cc >> Jeanan Yasiri: This course
is offered through the University of Wisconsin
School of Human Ecology. I'm Jeanan Yasiri.
As we begin today I'd like to extend thanks to our partners in
supporting this course, the UW Office of Corporate Relations,
the UW College of Engineering for their technical support, and
financial support that is offered through the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation which is committed to advancing academic
education in entrepreneurship. Additionally, we'd like to thank
our media partners, Wisconsin Public Television and their
University Place crew for joining us and taping today's
lecture. I'm very pleased to introduce
our special guest today, John Roach, president of JRP,
an Emmy Award winning video and film production company based
here in Madison, Wisconsin. As we'll learn, John has a
distinguished background in video and film productions,
including co-writing the screenplay for the motion
picture "The Straight Story," a film directed by David Lynch.
"The Straight Story" premiered at Cannes and was released in
October 1999 by Walt Disney Pictures.
The screenplay was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and
one of the films actors, Richard Farnsworth, received an Academy
Award nomination for best actor. Prior to starting his
Madison-based company back in 1985, John was a producer
at CBS and ABC in Chicago. He's also worked for NBC and
ESPN. His credits include eight Emmy
Awards, a national IRIS award for best television special, and
a national Cable Ace nomination. John produced the Cable Ace
nominated "The Sports Writers" on TV, and he has done a
considerable amount of other work including writing a monthly
column for Madison Magazine. His book is "Way Out Here in the
Middle," and it was published in 2003.
Of course, his corporate clients are part of the story that he
has to share since the organization started back in the
mid-'80s. His organization has done
$50 million in production work with clients such as Coke,
McDonald's, Miller, and Coors. Now I asked John to come and
speak with us about entrepreneurship because I think
that he really demonstrates the intersection of entrepreneurship
between building a business and also being an artist.
So I believe he truly emulates what our thinking is in this
class about thinking of entrepreneurs in a very broad
perspective. Please join me in welcoming
John Roach. [APPLAUSE]
John Roach: That's a nice chair...!
Hey, nice meeting everyone. I'm not going to pretend to give
a real formal lecture to you. I'm just going to do my best to
share with you what I know. The first thing is I have just a
total aversion to PowerPoint. I've seen some of worst ideas
presented with some of the best PowerPoint you can imagine.
But I did put together some talking points so that you might
have them up there. I guess the first thing we would
start with, is why are we here? Always a good question to ask
when you're speaking to people. I'm here to serve you today, to
tell you a little bit about what I've learned since I sat in the
seats you're sitting in some 35 years ago here at the UW
Madison. I should qualify my remarks and
perhaps help you qualify me by telling you that I'm 58, went to
Madison, went to Madison Edgewood High School.
I'm a total townie. Not just a Sconnie, a townie.
I'm, like, genetically compromised.
I have three children who just recently graduated from the
university as well. My oldest daughter, Kate, works
for Draft Foote Cone, a big advertising agency in Chicago.
Middle daughter, Maggie, works for the Wrigley Company, and my
son JT Roach works, actually, for our shop.
So this is kind of your worst case scenario is someone your
father's age coming and lecturing to you.
Talking about why are we here, the majority of you will not
start your own business in your life.
And so I'm trying to make sure that what I have to offer you is
salient. The one thing I can tell you is
even if you end up the rest of your life working for a huge
company with massive resources and a great pension plan and a
stock option plan, you will work with companies like mine through
your career. So it's probably good, if you
don't end up starting your own company, to understand the
mind set of people who run smaller companies who will help
you do your job at a bigger company.
I've always felt also, just parenthetically, I worked for
ABC, CBS and the Marriott Corporation, my first job out of
school was with Marriott at Great America back before Bally
bought it, Six Flags. I started out working for three
real big companies and learned all I could from them in order
to work for myself. Which is a kind of something as
a model that I had in my head as I started out.
When I was in school at the UW it was the afterglow of the
'60s. Played in a couple of bands, was
kind of a high school jock, and this just went away as this crap
always does. Here we go.
But I always, there was a line, that has become a cliche, but it
wasn't a cliche for me when I was 19 years old.
And it was a line offered by Henry David Thoreau, and the
line was called living the life of quiet desperation.
It's become a cliche. I admit it's a cliche.
I'm embarrassed to mention it, but sometimes cliches become
cliches for good viable reasons. And I grew up somewhere in my
DNA knowing that I did not want to be in gray flannel suit, I
did not want to be in a cubicle. I have an aversion to cubicles.
And quite honestly, if I'd been real honest with myself, I
didn't want to work for anybody else.
I wanted to work for myself. I was that cocky, that vain,
that stupid to think, hey, maybe I could build a business around
what I love to do. So maybe that's kind of what
we're exploring here today. Let's start off with what is an
entrepreneur? An entrepreneur, I think, is a
person who finds a passion and builds a business around it.
So Jeanan mentioned the arts. I have a passion for writing.
I have a passion for film. But I would argue there are
other entrepreneurs who build businesses around their passion.
I would argue every guy in the NFL is an entrepreneur because
he's built a business and a brand around his talents.
Most Olympic athletes. Most movie stars.
In the old days there were movie stars who were contract players
where they were just bought and paid for and showed up to work
and they put them in whatever movie they wanted them to, back
in the '30s, '40s and '50s. And then all the sudden actors
said, no, I have a unique talent.
I want to be in the movies I want to read.
I want to read the script before I show up on set.
I want control of my destiny. And so I think an entrepreneur
can come in a lot of different ways.
Some of it is creative but you could be an entrepreneur as a
computer programmer as well. I think the issue here is an
entrepreneur is someone who has a passion that they think is
unique and they're comfortable taking it to market by
themselves. What's the personality profile
of an entrepreneur? I would say, number one, you
have to be confident. You have to be disruptive.
You have to have a little attitude.
I can tell you quite honestly when I worked at ABC and CBS my
biggest frustration was, and this sounds vain glorious and it
is, but I thought I was smarter than a lot of my bosses.
And when someone made me do something that I thought was
stupid or lame or cliched, it drove me nuts.
I always tell the story about some friends of mine gave me
heat for leaving ABC. They said, why'd you leave ABC?
What are you, nuts? You're working for one of the
networks. And I said, because if you're
standing still in the hallway they make you produce a
telethon. I didn't have much control over
my own work, and I wanted to own my own work.
So I was a little cocky and I had an attitude.
I was a first born and my father owned his own business so some
of it was in the blood lines. I think that you have to be
unafraid for fail but fear failure.
