
Speaker 2You know? No, that's not it. It does a little bit but not a lot. And the only wheel on that plane that we fly is a Cessna 160. So the only wheel that actually has any turn in it is your front wheel. Okay, so it's not. It's like a tricycle, basically, but in a much larger scale with a big-ass engine on the front of it. It's very intimidating when I land. Everything else I'm fine, everything else I'm fine, I feel good about it. But when I get down to that approach I've got that so much power down so much you could probably walk beside it.
Speaker 1It's like you've seen the videos where they're doing the see who can land in the shortest thing, and they've got those little light aircraft and it just bounces one time and it stops. Have you ever watched those? Oh yeah, I've lived that I was going to say is that you coming in?
Speaker 2You could really jar yourself if you're not paying attention. And the sight patterns are so weird because you're thinking as you're approaching, you're going, you're nosing down a lot to make your approach. So I mean you're coming at this angle and the whole entire time you're doing this pattern. You're going up and then you're trying to get back down and you know in enough airspeed and everything else to come in there for a good landing Because you can undershoot it. You overshoot it. I mean, good news is you can still fly the damn plane. You can power up, power down, whatever you need to do, but you're trying to hit it.
Speaker 2You know just right, and you've been doing this downward nose uh-uh, when you get ready to land, you got've got to nose up a little bit and let it level out and then hit, and every time I do it until I hear those wheels hit the ground. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm a nervous wreck, so I want to finish all of it and I think eventually, if I'm going to have a plane long term, I'm going to get one of these damn Delta State kids that's got a buttload of hours underneath them to fly me around and just say you want some hours.
Speaker 2I'm paying for fuel and you get hours, but I need you to take my ass to Oxford, Mississippi.
Speaker 1How long takes a flight to Oxford from here in a plane? Because I don't even know, dude, with that plane, you're probably I just get you a helicopter and you can land it right out in the back man 35, 45 minutes.
Speaker 2He flies in his plane at a constant 180 miles an hour from Brandon he can get to Cleveland Airport 35, 40 minutes.
Speaker 1A little quicker than a car.
Speaker 2What, which? Is what it took me to when.
Speaker 1I left my yeah, it took me almost 30, yeah, 30 minutes to go to Drubin back.
Speaker 2Helicopters are a little bit pricier than an airplane.
Speaker 1Well, they're a whole different from what I understand. If you've never flown and you want to fly a helicopter, it's easier than if you kind of like you're talking about the car and the plane, getting out of a plane and in the helicopter everything's backwards. What they say, I don't know.
Speaker 2You can tell me and I wouldn't, know, any difference anyway, it's completely different from what I've understood.
Speaker 1But it looks like a helicopter would be a lot of fun. More dangerous, isn't it? Well, yeah, because you just fall out of the damn sky. Yeah, you can't glide.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, because you just fall out of the damn sky. Yeah, you can't glide, ain't no?
Speaker 1gliding going on, buddy. When they say hard landing, they mean it, don't they? Yes?
Speaker 2It would be one of those. I wish I had a parachute moments. I really did like the idea of a helicopter. But when you start looking at the cost and the maintenance and I don't have that kind of money but you start looking at the cost and the maintenance of those things, it's insane. It's insane you can buy. You can buy a reasonable plane if all you're wanting to do is putter around and it's just for fun. You know you can buy one for about what you buy a damn car for now, car truck for um man these trucks are ridiculous.
Speaker 3Yeah, brother, yeah I mean they're knocking on 100 grand's door average price.
Speaker 2Like an average, like if you a really nice truck with leather is going to be over $80,000 now, yeah, I don't even know. I'm not even going to say how much my Ram was. It kind of blows my mind. My first pickup I ever bought was a 2004 Chevrolet 4x4. Four-door, leather, bows, everything, I think. Out the door at Cosman's it was like $23,900. Brand new. My payment was like $300 a month or something. Stupid yeah. And I remember back then I was like God, I'm never going to pay.
Speaker 2Payment was like $300 a month or something stupid, yeah, and I remember back then I was like God damn, how am I ever going to pay this off $300 a month? I've got pieces of shit vans out there right now that are that much Piece of shit that I've got the crew in that. I mean I don't want to buy them a piece of shit, but I'm not going to buy them something new because I can't afford it.
Speaker 1I'm going to buy them a piece of shit, but I'm not going to buy them something new because I can't afford it. I mean, I think they understand at this point. I mean like they know what this stuff costs.
Speaker 2Well, it's crazy. I mean they're getting to drive in a vehicle that I pay the gas insurance.
Speaker 3Yeah, they're kind of okay with that. They're okay with it.
Speaker 2We've got some newer stuff out there, but it was like these damn shuttle buses. I bought my first shuttle bus three or four years ago when I thought I was going to do the day center downtown and I always put the car before the horse for some damn reason. But I bought a shuttle bus and I paid $20,000 for it. I sold it 12 months later for $25,000. And the person was pleased as punch to get it for $25,000. I bought the Pinnacle one that we had. I bought it for like $32.50. I just sold it the other day for $35. Didn't make a lot on it. But I looked at the average prices right now and I was like hell, I have to get a deal. And these two newer ones I bought and they're just new to me One was $49, and one was $47.
Speaker 1Over double your first one.
Speaker 2Oh yeah 47.
Speaker 1Over double your first one.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, and if you want to buy a brand new one, brother, it's 100 plus oh 150, 160.
Speaker 1Depending on how it's set up. I looked at a tractor Every day. Facebook Marketplace is one of my little things I like looking at and so I look at tractors all the time on Facebook Marketplace and I saw a used tractor $450,000 for a used tractor the other day, my first tractor I bought. I bought because it was used, but I think I gave $30,000 for it.
Speaker 2I mean that's 25 years ago but my gosh, if people aren't waking up to the inflation and how bad it's gotten in the last three or four years, it's scary to me, man. I don't know how.
Speaker 1Is there opportunity in this, though? Somewhere, like, as you're a businessman, do you look at it and go because you saw problems? That's what makes you an entrepreneur, I think. Do you look at it and go because you saw problems? That's what makes you an entrepreneur, I think. Do you look at it and go? Okay, what's the problem? Because I think about this a lot the 70s was very similar to what we have right now. Oh, I know what the problem is.
Speaker 2Ain't a damn thing I can do about it except pass it on. But I'm talking about on the business side, on the business side of it.
Speaker 1But you think about Microsoft was started, then Apple was, and you just go down the laundry list of all these great companies that were started when everything sucked yeah. Are we going to see some? You think some new cool stuff come out of this that we can't foresee right now? Maybe I hope so. Like to me, this is a little bit. I hope I'm more prepared, like when I think about what I'm in food and farming.
Speaker 2I think I'm a little better prepared for this than some other folks are. I'm telling you what's coming and what I have seen. You're seeing such a technology jump just with things like AI and ChatGPT, and I think you and I did, we talked about this, or I might have talked about this like AI and ChatGPT and I think you and I did, we talked about this or I might have talked about this.
Speaker 1I played with ChatGPT. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2It's very interesting, god. I wish we'd have had it when I was in college trying to write papers, because I'm a moron when it comes to that.
Speaker 1I had it write an LLC agreement for me the other day. Yeah.
Speaker 2And I just told it who I wanted the manager to be and it spit it out. I had to change a few things. It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot easier than paying a lawyer to do it. Better than you sitting your ass there for six, eight hours and trying to draw it up and write it up 30 minutes.
Speaker 1I was done, dude.
Speaker 2It's wild. I mentioned this, we had had a conference call with Lenny's Corporate and, in the grand scheme of things, they are a very small franchise. Yeah, they were bought out by a pretty large franchise but even with them, 800 locations is still small in the grand scheme of franchises. And we were on there and they were working on an AI answering service and Stafford. It is indistinguishable from a human being.
Speaker 1So if somebody calls your restaurant, they could talk to somebody on the computer and not know it.
Speaker 2One of the biggest complaints we get about our place is they don't answer the phones, and what I try to explain to people is if we were super smoking busy all the damn time, which, again, there's lack of income.
Speaker 1I'm in this business. I understand you can't always have somebody available to answer.
Speaker 2We're in an impoverished area. It was before COVID, it's after COVID and your cooks are not going to answer no, Anywhere, Any business.
Speaker 1So you've got maybe one or two people that can answer and both of them are busy, or you could be. I did away with call waiting Because if you're on the phone with a customer you're not going to say hold on and let me catch this call on another line. So people call and nobody answers. I said it's very likely they're on the phone with a customer. Well you know, now I get the busy signal, so they know, you know I try to tell people this too.
Speaker 2We're one of the only quick service restaurants, so that's just that one little notch above fast food. We're one of the only quick service restaurants that you ain't calling. You're not calling McDonald's. You ain't calling Arby's Right, nobody's going to answer that damn phone.
Speaker 1No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 2From a quick service standpoint.
Speaker 1I never thought about it like that. Nobody's ever called McDonald's and put an order in.
Speaker 2No, but if they'll call us and they don't get us, man, they're flipping their shit and you know we're making it easy for everybody. I've got the app. That's the easiest damn thing in the world. If you order the same thing all the time, hell, you just really go in there and hit two clicks and it's done. See, now I encourage people to do the app, but we miss a lot out of business per day because we just don't get to the damn phone and then you're having to deal with the person not being able to hear you, you not being able to hear them, miscommunication, things like that. But this AI system they can even go in there and put in like, have it replicate different vernaculars, like you don't want your AI to sound like somebody that lives in New.
Speaker 2York City, or Brooklyn, or Brooklyn, yeah, we're going to have it sound like somebody that lives in Shaw Mississippi. And it sounds like somebody in Shaw Mississippi. That's insane. And you call out your order and they will spit it back to you. And if you get to the very end of your order and you say, hey, by the way, on my first order I decided I don't want onions. Okay, so on your first order, which was a Philly cheesesteak, blah, blah, blah, blah, you don't want onions. Now, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Okay, your total is $45.99. We'll see you in about 15, 20 minutes.
Speaker 1Well, like you say, who's this available to Everybody?
Speaker 2Everybody, and so what is it going to do, though? Coming with this technology advancement, you've already got tractors and combines. They can damn near drive themselves. They just need a pilot in there to get it cranked and they start reading their book or watching their iPad. Right, and this damn thing will go down the roads by itself. Now, oh yeah, there's probably going to come a day where you don't have to have any of that. Probably, yeah, you just almost set up like one of these damn automated we're a lot further from that than you think, but yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2But you know they've got these kind of almost like a damn Roomba, you know what I'm talking about. It goes around and cleans and when it's done cleaning it goes back to its dock and charges. I don't think we're far from that. And then when you look at the technology recently where they put in that McDonald's I think it was in Ohio or Illinois With nobody working in it, not a son of a bitch in there you go in there and you order off a kiosk In so much time it says your order is ready at door one and they've got like four or five little slide-up bellhop doors over there where it's been made in the back, probably in a completely dark room, by robots, and your shit comes out fine and you don't get attitude from anybody.
Speaker 1There's a company in Louisiana that's doing this with convenience stores and basically they'll buy a corner in Cleveland, bring a shipping container, set it there. You'll drive up to a drive-thru just like at a Wendy's order, whatever it is, and when you come up it's the exact same thing. It's sitting there waiting on you to scan your stuff and lift the door, and it's there I've been to. I mean, this is Louisiana. We're not exactly the pinnacle of technology. Yeah.
