From Studio 54 to the Boardroom: Don Kurz Shares the Life Lessons Behind Do the Hustle

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody, it's Kelly Cat Tap Tots, and I've got Don Kurz here. Such amazing man. He's got He's got a book that's out, but his life could be a movie, like from Studio 54 to Wall Street, to being a championship of uh lacrosse. He's got a lot of things he's gonna tell us. So tell us your story.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Well, first, thank you so much for having me. Uh I've watched a number of your podcasts, and I'm a big fan of yours. So my story, I wish I could say it was well thought through and planned, but it was very much dictated by circumstances. And that's one of the messages I try to convey in the book about how you life pivots and how things happen that you need to absorb and learn lessons from and move on. So my focus as a as a young person was very much athletics. The captain of my high school championship football and lacrosse teams, and was recruited to be a lacrosse player at Johns Hopkins in in college. Was fortunate to be on a national championship team, and everything was going really well. And then my junior year, I got two successive within four months serious knee injuries, ACL and MCL ligament tears. And back then, which was in the late 70s, the technology of MRIs and arthroscopic surgery and all the stuff that we're used to today did not exist or it was not at least available to the average person. So I ended up having to retire my cleats, and somehow this thing called disco was emerging at the time, which of course had nothing to do with, but it it happened in the 70s, and I'm from New York originally, from Queens. And as I went back from my summer vacation, disco is really emerging. Met this young lady who taught dancing at a place called New York Hustle. You can't make this stuff up, it was called New York Hustle. And uh she taught me these moves, and right around the time Studio 54, which is that iconic disco was emerging, this movie Saturday Night Fever was yet to, but it was soon to come out. So the whole world was now starting to embrace this crazy thing called disco, which was a very happy, uplifting, very inclusive musical genre. Everyone just kind of blended together on the dance floor and uh with the music. So it was a very fortunate thing that I was able to land in this after having to uh leave the lacrosse world. And I ended up teaching dancing at Arthur Murray as I got my MBA at Columbia, became a regular at Studio 54 through some luck and through some uh fast talking to the doormen who didn't let many people in. So that taught me at first that when you get a devastating setback like a serious knee injury, or you can fill in the blanks, whatever one's setback is, and we all have them, that there are opportunities if you will look for them, and that you can't get overly down and you can't start having too many regrets or feeling like a victim because it's not fair. And you know what? It isn't fair. It's not fair I got those knee injuries. It's not fair this person got fired from their job when they did nothing wrong, but they got laid off. It's not fair, many things that happen in life, but how you absorb these lessons and setbacks is what I've learned. So I then became an entrepreneur after I um uh started out my career in consulting, and then became uh a person who started companies, had successes, took a company public on NASDAQ, had some devastating setbacks through some boardroom drama, getting fired from my own company, starting a hedge fund doing very well, and then getting hit by the Bernie Madoff crisis and the subprime subprime mortgage crisis in tw uh 2008. So these various ups and downs, but they all led to something even better. So I am with my current company, Omelette, right now, which is a marketing and advertising agency. It's a wonderful company, great colleagues. We do great work for clients like Google and others. And all of it happened after significant setbacks. So that's my message. Be resilient, absorb lessons, don't feel victimized, and don't try to get justice at every turn. You have to really pick your fights.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah. So before we get into your success, take take us to one of your lowest moments.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

So I talked about my injury, which ended my lacrosse career, but I would say um among the, or if not the lowest, moment was when I um had kind of a uh dramatic exit from the public company that I was running and that I co-founded. And I wanted to take the company private. So for you listeners, when you're public, you're owned by the public shareholders. When you're private, you're owned by a select few people. It's not traded on the stock market, and you have much less scrutiny from the outside world. So I felt that the company would be better off after having 10 successful years as a public company, that we would go private. I had an investor who was very interested in buying out all the public shareholders. I work with this group and we presented a letter to the board saying we want to take it private at a nice premium to the stock price that was trading at, and the board or not the whole board, but a majority of the board felt that I had kind of gone around them. I was trying to profit perhaps at the expense of others and that they didn't like it. So ultimately I was terminated, and that was a devastating body blow of a company that I again co-founded and had uh success running. All of a sudden I was out, and I'd never had a failure like that in my life. So it's hard to say I had something more devastating happen to me, at least professionally, than that. But again, I learned after trying to fight this that it will lead to something else if you just trust the process and work hard.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, I can still hear it in your voice a little bit. Yeah. About the failure, but a lot of people learn from failure. They do. So your failure is the the cover charge to success. What's the most expensive lesson you've ever paid for and was it worth it?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Well, Kat, it was I still have to keep with that because I lost tens of millions of dollars of net worth because when I left the company, it started going downhill. And it's not just because they missed me, but there was a variety of circumstances and it the company ended up going bankrupt. So I lost all of that net worth that had once been worth well over fifty million dollars and all of a sudden it was zero. And that was pretty expensive, at least in my book. And it was hard to take that and and be okay with it because I felt it was terribly unfair. If this drama and this boardroom coup didn't happen, I would have still had all that money and uh it would have been nice to have to this day. But that was probably the most expensive lesson.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah. So there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there and some of them are probably going through what you went through. And how how would I say, what would you tell them? What would you think?