Fear of failure, I would argue, is my greatest motivator.
But the flip side of that is that I left a job after eight
years with the network credits and went into business for
myself, frankly without a business plan, without any
capital, simply because I didn't think I would let myself fail.
But I wasn't afraid of failing. If you look at Steve Jobs, Bill
Gates, all these guys, they really started out, they did,
they started out in garages. If you look at great rock
artists, great writers, they lived very poor lives to start
out with but they had a drive or a passion and a little bit of
attitude that says, you know what, I think I got something
that's a little bit different, that's a little bit disruptive
that might be a little bit better or I view the world in a
slightly different way and that's how I want to do it.
In fact, if someone makes me not live my life that way, I'm going
to lose my stuff. I would have said something else
but this is going to be broadcast.
I think that you have to be comfortable with insecurity.
If you want security, if you want a job with a big company,
that kind of paternalistic thing, a company that will take
care of you for the rest of your life or a company you work to
and then you can go to another big company, entrepreneurship is
not for you because there's very little security with it.
Right now as I stand here I don't know what business I will
have six months from now. And yet I have a payroll of over
a million bucks. But I'm gambling on myself and
my people that we'll do much better than that this year.
And I do that gamble every year. So you have to be comfortable
with a lack of security. Risk, I think this is the
biggest thing. I wrote a piece just last month
for Madison Magazine talking about how this economy is going
to be very challenging for government workers because some
argue that the second shoe is going to drop, second shoe of
the great recession is going to drop, and it's going to touch
upon people in the public sector, the government sector,
state a municipal governments. And I have a lot of friends and
family members who work as teachers and for the DNR and all
this sort of stuff, and one of the reasons they work there, I
think, is that they're risk averse.
You know pretty much you'll have a job for life, pretty hard to
get fired, great pension, great healthcare.
You don't make as much per annum but it's security.
I have a brother in law who works for the DNR and he told
me, he said, John I really admire what you have done but I
know what I'm going to make every year for the rest of my
life and the only way I can get fired is to kill someone driving
drunk in my DNR car and even then I don't know if I'd get
fired. So if you're risk averse, you
probably should rule out entrepreneurship.
And if you need structure, you should probably avoid
entrepreneurship because frankly I think small businesses really
come out of some level of chaos. Frankly you have to be pretty
comfortable with chaos. That doesn't mean you don't have
a vision, but executing the vision, especially within a
business context, does not always fall into place right
away. The one thing I'd say about
being an entrepreneur too is it doesn't mean that you're this
crazy pirate. I've said many times that I
think being a small business owner is essentially capitalism
reduced to its purist form, in that the harder I work, the more
I make and the smarter I think, the more I make.
If you take a job with a big corporation you could be
brilliant but your compensation is set.
Your right to claim intellectual property to your ideas does not
exist. The company, when they hire you,
they buy that out. And I always wanted to own the
work that I generated. So we're going to, okay, good.
So then Jeanan bracketed this with an entrepreneur, which is
essentially a business term, and then put it within the context
of being a working artist. I guess I am a working artist as
a writer, director, and executive producer.
I think it's worth asking, what is an artist?
And I would argue that an artist is someone who has an idea and I
think it's one thing to have an idea.
Everyone has an idea for a movie, everyone has an idea for
a TV show or a book. It's usually based upon their
own life. But then you have to be
creative. You have to create that idea in
a quantifiable fashion. You have to put it on the paper,
on the script. You have to capture it on film.
So you have to create it and then you have to produce it or
distribute it and make money on it.
I'll be real candid, all sorts of people call themselves
filmmakers now and it really gets under my last nerve.
You'll know you're a filmmaker when you make your mortgage
payments making movies. If you own a video camera and
you shot four minutes and edited into nine scenes, with all
respect, you're not a filmmaker. A filmmaker, I would argue, is
someone who can make a living making films.
I think a writer is someone who is paid to write.
Now you can write vocationally or recreationally but it's one
thing to like to do something, it's another to make your living
at it. One of the things I'm most proud
of is I'm a member of the Writers Guild.
I get all these movies during Academy time before they're
released on DVD and everything. And my kids come home and we
have like our own private film fest.
Like I have Social Network already.
It makes me feel special. Anyhow, so that's the bit.
And there's a lot of discipline and hard work.
As you remember when Peter Schneider was here, there's a
lot of method to the creative madness.
And what I tried to do was, and I'll get to this a little later,
but I tried to exploit ABC and CBS for experience while they
exploited me for cheap labor. Okay?
And that's what you guys are going to be.
That's the state of your careers when you come out of college.
You're cheap labor. And you have to make sure that
you're exploiting your employer, and when I say exploit I mean it
in a non-pejorative way, you have to exploit them as much as
they're exploiting you. You have to exploit them for
knowledge and experience and reputation.
So after I left ABC, my option was to move to New York or LA.
I was about 32 maybe, 33. And I chose to come home to
Madison for very personal reasons.
My wife, I had just been married a couple of years, my wife's
father was diagnosed with cancer and was dying and in the middle
that her six-year-old nephew was killed while riding his bike.
And she and I are both from big Catholic families, and we are
family people and we were going through a certain kind of like
triage. We were coming back to Madison
many weekends just to take care of the wounded members of our
families. And the connection I had to our
families and then the notion of moving to New York or LA and
writing for a sitcom or something wasn't sitting well
with me. Even with all my good friends in
Chicago, I had a year, 1984, we were surrounded by death in our
family and I thought how many of my buddies in Chicago would make
their way to Madison to throw my bones into the ground?
And I thought maybe five or six. And so it really put into focus
for me, what did I care about? And it turned out that I cared
about family. And that's why we moved back to
Madison in '84. And I might add, it's been a
great creative platform because if you're secure and your
family's secure and your wife's not screaming at you, it's
amazing how productive you can be.
So let's talk about different kinds of art.
There's commercial art and there's starving art.
Commercial art, I would argue, is advertising agencies, graphic
designers, doing corporate logos, all that sort of stuff.
It's an artistic pursuit, but I would argue it's not purely
artistic, it's commercial art. And I know a lot of artists who
work for big agencies but at the end of the day they have to help
sell Cap'n Crunch. They have to help people go to
the linen sale at Kmart, which is really not a very creative
story to tell. And what they do is they work in
the creative arts and they use that to keep their chops, and
then they pursue the finer artistic elements of their
passion off the clock. One of my good buddies, in fact
he's got a cabin up in northern Wisconsin, and tongue in cheek
we go ice fishing every year. And these are guys who invented
the Corona beer campaign, the beach campaign, one of the other
guys wrote a screenplay of a film that Michael Keaton just
starred in this year. And they've all worked in
advertising agencies and then used that work to subsidize the
finer art passions that they have.