Speaker 1So it's going to be everywhere. And I forget the name of it, but they're on LinkedIn. But it's pretty impressive what they're doing.
Speaker 2I mean I always say Stafford, if we're seeing the technology, it's old.
Speaker 1There's something far more advanced. But let me ask you this we started out. Was that me and you talking about the cotton picking? Yeah, at the beginning. Does anybody feel sorry for the people that used to pick cotton losing their jobs to the cotton picker?
Speaker 2To an extent I do, yeah. But that was a terrible living I do when there are people, because that's what they knew and that's what they were probably good at.
Speaker 1But there was no middle class in the Delta. There's a great display in the Cotton Museum in Memphis and they talk about this thing. Russ Brothers brought their cotton picker to Stonewall to try it out and they ran it, and the Jackson Daily News was there. It wasn't a clearing ledger back then, and they said the best thing they can do is take that thing to the Mississippi River and push it over the edge because it will destroy the farms in Mississippi. There will be no more farming because it will put everybody out of business.
Impact of Automation on Job Market
Speaker 1And, of course, there was no middle middle class. You either pick the cotton or you own the cotton back then, true, and so there was a middle class could create it out of that, and so I don't feel bad, and it's like I don't know. We get nostalgic maybe. The one thing I will say, though, is what scares me is I wanted my ai to wash the dishes so I could make art, not make art so I could have more time to wash the dishes. You know what I'm saying, but that's what's happening. They're doing the thinking, which is what you know.
Speaker 1The cotton picker took away the manual labor, and I don't that's why I'm saying I don't think we're there yet, because there's still some an edge of manual labor that they're. They hadn't figured out how to let AI do that on the farm. I went to a— so your working man jobs are going to be real important in the next—and they are now but they may be the highest paid jobs out there pretty soon. Yeah, I think your vocational type jobs. That's what I'm saying Because AI can't do that, not yet. Well, they can't physically—they can think it, but they can't physically do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think there's. I don't think we're that far away from having.
Speaker 1But it's come in backwards. Everybody thought that those jobs they said the truck driving jobs were going to be the first thing to leave, and it doesn't look like that's what's happening. It's like the creative jobs that the boys were losing.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's weird dude, Bob, the phones were losing. Yeah, it's weird dude. Years ago, when both my companies my first two, Roddy Holman and Delta Mates were not doing enough for me to pull a paycheck out of and I had to put bread on the table, I went to, I interviewed with several companies and I kind of stuck around in the food industry realm. Of course, that's where I landed for a little while.
Speaker 2But, I interviewed with a company and you've seen them, you know Benny Keith, and they're over in Little Rock and they were in the process of building their first automated warehouse distribution center. So you know, when I worked for Cisco, you'd go pop into that warehouse and we had to work it some when I was going through training because they wanted you to know every aspect of the job. So you kind of appreciated it. It's not like you were going to do those things, but you appreciated it so you worked them. So when they had the sorter order, the sorter picker those people that were, you know, running the forklifts and going around and pulling product and picking that's what they called it picking you were picking products and just sending them your orders. This warehouse and it's up and running is 100% automated. Nobody's in it. I mean I think there's some IT guys.
Speaker 1You talking about Benny Keith, or does Cisco have that now? No, benny Keith, you know US has a brand new warehouse. Theirs got torn down by a tornado Probably so so I wonder if they did that Because they have like one salesperson in the Delta. I don't know how many customers he has. You don't need them anymore.
Speaker 2I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, when they started offering customers the online ordering system which I we don't have a rep.
Speaker 1I love it. I would rather go in when I'm getting ready to do it, do you feel?
Speaker 2sorry for the sales rep, that doesn't get to come in there and see.
Speaker 1You See where I'm going with this?
Speaker 2Oh, no, for sure, because those guys are middle class.
Speaker 1They are, and there are definitely fewer of them, but it got to where before. I had access to that. I mean, we've talked about this, but a couple of those companies weren't treating their salespeople well enough to keep them running anyway. Oh, and so I was having a new salesperson every six months, and that's really what I was like, because I really did go to US Foods, because they had this great ordering system and I was like he's like man, the only way I can do it. So he's fewer salespeople, but he has a bigger territory, so he's making good money, but everybody else had to find something else to do.
Speaker 1And he was like you're going to have to either order or we have somebody from the warehouse that will call you and you can put in an order. But he said I can't come see everybody. I said I'm cool with that because I've got a new person here every three months and they don't know what we ordered and my order's messed up.
Speaker 2He's essentially like a supervisor is what his job?
Speaker 1is now. I saw the writing on the wall.
Speaker 2He's happy with that when they started offering that I said y'all they were getting us to go out here and pitch it to customers. Hey, how about the Cisco ordering system? And I was like you know what y'all are doing?
Speaker 1You know it sucks. Anyway, though, the Cisco ordering system is terrible, it's terrible.
Speaker 2It was shit then. I'm sure it's shit now.
Speaker 1US Foods looks like you're ordering off of Amazon. And then Cisco looks like what you had.
Speaker 2Yeah, same damn program, just gussied up a little bit Like, if you don't know, the number of the product yeah it's exactly 2.11, maybe.
Speaker 2now One of my sales reps back then was telling me. He said man, it's a great idea and we're still going to get paid on it. And I said you know, you're farming out your job. Yeah, ultimately and ultimately, what they're going to do is they're going to go back to the customer within a year and they're going to say hey, instead of you paying numbnuts over here, 3% of your order, how about you save 3%? And you don't call him at all. And sure as shit, that's what happened.
Speaker 1Really.
Speaker 2Hell yeah, it happened.
Speaker 1On the big accounts and stuff like that.
Speaker 2From what I understand, I think it's been offered to everybody Ideally. It's kind of like me with my app. Do I want to hire somebody I do need somebody to call occasionally and see a lot of people don't. Do I want to pay somebody to sit there and answer the phone for three or four hours a day, or would I rather just have you order everything on the app Because you know what? The app don't cost me shit. The app doesn't talk back. It doesn't ever get your order wrong. It doesn't get your order wrong.
Speaker 1You get your order wrong. You get your order wrong.
Speaker 2It's a user error.
Speaker 1It's a user error, exactly that you get your order wrong. It's a user error. It's a user error, exactly that's the thing. And even when I do get something, I'm like I don't think I ordered that. I know it's my mistake when I order from the merchant's app. Absolutely, I know that. Okay, I thought I ordered. And then I get to looking and it's one digit different and I'm like I put the wrong damn number in. But it's my mistake and I have to own that.
Speaker 2I told somebody the other day, if I had it my way, covid was probably one of the most profitable times we had in business. Because that front door was shut. I was able to cut labor down, which obviously that labor some of it went straight over there to answering the phones, but we were shoving everything out that side window. I wouldn't have a dining room. Have you seen these ghost kitchens? People are doing A hundred percent. I wouldn't have a dining room. I'd have it blacked out to where we went in there and cooked and I wouldn't have a damn phone system to save my life. You want to order from us on the phone? Tough shit. Same way you can't order a damn phone system to save my life. We wouldn't even. You want to order from us on the phone? Tough shit. Same way you can't order on the phone from any other fast food restaurant chain in the United States of America.
Speaker 1It doesn't happen. For those that don't know what a ghost kitchen is, these people will go, set a kitchen up and they'll be running three or four different restaurants out of it. It's all through delivery apps, so you think you're ordering from three different restaurants. It's being delivered to you. It's one kitchen and they've got a bunch of cooks in there and that's all they're doing is pulling that stuff off the internet.
Speaker 2It's like a commissary.
Speaker 1It's a commissary kitchen is exactly what it is Common. But I thought about that. I was like man Cleveland's not there yet you could do it in Madison, Oxford. You could do it in a bigger city, but just get right outside the city limits, where you shouldn't have all that.
Speaker 2I don't ever order. Very rare and I mean rare do I do DoorDash, and that's usually if we don't have DoorDash in Drew what I've never ordered anything off.
Speaker 2DoorDash. My kids do it all the time. It's in Oxford all the time, but the only time I ever do it is if Anna Race has got a ball game and I'm not there and I have to take. I'm there with her at the ball game and Wilkes, he ain't going to that damn ball game to save his life, he's at home. So I'm like you know he'll text me. Hey, dad, I'm hungry. I'm like okay, well, go fix a sandwich. But most of the time, you know, for dinner or whatever, I'll call in something like lost pizza. But I don't call in, I get on my door to ask you out. You know it costs me way more than it should cost, but I don't have to a restaurant, me too.
Speaker 1That's I hate. I don't I very similar like what we just did today is not usually my thing is going and picking up food, taking it, so it works for this. Yeah, but yeah, I would much rather be in the setting the food's better in the setting I'd much rather be I'm sitting there and shooting a shit and visiting with everybody that comes in. I love that shit it's and drinking a cool, and that's my fear is we're going to end up losing that, if we hadn't lost some of it already.
Speaker 2I think the days of the big dining restaurants with a lot of seats are over.
Speaker 1I think COVID, I think COVID really, really Will there be a nostalgia for that, but like I don't even see people going back to church like they did, much less a restaurant.
Speaker 2Just like you and I don't order DoorDash that much these young kids order the shit out of it. Oh, I know they don't care about the experience of going up there and they don't care about the cost. And they don't care about the cost Ten bucks extra and I could have just gone up there and had it myself.
Speaker 1And all they had was that amount of money, that funds. I'd rather not deal with people.
Customer Experience at Self-Checkout Machines
Speaker 2I I guess I just won't have to Right.
Speaker 1But now I will say when they first did self-checkout at Walmart I was like, oh, this is awesome. I was one of the few people that liked it. But I was like there are some good self-checkers I mean some good checkout people. But for the most part my experience with checkout people at Walmart has not been superior. So you know, when you check your stuff out, I check it out real fast. I stack it in my cart the way I want to stack it in which. I don't go to Walmart a lot, but when I do I go early in the morning, like six o'clock. I pay cash. So I go through there, pay my cash and get the hell out of there. It's way faster.
Speaker 2I got to tell you this. So Monday, to preface the story a little bit, monday I went, I took my cards out there on the trailer, my Pontiac down to Vicksburg for the Miss Mississippi pageant, blake Freddie's daughter. He asked could we, could you use it? I said yeah, sure. So I stopped in a gas station it was Circle K, I think and I went there and I wanted a Diet Coke. So I go in and get a Diet Coke. Go up front. There's one lady behind the counter.
Speaker 2They have got so much shit in this damn convenience store it blew my mind. You've probably seen these a hundred times now because you go to all these gas stations but the whole front counter was nothing but automated checkout. The lady behind there did not want my money. I had to put it in a machine. She was doing cash or credit and I said I've got both, so I'll do cash.
Speaker 2And so I had a $10 bill that I took out and I'm trying to pay for it and she goes. I went to hand her the money. She goes oh, no, no, no, no, no. You put it in the machine. It's nothing like five or six of these feeder machines and I I slide it in there, it won't read it. I slide in there again, it won't read it. She goes, uh, do, and the line's backing up, so I take it. I'm like, can I just run on credit? And she said, well, I've already got it rang up as cash. And I'm like, well, son of a bitch, now she can't change it. So I'm like she goes, give me the 10, and I'll give you two fives.