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Such good questions. You know, I I would tell them first as an entrepreneur, you have to be two things simultaneously, which sound counterintuitive. You have to be eternally optimistic because there's constant headwind, there's constant things thrown your way, a client is late paying you, an employee that you've spent all this time developing decides to leave and she goes to another company, a competitor. You lose a valued client because they change CEOs and they want their own agencies. There can be a million reasons. And you have to stay optimistic, but you also have to be very realistic. You can't be Pollyanish and think, okay, we'll just get a new client. We'll just get somebody even better. Well, it's not that easy. And you have to be very meticulous about your cash flow and your assumptions. So you're trying to be optimistic because you have to power through these setbacks. You also have to be very brutally realistic about what you can afford, including a decision that you might need to fold, because you don't want to keep putting scarce resources into something that's starting to trend downward and that the probability of turning it might be too unfavorable. I've had multiple ventures, successful and unsuccessful. I bought seven companies through my previous iteration of career at my previous company. I'd say three were real successful, three were failures, one was kind of in the middle. And the biggest counsel I would provide to a fellow entrepreneur is read the tea leaves. Don't be blindly optimistic in terms of what you think's gonna happen, but absorb lessons, be incredibly sensitive to what you see in the marketplace, and then finally listen to your gut. That's another thing that I think it's I want to emphasize. I've learned, and I'm a pretty analytical person, that my gut is ultimately the determinant of what I should do. It's uh true a hundred percent of the time, and my gut is the only I don't know if it's an individual, it's just a thing, that I can trust that always has my best interest at heart, no matter what And it tells you if you listen to it that uncomfortable feeling, don't subordinate it, don't ignore it, listen to it and listen to what it's telling you, whether it's about a a relationship, whether it's about a business, whether it's about a colleague that you're unsure of hiring, listen to your gut.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Wow, that's the gut of um with the algorithm.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

So you you to you talk about trusting your gut and yadrom over experts. How do you know when it's intuition versus emotion versus ego?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

That's that's it's great. I I've learned through trial and error, and again, as we've discussed, some expensive uh trial that uh I I I just know I think the way I've connected with my gut now. The intuition is ends up being the truth. So I don't uh distinguish between intuition and analytics. The intuition is the algorithm processing all the data, processing what's best for me, what I'll be happiest about. It's doing some black box of some calculation that I would never begin to understand, and it's spitting out an answer. But uh, you have to be sensitive enough to listen to it because many times the answer is not gonna be what you want to hear. For example, a relationship. You're married, and I've gone through a, you know, an expensive and painful divorce. My goodness, you don't want this to end. It's gonna be so expensive, it's gonna be dramatic. It, you know, I didn't have any kids, but if there are kids involved, it's, you know, it's very whatever. And you try to say, okay, we can work this out, and maybe I'll power through this and it'll it'll we'll go to therapy and whatever. But your gut is telling you if it's over. And it w and if it's over, it's far better to recognize it at that versus waiting five years after you've gone back and forth. And it ends up being over anyway, and usually in a much more painful and difficult way, because then it's just five years you felt you've wasted your, in my case, wife's wasted the their time because it was never gonna go anywhere. And it's far better, even though it's painful to recognize that lesson early. But you have to listen to your gut and not ignore it because it's telling you something you don't want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

So when you're listening to your gut and everybody else is telling you you're wrong, what happens?