Screen writing, photography, whatever it might be.
But there's commercial art and starving art.
The starving artists in LA are waiters.
They're all waiting on tables so that they can go to auditions or
get a job as a production assistant.
So what I've done is I've had this small company where I
really have a lot of control and freedom.
Freedom is huge in terms of being an entrepreneur.
There is great freedom in having your own shop.
And if you're in the creative arts, freedom is almost a
necessity. You have to feel somewhat
unencumbered. You have to feel like you're
being paid to be your best self. And I really do feel that
through the years that has by and large occurred with our
little shop. I did give a talk to the
business school and I said, and I wish this on all of you, I
have never looked at the clock in my life once I started my own
business. The day goes by really fast.
I never know when it's lunch time.
I rarely know that it's time to go home or stop at the saloon
for a beer. And pretty much what I do is who
I am. And I really love it now because
with technology you can work in your pajamas at home at 6:00 AM
and all this other stuff. And I always felt that way about
it. I was always churning on stuff.
So there's just tremendous freedom.
In fact, this should be on the PowerPoint, this goes to show
how I suck at PowerPoint, I would put a big thing that just
says freedom. And I think freedom has value.
I was offered a job in LA to produce the Dennis Miller Show
which means I would have had to pick up and move to LA and move
my family there. And they would offer me a lot of
money. I didn't want to do it because I
wouldn't have had the freedom that I have back here.
And then small company, big company, our group has about 10
people, editors, writers, directors, all creatives.
Managing creatives is a very interesting thing.
And what we do, though, is that we are kind of like a SWAT team
or a special forces team. When a major brand has a
creative project, they call us up.
And usually not through their agency.
It's usually with the CEO, senior VP of marketing.
They say, look, we've got this new product, we have to
communicate it to all our people, all our vendors, all our
distribution channels, whatever it might be.
And we get that. I always view, and we're a
national company, we shoot all over the world.
We've shot in China, the North Pole, all throughout Europe, all
throughout South America. Our creative director is
bilingual, speaks English and Chinese.
Our pieces are regularly translated into 13, 14, 15
different languages distributed all over the world.
And so the metaphor that I use for my employers is the shark
and the remora. Does anyone know what a remora
is? Anyone?
Really? Man.
It's the little fish that swims along with the shark and cleans
it up all the time. Have you ever seen sharks that
have just got the little fish around it?
So we're kind of like the remora.
We're small, we're quick, and we get stuff done.
So how do you know you can run and start a business?
Well, number one, you probably can't.
The mortality rate for new business startups is very high.
There are varying statistics. I've heard only two out of 10
survive for two years. And only 5% of those survive for
another five years. Meaning about 5% or less.
Now, according to the small business bureau, which I think
kind of has an agenda in terms of making it over, over half the
United States workforce is employed by small businesses.
A majority of the innovations and patents that come out in the
United States come from small businesses, then they get bought
by big businesses or they become big businesses.
Here are some survival rates. There were 627,000 new
businesses started in 2008. There were 595,000 closures.
So that's a difference of 30,000 businesses.
And there were almost 50,000 bankruptcies.
Seven out of 10 survived the first two years, only half
survive through five years, and I think that's optimistic.
So how do you make it successful?
Number one, you have to have the right personality type otherwise
you shouldn't have your own business.
You really, and this just sounds so bad, you have to dislike
having other people tell you what to do.
You have to have a vision for yourself or for your talent or
your skill or your passion and go, you know what, I just got to
do this and if I sit in this cubicle any longer, I am going
to lose my mind. You have to be independent.
You have to not care about money.
I find this to be very interesting.
If you look at a lot of early inventors and stuff, they really
don't care much about money at all.
It's kind of like they're fixated on this idea or this
passion and that's what they have to do.
And the money follows that, but the passion comes first.
And I think that's really true. When I started my business I had
no business plan, had no line of credit, the business financed
its own growth, and I was actually incredibly stupid and
naive about the business of my passion.
And that's been my learning curve.
Writing a script, directing a piece, working with talent, that
comes quite naturally to me. What didn't come naturally to me
is how to do an organizational chart, how to hire people, how
to fire people, which is brutal. How to set up compensation.
How to set up rates. How to figure out what our
margins should be. So I had to teach myself all the
things I didn't think I'd have to learn in order to pursue my
passion. And I'll talk about that just a
little bit later. But the first thing is when I
went independent, I went independent and walked away from
a really good annual income with effectively no guarantee of
income. I just knew I couldn't do what I
was doing any longer, and I knew that if I was ever going to try
it, this would be the time. And what was that time?
I was just recently married, our first child had been born, it
was actually a little late. First child had been born.
But interestingly enough, as a guy, and I don't think this is
sexist, everyone has different genetically programmed reflexes,
when our first child was born I become a much better
businessman. It triggered this kind of
provider reflex in me and, for whatever reason, I've told this
to other guys, I just said for whatever it is it made me a much
tougher, smarter businessman, much tougher and smarter about
myself, what I was good at, what I wasn't good at.
But you can't care about money at first because there won't be
any money there. Unless you get a bunch of
investors and honestly then it's not your company, it's theirs
too. And this is what drove me to
start my own business is I wanted to live my own life.
Success is living the life you want to live rather than having
someone impose a lifestyle on you.
And it's amazing how hard you will work if you're living the
life you want to live. If you're living where you want
to live. If you're doing the kind of
stuff you want to do every day at work.
If you're working with the people you want to work with and
work is fun and you're totally unaware of the passage of time
you're so consumed by your work and you're living the life you
want to live, that's great. And especially in the artistic
stuff, as I tell my people all the time, as I said earlier,
what we do is who we are. There are a lot of people who
work for big accounting firms and then go home at night and
play guitar in the coffee house or do stand-up comedy.
I would argue there might be some quiet desperation at work
there. But we are who we are in our
offices which I really like. Self-promotion.
If you don't promote yourself, who will?
And how to promote yourself and not be an ass.
I think it's a very subtle thing about once you decide to start a
business you have to bring in customers.
You have to bring in work. You have to figure out what to
charge for your work. You have to make an argument for
value for you work. You have to get repeat business.
And you have to figure out how to promote yourself but not be a
jerk while you're doing it. So I've always been, I'm not a
bad self-promoter, but I'm also not bad at helping people see
shared vision. Getting excited about an idea
and having other people excited by it as well.