Speaker 2She didn't want to check me out, she was just going to give me two fives so that I could sit here like a jackass and keep feeding it in the machine. It takes her like it felt like forever, but it was probably a minute or two. She has to go into one of those automated vault things, put my 10 in, then it spit out the tube with a couple of fives in there. Then she hands me both the fives and I take a five. The first five doesn't work. Then I have to take the second five and I turn it upside down and she's like, do it like this, do it like that? And I looked at her and I said, ma'am, I don't take this the wrong way. In all that time couldn't I have just handed you the damn 10, and you could have just checked me out and given me eight bucks back because my Coke was two bucks and she's like we can't do that Not here.
Speaker 1I guess it was theft, but you're ruining the customer experience in the process.
Speaker 2Well, in my mind. It's not like I'm barreling down to Big Spark a bunch, but in my mind, if I am, I ain't stopping at that Circle K. No, you have a bad experience. I don't want to sit here and try to feed dollars into a machine like I'm playing slots, you know that Dollar General is taking all of their self-checkout machines out nationwide because the theft is so bad.
Speaker 1Oh, I'm sure it's bad and Target has started it's like for $10 or less only. So, if you go to self-checkout you better just have a little bit of stuff, or they're going to check you. And then Walmart the rumor is Walmart's taking them out. They're having trouble hiring cashiers. There's no reason they haven't, but they're supposed to be taking them out because people are going in and under-checking themselves. Can I say this? How stupid did they think?
Speaker 2I don't understand the Dollar General business model.
Speaker 1They've done well, haven't they, in spite of themselves. Well, they're killing, they're putting family dollar out of business. Family dollar's closing 600 stores this year and 600 next year.
Speaker 2Have you ever been to Dollar General, where everything was put up on shelves?
Speaker 1The one in Drew's, the only one I've ever seen.
Speaker 2I've never seen one. I've got to ride over to Drew now and check it out.
Speaker 1We actually do have a very good Dollar General. I've got to go see this unicorn. The thing is they're selling so much stuff and they have no storeroom. Their storeroom's like the size of this room. So when they get a truck in, go into it, and I had them tell me one time. I said have y'all got any such and such back there? I didn't see any. She said, honey, if it ain't on the shelf we ain't got it, because we don't have any room in the storeroom to put anything, everything that comes in that storeroom.
Speaker 2that's just a holding room for them to get it out on the I'll say that the one in Oxford on North Lamar is pretty well kept, but I don't think I've ever been in one where it didn't look like they just got a shipment. And in my mind I know they didn't just get that shipment, they've probably had it for four or five days and they put their shit up on the shelves Like there's no rhyme or reason.
Speaker 1So that was my experience with Family Dollar and Drew. It looked like the tornado hit the trailer truck and they just picked it up off the ground and came in here and put it on the shelves.
Speaker 2And went in there and put it on the shelves. Yeah, it's like I'm looking for salt and pepper.
Speaker 1Okay, well, salt's on. If you need a buggy, you can hang it up because you couldn't even get it down the aisles Salt's on lounge one and pepper's on from Drew, and I do think that makes a difference. He's the manager of it. He wants it to be good, but they do a pretty decent job. But since they closed those self-checkouts, they only have one checkout. So every time you go in there, 10 people in line.
Speaker 2They can't check them as fast as they do. For a lot of people that's like their little grocery store. That's the only thing we got.
Speaker 1So the Family Dollar closed. But we all saw I figured that Family Dollar would have already closed because it was. I mean, you go over there at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The door would be locked. Bathroom break one person in there, so they just locked the door while they went to the bathroom.
Speaker 2I went in there one day, ain't a damn thing and there was nobody in there. That's what gets me yeah.
Speaker 1I go outside and the guy that's the cashiers outside on the sidewalk smoking weed and he goes oh man, I didn't know anybody was in there. I'm like, well, I'm ready to check out and I thought how long can this place stay in business?
Speaker 2That's why I think AI and robots are coming. They have to Every single year. We're as busy now as I have ever ever been in 12 years in health care. As busy as we've ever been by leaps and bounds and we're like on wood. We're very fortunate we're finding people to work.
Speaker 1I don't know how much longer that's going to last, because and you would think a place where unemployment is like 10% that you'd be able to find people, I can't hire them fast enough.
Speaker 2Saffron, I can't hire them. We get tons of applications. There's no longer, is there any etiquette on what do I need to wear to a job interview or to do my paperwork? Obviously, our school systems are failing our children because I think they are too.
Speaker 2Grammatically, jesus H. You can't read half this shit. Most of these people do not have a driver's license. They might have an ID, but they don't have a driver's license. Most people don't have, have never in their 20s. Don't have a checking account. Don't know how to open up their 20s. Don't have a checking account. Don't know how to open up a checking account or where to go.
Speaker 1We send ours to one particular place here in town where they will literally specialize in sitting down with them and go through it Spoon feed them on how to open up a checking account. You do all direct deposit. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2Nobody in this company gets a check.
Speaker 1That's the same way. So much better on us there again. It's way easier on your accounting, folks.
Speaker 2You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, you're not having to sit there and hand cut checks all day long.
Speaker 1Hand figure and all that. You plug it in and Bryce at ours just puts the hours in and it's done.
Speaker 2There's no way she could do it, because she's doing it for four damn companies. Oh yeah, You've got so much going on 160 to 170 people and you can't do that. But when I tell you I can't hire fast enough, I can't hire fast enough.
Speaker 1You've got that many people working for you now. Totally, yeah, that's crazy dude.
Speaker 2Dude, there's a lot of days I walk in here with a big old frown on my face because I'm pissed off about something. There's a lot of days I pull up in the driveway and I look and see my name on top of the building and I walk in and see all the hustle and bustle go on and go. I've said this before I owe my mother. This stuff would not be here if Joanne had not sacrificed for a couple years to come in here and work so that I could go and earn a paycheck. Yeah.
Speaker 2How cool is that? It's amazing what's been built, what we've got going on. To me it is. Was there a time period?
Speaker 1then, you didn't think that you were going I might not make it? Or were you just like, oh, I've just got to keep my head down and keep hustling oh, bro, there was probably about 18, 24 months in.
Speaker 2I had already contacted people about selling what little bit of business I had with delta maids and getting the hell out of right at home. I said I've just, I've made them. I have made a monumental. I'm young enough I can fix it and get back on my feet.
Speaker 1Was there a weird turning point for you where you realized it was going right, or where you made some kind of I don't know self-discovery? Or do you remember when you went okay, this may work.
Speaker 2I think in any business, anytime you start a business, you've got an idea in your head that this is going to work and this is how it's going to work and I'm going to make it work because I'm me and I can make everything work and you realize very early on that everything you thought and how it was going to play out is not how it's going to go. And, um, I think, probably at about 24 months in, maybe 30 months in, I realized that I was doing some things very, very, very wrong in the business. In all of it, I took the playbook that I had in my head because it wasn't working and I threw it out and we tried something different and you started to see it grow and probably about year four, I guess yeah, in 16, I was able to walk away from my job, job, job and come back into this full time where I could make money. And I mean we haven't looked back. We've had some highs, we've had some lows.
Speaker 1What would be your advice to yourself in the early days? If I could go back in time.
Speaker 2If I could go back in time I quit my job with Cisco making phenomenal money. I was making six-figure money, not working very hard at all, like I mean I wasn't you know, I mean I worked less.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was back when Cisco took care of people.
Speaker 2yeah, I was you know, as a district manager I didn't, you know I wasn't having to hit the road all the time like I was when I was in sales. I, you know, wasn't having to fool with collections. It was a little bit easier that way. But instead of me walking away from that and starting a new company like I did, I probably would have kept my nose down for another six, eight months, maybe a year, and just rat hole that money and hired a good manager supervisor. I was very fortunate that my mother stepped in like she did, maybe tried to encourage her to do it earlier, but I don't know. I hate I had to do that to mom.
Speaker 2But we wouldn't be here if I hadn't. But I would have probably kept my head down a little bit longer and started the company at the same time and just grinded through it.
Speaker 1Yeah Well, you were young enough then to handle it too. Yeah, you'd be different now, if you had to do that, oh God.
Speaker 2In my mind. I don't know why I thought this. I was like I'm opening a business, it's going to be wildly successful day one, Don't we all think one? Where did I get?
Speaker 1that, though, but don't we all think? You know, the hardest thing for me is to know when to go. Okay, this is runner's course. I need to go a different direction. I forget who it was that said that the thing about entrepreneurship is you lose a lot, you just get a win every now and then, really, but I was like 1933. Three years in, I was like either I have to either have to shove this to the side or make really drastic changes, and I was like I don't really want to go through that. I'm on. I decided to close the business and sell out what I did, but yeah but was like it's.
Speaker 1And then I was in the same shape at Stafford's and I decided to completely redo that. Yeah. It was like this weird thing. Of course I'd been open a lot longer there, but I kept Stafford's more of a. That was a. I don't make a lot of money at it. We've talked about this before. That was just a hometown trying to a lot of money at it. We talked about this before. That was just a hometown trying to take care of my hometown thing. That's the only reason.
Speaker 2I bought Lenny's. I had no, there was. I couldn't see a scenario where I went man, I'm going to make a shit load of money off of this.
Speaker 1For God's sakes, I wish I could buy Lenny's Right. That wasn't probably something on the top of your mind, no, no. But then it comes up.
Speaker 2I did it because I wanted to be able to give some people jobs. I knew the people here enjoyed it and I knew it was going to be missed. And hindsight, god dang, I should have never taken that phone call. You know what I mean. Yeah, it's a headache where I don't make any money.
Speaker 1That's the kind of way I feel about the restaurant business. Part of it's the markets I mean Cleveland really is. People don't think of it. It's a small market. Sure it is Especially for Lenny's probably. Yeah, well, I mean it's, but even a hometown-owned restaurant Drew is a freaking small market dude.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, man, You're limited on your people that are coming in.
Speaker 180% of the people are below the poverty line. Yeah, lunch is $13.25. Yeah. I mean, you don't have to be good at math to figure that out. Math- ain't mathing yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, I just. You know I've made way more mistakes than I've had wins, but I've had some big wins. Well, mark keeps saying you don what it'll be right once. Yeah, oh shit, this has been very good to me.
Speaker 2I've looked at my career. You know I worked for Cisco for a very long time. You know I was able to go. I was offered a job to go sell insurance. That I was very thankful for, even though I hated that damn job more than anything on God's green earth. I got to work with some great people. But I look at and then I've had this and I've. So I haven't had to job hop a lot, really, only had to job hop twice. But you know, all the great people I've met and this I, I, I'll still. I love the Delta and I love the people here. I, you know, I look at sometimes and I just go, can I can, can we? Can we all just give each other a little bit of grace every now and then, for some reason, the people in the, the people in this area and in Cleveland, it don't matter, it's always. What have you done for me lately? You know what I mean, you know, but do we have a, is it?
Speaker 1everywhere, like that. Or do we not know? Because we really haven't lived anywhere. But here I mean I've lived in Oxford and I've seen, but I mean it's still kind of a delta. I've seen shit.
Speaker 2Reviews on things and stuff like that. But I guess it's just. There's so many people, nobody gives a shit. They enjoy the place anyway.
Speaker 1Well, it's smaller. Yeah, it's smaller here, so it's a little more personal when somebody critiques you.
Speaker 2Am I trying to make money? Hell, yeah, I am. I want to make as much money as I can get my damn hands on. Yeah, but I'm trying to do. I want to try to do stuff for the community too. I was like, man, this is a good community thing I'm doing over here Keeping this place open. People like it, not a lot of restaurants on that side of town, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This other shit, they don't give a shit. They don't give a shit. Screw your sub sandwiches. All this, I'm going to bet you about it.