SPEAKER_02 12:04

It's and again, I've been not very good at this most of my life. So I I can tell you what happens is I get influenced. I did get influenced by the experts, including experts that you're paying, whether it's a marriage counselor or a lawyer or or a colleague or whatever. And part of it is, well, I don't want to, even as corny as I don't want them to feel bad by ignorance to, well, I'm paying them a lot of money that they must know what they're doing to if it's if it's within a company, you don't want to overrule if you're the CEO, you don't want to overrule your management and they feel disempowered, they feel um not heard. So you try to say, okay, maybe we'll we'll try that. But invariably I found the gut is usually right. It's not because I'm the smart guy, it's because it's telling me what the reality is and it's estimating all the probabilities of success for various routes that you can take going forward.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

All right. So let's let's talk about the hustle. And I mean both the dance and the mindset, and how did Dancing Studio 85 shape the way that approaches business and life?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Well, as you note, the hustle is a metaphor for uh life. And but of course it was a very famous dance in the in the 70s, came up with the title for the book as a way that connects everything I've learned in life. Hustling, not in the best sense of the word, not in the pool hall where you're trying to trick somebody into playing you. But the you know, hustling on the athletic field, as you know, is okay. When you're taking you know when you're, you know, going off the field, if you're to the basketball court, they're subbing for you. Run out, don't walk out. If you're you know doing drills, don't go through it with half effort, go through it with your full effort. Always be hustling in business. Be the first in the office, be the last to leave the office, do the extra, extra work. And that formula of of just hustling being in motion is a very low risk, high return way to be as a philosophy. And of course it was a fun it was a fun dance, but the hustle is the common thread in my life through social, through business, through athletics. And it it it it's it's also more fun. It's also more fun to always be up and moving and energetic.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

So what does a hustle look like now if somebody was to build something from nothing? What would it look like in today?

SPEAKER_02 14:43

The first thing you have to do is be really, really passionate about whatever you're doing. Because it's very hard to fake hustling. You can do it for whatever period of time, a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, even a couple of years. But ultimately your ability to keep moving at that extra speed has to be underpinned by passion and and and just intensity. And that can only sustain if you're in love with what you're with what you're doing. So if you don't have that for whatever reason, whether it's in sports or it's in life or or it's in a business, you have to recognize that and be realistic. I have it the first chapter of the book, and forgive me, it sounds a little provocative, is called You Can't Will an Erection. And I learned that in college from uh what was called then a transsexual but transgender naval officer who determined after lying to themselves about what they felt they were, ultimately determined they needed to to transition to, in this case, male to female. But that lesson was recognize when you're where your passion is and then pursue it. And this person went through enormous pain while a very successful naval officer. So that's a little perhaps dramatic for what we're talking about, but the same lesson applies. If you're not really passionate about, you'll never get through the entrepreneurial ups and downs. There's too many obstacles, there's too many setbacks. So be passionate and hustle, but you have to have the passion in order to hustle for an indefinite period of time.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

But so you can build a hustle because you know, some people probably born with the hustle.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah, I I think I think we are all born with it innately. It gets to another point in the book where I say the only defensible advantage you have in life is your work ethic. AI can't take that away from you. Nobody can take that away from you. Technology can, if you're the relying on technology, you can be disrupted or or you can be, you know, outsourced out of a job. If you're relying on nepotism because you're well connected, and all of a sudden the person who's been looking after you leaves the organization and you're not as good as everyone thought you were, you're you're vulnerable. If you work your butt off at whatever it is, of course, work smart, not just blindly going forward. You'll sustain through virtually anything. People will want to work with you, they'll want to be your colleague, they'll want to be your friend because you're always, you you don't, you always follow through, you're always on time, you're always upbeat. Those are the things you can control. So that's kind of the overlap with the hustle is to outwork everyone and have that strong work ethic. I'm not a very big guy, but I played Division I championship lacrosse with guys much bigger than me because I out hustled people.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah. You you did a pretty good job out hustling because you got that championship.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Got my ring, my ring.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

You got your ring too. That's pretty good. And a lot of people would love to have a championship ring. And it takes a lot to get there. So let's get back and dive right into your book. Tell us about your book.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Well, the the book was something I I I can't say I've been dying to write a book my whole life. Some people say that and good for them. It's it's not something that I was thinking of. I got a call from a a big publisher a couple of years ago. And what they do is what they said they do is they look at LinkedIn, which is obviously a big business social network, and look at people's backgrounds and see who might be a good author and be able to take advantage of their publishing platform, whole network. And I said, Oh, that's interesting. Maybe, you know, I I did a book, what's called a book plan, which is a detailed outline of what the book would be about, potential table of contents and the like. And I did that with them. And then at the end of it, I was like, okay, this reads fine, has the requisite do's and don'ts of being a leader and whatever, but it wasn't, it had no soul. You know, many of your guests and yourself could have written the same thing with as much credibility. So it's not that it wasn't good, but it was like it wasn't unique. And I'm not going to go through the long, arduous process of writing a book just to be sounding like somebody else. But it got me kind of thinking, is there something unique that I can say? And so I started taking, using my hand, scribbling notes about any time I thought of anything that was interesting, about my childhood, about business, about life, relationships, whatever it is, I started writing down. And after a couple of months, I had 10 plus pages of detailed notes. And I saw this thread that intersected athletics, dance, and business. And I felt that was fairly unique. Each one of them individually, people, of course, do, but the combination and how they all intersected was somewhat unique. And I said that might be the basis of a book. So I engaged an editor fairly early on to help me structure my thinking and started writing. And that process took about 18 months. I have uh do the hustle, which is fortunately selling, selling well so far.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

What was one of the key uh chapters in your book, The Hustle?

