Strong leadership dedication is one of the main ingredients in achieving a goal. Without it, you can say goodbye to the things you want to gain. However, leadership also has bits of other factors embedded in itself, and an effective leader must understand them to be successful. The Former President of American Agri-Woman, Mitzi Perdue, dissects leadership by looking back on the lives of his father, the President and Co-founder of Sheraton Hotels, and her husband Frank Perdue, the poultry magnate. Together with Dr. Tracey Jones, Mitzi underlines the importance of having the right people to work with regardless of their numbers, the most rewarding physical fitness strategies for leaders, and how to commit to a particular goal despite the grueling tasks involved – all in the name of success.
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Mitzi Perdue – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Mitzi Perdue. She is a businesswoman, author, writer, and master storyteller. She is also the daughter of one business titan of industry and wife of another. Her father was the President and Cofounder of Sheraton Hotels and her husband was the poultry magnate, Frank Perdue. You're going to love what Mitzi has to share about paying the price of leadership.
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My special guest is Mitzi Perdue and I want you to think about that last name. She holds degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University. She’s the past president of the 35,000 members of American Agri-Women and was one of the US delegates to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi. She's writing for the Academy of Women’s Health and GEN, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. Mitzi shares leadership secrets that only a daughter or wife would know. Mitzi, I am excited on many tremendous levels to have you as my guest. Thank you for being my guest.
It's a total tremendous joy to be with you including that I was an admirer of your father.
You got to cross paths with him before. Is that correct?
I'm a member of the National Speakers Association and I can remember back then, one of the first sessions I've ever attended was given by your father. He said something that I've remembered for many years. By the way, the National Speakers Association tells you as a speaker to remember that most people won't remember anything you say a week later. I remember that your father said, “The difference between who you are now and who you will be after five years is the people you meet and the books that you read.” That has been so true that it has guided my life.
That is good also for leaders to read. For most people, it's in one ear and out the other. It's how we are as people. I got connected for our tremendous readers because you're like, “I can't believe Tracey is talking to Mitzi Perdue.” I got connected to you Mitzi through tremendous Mark Victor Hansen. He has every unbelievable advocate and true friend. He's like, “My connections are your connections.” He put me in touch with Mitzi. Mark, thank you for this. People loved his interview.
Mitzi, we're excited to know about your experience, not only as a woman and running a family business, which was near and dear to my heart, but also for carving out your own niche and background, being raised by incredible leaders and entrepreneurs, and what you picked up from them, the people you meet and there are also books. Dad would tell people, “If you haven't had a lot of great people, you can have a lot of great people through books.” Thank you, Mitzi, and thank you for sharing that story about my father. I'm delighted you got to hear him in this realm.
It's got to be close to a miracle that this little brain could retain something for many years. He had to be special for that to work.
I get calls from people in their 90s and stuff saying, “Back 70 years ago, I remember this.” I'm like, “Now that’s somebody who’s making an impact.” We're going to continue talking about his writing. He was known as a keynote, motivator, and enthusiast but also he was quite passionate about leadership. His booklet and his number one speech was called The Price of Leadership. In it, it was pragmatic and poignant but it talked about the hard side of leadership.
Mitzi, he lays out four prices that you have to pay as the leader if you're going to wear the leadership mantle. The first of those he cites is loneliness. We've all heard that. It's lonely at the top and we've all felt that at one time or another. Can you explain to me throughout your career or what you've observed throughout other leaders, what loneliness as a leader means to you where you've experienced it? What woul you like to share with our leaders that are reading that are in the season of loneliness?
It's as real as can be. I can remember in the case of my father. This is a quick little story from my childhood. When I was somewhere around 10 or 11, I was changing schools. My parents were big believers that their kids should go to public schools as well as private schools. I was about to go to the local public school and I couldn't sleep all night because I was worried. What I could think would be, what’s it going to be like to make new friends? My father was a captain of industry but he was also a good daddy. He noticed that I was upset. He said, “What's wrong?” I told him, “I'm afraid that nobody will like me.”
First of all, he was kind. He said, “Don't worry because you're likable. Of course, they're going to like you.” He put anything reaffirming. He said, “Plus, it's perfectly possible to get along without friends.” It's shocking but he said, “In my whole life, I've only had one friend.” Imagine the loneliness of having only had one friend. His friend was his roommate from college who became his partner in cofounding the whole Sheraton Hotel chain so it was a close friendship. What he must have given up in his social life.