Speaker 1Are you saying Lenny's is for sale?
Speaker 2Hell yeah it is. Anything's for sale, you can buy this damn. I know you're not an Ole Miss fan. You want this shirt. Hell, I will sit and do the rest of it.
Speaker 3I'll give you a nickel. We'll do the rest of this thing topless.
Speaker 2I don't give a shit. But oh yeah. Yeah it's, I like having it, but I don't like having it.
Speaker 1I feel the same way about the restaurant. I will say the restaurant Drew is better off than it ever. I think our food is better and I've got better health than I've ever had. And that's taken a lot of pressure, because there was a point there about 2000 and just post-COVID 21, 22, where I was like, yeah, I'm ready to get out of this thing, but I feel a lot better about it now.
Speaker 2Drew's not a destination place for me, no, and I don't have to go through it, but the times I've been over there and stopped you a place to eat, it's been great.
Speaker 1But it's way better. Some of the best damn fried chicken I've ever had is over there we got great fried chicken, but I mean I think we have the best, the better hamburgers in the Delta. It's pretty good. But I mean my staff does it. Man, they're good, they do a good job.
Speaker 2I know you're getting on this new venture doing this. Are you still going to do your tailgate reviews, are you? Going to try to incorporate this, as in doing both while you're out.
Monetizing Social Media and Family Bonding
Speaker 1Well, I don't know You're like me, I see it all as one thing. Anyway it is, I mean, everything's kind of food related, even farming, yeah, and I mean I ain't bragging, but Facebook paid me $100 last month. A little more than that actually.
Speaker 2Hey, spotify paid me $3.81. That's what I'm talking about, buddy. It cost me more money to have somebody take that check from the envelope, sign the back of it and take it to the bank. Well, facebook direct deposits.
Speaker 1I don't know, Spotify doesn't, but yeah, so I mean, all kidding aside, I would like to find a way to monetize what I'm doing on the social media. Well, you've got a huge following on. Youtube and everything else. Right, I do and I'm hoping to pull that into the podcast part. You know, pull some of those guys and I'm hoping some of them listen and and I you know there's a lot man.
Speaker 1There's a lot of people barely scraping by doing the podcast, just doing it for fun, and there's a lot of people making bank off his podcast.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I mean like Theo Vaughn got offered have you ever watched him on so ridiculous what he says and you cannot not laugh at it. Yeah, it's hilarious. But he he's making so much money off his podcast. He got offered a part in a recurring it's animated show adult animation so all he had to do was read into a mic and he says man, I'm making more than that doing one podcast and then they would get paid for one show. And he says I can knock a podcast out in like two or three hours and this takes like eight hours to record one show.
Speaker 2He's like yeah, I'm not interested. I mean no reason, I'm doing it, it's just fun to me. Yeah, you're doing it to blow off steam a little, a little bit. And my mom pointed out something good the I put up a picture. We did one last night. We do Ask Will Anything Wednesdays?
Speaker 1Yeah, I do it on. I've seen them.
Speaker 2I put it out on Wednesday and we've got some awesome ass listeners that put in shit and they really get invested in the show and I love that Because anybody that thinks I'm entertaining to want to talk to is you're A-OK in my book. I can understand why I'm not everybody's favorite flavor, but she just goes. I'm so glad that you're getting to spend that time with your nephew and his wife and their daughter, because I'll go over there.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's been a big deal there hasn't it, oh yeah. I mean, have you picked up a lot of new downloads since you've been doing it that way?
Speaker 2A ton, because it seems like y'all have a good time we have a blast and he brings his friends over there and see, I was, you know, with little Vance. My sister and I are such an age difference, we're 11 years different, so I mean she was damn near out of the house by the time. I was probably enjoyable as a child. You know what I mean. So they had Vance, you know, and I mean it was like, you know, I'm Uncle Will, but hell, I wasn't much older than him. Yeah, you know what I mean. I think I'm 15 years older than Vance, 14, 13 years older than Vance, Not that big, not huge age, like you would look at my uncle, who was like 40 years older than me. So you know, I had to. You know I was their alumni advisor when they were KAs and they were a bunch of little shitheads Not that they're not shitheads now, but they're shitheads with jobs and families.
Speaker 2And I go over there, we have an absolute blast. We'll sit there and have a drink or two or sometimes more, and we over there and play with my grandniece, hang out with them, because I really wasn't very close with my uncles, I just wasn't. There was such a huge age gap. What do we have to sit here and talk about it's like we're good friends. Don't fool yourself. I still tell him I'll knock his ass out if he says something stupid to me because I'm his uncle. Or he gets on this tangent of calling me Bradham and I'm like that's reserved for friends, my peers. You ain't calling me Bradham, it's Uncle Will. That's why I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1I think I've heard that on the show.
Speaker 2Actually, hadn't I we ain't doing that shit and I'm just joking with them, but I'm not. But mom just said I'm glad you're able to get that kind of relationship with them Because we'll text during the day. He's invested in it now. So is Avery, his wife. What do you think about talking about this tonight? And it's gotten to where it's a thing now. When I'm here for these three or four days, we podcast on Sunday night and we podcast on Tuesday night when I'm here, and it's become this family thing. For you guys it's a lot. We eat dinner, avery cooks. We're all going out to dinner tonight. I don't know if I'm going to be able to eat anything after eating that damn thing.
Speaker 1You can choke it down. I'm sure you know.
Speaker 2I assure you I'm going to have a few vodka drinks or a beer, but it's just a lot of fun to me, man, I love it, it's just.
Speaker 1Have you found new friends out of that that you didn't expect to find? Like if listeners started contacting you, kind of become friends, yes. Or has that opened some doors to people you didn't think it would open doors to? Some of it is wild.
Growing Fame Through Podcasting
Speaker 2The people that I've had message me and I'm like they're like hey, dude, really love the podcast. I was listening last night and I'm thinking I met that person 20 years ago and I probably hadn't seen him in 20 years. And they're listening to my podcast. That's awesome, because we don't have a lot of time. We sit there and talk about the bullshit we did that day, you know, or what we did last week, or we'll have topics, but you know, it's not. It's just wild to me that some of these people listen and they're steady listeners and we're steadily growing the listeners.
Speaker 1It's weird and I get the same the reason I ask I have the same kind of thing. But it's like I have people from Australia that watch my show and they'll be like you've got to explain this to me because I don't understand what you know. Explain meatloaf to me, or why are y'all eating fried chicken, liver, you know that kind of stuff. And then I was at a wedding the other night and this guy I know really well was like look man, my daughter wants to meet you. And I was like what? And he said I tried to tell her you're just an old redneck from Drew, but she thinks you're famous or something and it's so funny to me. But yeah, and then stuff, like in about two weeks I'm interviewing Robert St John.
Speaker 3Robert St John wouldn't have been on the show if it wasn't for the tailgate review. He didn't know who the hell I was.
Speaker 1But because of that he knew. When I hit him up he was like oh yeah, man, I loved it.
Speaker 2That's funny to me, vance, and Avery were at the zoo like two weekends ago and he said two ladies came up to him and go, you're famous. You're the guy on the Will Prado podcast, You're his nephew, right?
Speaker 1They recognize his voice, or did they recognize his face?
Speaker 2Because they've obviously seen it on Facebook, on our website on our podcast page and everything. We don't do any clips. I haven't gotten that technologically savvy, I hope.
Speaker 1That's why I got the camera, so I'm hoping to get some clips out of this. We'll see. Oh, you will, but it was I got to learn how to edit that right.
Speaker 2Avery said you would have thought that he just was. Like somebody came up to him and goes you're Michael Jordan, right? I mean he, you said. She said he was grinning and he was so excited and all this other shit and I was laughing my ass off Because I mean I'll have people come up to me and have seen just the picture where I'm doing the little promos, say an episode 201 or whatever you know.
Speaker 2And they'll go oh, you're the guy that's got the podcast, not the guy that's got Lenny's, not the guy that's got the health care company, not these things, shit no. You're that redneck son of a bitch that cusses all the time on his podcast, right, and they'll want to sit there and talk and shoot the shit.
Speaker 1Well, that's what. So the weird thing for you is going to be the same for me. You know I could go through this laundry list of all the cool shit I've done in my life, and I'm known as the guy that eats chicken off the tailgate of a truck.
Speaker 2That's how I refer to you.
Speaker 1But you know, it's like to me the least important thing I've done is the one I'm known for. I'm not known for being a judge, or farming for 30 years, or you know whatever it's like. Oh yeah, that's a guy that goes around and eats at gas station. But it's funny man. Even people I know like I'll go in the planners' equipment down there and they'll be like oh, I stopped at that place you were talking about on Highway 82 down there. It was really good, you were right.
Speaker 2I was showing somebody some of your clips and I think I went through and I played the one where you and I went to Roy's Roy's store. You know it's old. It's old too, yeah. Okay. So I was showing them this video and I was like you won't believe how many people watch his thing and I'm not saying it as a slight, but I'm happy for you, but. I'm like, and they were like this is awesome, Does he do more of these? And I was like, oh my God, he's got hundreds of these damn things.
Speaker 2I got 172 published when he's gone to these damn things I've been to about 200 stores, but I've only published about 172. Those other 28 were ones you just went to and went. This shit sucks. You didn't want to put it out there. I'll tell you some good stories on that.
Speaker 1So I went to this one place and I figured out that store employees will hit me up and say, oh, you need to try this place in whatever city you know, name the city, but this place out from oxford, out in the middle of nowhere, and they were talking about how good their food was and I walked in and of the three other people in that store I had more teeth than the three of them combined. And so I'm looking and I'm thinking this is weird and I walk in. I kind of look in the hot box. They got a hot box for food in.
Speaker 1I'm looking at food and it was mainly pizza, sticks and stuff like that there was a little bit of fresh done food and I bought a Diet Coke and I left and I didn't even get the camera out. But didn't there have been other places that you know and you've been in the restaurant business? I've been in the restaurant business. Everybody has a bad day. So you know I'm giving most people the benefit of the doubt on the outset and even if it's bad I go. Maybe they just had a bad day, so I'm not going to produce that and put that out. I did early and then I realized that was not the right thing to do. But I've gone to a couple places where I just took a bite or two, just folded the box up, threw it in the garbage and turned the camera off and just left. Have you circled back to?
Speaker 2any of those. I have not Just that same mentality of maybe they just had a bad day, they had to cook something.
Speaker 1I know that there's one and I'll tell one because I did actually publish this because I had this interaction with a guy outside that was so good that I had to publish it. But I think it's called Little John's in Charleston. If you ever go that way to Oxford, that gas station on the right, I know what you're talking about. And when I say and I really was like I said I'm in the restaurant, I'm trying to find something good and I ordered two or three different things and the fried pork chop looks so good, dude, and it was the toughest pork chop I've ever had in my life. And they had these meatballs and gravy that were definitely those very, very cheap Cisco meatballs that had just been sitting in gravy for like four days and it just melted when it went in my eye I was like I may have to spit this out on camera. It was that bad.
Speaker 1But the guy outside the store was like I said what's the name of the place? He said I don't know. And this whole conversation we had was just epic. He didn't know what town he was in. I mean, I don't know if he was. He was an older man. I don't know what was going on, but it was hilarious. But they have changed some of the management and the same person still owns it, but they've changed the management there. I think it's way better. You sent me back. I hadn't re-reviewed it, no, you ought to go back.