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Well, I think the chapter about avoiding and and acknowledging sunk costs, and sunk costs are a very real trap we all fall into, and I certainly did, whereby you put so much time, let's say we can go to an entrepreneur again, you've invested your life savings, you put three, four years into this thing, and there's no way you want to acknowledge, you know what, this ain't gonna work. You know, we tried everything, the there's not enough customers interested, or we our cost structure is too high to price it the way it's gonna sell if it's a consumer product, whatever it is. And avoiding the some cost fallacy requires you to think what you need to do going forward without considering what you've already invested into it. So marriage is another example. Oh my goodness, we've been married 15 years, we have two kids. I can't even imagine what it would be to start over again. I I'm nervous about it, and all with good reason. Again, an entrepreneur who who's put their life savings in the world.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah, they get Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

You they very na and I am as guilty as anyone of that. I finally became because my gut was telling me this ain't gonna work. This venture, uh my hedge fund, for example, after the big decline in 2008, it's never gonna be able to recover in the next reasonable period of time. And it's best to move on, even though it in that case cost me $4 million. And I could have kept sinking very precious resources back in because I didn't want to acknowledge failure for pride. Or it's like, what the hell am I going to do now? I put everything into this thing and what am I going to do? So those people who can say, you know what, I gave it a good shot. The risk return of continuing to go is not there. There's an opportunity. Opportunity cost of not moving forward with the next deal or the next relationship and to bite the bullet and move forward. That is, I think, an important chapter of lessons that many of us can learn.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah. So a lot of I can barely say this word, entrepreneurs, they get stuck in the uh cost trap, right? Absolutely. What is your mental uh framework for walking away when something isn't working?

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Boy, I I'm a person with too much pride, and maybe that's the same thing as ego. And it's really hard to acknowledge failure, particularly if you came out of the gates, you know, really saying this is going to be the great adventure, and you tell all your family and friends, and you put your resources into it and everything else. So you've got to acknowledge that when the ego and and pride is is getting in the way of rational decision making, and understand that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. You know, he's had multiple failed ventures or go back down the list of entrepreneurs. I say in the book, venture capitalists and investors don't want a person who's never seen failure because they're it's just not the way the world works. So I think the advice is always be realistic and and you can't have to toggle risk return. Of course, there's a chance you're gonna turn this thing around. But if it's five, if it's five percent, it's just not worth it. Again, the opportunity cost of not moving forward with your next deal or or whatever that next chapter in your life is, is a is really real because you you're not getting any younger. You have the wisdom of this venture that is worth a lot. It might not be worth anything in terms of your bank account, but it is worth an enormous amount. Your next venture, your next initiative will be much more informed because you realize, oh my goodness, you shouldn't start this until you have one client already. You don't want to start burning cash right out the or you don't need a big fancy office to put money into that. All the things you might have learned. So it's acknowledging that failure and accepting it, embracing the opportunity that the future holds for you without having a real regret and saying that's part of my journey and it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yes, I understand. So you've been through some major financial highs and lows. So how do you emotionally recover from the numbers when they drop and the pressure, when the pressure's real? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_02 24:40