On the other hand, I witnessed that he gave it up but he got his social emotional needs met because he was much a family man. He put a tremendous effort into teaching his five kids values. He didn't want us to grow up to be what we used to call kids who suffer rich man’s disease that they're out of touch, can't earn a living, and can't interact with people. He loved nestling in as a father surrounded by five kids who adored him.
There was loneliness at the top but the compensation was that he was fed emotionally by family. I can even talk about Frank Perdue. He was a sociable person, but I, as his wife, got to witness who his close friends were. He had about two. I hope I was his best friend. I'm into helping the guy deal with the loneliness at the top. How about it's a plain fact and you got to deal with it? It's lonely at the top. The number of people who are going to understand you or that you even have time for is limited.
A way of getting around that is I love the idea of mastermind groups. I see that a lot from top people. I also think a way of getting around it is there are organizations. One that comes to mind is the Steering Committee for the Library of Congress, and it costs a fortune to be a member of it. If you're at the top and you join an organization that costs a lot to join, you're going to be able to hang out with peers and make friends. The best cure though is mastermind groups.
That's a beautiful thing in nowaday’s world because there are things you can't share with your family. I know my father, we never saw him disappointed, and he shouldered the burden for what he needed to. He let my mother shoulder the burden for what she needed to. I love that there are mastermind groups now because you need to get counsel. I've been a member of a lot of those and somebody will always ask me, “Tracey, I know who you're pouring into, but who do you get fed from?” As leaders, that's critical.
I love the fact that your father told you one and you saw it from Frank. There's this misperception amongst leaders that you have to be surrounded by all these raving fans. It’s even biblical. Jesus had His twelve, but He had His three that saw Him. I tell people, “If you can even have that one that you know would take a bullet for you, that's what you need.” Of course, your family is such a blessing, too. I love that he poured into you and let you know the reality of if it's only one, it's enough.
At my father's funeral, I had something whooping happened which was his roommate from college who was his business partner until the end of my father's life. I met Uncle Bob at my father's funeral. It slipped as death warmed over you. I'm not terribly observant but even at age 28, I could tell this man was in the less throes of devastation. To human contact and to talk with him a little bit. Sometimes it's helpful to people who are bereaved. I'm bereaved but I could see that he was more shook than me. To help him remember, I asked, “What was it like working with him?” I’m giving him a chance to remember, talk, and reflect. I asked him, “Did you two ever fight because you shared an office and a secretary for 50 years?” He said, “Did we ever fight? It would be no more possible for me to fight with your father than for a left-hand to fight with the right-hand.”
That's a friend.
What if he only had one? They understood each other and they worked together. In fact, I used to ask my father, “Where does Uncle Bob fit in?” He said, “It was perfect.” My father's gifts were being innovative and vision-oriented, and Uncle Bob's great ability was to carry them out. You need both and they had both. They built from one hotel, there were 400 at that time of his death. You don't have that kind of success unless you've got an amazing balance of what's needed.
Leadership Dedication: It's lonely at the top. The number of people who will understand you or that you even have time for is limited.
That synergy brings that exponential growth. For our leaders that are reading, I was in Fortune 100 companies because I thought bigger was better. In 2008, I went to a small second-generation company and there are times when it's just been me and one other person. There's this thing of, “I have to have 15 or 50.” Not necessarily. You need that one right person with you and the sky is the limit. You can make anything happen. I remember even in some of my doctoral leadership classes, they told me, “The sweet spot is 2 to 4.” It took the pressure off me because I thought as a leader, I need to have this cadre of staff officers around me. You might do or you don't. It depends. It's interesting that you said that. Thank you for sharing that.
This is a somewhat different story that it has to do with Frank Perdue. At the time of Frank’s staff employed 20,000 people. When I first met him, he’d employed 16,000. There was a man with whom he argued constantly who worked for the company. He started out way low down in the company. He was something called a serviceman. A serviceman isn't military. If you're growing chickens, you're going to want to have somebody who's the equivalent of a veterinarian, calling your farm every few days to check that everything is going right or you've got questions.
The serviceman will have a route and he'll go visit in the course of a week 60 farmers or growers. Don may have started out as a serviceman, but he eventually became head of the whole company. Frank appointed him head of the whole company. Interestingly, their entire relationship from Don Mabe being at one of the lowest ranks to the highest, they’re always arguing. I'll describe a case where I know they quarreled. It was a sales meeting and there were eight people around the table. Don Mabe was at one end and Frank was at another.
All morning, they've been feuding. It’s someone you’d described as being like cats and dogs. Finally, at one moment, Don Mabe ripped off his glasses and threw them down on the conference table. They bounce once and hit Frank square in the chest. As that's going on, Don Mabe is telling Frank, “Why don't you take up hang gliding?” It is a hostile thing to say because you get killed real easy that way. You would think that that standing up to the guy whose name is on your paycheck would not be a good career move. Frank valued it.