But I'm a big believer in casual name dropping.
Instead of walking in and going blah-dada-dada-dada-dada, I'd
rather be at a party and say, oh, geez we just worked with
LL Cool J last week. You worked with LL Cool J?
I know he's old. I'm old.
And then, oh yeah, I was out in LA shooting.
Who are you shooting for? Oh, Coca-Cola, LL Cool J is
doing a spot with them. Really?
Oh, yeah, it was the same director we worked with on the
Tom Hanks project. Tom Hanks?
You worked with Tom Hanks? Yeah, he did this Fox kids show
I was working with and the director was also doing the
spot. So you kind of casually drop
this stuff around. Celeb names are big and
traveling is big. So you say, I just got by back
from Innsbrook. What were you doing in
Innsbrook? We were shooting the US Olympic
ski team for Miller. Really, you do work for Miller?
Yeah, yeah, we do. Tell me more about it.
Oh, it's not that big a deal. I just flew to Innsbrook and
went skiing with the US Olympic ski team and almost fell down a
glacier. [LAUGHTER]
A crevice. So, especially if you're the
owner, the prime mover of the business, you are, they call it
the rain maker. You have to make it rain.
You have to make the jobs come in.
[LAUGHTER] What?
Not like Rain Man. What?
[LAUGHTER] Oh, you have to make it rain.
[LAUGHTER] And make it rain money.
So casual name dropping is a great way to promote yourself.
I also think it's cool, I love social media and Facebook and
all this sort of stuff because I love to throw up little pieces
or little casual mentions of projects we're working on right
now. And I always like it when the
client, this is a really good point, I can't believe I didn't
put it down, I love it when the client comes to us as opposed to
us tugging on the client's sleeve for business.
It's always best when we heard about you from someone.
And our work has always been our best promotion.
Business of show business. This is what I tell, again now
this is kind of crafting this entrepreneur with arts.
They call it show business. There's show and there's
business. Let's just take a half step
back. I've always thought, and there
may be classes at the U about this now, but for like the kids
who are in drama, I hope they have a class about how to hire
an agent. Okay?
How to review a rights document or a release form for what you
should release for the use of your image and likeness.
I hope they offer a course in if you're cast in a role in the
movie, what is your residual layout.
How do you become a member of the Screen Actors Guild?
What the benefits of the Screen Actors Guild.
When does the healthcare kick in.
Does it cover getting your eyes done.
And all the business parts of being an artist and selling your
work. So these are just some of the
things I had no idea about. I just knew I wanted to shoot
film and tell stories, do TV shows, write screenplays.
I had no idea what a line of credit was.
I was clueless. I ran my business for 10 years
and then the bank said don't you think you should have a line of
credit? I said, sure, what's that?
Now that's embarrassing for me to admit.
Really embarrassing. You're nodding.
You're right, it is embarrassing?
[LAUGHTER] You're smarter than me.
I had no idea how to hire people.
We had a little success early so I thought I was golden and I
would just say I've got a great read on people.
Wrong. I made so many bad hires and
then took too long to fire people.
Compensation. I kind of knew how to get a
comparative, when we brought in a writer or a director or
something like that, I kind of knew what they should be making
per annum, I didn't know how to have the compensation discussion
and how to frame here's what we can pay you.
Well, geez, nah, nah, nah. And I said, well look, if we pay
you a hundred grand, given the expense of having you as an
employee, you have so have $400,000 worth of billings.
Now if you think you can do that, then I'll pay you a
hundred grand. But you'll lose your job in a
year if you don't do that. Because if you have an employee
for a hundred thousand dollars, you have 15% of that is for
FICA, social security, you've got another 15% for healthcare
and dental. Then you've got the rent for
their office, their computers, their travel, their phone line,
their cell phone, their Apple iPhone, their iPad and all the
sudden I finally had an accountant who said here's what
it really costs you to have an employee.
And here's the return you should hope to have.
You should hope to have a three to one or four to one return on
every employee you have. So when someone comes in and
asks me for more money, I always say to them, great, how are we
going to both make more money together?
I want you to have more money, but it's got to be a good deal
for both of us. Margins, how to operate your
business on margins, how to price the value of your work.
Huge lesson. What do you charge a day, some
of the people ask you. Or how much is a finished
minute. You really have to sit down and
do some math and quantify what your creative talents go for on
the marketplace. And then you have agents and
percentages. I have an agent in LA for
screenplays. And then the last thing I would
say is someone has done this before, the models exist, I was
really stupid in that I did not seek out the models.
I just made stuff up as I went along for too long a time.
So if I would give any of you counsel, if you do end up
starting your own business or going into some sort business
that lets you leverage your creative arts, right away reach
out to someone and find the business model because if you
have a stable business model, your art will be so much better
because you shouldn't starve. If you're starving as an artist,
maybe your art isn't that good. You know?
Is any of this making sense? Am I engaging you at all or do
you all wish you were elsewhere? Nod your head, move, do
something. Okay, back there, you're okay?
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Signs of life. Okay, people, one of the things
I've learned, I'm really talking about running a small business
here in creative. Creatives are notoriously
difficult to manage because they're never happy.
They have the highest incidence of depression and they never
feel that they're being compensated enough.
But no one's ever happy with what they make, but many can be
happy with what they do. People will work for less than
they think they should if there having fun and feel appreciated.
That's a huge element and it took me a little while to figure
that out. What we do is who we are as
opposed accountant by day, stand-up comedian by night, I
covered that. Expectations and delivery.
One of the things that I learned later, is to just have, and
again I'm talking to you guys like you're running your own
business, that's what I'm talking to you about, you have
to have really honest discussions with your employees
to find out what your expectations are and what their
expectations are. And you have to have that
discussion. You have to screen these
employees. You have to really take a hard
look at their experience, and I've always felt you have to
make sure they worked in a big market for show business.
That's critical. If you've never worked outside
of Madison, you probably don't know what you need to do, know
what you need to know to work with us at least.
But I never knew how to have these, it's an HR function.
Nothing could be more boring than human resources.
That's what I thought. And yet, I have come to
appreciate people who know how to have these discussions with
employees. And, again, if you start your
own business, reach out to people who will help you for
this. You'll be amazed how many
consultants are out there. For a thousand bucks a day,
they'll save you a hundred grand.
Technology, anyone watch Modern Family?
Okay, I'm known as Phil Dunphy around the house.
Can't wait for the new iPad. In fact, my nephew is on the
lead technology team for the new iPad 2.