I think it's, you know, I use the term accept and embrace. I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with it. And they have to go hand in hand. You have to accept the brutal reality of what it is. Again, this relation I'm making this up. This relationship is over. You know, that it just ain't that into you. I'm sorry. It's the writing's on the wall. This venture is toast. I made a bet on a stock and it was the wrong assumption. Something happened, and I've just lost a lot of money. I just got fired from a job. Whatever it is, you have to accept that reality and try not to fight it because it is what it is. I used to fight reality and try to, in some cases, litigation or other means to try to change it. And there's occasions you have to do that, of course. But for the most part, it's like you absorb the body blow, accept the reality, including when it's unfair and unjust, and then embrace your next opportunity without looking back. So you have to just say, I just lost a lot of money and I shouldn't have done that. People told me don't do that. My gut told me don't do that. You really want to put all that money into this thing. I did it and it's done. And you can't be bitter because you already made that decision. What you have to do is absorb the lessons and embrace the many opportunities that your smarter self has ahead of them. And that accept and embrace philosophy is something it took me many years, but I I really do uh So does that does that mean um don't fight the tape? That is exactly what it means. Yeah, don't fight the tape. Don't fight the tape is an old Wall Street saying when there used to be a ticker tape, not uh computer screens. That's a little before my time. I I go way back, but not quite that far.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And you look great.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Well, the you see on old movies, you know, that they're they're watching this little tape come out of some machine and it says, you know, Microsoft, they weren't around then. IBM or whatever is down a half a point or whatever. And there are times when stocks, and I ran a public company for 10 years, so I know this, start to just head down. And it doesn't make sense. Oh, they had good earnings, they're talking optimistically, but somebody smarter than me knows what's going on and the stock keeps heading down. Don't fight the tape, meaning the the trending down price, because invariably there's something structurally wrong with that investment. And yes, maybe it turns around, but normally it doesn't, or at least not in a reasonable time. And while you're tying up all that cash, you're not investing it in something better. So don't fight the tape. Don't be proud. I told Kat that IBM was a great investment, and I don't want to be embarrassed now that that it's not, and or or I don't want to acknowledge I was wrong about that. Don't fight the tape. Acknowledge, take the loss, take the body blow, and live to fight another day.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Wow. So when it comes to leadership and culture, yeah, how do you handle a high-performing employee who's toxic to the culture?

SPEAKER_02 27:53

That is such a good question. And again, something I learned through, you know, making plenty of mistakes. Ultimately, you need to exit that person. That's what I've concluded, particularly cultures that I like to be part of, which is very team-based. There are certain cultures that are star-based. It's like a basketball team or a football team, you know, that it it I've always thrived in team-based cultures. That's why I like team sports versus individual sports. And if that individual, no matter how talented he or she is, is toxic, they don't give credit to their colleagues, even though it was a team-based win. They are primadonnais, they don't show up to meetings on time, they are gossiping uh about whomever. And we all know people like this. I'll take a really hardworking person who's a good cultural fit, they're good teammates. You could train them. I'll take them any day of the week on a sports team or in a company over the superstar who's very volatile. Those stars in business, they'll leave for the next highest offer as soon as they get one. They're not loyal and they and they're toxic. And it also sends a message when you allow those, let me call them prima donnas to be around. It sends a message to those that the leadership is really not living the values because they're letting this toxic person because they're very good.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, the the toxic person is basically a a cancer within a community of uh of a business.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

And and they'll bring you down if you let them.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

So that's when when you're in a a setting or or a community, a business, it's the we and not the I. So that's basically what you're talking about, is the we and not the I.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Everything is about the teamwork.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Exactly. And I certainly would be nowhere in my life without other people. And it's not being, you know, falsely humble. It's true. And it's why not acknowledge that? You know, why not nobody wants to be around the person who elbows everyone else and tries to get credit. It's just not a good look. It's not smart for your career. And it's it's just very, very, very few people are that good to really be that way. Maybe the person who invents, I don't know, the next great drug or a great technology thing is so smart that they can be that arrogant. But for even if you can be, why be that way? Nobody wants to be around you. And the reality is it's a team. It's always a team. It could be, you know, the person who who operationally is behind the scenes making sure all our systems work. It could be the producer who makes this brilliant creative idea happen on time and on budget. It it's always it's always a team-based thing. And it's a lot more fun to be celebrating with team than by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Yeah. So when it comes to outworking everyone, like a true defensive strategy, so in the world of AI and shortcuts, does that still hold true?

SPEAKER_02 30:57

I think it holds more true than ever because technology is kind of democratized stuff.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

If you will, just like spreadsheets did before you had the nerd, not me, who would be a whiz on with a slide ruler or an old calculator and could have a real advantage over data analysis, or was a good researcher who would go to the library and know where to find stuff and whatever. Now all that stuff is table stakes. You just, whether it's through AI or a good internet search, everyone has an ability to do those things. And so that's not a way to differentiate yourself. The only way that sustainably you can differentiate is through your work ethic. Now, again, you have to work smart. You can't just, if AI can do X, Y, and Z for you to help launch a project, use it. Blindly put in, you know, a bunch of numbers or something. Yeah. So you have to be smartly using it, but it's still that work ethic. When you're taking AI, it's easy to be settled for the answer it gives you. Person who works extra hard says, okay, that's reasonable, but it's not good enough. It doesn't really show my thinking. It it's too obvious. It's it's it's not insightful enough. So they take that draft and then they spend hours reworking it, and that will show. So I think the work ethic is more than ever your defensible advantage that you can take, whether again, on the athletic field, you're you're going out after practice, whether you're a basketball player taking foul shots after everyone's gone home, or lacrosse player shooting at the goal, or a person who's sitting in an office or at home if they're working from home, and the day ends, but they say, you know what, there's more reading I should do about this subject, or I want to go through this presentation one more time to make sure I get it. Those are the people that will get ahead.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

So what does uh outworking actually look like on a daily basis for you?