He had no use for yes-man and the person who believed strongly in what he stood for enough to challenge the boss himself, Frank treasure that. When there were promotions to be made, Don Mabe got them. Uncle Bob and my father never fought. Don Mabe and Frank fought constantly as far as I can tell. In both cases, it worked. The proof is in the pudding. In both cases, the relationships were productive and long-lasting.
Don may have in him what Frank as a leader was looking for and Frank had what this follower is looking for. The same with your father and his business partner.
It's amazing that the dynamic is opposite and yet ends up in the same place which is productive. There's a PS to that story. I wasn't there but I heard it described by a salesman who was there. The salesman who was there didn't know what I know. Frank Perdue, Don Mabe, Flo Mabe, and I had dinner that night and they were laughing their heads over taking up hang gliding. Frank didn't hold a grudge.
Neither did Don Mabe. That's what I love about it because a lot of times, there's a conflict between the boss and the team members, and then it festers and you start drawing more apart. That's not a healthy conflict. I love spirited board meetings because we ought to be calling each other, “What did you say?” It’s like parliament. In the end, we need to all walk away and be able to put that aside. That's the key. I know some people like the contentiousness and then it breeds that disengagement and that hostility.
For leaders, there's a big difference between that. Somebody can quote, “Bust your chops, and then you come together at the enemy.” That's how we did in the military. We call each other every name in the book. We'd go out and we'd fight together but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about there's a difference and leaders know it because they can feel that somebody is working, not to give you feedback and build you up, but to take you down.
All the difference in the world. In the case of Don Mabe, what I know Frank respected going on was if you're a yes-man, you're not respecting the leader. How about you're more interested in your career than the good of the company? Don Mabe loved the company and Frank realized that.
I got my PhD in Leadership, and one of the things we dug into is I don't care about leadership. I want to know about the followers that make the leader and the leader that they're meant to be. One of the things is critical thinking, not critical spirit. If you have followers that are all-in, they're going to warn you, challenge you, check you, exhort you, and respect you, but they're going to let you know everything they see at their level because they are in it with you as the leader. That makes all the difference in the world.
The example of Uncle Bob saying that I could do more quarrel with Ernest than I could with my right-hand versus the left-hand. What do you make of that? Frank and I rarely quarreled. I could say about Frank that the left-hand quarrel with the right-hand because he was understanding and fair that there was almost no point in arguing with him. He’s somebody who understands. It doesn't mean I always got my way but when you feel completely listened to and understood, it's not necessary to fight.
That's why a marriage born out of best friends means regardless of the conflict, you'll always go back to being cohorts and best friends to resolve issues versus arguing.
I always thought my role was to be a force multiplier that we shared goals that I hope will be useful.
That was loneliness. The next price that my father talked about is weariness. He would always say, “Tracey, if you're going to be doing anything worthwhile, you're always going to have people that are doing more than their share and ones that aren't. You got to learn to shoulder the load and you got to stay replenished.” You brought up his quote about he stayed replenished through hanging around great people and reading tremendous books. Mitzi, how do you stay charged up, refreshed, and replenished? How do you keep from getting world-weary and rundown?
I will come in first of the two men that we've been talking about and then I'll switch over to me. Both of them were tremendous believers in physical fitness. My father was born in 1897. By the time he was in his prime, we didn't have the awareness of physical fitness the way we do now. Everybody talks about it. He had to be farsighted. He used to amaze me. Where we lived and where he worked was a good 40 minutes brisk walk. He could have had a chauffeur drive him but he always walks there and back because he wanted to exercise. He would drink a glass of wine at a meal but that was it. He was totally against smoking and he is into maintaining his weight. The purpose of all of this was to be at your fighting peak at your best.
Frank Perdue was dedicated to physical fitness. I'm not sure that I even agree with this but I'll describe it. I'm a big believer that you should get 7 or 8 hours of sleep but he was fine with four hours. Say, there's a plane to catch and if he didn't cut back by twenty minutes of sleep, he wouldn't get any exercise that day, he might get 3.5 hours of sleep, but he would be on the treadmill working hard. He was careful about what he ate and alcohol consumption like my father. I'd say they're rather parallel. By the way, I'm not recommending anybody four-hour sleep but it did seem to work for him.
It worked for my dad. People would call and he'd pick up the phone at 4:00 in the morning. They're like, “What?” from all over the world. I'm like you. I'm an eight-hour night girl. I love my eight hours, but he truly could do and optimal at four.