It's going to have a profound effect on the way we do
business. I already do conference calls
every morning with my younger brother, who now runs the
business day-to-day, on FaceTime.
It's a tremendous business tool. Now imagine that with an iPad
instead of a smaller screen. Technology allowed me to work
from Madison. This is just pathetic but when I
started my business in Madison in 1985, computers really
weren't used. There was no such thing
as Fed Ex. The airlines hadn't been
deregulated so getting a direct flight to New York was difficult
or impossible from Madison. There were no cell phones.
I typed my scripts on a typewriter, an IBM Selectric.
And technology allowed me to be globally competitive from
Madison, Wisconsin. We're regularly bidding against
groups from Los Angeles or London or New York or
Minneapolis or Detroit because it really doesn't matter where
you are, it matters how good you are.
And so technology, the investments in technology,
historically have been the best investments I've made in my
business. Mark always says control the
means of production. In film production it's kind of
a subcontractor business, you subcontract your lighting guy,
your sound guy, your gaffers, your grips, livery, food, all
that sort of stuff. But the more of those services
you internalize, the better your margins are.
And what has happened for our little company is that
technology has conspired to make it more profitable for us to buy
gear than rent it. So now we have two full blown
Apple Final Cut HD edit suites. We have a mixing studio.
We have three HD cameras, we just took delivery of another
one. What does that do?
Well, it allows us to make money on our own gear.
But more importantly it allows me to cut my clients a break
plus a piece of business so I'm not running into overtime on
edits and these sorts of things. The more control you have over
the tools of your art, the better off you are.
And I probably don't get out of my pajamas until 10:00 in the
morning every day. I start at 6:00 in the morning
drinking coffee. I do most of my writing early in
the day, this is creative ideas, scripts, whatever it might be,
before the affairs of the day cloud my mind.
Coffee is a great drug for writing, as you guys probably
know. And so I'd literally, I used to
have to get up in the morning at 6:00 and be there to do a show
in the morning and all this sort of stuff, but it's the most
productive time of my day, and I do it in my pajamas which I
think is just tremendous. And I'm literally calling all
over the place. I think more and more you guys
are going to be working remotely.
My daughter works for Wrigley. She works at home on Fridays.
Just doesn't even have to come in the office.
It's also quicker. I worked in Chicago and commuted
on the Edens expressway for eight years.
I wasted three hours a day in my car.
And this was pre-cell phones. You couldn't have any productive
time in your car. Total utter waste of time.
It's much easier, I obviously I'm telling you guys stuff you
already know, to research. And in terms of the world of
creative, it's also easier to engage in what I call benevolent
theft. When we go into idea sessions, I
always go online and look at piece that is are similar that
have been done. What is the language of the day.
They say there are no new ideas, there's just benevolent
theft. You don't want to rip anything
off. You shouldn't be satisfied with
that. But most of everything has been
kind of done. And so what I like to do when we
have our creative sessions is I like to prime the pump with
pieces from YouTube that I've gone out and grabbed to say,
okay, what can we do that will be cooler, better than this?
And the technology allows you to do that so wonderfully.
And then if you have invested in technology, it's been my
experience that you're one step ahead of your competitors.
I have a client who completely dug the fact that I had the
Apple iPhone 4 and was able to FaceTime with him in the morning
before his meetings started. It makes a statement about you
and your company. You have to be wise about a
technology investment. You have to be sure that you can
get a return on that investment because if you sink money in bad
technology, not only is it costly, it's also a bad metaphor
for you as a businessman with clients.
But I've seen a lot of clients now call me for what kind of
technology they should invest in.
And big companies usually don't invest in cutting-edge
technology because it's too hard.
Okay, so I want to talk about humanity because I don't really
view myself as a, although I've been a businessman, I don't view
myself as, I don't refer to myself as a businessman.
I'm more of a dad and a father and a friend and a brother and
all that sort of stuff. And I have a lot of friends that
I worked with collaboratively in business that are friends.
I really do think that business is relationships.
My daughter Margaret, Maggie, went to work for Wrigley, and
she's in charge of sales analytics for all these
different sales people all around the country, 400 people
who call every day and complain about their commissions.
And she's had the job for a year and a half and she finally went
on a business trip two weeks ago to Charlotte and gave a
presentation to everyone and all these people she'd been working
with remotely for a year and a half came up and said, wow, is
it great finally meeting you. And she felt the same way.
So in the midst of all this technology, I think the humanity
actually becomes more important. There's nothing like having
dinner and beers with a client to get a read on them.
I know how my clients view me. They say we need something
fresh, call Roach. And now Roach doesn't mean just
me, it means everyone in my group.
We need someone ho won't let us down, call Roach.
Because the humanity of this entrepreneurial artistic stuff
is that if these things get screwed up, our clients get
fired. And they have kids and they have
houses and all this sorts of stuff, and I've seen people
hyperventilate before big shows when we're controlling how their
career is perceived and it comes off swimmingly and you're just a
freakin' hero to them. And that's how our business
grew. We became a hero to someone at
Miller who got hired at Coca-Cola, all the sudden we're
doing big projects for Coca-Cola.
Another person went over to SC Johnson, and our business grew
exponentially because A, we had fresh creative ideas and B, we
were dogged. We would not let the project
fail. And in so doing, we would not
let our client's reputation be compromised.
So I don't know if that makes any sense to you.
Okay, things I find myself saying now that I'm old.
I ask my employees to solve problems, don't create them.
No one likes working with a whiner.
Raise your hand for help. I think if you're an employer,
if you're in my position, you have to keep your eyes on your
people to see who's struggling. Because in the creative arts, in
what we do, deadlines, a lot of pressure, it's not a 9:00 to
5:00 job. It can be 12 days in a row,
12 hours a day, and you have to really be sensitive to your
employees who are struggling. And what they do is they don't
tell you they're struggling. They're going to try to take one
for the team or struggle through, but they endanger the
project. So I always tell people, please,
raise your hand for help. I need help.
It's three words that are really important to be able to say.
Throw good people at problems. Small businesses, most every
small business has an expand/contract model.
There's seasonal things, there's work load things and so we
always have a deep bench of freelancers that we can throw at
problems. This is, raise your hand for
help, in terms of a manager, is immediately followed by throw
good people at the problem that this person needs help with.
Hire good people and get out of their way.
Phil Knight is the president of Nike.
He has one of my favorite quotes, and it's profane so I'll
clean it up. He said 90% of my job is finding
the right people and the other 10% is getting the bleep out of
their way. I really do believe that finding
the right people to fit with your group is great.