Speaker 1I'll tell you the only two bad reviews I ever put out was that one and 3555 Truck Plaza, which used to be awesome. When I was in college we had a deer camp out there and we'd go there and eat all the time. When I was in college we had a deer camp out there and we'd go there and eat all the time. And when I say those people should have been ashamed of themselves little chicken strips and I mean this was like probably about the time COVID hit, so it was before everything went crazy price-wise Little old bitty chicken strip and it was like $8 for one chicken strip or something ridiculous like that. So it was like one chicken strip and a was like $8 for one chicken strip or something ridiculous like that. So it was like one chicken strip and a drink was $10, one chicken strip and it was hard as a rock. I mean they knew what they were doing. Can I say something?
Frustration With High Beverage Prices
Speaker 2I want to say this real quick, speaking about stuff that's overinflated, and they know they got you. So you know, anna Reese Wilkes never wanted to play travel or anything, thank God Gotcha. So you know, anna Reese Wilkes never wanted to play travel or anything. Thank God he plays, you know, junior high and high school ball now, but he didn't want to play travel ball. Anna Reese loves travel ball. I hate it and I've been in ballparks all over the damn Delta, all over North Mississippi. I walk into one the other day. Number one.
Speaker 2they got everything in there jacked up because they think they got you and they do got you and they do got you. But I've never had anybody and I don't really eat in those places because it's not ours will have Chick-fil-A sandwiches in Oxford. I'll just take the bread, throw the bread out and I'll eat the chicken sandwiches because I'm trying to not eat that shit.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've never had any one of them say what's in the cooler, what's in the bag? They tried to tell me in Grenada, mississippi, that I couldn't bring my damn cooler full of water. It wasn't like I was bringing in beer and I was finna get all shit-faced watching my daughter play softball. Couldn't bring water there.
Speaker 2And I looked at that girl and and 50 cents. My daughter and myself are probably going to go through a case in the 14 to 16 hour stint. We're playing in your ballpark and it's a hundred degrees outside. Do you think I'm fixed to go spend $200 on bottled water at y'all's concession stand? Well, we don't allow coolers and I went it's a team cooler.
Speaker 2I was lying and I said and that person's got a team cooler and that person's got a team cooler and that person's got a team cooler and that person's got a team cooler. And I said, if you want to call the cops up here on bottled water, be my guest. I said I'm going to eat y'all's ass alive in attorney fees Because I'd already texted mine and said, hey, I may have a problem over here in Grenada, mississippi, did you really? Hell, yeah, I did. And he was like what happened? I said they're questioning me on my damn cooler full of bottled water. I'm thinking I get it. She made a comment. This young little kid made a comment to me Well, you can't take drinks into a football game or a basketball game. And I said, yeah, those last two hours. Right, I'm here all damn day sitting under a tent trying not to melt.
Speaker 1I remember those long softball tournaments. Oh my gosh. Mary Stafford played softball one year and she didn't do it after that.
Speaker 2My whole point is who the hell is charging $3.50 for a bottle of water? I know what that costs, Right. I get Homer to drop me off a pallet of damn bottled water up here about four times a year because we wear it out in this office. I know how much it costs. You're not going to get me on this.
Speaker 1I have a Brita pitcher at home and I keep it full all the time. I love that Brita pitcher.
Speaker 2I've got a table top full so it's cold in the refrigerator. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1Love it. I drink my Diet Cokes usually until about lunch and then I'll swap over to water because the caffeine will my heart races at night if I drink caffeine late.
Speaker 2Oh, it does make me a bit mad.
Speaker 1I can sleep, but I wake up at like 5 in the morning and my heart will literally be going brrrr. What in the hell but if I don't drink that caffeine late, it doesn't do that.
Speaker 2It doesn't bother me, I don't know.
Speaker 1it was the caffeine, but when I don't drink the caffeine, it doesn't do it.
Speaker 2I don't tend to drink soft drinks at night anyway or like a diet Coke.
Speaker 1If I go out and eat I will, rare occasion, I'll have a cup of coffee or something. But I don't drink alcohol much either. So if I go out and eat I'm not going. I can get alcohol I used to but not much anymore. Love it.
Speaker 1So you were talking about something that does so if I drink a whiskey drink or, more likely, vodka. If I drink a vodka drink or two and I go home, I go to sleep so easy and I'm going to wake up about midnight and I'm going to toss and turn from midnight to 5 and then get out of bed about every time. Now I'm not hungover, I don't feel bad. I get out of bed about every time and I'm not hung over. I don't feel bad. I just toss and turn all night. It's something about it makes me restless. But going to sleep way better. I mean I, I will literally as soon as my head. I mean people say that as an expression and it's like head it to pillow, I'm out. If I drink a wish, uh, particularly vodka, and uh, I just was like, yeah, it's not worth losing all that sleep later in the night.
Low-Carb Diets and Fasting Benefits
Speaker 2I interviewed Dr Jenny Stanford and she married Rick Stanford who used to work with me at Crawdads and she's a physician family practice and she's real big into health and wellness and she's slowly getting out of traditional medicine altogether and going to go the whole holistic side of it. But I was talking to her because I mean I've dropped about 25 pounds so I'm in the 220s, high 220s pretty much all the time right now and I was telling her I was like I just want to lose like five more pounds. I said I've just hit this plateau and she was like you got to stop drinking and I was like that shit ain't happening. She was like you got to stop drinking and I was like that shit ain't happening. But when I've got the children it's not that I would get belligerent around my kids, it's I don't want to be any kind of impaired whatsoever if something were to happen with one of my kids. So when I'm in need Need to get in a car and drive them to the hospital and you want to be able to do it.
Speaker 2When I've got the kids and we're in Oxford I tend not to drink at all and I was telling her. I said you know, I know what you're saying, because when I've got them and I'm over in Oxford, buddy, I am in the bed at 10 o'clock. I sleep fairly well, but I don't ever have a problem getting up in the morning. Not that I have a problem getting up here, but like today, last night we did a podcast, I drank enough vodka to float a damn battleship and I went to bed and 2.30 in the morning I'm looking around because that's what I do a lot. I wake up.
Speaker 2That's what I do when I'm in drinking and I had to pop some damn ibuprofen and go back to sleep and then I was like hell, I got to fly today and I mean just all this other shit, and it was like I just maybe I, you know, I know there's something to it.
Speaker 1What's the what the doctor tells him and he goes pass. Yeah, what's that clip? Oh God, sam Elliott, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. She says you know what do you do to take the edge off, and he's like eat steak and drink whiskey. You just told me I can't do it.
Speaker 1I'm going to interview Michael Manning Friday. He got the men's health clinic down there. He's a good dude and so I'm going to pick his brain a little bit. What did she say about? Like you know, you and I both kind of low-carb a lot. What did she say about all?
Speaker 2that you know, and her and I this is the second time I've had her on and you really ought to talk to her. She's great, she'll tell you and this is the God's honest truth, because, I mean, I've looked it up too your body only needs one particular food source and that's protein. Yeah, it doesn't need carbs. It doesn't need fruits and veg. You can get that from supplements. It doesn't need all these other things that are either empty fillers or there's you know starches in them or carbohydrates and all these other things.
Speaker 2Your body is fueled off of proteins and the more you can ingest, the better off it is. It's not a damn free-for-all and it depends on what kind you're ingesting. That's a hamburger patty. If I'd taken the buns off of that, is it a hamburger patty? Yeah, is it a great hamburger patty? Not really. It's not that great for you. But if you're eating lean proteins and getting a lot of that a lot of chicken, a lot of fish, even steaks leaner steaks like a New York strip or something that's your wheelhouse and you can lose weight and feel a shitload better.
Speaker 1I sleep better when I don't eat the carbs, Carbs and sugar man and fewer headaches. They're terrible for you. Fewer headaches.
Speaker 2They're terrible for you. The sugar especially yeah, well, everything now is processed Well and like, so I do what's called low carb.
Speaker 1So you're allowed some carbs and you're allowed a cheat day, but the only real rule is no liquid sugar. You do not consume calories through beverages. Which means no alcohol.
Speaker 1Which means no alcohol, no beer. Yeah, I cheat a little, I drank a lot of that, so you know it's not going to kill me. Well, that's what I tell people all the time. Me and Wright were going somewhere one night we were actually going to Crawdads and Crow. If I go in Crawdads, crow's going to bring out something cool every time I go in there. And so you just know, I go in there going, I'm going to go to Crow's Crawl down and eat a steak and it's on my diet, but Crow's going to bring out, like that night he brought out sushi.
Speaker 1Well, you're not going to turn that down, he just gave it to us, you know. Well, I'm not going to say, oh man, I ain't eating your sushi, I want to eat the damn sushi. And he brought us out some kind of sandwich I don't even remember what it was, and that bastard was good too. But yeah, I'm not a Nazi about it, you know what I mean. But I do try to do good. So I've been bad off for a little while. I've been eating way too much stuff. So I actually fasted from Saturday night to Monday night to get kind of back in the groove, to get all that stuff out of my system.
Speaker 2That stuff's perfect, man. You do a water fast and some bone broth and then you can supplement. Depending on how long of a fast you're doing, you can supplement some amino acids. I just need liquids only and it will. It's amazing what it'll do for cleansing, clearing out your body and her and I talked about this because we were talking about during Lent you, what if that was kind of established as a once-a-year kind of ritual? And even my mom and them growing up.
Speaker 1I ain't doing 40 days bud Hell.
Speaker 2No, my mom and them growing up had some stuff similar to that, where you know they would fast at certain days of the week and they did it year-round. And I mean by fast I mean you ingested very little food, you had your liquids and it was meant more of a thing, kind of a disciplinary thing, to focus on prayer, but that, if that was kind of established, to really go in there and reset your body.
Speaker 1Well, it does reset everything doesn't it For health purposes?
Speaker 2yeah, well, you know, cancer is from inflammation. We have been all over the damn gamut today, haven't we? But it's from inflammation. Yeah, it is. We have been all over the damn gamut today, haven't we? Yeah, but it's from inflammation.
Speaker 1Is it because we're getting older that we find this fascinating? Yeah, we're like.
Speaker 2I don't think I'm ready to have cancer, just starting to deal with mortality.
Speaker 1Yeah, really.
Speaker 2You know the constant inflammation of something, why your joints hurt, why your head hurts, why your back hurts and what's causing those things. And I've noticed like after eating that right there, I love it, and drinking that drink, it's fantastic. We'll be stiff when we get up from here. I'll feel like shit tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1No, it really is true, and you know, I have migraines real bad. We've talked about this and I can tell you for sure they don't go away completely when I cut out cards, but they definitely are. There's fewer of them and they're not as intense, but if I'm I figured out, it's two, it's three things I have when I have really the really bad one. I'm stressed about something. If I'm usually not always, but I'm usually going to be stressed, I'm usually going to have a lot of sugar in my diet, um, and I'm usually dehydrated it's if I have three things at one time, I'm going to have them twice a week.
Speaker 1And then if I'm doing pretty good, my weight's down, I'm sleeping good, and that puts stress on your body. Losing sleep Because I can be physical stress or mental stress would cause it for me, and alcohol causes it. I figured that out too because I have several times consumed alcohol and four hours later I have a full blown migraine. And migraine is funny for me because it is literally one side of my face. This side will not my left side will not hurt at all. It's just like you could draw, like you could draw a line, and it's literally eye, head, neck, one side of my neck, everything's one side and that's like typically. I told Michael Manning because I went and got some Botox in my scalp to see if that would help, and when I told him that he said dude, that is textbook migraine. He said when you say that we know it's migraine, we don't even have to look any further. Textbook migraine is one side of it, but it usually is the right side.