You know that I have a background of writing on genetics so we have to accept that we're wired differently. Frank didn't skip. He didn't sleep in. He made sure that he got his exercise every single day. He's disciplined about it and the purpose was he’d be at fit form.
Mitzi, almost every leader that we've had on has said they're in bed by 9:30 and they're up at 4:30. They’re either working out, praying, meditating, thinking, setting out the day, or whatever. They get their seven hours but they are up early and they are incredibly disciplined about it.
Leadership Dedication: The best cure for leadership loneliness is joining mastermind groups.
Either discipline or conscientious, both men were the same. They didn't slack off as far as things that would keep them at their physical best.
How about you? What are your tips for staying vibrant and in the game, leading people forward, and doing all the things that you do?
I'm old and proud of it but I share their view. I want my 7 or 8 hours. I enjoy adult beverages as much as anybody but I make a sincere effort not to have more than a glass in a day, which is something of a sacrifice. I like it and I'm much more sociable. One of the things that I'm doing during the COVID-19 pandemic is I have virtual dates. I have happy hours with all sorts of people and I love it. That's not on physical fitness. You're having me as a health writer and I'm not out to prescribe for anybody, but I will say what authorities tell me. We all know this and I don't think anybody's going to quarrel about this.
The pandemic is stressful whether it's financial, relationship, job, or career. One way or another, it's high levels of stress which means that you are being bathed in the stress chemicals. Nature didn't design us to be under long unalleviated stress. Stress is wonderful if you have to run away from a lion chasing after you in the savanna or something. I don't think nature intended us to be under extreme stress for months at a time. The advice that I would give to everybody is it’s essential to give yourself respite and this is the thing that I give in the book that I wrote with Mark Victor Hansen. You need time to have those stress chemicals not coursing through you and wearing you down.
I can't know what will provide respite for you but I'll define what we're after. We're after some activity that you can do where you're not thinking, “I can't pay my rent,” “I'm going to lose my job,” or, “My boyfriend or my girlfriend is going to get tired of me,” or whatever. A big one is I've got four kids at home and they're driving me nuts. I’ve got to homeschool them on top of my job. The point of all that is you don't get through this without stress. I'll tell you what works for me. When you're not thinking of the worries, they are eating you alive. Make those stress hormones go away and give you respite. I like watching on YouTube animals being rescued like baby fawns that find their mothers.
By the way, there are a zillion animal things that you can watch on YouTube. When I'm watching a baby fawn that's been rescued from a ditch or something and it gets up, it finds its mother and starts to nurse, I'm not feeling stressed. Other people tell me that watching James Bond movies, playing the violin, puzzle, running, or whatever, It's almost a matter of life and death that you give yourself at least an hour of respite. I'm not going to call it escapism because it's not. It's medically necessary. That is the thing that I work hard at myself to make sure that during stressful times, there's some time when I'm not thinking about it.
You have to unplug and recharge daily. We're not machines. Even machines need to be plugged in for updates. I love the respite word. That's a beautiful word.
Especially if you're caring for somebody else. I have a niece who runs a nursing home. There are lots of medical people who will agree with her but I will tell it from her point of view. She says that people who are long-term caregivers for terminal people, 1/3 of them are going to die before the people they're taking care of because they don't get respite. The stress is going to wreck their immune system, and it's dangerous not to have respite.
What they say is, “Don't let your body catch a disease of the mind.” The long-term effects of stress are one of the biggest drivers of the out-of-sight healthcare stuff and the bad habits that are associated with non-productive ways of dealing with stress like overeating, smoking, and drugs. No matter what our vision is, we still have to take care of this mortal coil.
Tell me some of the things that you would use to unplug. What way would you do it? I've told you that I love watching happy animal rescues.
If I'm learning or researching, that's when I'm most alive but I work out. My husband put on a home gym. I get my best creative ideas at home gym. I also Sabbath one day a week where I check out of everything. That's important. If God rested, we need to rest too. I say no and it's tough because it's Sunday. If it's a teacher or preacher, I've got twenty pages of notes. You listen and you can write your twenty blogs as a result of what you heard after. I don't get on social media and I don't even check the phone. Mitzi, I make sure everything that was supposed to get done on Sunday gets done in the other six days. You prioritize your week according to it. How can you go into Monday if you're spun out and strung out from the weekend of stressing and all this stuff?