For all this talk about technology and everything, human
assets are actually more valuable now than they ever have
been, I would argue. A particular literate human
asset in the American culture since we've moved out of mass
production economy into an information economy.
Do it all with an easy grace. I don't think you should let
them see you sweat. I think that you should not
panic. And it is really comforting to
the rest of your team members when everyone knows there is a
lot of pressure and a light fell and the talent showed up drunk,
or whatever it might be, to handle it all with an easy grace
as if you've been there before because that keeps everyone else
from panicking. Okay?
Now I'm going to contradict myself.
Same thing as create drama-free zones because drama isn't very
productive. And if you have drama people
stop being candid with each other.
And in the creative arts you have to be candid and trust each
other. Does anyone know who Mel Brooks
is? Yeah, anybody?
Move, somebody move. Raise your hand.
Mel Brooks? Anyone know?
So I worked with Mel Brooks when I was young and he was touring
for one of his movies, History of the World: Part II, and I was
thrilled to meet him. I met a lot of celebrities,
worked with them, and I usually take it in stride but I was
really thrilled to meet him. I thought his movie The
Producers was just the most dangerous damn thing I'd ever
seen. So the security calls,
Mr. Brooks is on his way to seven, which is where our
studios were. I go there and meet him at the
elevator. We're in the exact same outfits,
khaki pants, blue shirt and a blue blaser.
He goes, son! Take him into makeup and he
goes, what did you think of the movie?
And I said, it was really great, Mr. Brooks; I really admire your
work. He said, no, what didn't you
like about it? I said, really?
He goes, yeah, I know what's working, especially if you're
young; I need to know what isn't working.
And I said, well, it wasn't as good as The Producers.
And he goes, I'm never going to make a movie as good
as The Producers again. And it taught me a great lesson.
He had no emotional investment in what was wrong with his
project. None.
He wanted notes. He wanted to hear what was wrong
with it. And that was a revelation to me
because I worked with a lot of people who if you even made the
slightest off-handed comment about something being off they
would just lose their stuff completely.
He was at the top of his game at that time, and he wanted me, a
lowly producer in Chicago, to tell him where he missed.
And he was totally, totally, utterly cool about it.
And it was a great lesson to learn.
Righteous anger. Now after I've said all this
stuff about drama-free zone and easy grace I think there's times
where you have to rear up on your hind legs and say nobody's
going to treat my people like that.
I'm going to have you removed from the set if you pull that
crap again. Is that understood?
Thank you. [LAUGHTER]
Because people will beat you up, and you can't let them
beat you up. Of some of the work I've done,
the thing I'm most proud of is accounts I've resigned because
they treated my people poorly. One of my people, we were
shooting Muhammad Ali at Atlanta Olympics, and one of my people
got heat stroke and the client came in and made some really
inappropriate remark about one of my, kind of saying one of my
employees was a slacker, when in fact this person's health was
really in danger. Heat stroke is nothing to mess
around with. And I informed Coke after that
shoot that we would no longer work with this person.
You've have to have righteous anger.
And I also think that if you're running the shop, it's really
critical, you want easy grace but you have to let people know
that you have passion and you care.
And so I don't think you ever go out of your way to humiliate
someone, but if something is being done inappropriately or in
a slackish way you have to say, hey, what are we doing?
This must be done well and it must be done well by 5:00
because that's when, boom, you're a pumpkin because we
can't go into overtime. Please focus.
Thank you. The other thing is you can't
beat people up all the time because one out of every three
shoot days you're going to have to ask the crew to skip lunch.
Okay? People get really, I never care
about lunch, but people really want their lunch.
So you always have to buy them a big free meal afterwards.
But you can only go to that well so often and you can only do it
if you treat them well. I don't know if this makes sense
to you. There is no big time.
I don't think there's any big time.
I've worked with presidents, movie stars, all that sort of
stuff. I have found it to be best to
act really casual and straightforward with them.
Don't bug them about autographs. Don't say, I've admired you all
my life. Just say, Whitney, Rod Stewart,
President Reagan, President Bush, this is what we'll be
doing, and Michael Jordan it will take us about 15 minutes,
Mike. I worked with Michael Jordan a
lot. Mike was great to work with.
If you told him, hey Mike. He goes, you again?
Yeah, yeah. I said 15 minutes you're going
to stand over here. We've got all the copy for you.
All you have to do is walk into your mark.
We'll mic you up. You'll be out in 15 minutes.
He goes, I'm timing you. I said, you've timed me before,
did I let you down? He goes, no you haven't.
And that's all you do. You don't say, hey Mike, can you
sign this for my nephew, all this sort of stuff because it's
business time. And they're paying him about a
million dollars an hour. Do not confuse activity with
achievement. This is one thing I always tell
my young employees is just because you're bustling around
doesn't mean you're getting anything done.
I think that that mantra helps you re-prioritize all the time
saying what is my intention today?
What has to be in the can? What has to be done today?
Am I serving, am I moving the ball up the hill or am I just
running around madly? Message discipline.
I think this is important for everything that you work on
because the world is full of words now.
There's just all sorts of messages flying around.
So it puts a premium on you knowing what you do, you knowing
what you want, you knowing the case statement of the project
you're working. What is the end result required?
So message discipline all the way down the line because it is
so, we live in a world of total utter constant distraction.
So the person who actually knows where they're going and what
they're doing is ahead of 99% of the people.
Critical path, that's the same thing.
You just have to, when you're in the midst of production or
running your business or whatever it might be.
And this is stuff that you ordinarily wouldn't tell artists
but it's like what are we supposed to do here?
One of the things I have found with really good artists, they
are really buttoned down and disciplined.
They don't waste any time. They care about their work, how
it sounds, how it looks, and everything else is secondary.
Get down off your cross, we need the nails.
I hate martyrs. That's a Tom Waits line.
I use that all the time when someone is whining too much.
Get down off your cross, we need the nails.
That's all. The only two other things I'd
share with you is I traveled for 30 years to make this business
work. It was really difficult.
Travel is not fun. It's fun when you're young and
you're in a nice four star hotel and you get to order room
service and you're going oh, this is great.
But if you do it for 30 years, it's not really fun.
So if you're working with people and you're making them travel a
lot, give them some love. And what else?
Just the work-life balance. Of all the stuff that I've done,
I mean the Cannes Film Festival, writing a David Lynch film, for
any of you who know David Lynch, he's a pretty cool director,
being surrounded by paparazzi, all that stuff was really cool,
but honestly at the end of the day I'm glad that I'm a
reasonably good husband and father.