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Again, showing up early, being prepared after a meeting, whether you're sending notes out or just to yourself saying, okay, what did we just learn? What's the next steps? Let me make sure I have the follow-up organized because I committed to doing two things, and Jane over here committed to doing those other two things. I want to make sure everyone's organized. Too often people leave meetings these days, and this is something I I notice a little bit more. And everyone says, okay, good meeting. And we have like 18 things to do that we just talked about. And if the meeting is not a good meeting if nobody does these things, because there's all this follow-up. And I think the person, again, who's organized and who makes sure they follow things up is the person that's going to get ahead. Certainly the person I promote.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, that's a detail-oriented person. I work in the corporate world for 33 and a half years, and that's what we do. We do pre-communications, we do communications, and then we do post-communication. Exactly. Post-communications is just another word for follow-up to ensure everybody's got their task and everybody's doing their due diligence to do the job as a we and not an I.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

It's exactly right. Because if one one piece of the puzzle falters and everyone gets impacted.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's hop into the passion and authentic. So how do you stay authentic when success, money, and pressure starts pulling you in different directions? How do you say that?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Well, I I think you just be true to who you are and recognize that you're not really that smart or special. And I certainly am not. And I'm not just, again, saying that. My success has been a function of sometimes being in the right place at the right time, definitely working hard, surrounding myself with people I love and people uh I like working with. And I think if you just keep grounded and realize, because I've certainly had many stumbles, that your successes could be fleeting. But the way you act, your ethics, your authenticity to who you are, that should never change, no matter what. You're on top of the world, and wow, I can't do anything wrong. Every investment seems to work and whatever. And other times you can't, you can't buy a a win, and no matter what you do. So staying even keeled and staying humble and realizing that your success is is a function of a lot of variables, some of which you don't control. But it what you do control is how you act, how you behave, how you bring your whole self to a meeting or any kind of venture, how simply telling the truth and not not trying to shave the truth. I tell young people I mentor a bunch of student athletes all the time. If you do two things, tell the truth and then do what you say you're gonna do, you're gonna be ahead of 95% of the people in the world. Tell the truth so you're not contradicting yourself and including I screwed up. Well, including that's so true. Whatever it is. When you when somebody says that to you, don't you embrace them, you know, not necessarily physically. Versus giving you an excuse or whatever, and then doing what you say. We just talked about f the meeting follow-up. You know, the the follow-up persistence and associated with it just separates you from so many people. People just don't do that enough. I'm you know, I I mentioned to you that I lived in LA for 25 years, and this is such a cliche. But uh cat's great to see you. Let's have lunch. I'll call you. You walk away. You know, I never call you. Of course, I would call you, but I'm using this as an example.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

You just give an example, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Yeah, exactly. But you know, it's like, oh well, let's do lunch. It's great. You know, I have a perfect role for you in my new movie, whatever, whatever nonsense I'm spewing. And then you never hear from me. So don't do that. You know, if you say you're gonna call. Yeah. Oh, ghosting, uh ghosting is a not a good thing, and it happens way too often. It doesn't take a lot to say, you know what? First of all, don't say I'm gonna call you if you don't think you're gonna call. That's the easiest thing. Or you you go on a first date with someone and really had a you don't have to say you didn't have a good time, but don't say you're gonna call and then not call. Or then don't respond to the text. I hear stories like this all the time.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Just be honest, it's not cool. Yeah, it's not cool.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

People appreciate it. People appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