Speaker 2During Lent, and I haven't been the best Catholic all these years, since this was really one of the first years that I made a Lenten resolution, pretty much, and stuck to it for the whole damn time, and even after that I did. Oh, me too. I love it when they're really cold. You know they're crispy People that haven't gotten addicted to them yet. I found drink diet coke.
Speaker 1I don't know if it gets any damn better. First thing in the morning I get up and I get a shower and I leave the house and I grab a diet coke. And the canned ones and I mean you know I'm not crazy, they're crispy, that's the only way to describe it. And the canned ones, and I mean, you know I'm not crazy, they're crispy, oh yeah, that's the only way to describe it. And a regular Coke doesn't have as much carbonation or something I don't know. I want it almost a little frozen, where it's got the little ice flakes in it.
Speaker 1The refrigerator. Man does that.
Speaker 2Your mouth is watered. Oh yeah, I gave up Diet Coke for Lent and three days into it I have never been one of those people that's had. I have a lot of stress in my life. I have. You know, I drink.
Speaker 1Are you cranky?
Speaker 2I am cranky.
Speaker 1No, I mean without the Diet Cokes Brother.
Speaker 2I was fit to be tired. It's like quitting cigarettes dude and I had some of the most massive headaches stemming from, like my neck. Mm-hmm. And after about four days it subsided and I literally looked at myself and I didn't want to diet coke after that and I kept telling myself well, you're going to do the whole 40, and then you're not going to drink them anymore. So have you drank any since then? Hell yeah, hell yeah. It was the day I came, the day Lent was over. I walked in here.
Speaker 1They are addictive, don't you think? Hell yeah, they are, they've got to be. Aspartame is not good for you. It's not just the caffeine, I mean, caffeine is a good caffeine, but it's not good for you.
Speaker 2I came in here and something happened and I was so pissed and I barely get I rarely get pissed off enough to where I vocalize it in this building. Or they know it. Yeah, they know. When I'm pissed this day. I came in, I was pissed and I was letting everybody know while I was pissed and April looked at me and she goes. She got up, she goes, I'll be back in a minute pissed. And I was letting everybody know why I was pissed and April looked at me and she goes. She got up, she goes, I'll be back in a minute. No, she didn't. She got up. She got in one of the cars out front. She went down to Dodge store. She came back in. She had two 24-ounce Diet Cokes. She put one on my desk and she goes. You need this. And my first reaction was well, you tell me what I need. And I went I think you're right and I drank that son of a bitch. It wasn't like it made me better, but she goes.
Speaker 1It takes the pressure off a little bit.
Speaker 2It's weird, you hadn't had one in a while.
Speaker 1You need one, and when I am depriving myself of everything else it is my treat. It's like I want something sweet, oh, I'll just go get a Diet Coke. And I've kind of become convinced. And I'm probably wrong, but I've kind of become convinced that aspartame, as bad as it is for you free base and sugar through liquid is probably worse.
Speaker 2All you've got to do is walk outside and look at, look at that, look at our population. Everybody's eating processed foods. Everybody eats out.
Speaker 1I mean, if that's the worst thing me and you do is diet coke. I think we're gonna be all right, me and tugging on this damn vape pen.
Speaker 1I mean wayne brit said when he found out he was diabetic he went to the doctor and he's the doctor said look man, you got to quit. I think wayne was drinking that uh dr peppers at the time. He says you got to quit drinking those dr pepper. Gets you a diet or something. And when he said I thought aspartame was bad for you and his doctor said you know, some studies say it is, some studies say it's not. But if you keep drinking those sugar ones as a diabetic you are going to die for sure. I can tell you that for sure. The aspartame I really I really don't know and I thought that's pretty fair.
Healthy Eating and Lifestyle Choices
Speaker 2Well, and when I was talking with Jenny about this, there's a large correlation between sugar and carbohydrate consumption and Alzheimer's and dementia, for sure, which that kind of blew my mind. Because if we're doing so much damn research on Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer and we've been doing research on it for decades now and not being able to find cures but you hear something as simple as which is why I've looked at and loved that carnivore diet I mean I'm telling you I'm going to feel like absolute shit. Probably this evening, probably for sure tomorrow, I'll go drink a ton of water and try to, you know.
Speaker 1I'm not even going to eat dinner tonight.
Speaker 2I'm going to just this is it. And I may not either.
Speaker 1I may go in there and get some, which I did pretty good, just the sugar drink was the only thing I did.
Speaker 2We'll go to the airport and I'll probably get some pork bites, are they good?
Speaker 1Oh, I've never had them. Or brother, really yes, sir. What's he do to them? I don't know. Airport grocery right down the road for folks that are listening right here in Cleveland, go in there and appetize her pork mites. I'm going to have to check that out.
Speaker 2Son of a bitch Brother. Yeah, have you ever had me steer you wrong on anything?
Speaker 2No no, no, I'm not steering you wrong on this. I'll get an order of those. I'll probably get two because my great niece loves them. Damn things too, but they're fantastic. That's good to know, man. But I look at it and go, okay, if carnivore diet has got all these positives. We've been doing all this research with millions, maybe billions of dollars in research money trying to figure out cancer, alzheimer's, dementia, all these other ailments. You know fibromyalgia You've got people that just hurt arthritis joint, all these other things. She is telling people here's what you need to do. She's not necessarily all carnivore, but she's telling people this is what you need to do. Why won't people? Just I hate pills. Oh, I do too, I love.
Speaker 2Ibuprofen, but I hate all this other shit you got to take on a daily basis. I can't remember to tell you I can't either. Well, I've had my blood pressure always runs a little high. When I started doing this, I'm telling you that shit went away. I've heard and talked to people that have gone on that strict kind of carnivore diet no sugars, no processed stuff, just really stuck to it and have reverse diabetes. That's not the same with everybody. I feel like I'm mentally more sharp, which I need to be, because I'm not sharp to begin with.
Speaker 1I'm mentally sluggish is what it is when I eat bad you know how it is dude.
Speaker 2When you think about it when you were going somewhere. You go eat lasagna at lunch. What are you doing after lunch? You ain't remembering shit. You ain't trying to do anything to keep your eyelids open.
Speaker 1You sound like somebody off Idiocracy. Do you remember that show?
Speaker 2Yeah, or Mush Mouth from the Cosby Kids. Okay, baby, I've noticed a significant difference and I go. Why? It's just like with all these damn drugs out there, why is it everybody wants to go with the absolute simplest fix, which is take this pill for the rest of your life? Ozempic, ozempic, I understand it's got its applications that are for people that just cannot win. Why are you not exhausting all your efforts with these other things? It's just going to require you to get off the couch, go walk a little bit and change your diet up.
Speaker 1But you can't out-exercise a bad diet. I'm convinced of that. Uh-uh, it's impossible. I heard a good line from somebody Some exercise is better than no exercise.
Speaker 2Oh for sure. Well, you can't have no exercise? Well, god again, go walk outside and look at our population in the Delta.
Speaker 1I heard a guy on Joe Rogan one time and he was talking about like a jar of orange juice is just as bad for you as this drink. It's got the same amount of sugar. And he said the thing is back in the day, you know, when we were running through the jungle or whatever, nobody squeezed out a case of oranges and drank it. And he said that what nobody measures is the velocity and I've never heard it put this way, but it made so much sense the velocity and the speed at which that sugar because sugar is absorbed through the intestine, not the stomach the velocity at which all that hits that intestine at the same time and overloads the system. You cannot do that naturally. It can only be done through something that's processed these drinks, or processing orange juice down or apple juice. The juices are as bad or worse.
Speaker 2When you got back in the 40s and the 50s. But if you ate an orange, you're okay.
Speaker 1But if you drink a glass, you just ate eight oranges in like 30 seconds. That's not normal. Straight to your system.
Speaker 2You look back in the 30s, 40s, 50s when our parents were working on the farm or whatever else they were doing. It's a system. So, like you know, you look back in the 30s, 40s, 50s when our parents were, you know, working on the farm or whatever else they were doing. They were eating everything that was pretty much on the property. It wasn't a lot of stuff you were going and picking up at the general store.
Speaker 1You may get some flour and shit like that, but you know, for the most part you were eating off the land You's hard to get fat when you're doing those two things.
Speaker 2It is, and you're working 12 hours a day and you're eating, you know, fruits and veg, and it's a wild game. You ain't getting fat. You had to be doing something special to get fat. Nowadays it's.
Speaker 2You know, hey, what am I eating for breakfast? I mean, that's why. I get up and cook for my children. I don't for breakfast, I mean, that's why I get up and cook for my children. I don't eat breakfast. I don't eat breakfast either, but I cook for my children Because I know that the alternatives are a lot of people just go here's a Pop-Tart or here's a cereal bar. Have you watched the New?
Conversations About Mannings and Football
Speaker 1Jersey NFL movie about the Pop-Tarts. Uh-uh, it's the stupidest thing you ever saw. What they did was very kind of cool. So it's about the invention of the Pop-Tart and this race to see who could come up with this thing first between Post and Kellogg. And it's happening the exact same time as the Space Race. So in the movie you start to pick up Kellogg is American, post is the Soviet Union. So in the movie you start to pick up Kellogg is American, post is the Soviet Union. It's so dang funny and so stupid.
Speaker 1But Bill Burr plays JFK to a T Really, oh, it's so funny. At one point he's like we need something. He gets the Kellogg folks in there and he said we got to do this for America. And look, you guys can't stay long. My wife's kind of mad at me about a certain someone who sang me happy birthday the other day and he makes them leave because the double mint twins are there to see him. It's awful. I mean, they spared nobody. They roast every historical figure you can think of. It's so funny. I got to watch it. Where's it?
Speaker 2on. Netflix.
Speaker 1It's so dumb and you don't. You're like this should not be enjoyable, but it's enjoyable, like. But if you remember, on Seinfeld, jerry only ever ate one thing and that was cereal. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1And it's about these and the serial wars were real, like Post and Kellogg hated each other, they were in the same town. It's just hilarious, yeah, and every comedian you can think of is in it. I gotta watch it now. Oh, yeah, cause I've I've seen some people say it didn't get that great of reviews, but they were like, hey, this is way better than what people are saying. It's actually lot. The only thing is watching it with my kid like she didn't understand. She did catch the Marilyn Monroe reference on JFK, but a lot of that stuff Way before her time. Yeah, she didn't catch the cultural reference. So it's definitely made for our age group. And like Tony the Tiger is played by Hugh Grant I mean Hugh Grant as Tony the Tiger is pretty hilarious, it's just hilarious.
Speaker 2Hey, I know you're going to have to wrap it up here in a minute, but have you thought, do you have any kind of relationship with any of the other Mannings?
Speaker 1so I know Archie.
Speaker 2And he and I text every now and then what's the middle, one's name.
Speaker 1So the middle one's actually Peyton, no, no.
Speaker 2Cooper's the oldest. He's the oldest.
Speaker 1He's my age. Peyton's a couple years younger than me. Cooper's kid Arch. He's the one at Texas.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean I still collect trading cards and I sold. Anna Reese pulled it. It was an autographed arch. It went for like $475 the other day. Are you kidding me? I've got one. He signed that's an out of 10. And I've been told it's in the thousands and I haven't sold it yet.
Speaker 1And he's never even started in college yet.