And if I wasn't, I think that other stuff would not, life's
pretty unbearable when you don't have your personal side
together. That's just me.
Other people can swing it just fine but I need a good base.
That's all I have to say. I hope this is helpful.
I don't know if it was. I'd love to hear some questions,
and then I'll be able to tell if you heard anything I said.
[APPLAUSE] >> John's actually been to class
before. He was here when Peter Schneider
came last semester, who, of course, is an old friend of
yours. >> He actually wasn't an old
friend, that was the beauty of it.
Peter Schneider was the guy from Disney who gave you guys Ariel
and Lion King, gave you your childhood.
And he gave the green light to a screenplay that I wrote that
ended up being this thing. And you guys haven't seen it.
It was a very small film but a cool film.
It's in the Internet Movie Database top 200, all that sort
of stuff. But it was about an old man who
drove his tractor across Iowa to see his dying brother.
Very simple film. Totally weird film for David
Lynch to make who did Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Mulholland
Drive, and this was a totally against type film for him.
But they flew us to France and we walked up the aisle and waved
at the photographers and every time I turned and waved they
said, who the hell is that? Get out of my shot.
[LAUGHTER] Okay, questions.
And you guys know just raise your hand, and I'll be happy to
hand the mic over. I'm looking for those hands to
go up. I've got one right here.
Hi, my name is Rhea Harvey. >> Hi, Rhea.
And my question for you is would you or have you done an
advertisement for a company or a product with which you've had an
ethical qualm with? >> I have turned down two
projects because of that. We did work for the Miller
Brewing Company which was owned by the Philip Morris Company,
and we did not take any work from the parent company, Philip
Morris. I do like beer.
I have a real problem with cigarettes.
Lost my father-in-law to lung cancer, and so we went out of
our way not to take any work from them.
And I also don't, we've done political work as well, but we
don't take work from far right-wing republicans who are
anti gay, it's just not who we are.
I don't mind moderate republicans.
I think there's a good argument to be made on the moderate side
of both arguments, but when the talk becomes hateful we don't
care to be part of it. That's a great question.
And, by the way, when we have ethically sketchy projects come
in, I meet with the staff to make sure everyone is
comfortable with it. And there have been times where
certain members of my staff have recused themselves from a job
even though the rest of the staff wanted to do it.
I'll give you an example. Someone who is a registered
republican doesn't want, registered republican doesn't
want to help a democrat become governor.
So they just don't work on the project and we respect that.
I thought I lost you and you have a question because you were
nodding off. [LAUGHTER]
Sorry, I had surgery this week.
What did you get cut on? >> What?
What got cut on? >> My foot.
Oh, sorry. Okay.
[LAUGHTER] >> My name is Eliah Rinzel,
and I was wondering have you had any decisions, maybe some jobs
you took that you wish you wouldn't have or just big
decisions you've made that you didn't like.
That's a great question. Some of the most difficult jobs
that I've had have been the most rewarding and profitable.
And over time, I'll give you an example, anyone here from
Chicago? Anybody?
Remember Steve Dahl? Does anyone know of that name?
He was a radio guy they blew up Comiskey Park.
My first special was a really edgy special with him.
Won my first Emmy for it. It was a brutal project.
Difficult talent, difficult, we were shooting in Memphis.
It was a send up of Elvis Presley.
And yet, the creative idea was really, really good.
But it took years off my life. Would I do it again?
Yes I would. Writing The Straight Story was
really hard work. Would I do it again?
Yes I would. I think what I have found is if
a job is really difficult, ask for more money than you can turn
down. Meaning it's not worth having a
lot of personal friction with a client who's got a $10,000 who
doesn't know what they're doing and they're a jerk because at
the end of the day every job takes what it takes and you
can't afford to do it poorly. Even if the client doesn't know,
you know. So the lesson for me is unless
someone really treats you or your people, crosses the line in
terms of respect, then sometimes you just have to put your head
down and make it a mercenary act.
But the only regrets I have is the times I worked really,
really hard for clients who didn't appreciate it and didn't
pay for it. That answer your question?
Thanks. Yes, Alyssa.
Actually we've got the mic right here and then we'll get to
Alyssa. >> Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm Jewel. Of all the awards and
nominations-- >> Jewelryana.
Yes. It's different.
Of all the awards and nominations you've received, is
there anything that means, maybe to the general public something
might be really prestigious but to you it doesn't mean as much?
Is there an award that you've received that means more for any
reason? >> Right.
I have to say I honestly don't care that much about awards.
But I will say that nominated for an Independent Spirit Award
was really cool. In case you guys don't know what
that is, that's like the cool pre-Academy Awards party that
happens the day before the Academy Awards, and it's all the
young new independent films. It's where Pulp Fiction won and
where, what was that movie about the guys who got caught in the
forest and they made the whole social myth about it?
Blair Witch. You know, it's the smaller indie
films. And we got nominated for best
first screenplay, and we were with some really cool company.
In fact, the guy who did Election and all that sort of
stuff. So that was really heady and
then having the film premier at Cannes Film Festival.
That was serious boogie because that was part of film lore.
And then to have Richard Farnsworth, who is the old guy
who had the lead in our film, get an Academy Award nomination
for best actor which is one of the top three awards.
That does mean something to me, but here's what means more: the
morning that the Academy Award nominations were to come out,
Disney did a campaign for us as screenwriters as well.
So we were up for best screenplay, best original
screenplay. In fact, on my wall at home I
have the print ads that Disney ran in Variety magazine saying
for your consideration John Roach, Mary Sweeney, best
original screenplay of The Straight Story.
But I didn't want to sit at home and watch it.
They announced it on Good Morning America or whatever the
hell it is. So I went cross country skiing
in the arboretum. We had gotten six inches of
snow. It was just beautiful and I was
hoping someone from our production would get a
nomination, either David for best director, Sissy Spacek for
best supporting actress, or Richard Farnsworth for best
actor, or possibly Angelo Badalamenti for the soundtrack
which is beautiful or maybe, a long shot, us for screenplay.
But I really didn't have a viable hope for that.
And I got in my car and I had voicemail in my car and there
were 38 voicemails. And the first one I punched, and
by the way there was a Cannes Film Festival premier and then a
Hollywood premier. Marilyn Manson sat right behind
us, he came for the premier, and my daughter goes Marilyn Manson
is sitting right behind us and over there is the president of
the United States. Which was Bill Pullman.