They appreciate it a lot more. They do have you ever chased something that looked like success, but it didn't feel like it.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah, I think uh plenty of times. We all, again, we talked about you have to be optimistic to be do anything entrepreneurial because otherwise you have no shot because there's so many obstacles. So there are ventures or investments that I've done that, again, my gut was telling me, is this and the hedge fund is probably in this category. Do you really know enough about this? Are you really prepared for the risk? You're just looking at the upside, but you're not realistic enough about what can happen. And of course, in this case, things like uh the financial crisis in 2008 happened in the subprime mortgage crisis. I I've definitely done that. And it doesn't mean I won't do it again. I'm sure I will. But I'm just much more aware and much quicker to acknowledge defeat if you're you learn from it. And cut your losses so you can again live to fight another day. There's nothing worse than hanging on to something that is trending downward. It's it's it's sad and it's so counterproductive. I would love to shake people when I see them doing it. But it's like it's very personal for an entrepreneurial to say, your baby is not that cute, you know, they don't want to hear it, and they're not gonna remain friends with you if you tell people things like that. And so I just hope people are take a step back and look at the data and listen to their gut, because their gut is telling them.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Yeah. If somebody was to um sit there and and tell myself or say, uh, it's just not gonna work, and then walk away, I think that would be more painful. At least tell me and be respectful. Hey, this is not gonna work because this is you're not doing this, this, this, and this. And even if you did, the numbers didn't look right. So maybe you should go back to the table, take a look at it, re-evaluate it because right now nobody wants to take part of it because it's spiraling downward and not giving that leverage. I would accept that, and I think thousands of people would, but it's telling somebody, oh, you got garbage over there and you walk away and don't explain why, it's their mindset is like, what is going on here?

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Yeah, and that would be a very personal and yeah unkind and unnecessary thing. First, somebody should ask you for the advice. It's not productive to go around offering, particularly something that's very personal to someone, unsolicited advice. So and I do get asked advice from folks in various forms. And I I'll try to de-personalize it and say, you know what, when you went into this thing, the market looks strong, but a new technology's come out, so it's made that a little more obsolete. You thought you could price your product at this level, but it's more competitive than you thought, so you really can't price it at needs to be lower and your cost structure is too high. So exactly what you're saying, trying to provide context, not make it personal, like, boy, you made a stupid move there or whatever. Just talking about the marketplace and again the risk return of continuing down the path. What is the biggest failure that you I think I'm trying to look for another example, but the real answer is when I left my public company, that's where I learned the accept and embrace. After several years of litigation and realizing even though I keep winning the litigation, it goes. Yeah, there's a another appeal. And meanwhile, the company that I'm a large shareholder in keeps going downhill. So I win these individual battles but lose the war. And to realize that my ego and pride were the things that were driving it. And now I learn to accept what reality is. Again, it could be unfair, it could be unjust, but to accept that happened and the need to move on.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Yeah, the need to move on.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Yeah. And because we all we all have those things happen to us. You're not alive and you're not not going to be successful if you're not taking enough risks where you don't get some real failures.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

So what what was the biggest win of your life?

SPEAKER_02 41:56

The the biggest failure?

SPEAKER_00 41:57

No, the biggest win.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Sorry, the biggest win. Um you know, I I I I look at the move from lacrosse to to dancing as literally the lowest point in my life. My lacrosse career and my sports career is over. That's really all I had in terms of as something unique about me. And then somehow pivoting to being at the forefront of the disco phrase phase phenomenon and teaching dancing, getting into studio 54 and hanging out with all these celebrities. And that all happened within a year. And and I just learned that if you let it, life, life opens new doors when you when a a previous one closes. You just have to allow it to do that. And that was such a win because I thought, no, I mean, I don't want to get dramatic that my life was over when my sports career was over. That's not the case. But it was a real low point. And all of a sudden to have the joy of dancing and hanging out with all these cool new people, it w it was a wonderful thing. There's nothing as a better win, I think, certainly on on a personal level than I've had.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Yeah, I think your life is a big win. Very unique, well driven, very successful, and and and you learn from your failures, which made you even more unique and and understanding. And I think my audience loves you because of you've been through it, your journey. And and you're telling about it, and you're you're you're talking about it, and now you've got a book. Do the hustle, right? Life lessons from Studio 54, you know, the championship with cross build, and the boardroom. I mean, how many people in this world can talk about what you're talking about in your book and learn from it? And it's a life lesson from you.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Well, I thank you for the kind words, and the book was written to try to help people as corny as that sounds. There's a lot of lessons through, again, many mistakes that I've made that I wanna share with people and hopefully give them some insight and reflection that can inform what they do going forward.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yes, I agree. One decision you make well you make again instantly.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

What is one decision that sorry Kat, one decision that that you make again instantly.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

What what would be one decision that you would make again instantly?