Speaker 2Isn't that crazy. It blows my mind that Ole Miss has made some investments the last couple years. Yes, and they really made some investments on coaching coming into this year and I think they're ranked preseason four or five and I think they're going to do very well, and I think they're going to do very well. But it has blown my mind that they have not tried to get that kid oh, I think they've tried From Texas and get him over to. I think they've definitely tried. I think if they have a big year this year, but you know the money's not.
Speaker 1I don't think money's going to be the issue for him. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2But I mean, just think about what that would do.
Speaker 1It's going to depend on what.
Speaker 2What that would do for the university to have that kid there.
Speaker 1I think he's going to play where he thinks is going to give him the best if this makes any sense the best coaching to put him as a quarterback in the NFL. Because that's what Peyton did. Peyton says we're going over here because of David Cutcliffe and then because you know, david Cutcliffe was not at Ole Miss and he was the offensive coordinator for Tennessee. Yeah, and then the only reason Ole Miss hired him was because they knew that Eli wanted to play for David Cutcliffe. And then they hired him and then when Eli left, they got rid of him. Yeah, they and I. I wanted to play for David Cutler, and then they hired him and then when Eli left, they got rid of him. Yeah, and I may be speaking out of turn, but I think that's for sure what happened. They went for the coaching and it did them pretty well, served them pretty well in the NFL.
Speaker 1And Peyton so I've talked to, I've emailed back and forth between me and Eli a couple of times and me and Cooper, not Peyton. I don't know Peyton at all really. We met maybe once, but really don't know him at all. But I text Archie pretty regular. He's a pretty cool dude.
Speaker 2Did you see where Eli sold his house? It was in Oxford I did the other day. I get the updates from the chamber and stuff like that. The house sold but they were selling off. It was kind of weird. I didn't understand why he would do this. He was selling off all the memorabilia in there.
Speaker 1He probably got a ton of it.
Speaker 2I know, but do you really want to sell that kind of stuff off? I mean, I would think you would want to maybe give that to your kids or help donate it to a museum or something. But they were selling off a lot of the memorabilia. I was going to go up there and see if there was anything and I was like you know what? I'm not going here and fighting against these damn millionaires and billionaires.
Speaker 1I got a good Archie story about Eli's house. He said after Eli was playing for the Giants and won his first Super Bowl, he still had that house in Oxford obviously, and he would go there occasionally and Archie had a house kind of around the corner, I think. So anytime Eli was home Archie would be over there. And he said the little kid would come over all the time. Mr Manning, can you sign football? Talking to Eli, you know, and one of them was the grandson of a guy that Archie played college football with and he saw him a few weeks after he had gone over there when Archie was there, and he said did Eli sign your ball? He said yeah, granddaddy. He said Mr Eli signed it and he gave it to some old man and he signed it too and it was Archie.
Speaker 2Where does Archie live?
Speaker 1now New Orleans. Does he? Yeah, yeah, he's kept a house in New Orleans the whole time, I don't think when he was traded. I don't think when he was traded. I don't think they ever sold their house at New Orleans Inn. Huh, but I don't think it's the same house. And somebody told me he did not tell me this, but that they were downsizing, that the house was too big for them now, but you know, he's late 70s, now yeah.
Speaker 1And you think of what his body went through. Oh, just a beating. You know, I don't think he's in as good of health physically. I think mentally he's good, but physically I would imagine we're talking about having pains. His knees have to be terrible. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh God, just beat to shit and back. Yeah.
Speaker 1But just, I did a video, a happy birthday video, of Archie some years ago when he turned 70. So it's been, he's probably 75, so it's probably five years ago or longer, and Cooper and Eli both emailed me. When I did that, I guess because I sent it to Archie, I had Archie's email and he. And when I did the Archie shirts, I sent Archie an Archie shirt and I wrote him a note in it and I mailed it to him and I said it's Saints colors, because I didn't know, as a Mississippi State fan I didn't have the heart to make a whole Miss colored one, which he got a big kick out of, you know.
Speaker 2I mean I've been in Oxford and hadn't really been out out until probably the last six or eight months. Where I go out when I don't have the kids, I'll go out pretty consistent friends and kind of hang out over there, but I've never run into any of them in town. You think you kind of?
Speaker 1would. So his sister lives in plein air. Yeah, and I think they go to Oxford every night and they're around Vernon Shelton and Miss Pam, who taught me in high school, but the rest of them are not there. Really, I don't think. Yeah, I guess Archie probably still has his house there, but I don't know. I don't know if he kept it or not.
Speaker 2You would think you would maybe run into him every night then or see him at some kind of ball game.
Speaker 1People tell me all the time they run into him in Mannings and New Orleans. Really, I've been in there a couple of times and didn't see him, but I don't know.
Speaker 1Who knows he's supposed to be at Delta State here shortly doing something. Who Archie Really yeah, I don't know what it's going to be Beacon at something or something like that. He was in drew one time and when they named manning boulevard manning boulevard and he's telling a lot of stories about drew. But one of the stories he told was why he didn't go to mississippi state and he said people ask me all the time why I didn't go to state. And he said I was recruited. But he said the person that recruited me was the mayor of Drew, was a state guy, and back then you know, if you're an alumni, you could just go. It wasn't like it is, you didn't have all these NCAA rules and stuff. And so he said the mayor came, got me one day and said son, let me talk to you. Man, he's in high school, you know.
Speaker 1It puts me in the car and while I'm in the car this is Archie's story somebody robbed a bank in Drew, and so the mayor back then was also on the police department and was a judge. You know, that's what I think we're back in today. And so they go, set up a roadblock going out of town and the guy blows the roadblock and is shooting when he comes through and Archie says I don't even remember what he said about Mississippi State, he said that was my old recruit from Mississippi State was getting shot at Going to Ole Miss. So I don't know, I'm sure I messed that story up, but that was the gist I got out of. It is that his recruitment to Mississippi State was him getting shot at during a bank robbery.
Speaker 2God I'm sure if I had Ole Miss, thank God he got there was a bank rob that day. God I'm sure, if I don't miss, thank God he got there was a bank rob that day.
Speaker 1Well, you know it worked out best for him because where he went that was the quarterback man right there. You know he went to the right spot. Yeah, but he said they recruited like eight freshman quarterback every year and he really did not think he would get to play much less as quick as he did, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah, damn near out to eight.
Speaker 1Because they beat like eight people out just in his class, much less. You had eight in every class. Yeah, because back then was it Johnny Vaught, wasn't it Mm-hmm. Johnny Vaught and Bear Bryant. They would just recruit everybody they could recruit to get somebody else from getting them. Mm-hmm, those days are long over. You can't get as many now. Now, if there's a good one on the sideline, you just pay to come over to your school the next year.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, that's the new game. I think it's ruined it. It's going to be whoever's got the most money and I think that's why it?
Speaker 1could be some parity to it, though, because are you going to pay somebody because they do want to play?
Speaker 2Are you going to pay a bunch of money to keep them?
Speaker 1from going to the other school, even if you can't play them Depends on what kind of money you got. You know what I mean. It's going to be weird and you know, if I'm the player, do I want to go? Yeah, I'll take the money and just sit on the bench and wait my turn, which is kind of the conversation we're having about Arch. He's waiting his turn.
Speaker 2Or do or do I go somewhere. They're going to play me right now and they can pay me. Yeah well, these kids are getting in the position now where they're like what if I get hurt? So does it make more sense for me to ride that bench for three years and and take?
Speaker 1the money and take the money you know, because some of them are getting paid. Did you see Saban testifying on Capitol Hill about this and he said nobody wants to know. What are you going to do to help me get to the next level? What are you going to do to help me become a better player? All they ask is how much?
Speaker 1you're going to pay me and that is. And that's kind of the problem with the workforce in general. They don't want to be developed as a human being anymore, they just want to know how much they're going to get paid.
Speaker 2If anybody that interviews and I know I'm not paying people here, we just can't it's just not there. You know stupid crazy money for stuff that we do in the service industry. But if one of the first questions is what's the pay rate? And.
Speaker 2I get that phone call or I get that message on social media. It's not what kind of positions do y'all have open, or what kind of training do you have? What's the pay rate is the first sentence out of their mouth. A lot of times I skip it because I don't know you, so I don't know what you're worth as an employee.
Speaker 1I tell people all the time we have a beginning pay rate and we reevaluate that pretty quickly by your performance. Yeah, you have to Because you can't come out of the gate overpaying them. And some people stay at the opening pay rate for a good while, but some of them I'm like, oh, we definitely keep these people around and knock them up a little bit.
Work, Sleep, and Business Reflections
Speaker 2You know as well as I do. There's folks out there that ain't worth the minimum wage that you would have to pay them, and I've never paid a person minimum wage at this company, not one damn time.
Speaker 1I don't even pay my dishwasher minimum wage I never have. I mean, they're all going to make more.
Speaker 2But you do hire some people. Sometimes they ain't worth half a minimum wage.
Speaker 1I know some of these police departments around here pay minimum wage to a police officer. Think about that for a minute.
Speaker 2Oh man, who wants to go out and get shot and deal with that bullshit for?
Speaker 1minimum wage. What do you think you're getting? What do you think you're getting when you're paying minimum wage on a police department and they complain about the police department's training and stuff? You can't even pay a minimum wage. You're sure not getting them trained.
Speaker 2Uh-uh yeah, they're going to make mistakes when you get those kind of people, and the ones who do take that job are usually ones that are they're wanting that ability to be able to go toe-to-toe.
Speaker 1They will be going two hours and 15 minutes, man, I know. It's going to be a good one, yeah.
Speaker 2This is Joe Rog. Oh yeah, we ain't rolling three hours, man. I'll be looking at the back of my eyelids. For too long I hadn't had my nap for the day yet.
Speaker 1Especially after that burger. This is a good closing question. Are you at?
Speaker 2the age where you need that 20 minutes middle of the afternoon nap In a lot of cases. Yes, Do I get it all the time? No, but I'll start and again this will go back to my diet of how I eat with that. I'm tired right now, like I could go kick back.
Speaker 1That's the only thing I've had.
Speaker 2Today is what I just had, so I'm pretty good I could kick back in my chair right now and, and taking that, I just want 20 minutes.
Speaker 1I'm over. That messes me up my um.
Speaker 2I like to call it the great reset it is is I have to have. There's every now and then when the perfect storm hits, where I don't have the. And I say perfect storm, but it is what it is. I don't have the kids. They don't have anything going on on Saturday where I've got to go to it. I don't have anything going on on Saturday where I can go to bed on a Friday night at 10 or 11 o'clock and I rarely ever sleep through the night. But if I have one of those perfect storm nights, I ain't going to lie to you, I'll go drink some NyQuil.
Speaker 1And make yourself sleep.
Speaker 2My old ass will lay in that bed until 10 o'clock the next morning because I'm not getting up.
Speaker 1I can't get up at late. I can't. I'm not getting up. I can't get up at late, I can't. I don't know why. The mic will help, so I'm sure.
Speaker 2This is a rarity, and I found this out too when Nephew has let me take a Unisom before, and I mean it throws me for a loop. I've never had one, but if I do, don't do it.
Speaker 3Don't do it. It's going to mess your ass up. I'm just telling you.
Speaker 1Do you set an alarm to get up every day?
Speaker 2I do, but I don't have to. I don't set an alarm, I do out of necessity in case something just happens.