Independence Day had just been out.
Our kids were like eight. [LAUGHTER]
And so they did the whole walk and everything.
And my daughter Maggie, who ended up getting a double major
in English and comm arts here, all I got on the voicemail was
screaming. And she had met Richard
Farnsworth. She had met everyone.
She was very excited and she goes, Richard got a nomination,
Richard got a nomination, dad. And you could hear screaming in
the background and that was the voicemail.
So that's what I cherish the most.
It's the intersect between that formal recognition and the
feel good human side. Is that fair answer?
Hi. You clearly have a natural
talent for writing and film and you kept mentioning that you had
to teach yourself or look elsewhere for business advice.
You bet, I'm still learning. >> What degree did you graduate
with? >> History.
[LAUGHTER] For all of you who don't know
what you're going to do. You're in school and you have to
declare a major. I became a history major.
I took the path of least resistance.
I tried a couple drama courses; I didn't fit in.
I tried some comm arts; I didn't like the classes.
And I loved reading history. It was reading and writing and I
just have a vivid imagination and history always, I loved
reading history and also there's a lot of writing with history.
So I pretty much am your typical confused humanities graduate
from the University of Wisconsin.
And I might add, you guys are lucky, Madison is a culturally
very cool place compared to some other schools in that it's the
cultural mix of Madison, not the formal education and courses
sometimes, that give it its edge.
From my generation, Hollywood is filthy with Wisconsin graduates
and there was no film school at the UW.
There he this were all history majors, soc, English.
All sorts of this kind of polyglot humanities sort of
thing. And there are tons of people in
the movie business in Hollywood. Yes, sir?
Yes, sir. How are you doing this evening?
Good. >> My name is Aaron Henry.
Aaron, how you doing? >> I'm doing well.
My question was regarding, I know you work with a lot of
people and who did you have the opportunity of enjoying that
group of people or that person to work with?
Who did you enjoy the most? >> Yeah, well David Lynch
because I learned a lot from him.
There are some people who've I've worked with professionally
who I stayed in touch with. Does anybody know the TV show
Cheers? Okay.
You know George? I mean Norm?
George Wendt? The fat guy who drinks beer?
He became a friend of mine. He was in Second City.
He's a good friend. Chris Farley was a good friend.
I consider Dave Lynch a friend. And then there are a lot of
other people that I worked with who, if I mention what we worked
on it would be a really good connect.
It's like teammates or camps you've been at where you connect
with someone and then you reconnect and it's a joyous
memory, it's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of show business
that's kind of like summer camp because you come together for a
magical six weeks and then everyone goes away and all you
have are the memories. But then when you get back with
these people you remind them, hey, we worked together
on The Straight Story. Oh, my God, how are you?
Yes. Boom.
Then I would say the other thing is just the core people of my
office. Directors, writers that I've
worked with who are just good friends.
Then also, it's kind of fortuitous, I'm going up to the
cabin this week. Tongue in cheek, we go ice
fishing. It's a joke.
All these guys wear Armani suits and crap like that.
They have no idea how to ice fish.
We hire an ice fishing guide. [LAUGHTER]
That's how hopeless we are. But these guys that I've
mentioned, they've written movies, big television
commercial campaigns, one of them is the president of NBC
stations. And I get together with them to
compare notes because that's the one thing I would say is you
don't always have someone to talk to about am I doing right
by my business, by myself, by my people?
Am I losing my edge? And it's like going on a retreat
with these guys every year. And we bounce ideas and stuff.
I'll give you an example. If I was a professional athlete
it'd be like going away with someone and talking about agents
and endorsements and trainers and all that sort of stuff.
It's the same thing. It's someone you can huddle down
with who's in the same business you're in, which by the way
there really aren't many people in Madison who are in the same
business I am in. I can't go down to the village
Bar or Wando's and say, hey, what are you charging for
lighting guys now and stuff like that.
So those are the relationships I cherish.
If there's any famous people, I don't know, I'm sure there's
some famous people who are friends but I don't think of
them as famous anymore so I can't bring up their name.
I just don't, fame's a weird thing.
I wouldn't wish fame on anyone. >> Okay, so you talked about how
relationships are really important, I was wondering how
you separate friendship from business and if you've ever been
in a situation where business had a trump over friendship?
God, you guys are asking great questions.
There's a line in Hollywood that says, Hollywood: no permanent
friends, no permanent enemies. I try not to do business with
friends. I have a buddy of my who is my
roommate out of college who is retired at 40.
He made millions of dollars with Salomon Brothers.
And he called me up after The Straight Story and said,
hey, maybe I can get some investors for your movie.
And I said, cool, Bob. I still can't believe you're
retired plus you weren't that smart.
[LAUGHTER] And he laughed.
He's great on rock and roll trivia though.
And he said, well, I wouldn't invest because I never invest in
anything where I can't sue the other people involved.
And he said, I would never want to sue you; you were the best
man in my wedding. I think it's a very difficult
thing. My brother is my partner in my
business. My younger brother, 15 years
younger than me. It's an Irish Catholic family,
he was "oops." [LAUGHTER]
And you really have to do a lot of work if you're going
to work with friends. You need more work and more
paper to work with friends than strangers or enemies, I think.
That's a brilliant question. All your questions have been
good. I'll take a crappy question.
Anyone have a crappy question? >> Do we have a final question
here? >> Hi, I'm Lauren.
Hi, Lauren. >> And I was just wondering,
what would you say is the hardest part about your job?
Pressure. Tension.
The fear of failure and travel and firing people.
[LAUGHTER] I hated firing people.
Just hate it. I get clinically depressed for a
month after firing people. There are people who like firing
people but that was always difficult for me.
If I could just finish, Jeanan. I'm really grateful for you guys
to let me speak to you today. I'm enough of a Irish Catholic
boy to feel that I can never enjoy any success unless I feel
like there's some good karma associated with it.
And what I hope is today, I probably bored the living crap
out of a huge percentage of you, but it's my hope that one or two
of you may find yourself in a position where you might
possibly remember one little morsel that I threw out today
that will help you at a hard time of your life.
I couldn't be happier for you guys.
You guys are in a really cool place in time.
This economy sucks but it's rebounding.
And you guys are coming out and you're smart and you're cheap
labor and you're from a great school with a great reputation.
So I wish you guys nothing but the best.
If anyone has any follow-up questions or anything and you
want my email or anything, I'm happy to help out, and you can
get it from Jeanan, but I wish you all just the best of luck.
And thanks for letting me talk at you.
[APPLAUSE]