SPEAKER_02 44:23

I I I think the movement to the company that I'm with now Omelette, which was about fourteen or fifteen years ago. Um it was a company I didn't found. I knew the found uh founders I started consulting with them when I left my hedge fund and there was a window to uh make an investment and get very involved and it was of course very uncertain whether what the company's position was and whether that would be a good idea. But my gut was saying this is a special company do it. And I did it and it's worked out very well and that's something I would do again because it was a good decision. Felt a great company with a bunch of my colleagues and and uh it's it's a lot of Well long as you're having fun exactly you got to have the fun. And you gotta hustle.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

You gotta hustle. So uh one you would never repeat. Something that you would never repeat.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

I I wouldn't there was a time in my public company now we're going back to the late 90s. There was a big investment bank called Bear Stearns which ended up going a sizable investment bank wanted to do what's called a secondary offering for um for EMAC which was my public company and it would have been an opportunity to cash out a lot of money and raise money for the company. It's a secondary offering meaning we're already public you're doing an an an additional offering of stock to new investors. But you also could sell personal stock during the process. And since I was a little uncomfortable with the forecast of the business for the next year I didn't want to sell stock and then have investors disappointed and if the company started doing poorly. So I said let's hold off and we ended up not doing the offering. I ended up not cashing out which would have been all I was too optimistic that the company would keep trending upward. And uh it was a mistake. Everyone does these secondary offerings and they take money off the table. Because as an entrepreneur you have all your net worth into the company and you have to diversify. And I learned investors never say thank you when you don't take money off the table. They just sell your stock when it suits them. So I I was naive and I didn't want to sell stock unless I was sure the company was going to continue performing well and I ended up not selling selling any stock and and and seeing a lot of that net worth drop.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

So I I wouldn't do that again exactly success in one word one word success what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Hustle I knew you were gonna say and that job is probably the obvious answer but it's it encompasses passion it encompasses work ethic and encompasses being smart. You you you don't hustle and run through a wall you hustle smartly and it's I'm I'm so fortunate I fell into this title because the only reason is it's I used to do the dance and it was like wait a second this really applies to everything.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Yeah. If somebody's listening and is at rock bottom right now, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_02 47:34

Absorb and accept that you're at rock bottom whatever that person's rock bottom is it could be because of a relationship it could be substance abuse it could be they just got fired from a job or laid off or or wh whatever their rock bottom is because it's it's different from all of us. Or just being very depressed even though things are going relatively well. We all know folks like that. So first not try to hide it and talk yourself out of it and say, you know what, it's really not that bad. Let it sink in I have no m I'm this up I have no money and I have no job and my wife just left me or whatever it is. My kids gotten in trouble what whatever it is. Don't sugarcoat it absorb it. Embrace it and then embrace what you have to do and not feel sorry because it's not fair that that happened. It's not fair. But it it did happen. So don't try to feel victimized even though you have every right to you have every right to but it doesn't do any good. And then embrace your path forward okay this is where I am this is the situation this is what I'm going to do and then make it joyous. Somehow wow look at all these new opportunities I can find a new you know relationship. That one wasn't working I can find a new job you know what I really didn't like that career anyway. I'm now free from that I've sold my house and my car so I don't have all this high overhead. Wow this is cool I can now start seeing my friends again because I have more time. Whatever it is, accept that reality of where you are and then embrace the many opportunities because we all have opportunities going forward if you just allow yourself to realize them. And again the joyous part is the passion and the hustle. You got to go forward not just dragging your feet I better get a job because I don't have any money. It's like wow what a great opportunity let me find it and I guarantee any of your listeners feeling that way, you're gonna end up in a better place than you were. You will end up in a better just keep being a good person, act ethically, work your butt off and take initiative and then trust it will work out. I promise you every good thing that's happened was preceded by a major setback in my life.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

So I I am proof of that yes you are all right this is Calicat tap. But before we tap out what legacy would you leave behind? What would you leave behind?

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Try to pass on your life lessons to others. We all have an obligation as humans to leave the world in a little better place. And since I have no children unfortunately my vehicle is this book try to impart your lessons and it makes you feel good and it makes others who can learn from it feel good and it'll make you know our humanity a little bit better. So do that as a car. And then where can we find this you can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and it should start being available in bookstores and libraries but Amazon has been the primary um it's only been out about three weeks primary vehicle and I have a website I'm sorry for plugging myself here but it's Don Kerr's author D O N K-U-R-Z author.com and it has a lot more about the book and my background some fun pictures I'm gonna put a disco playlist on there soon and um also has a link to to to buy the book.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Since you said disco playlist what what's your favorite song on that playlist?

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Somebody just asked if something a performer named Candy Stanton Young Hearts Run Free I know you know this song whether you know it by title if I played it you would know it. That's probably my favorite song but there's a lot of really good songs on it song. So people who listened to my music I had a book event and played disco everyone was like you gotta give me this playlist it's the greatest including people who are 23 years old.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Alright this is Kelly Cat Tap Talks and we're gonna tap right out of here would like to thank you very much Don for being on the show and telling us your journey.

SPEAKER_02 51:55

Well thank you for having me it was a lot of fun and and I appreciate your invitation