Speaker 1I mean it's physically impossible for me to sleep past 630. I'm typically going to wake up between 530 and 6, just on my own Sometimes 5, but I mean typically it's been weird like the last two weeks I've been waking up at 4 minutes to 6. Exactly Like over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 2I don't know why you know there's I mean, theories behind that kind of stuff. If you keep waking up at the same time, or when you do wake up, you're looking at the same damn. You're seeing different numbers and stuff like that. It's kind of wild anyway. But on how your brain is thinking, or if maybe a higher power is trying to tell you you need to be up doing something at this specific time every single day.
Speaker 1It happens a lot, though I'll get stuck on the time every single day. I mean it's it happens a lot, though I'll get stuck on the time for a while and I'll roll over and it's 5.56. I'm like, all right, I'm going to jump in the shower, but I don't, son, I feel like my body will tell me you know, I know I'm not going to sleep late, late. So my body will say, every now or middle of the night, whatever you want to call it between the hour of 2.45 and 3.15 every single night.
Speaker 2Now, most of the time I have to cut the TV on for a little bit. I don't get on my phone and scroll, because I know what's going to happen. Then you go down a rabbit hole. I'm down a rabbit hole, but every night don't know what it is.
Speaker 1So I wake up typically about that time, but I just roll right up and go back to sleep.
Speaker 3I generally do not have a problem going back to sleep?
Speaker 1Yeah, usually it's because I need to pee. I mean, I'm just at that age, at that age where you got to go pee. I drink a quart of water before I go to bed, for pretty much I'm too big glasses, you know. Better to pee in the toilet than pee on yourself in bed Facts or just lay there and feel stupid. Yeah, that would be embarrassing. Just get up and get that over with.
Speaker 2But I'll generally go right on that. When I do wake up at that time and I do have to go to the bathroom and then you lay there for a minute and you're like shit, I don't want to get up and go to the bathroom, I have to cut this light on and get up and everything else and you're like but I really got to go. So what do I do? It's almost like you can't go back to sleep. We have definitely gotten old. We've talked about health and wellness and nutrition and pissing yourself for the last hour on here and your sugar. I have gotten old, yeah. I've got to watch my sugar intake.
Speaker 2What an asshole. I really have turned into an old curmudgeon. Get off my lawn. Get off my lawn, damn. Kids don't want to work, so you got any finishing words, finishing anything.
Speaker 1You want everybody to know that.
Speaker 2I'm awesome. I don't know, man. I mean I don't really know. If you're talking about business, stick to your guns, it's all going to work out. I look at everything like it's always going to work out.
Speaker 1That's kind of the way.
Speaker 2I do. I'm a pessimist about a lot of things. It's all going to work out. It's not that you're a pessimist about a lot of things. It's all going to work out.
Speaker 1It's not that you're a pessimist. Probably it's that you're on defense. You try to be on defense most of the time. I mean, you have offensive times, but you definitely don't want anybody to mess up what you've done.
Speaker 2Owning a business and dealing with people has turned me into. I think a long time ago, when you and I talked on one of the first podcasts I did with you, you asked me what do people think about me?
Speaker 1and I said well, people think I'm an asshole.
Speaker 2I'm not an asshole, but dealing with individuals and your own business and having to deal with the general population, it's there's, I'll say it there, I'll say it. There's nothing like it. I love owning my own business, I love doing my own thing, but there's nothing like it, and by that I mean you get to see a different side of people you do and people that you think are your friends are not your friends. People that you don't think are your friends love you to death and you realize real quick who your friends are and you know. Fortunately for me, you and I met through the food industry. I say it to your face, like I've told you before, I didn't give a shit about you and your business. All this other stuff I didn't care. You and I ended up being friends, yeah, and we've had a good friendship all this whole entire time and I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 2Having your own business and working in that kind of environment. You have to develop a unfortunately, you have to develop a very thick skin on who you can talk to, who you can trust, who gives an absolute shit about you, because everybody and their mama wants your money, everybody and their mama. You make a donation. We love Lenny's. Well, donation. We love Lenny's. Will we just love Lenny's and I'm like you've never been there? Will we think Delta Maids is the greatest company on there? Why are you using another company?
Speaker 1It's like when I text you and I'm begging, I'm like dude if you don't want to respond, don't respond, because I know exactly how it feels. But I'm begging for North Sunflower Academy. You know I hate doing it because I hate getting asked.
Speaker 2I don't mind, I try to help everybody that I ask. But I've gotten to the point now in life where I look at stuff and go. You know what. I remember that time you were on a social media post and you were bitching about nobody answering the phone at Lenny's. And now you're wanting something for your travel ball thing.
Speaker 1Screw you and your kids' ball team.
Speaker 2He's talking shit and I feel bad about it, but I don't.
Speaker 1I'm like Well you can't give to everybody, you really can't. The other thing I will say this, the other thing that gets me are the advertising salespeople. Man like I may be totally wrong. We're doing a podcast. Nobody listens to terrestrial radio the way they used to, nobody watches TV the way they used to, nobody reads a magazine the way they used to, and I hate it for those people because there's some folks locally put out an incredible product but it doesn't have the value it used to have and they I mean like every day advertising people come in my restaurant want me to buy something and they'll be like well, you're just stupid if you don't buy it. Pretty much is what they take. Well, I mean, obviously I can't buy from everybody.
Speaker 1You might be right, it might be a good product, but you can't buy from everybody. I almost feel like they're asking for a donation at this point.
Speaker 2A lot of the advertising I do. I have no illusions that this is going to bring me more business. I know what's going to bring me more business and that's when I you know it's the guerrilla marketing or word of mouth. Let's just do a good job and they'll pass that word around. Or if I'm going to do advertising on a platform that I've got to pay for, you're an idiot.
Speaker 1if you're not doing social media right now, it's cheap You're an idiot $100 on social media goes a long way and I don't have to sign a contract. Hell yeah, Everybody wants to come in and we'll do it for this price, but you've got to sign a six-month contract. I'm like I don't buy green bananas anymore. I'm not signing a six-month contract, right On advertising.
Speaker 3Are you crazy, but that's what everybody wants, everybody wants it.
Speaker 1But I'm like you. I buy some advertising locally only because I know they're a local business and they do do stuff for the community and it's almost like you said. It's almost a donation in my mind because I don't see where I get a lot of benefit, like where I used to pre-2008 or 9, there were some radio ads I did that were just like jam up. I mean immediately.
Speaker 2I could see a reaction. Well, the great thing about the social media aspect and God, we're getting off on another tangent. The great thing about the social media aspect is that in a lot of cases I can sit there and look at the analytics and monetize it.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, and people are looking at it and going oh Well, you can run a trial and when you see what works, then you can boost that post. Or you can adjust, yeah, well, yeah, you adjust it until you get the right formula and then you boost it. I meant with the company Well, the only way I can. And you never really know if you're advertising at home unless you do some kind of special buy or come in and mention this ad Use this promo code.
Speaker 1Nobody's doing that. Nobody's doing that. If they are, I've been doing it badly wrong. I met with an agency the other day.
Speaker 2I've got to tell you this and then we can go. This is pretty funny. So I'm not going to say the name, but I did run into this person the other day. So I'm not going to say the name, but I did run into this person the other day. So I'm not big money, I'm not, but I've been around the block for a little while and I've got successful companies. So I meet with this agency I'm not going to say where because it will narrow it down, but I met with this agency and we sit down and we start discussing things about advertising for two companies that I have, and we go through all this rigmarole and talk and spend and everything else, and at the end of the day I get an email from the son of a bitch and he says hey, you know, we'll really appreciate your time and with these two companies we wish you all the success in the world. But we just don't think we're going to be a good fit to work together. And I said I just I replied, I said all right. So I met with this other company the other day and they're all over me.
Speaker 2I've always looked at something like this I may not be the spend you want right now, just like you may not be the customer I want right now, but I'm envisioning you being the customer I can't live without in a year. Yeah so, and I always have to tell them this in healthcare, you know they're like well, we're getting a client and they're, you know, we're getting it through Medicaid, and they're two days a week, for two hours a day, and that's only four hours. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like they ain't getting any younger.
Speaker 2They ain't getting any younger I can do that math I'm going to bet they ain't getting any better, and so eventually they're going to get those hours bumped. Next thing, you know, we're looking at them and they're getting seven days a week for eight hours a day. So we're in the business of doing. Number two they need long-term care, which means they're not going to be here just for a year or two years or three years. They're going to be here for a long time because, wow, we're going to take damn good care of them.
Speaker 2I met with this other ad company and I'm talking to them and they tell me what it's going to cost and it's significantly less than what this initial company tells me. And I'm kind of laughing with them. And I said I got to tell you. I told them the story and I said this guy, literally I told him what I wanted to spend and I said it was damn near double what you just told me and y'all are doing the same damn thing. He said really, can you tell us the name of the company? I said I'm not going to tell you the name of the company. I said I'm not going to tell you the name of the company. I said but I came into this meeting willing to spend this and y'all are glad I'm spending half that.
Speaker 2And I got this asshole over here that I just wasn't good enough for him. I'm not a good fit for his company. So I ran into this particular individual, I don't say where I was having some drinks with some friends of mine, and he walks over there and he's like we catch eyeballs and I didn't think he was going to come speak. And he walked over and he said, hey, how you been doing. I said, man, good, good, good. He said man, you know, I just I kind of wanted to explain myself on the whole thing with the advertising. You know we've got these really, you know big clients that we've got.
Speaker 2I said man, I understand I'm peanuts in the grand scheme of things with your business. I said, but I did find a company that didn't think I was peanuts. They actually charged half of what you did. I said so what I'm doing now is when I talk to people, like I'm talking on this damn podcast right now. If somebody called me up and asked me who's somebody that can do some advertising work for me, do you think I'm going to mention your name? Right.
Speaker 2And he said well, I mean, I would hope you would.
Speaker 3And I said you, can hope in one hand, why would you?
Importance of Treating Clients Right
Speaker 2You can hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up, because I'm going to rip this other company who happens to be all these guys were based in this particular town and now they've moved off to another place and they're hungry and they want clients. So I'm giving them my business. And I said at half of what you charged, and I was willing to spend what you were going to charge. And you didn't want my business. I said man. I looked at him. I said, dude, I ain't going to lie to you, I've been doing the sales game probably before you were born. He's half my age. I said I've been doing the sales game for a long time. Man, I learned a lesson a long time ago One never turn down a client. There needs to be something bad wrong if you turn one down.
Speaker 1The second one is you treat it sure doesn't need to be over the money.
Speaker 2You treat everybody right. My boss told me a long time ago you walk in the back of a restaurant, you speak to the damn dishwasher, just like you speak to the guy who's the GM, because next week the dishwasher may be the damn GM. And I said, number one, you're condescending. Two, you didn't want my damn money. And I said, odds are, I'm going to be with this company for a long time if they produce for me. And the other odds are when they produce for me and anybody else asks me who's doing my advertising for me, I'm telling them their name, not yours. You have a good day, yeah, and can I buy you a drink? You know what I mean? Yeah, I just. It washed all over me no explanation as to why he couldn't, but I knew why he couldn't. It was I wasn't going to be spending enough money for them to fuck with it. And I ain't talking about $500 a month.
Speaker 1You ain't talking chunk change.
Speaker 2Thousands of dollars a month is what I was going to be spending, because I know the benefit of it. I just wanted somebody to manage it for me. He didn't want me. Okie doke buddy. That's a good story to end on yeah, eat shit, dude.
Speaker 1And that's Breaking Bread with Stafford Sheridan and special guest Will Bridell.