My thing is getting great books, taking time to pray, and get in the word. Listen to God because He has the answers. I can only figure out one of them but He knows all of them. It’s being quiet. I tell people, “I don’t only pray for success. I pray for wisdom because with wisdom comes peace.” Even from your husband and your father, no matter what else who disagrees, or how bleak stuff looks, when you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, then you got that peace. For leadership, give me peace because you don't know how so much of the rest of it is going to turn out. Give me one person to fight the battles with me and give me clarity so I can have peace. Peace is a huge thing.
It's healthy. I'm going to define peace, and I'm making this up as we go along, but it seems to be right. Peace has a lot to do with not having cortisol and adrenaline rushing through you.
You got the good things, the endorphins. There was a chemical thing. People ask about my dad, “How does he always stay like that?” I'm like, “He's always like that because he's always infusing himself with positive thoughts, people, input, and books. Therefore, his brain has rewired itself to have tremendous positive dopamine and endorphins coursing through 24/7.” That's who he was and he had to be this efficacious personality because then, you’ve got to vent that positivity and you got to pour out to other people. You know as well as I do, there's a real science to it. It's not a Pollyanna trick of the mind. I've heard this, “Fake it until you make it.” I don't want to fake it. I want to feel it.
I believe it. I am a positive person. That's me.
I can tell that and people can tell that too. There are days when I'll get up and act tremendously when I don't feel it because your feelings catch up with your actions. It’s such a beautiful thing.
I have a deep belief that how you dress, how you do your hair and makeup, for guys, how you shave or whatever it is, there's a huge relationship between the outside and the inside. If the outside is a mess, that's going to affect the inside. I'll tell you something I've done through the entire pandemic, even though I've been sheltering in place. I still dress every day as attractively as I can. I put on my makeup and I do my hair because that gives me energy. It's like a self-respect thing.
They even said that in Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The prisoner of war, people that were in the Holocaust, even if they didn't have toothpaste or clean water, going through the motion of doing a semblance of taking care of yourself did incredible things for the world to live and survive, and reminding yourself what it means to be a human. There's an awful lot to be said for that. It still show up, even if you're not there.
In my life, I have logged in many hours of working and volunteering in nursing homes and also for hospice. I got to observe something that lots of people know but I find it fascinating. I'm not one of what I'm about to describe, but the volunteers will go into nursing homes and do the residents' hair and makeup. I as a volunteer who is talking to them before and after get to see that the difference is staggering. It makes me the deepest believer in the world that the outside and the inside are incredibly closely related.
My mother-in-law turned 101. They did her hair up and I'm like, “Monica, you look beautiful.” She can tell. She's like, “My hair.” When it's done, she's like, “Look at this,” and I'm like, “Absolutely.” That's beautiful. Mitzi, we talked about loneliness and weariness. The next price my father talks about is abandonment. Typically, it's a fear of abandonment. My father talked about, “To be a leader, you have to abandon what you like and want to think about or do in favor of what you ought and need to think about and do.” You are with some men that were leaders in their ability to abandon everything to focus on the one compelling vision. Can you share with me some stories about how you witnessed that or how you get clarity for yourself and your accomplishments?
Leadership Dedication: All you have to do is be yourself, but it takes extraordinary practice and skill to let the real you shine through.
In a way, I was saying about both men having either 1 or 2 friends only, that's an example of it. They weren't social butterflies who would go out to the bars drinking. I used to think that in the case of both men, they value every minute so much that they weren't going to squander it on things that took them away from their goals.
My father would say that's the truest definition. He would say that we do more in our day to guarantee our failure than we do our success. It’s like what you're talking about. Not having a sense of urgency that every second and every word counts. Every minute is an investment in their future so you want to spend it wisely.
I'll tell you something. This is personal. I shouldn't say it but I've got everybody's attention. I'll tell you the extent to which I value every second. I'm always looking for ways of getting more done in a day. My big cause is human trafficking, and we can get into that if you want.
I'd love to. I want to know more about that.
On abandonment, we've talked about abandoning comfort. I take a shower every morning when I wake up. I spend 50 seconds waiting for the shower to warm up. I've discovered I can say 50 seconds of my life by getting into the cold shower. That's good for a person to have thermal resilience. It's actively good for me but it does save me 50 seconds because I can lather up and then by the time it's warm, it can wash off. Let's assume it's a minute a day, 365 a year. I think it counts.
I love that, Mitzi. That’s conscientiousness that this could be your last day so you want to finish that race strong. We take time for self-care, respite, and stuff like that. I often tell people, “What if you were a lawyer and you build every moment of your day? At the end of the day, where would you have spent the majority of your time?” Lawyers believe, “I did this many hours of this.” We'd be surprised that are we as productive as we like to think that we are?
That makes me think of something that I once heard Frank's greatest rival. They were total frenemies and that's Don Tyson. They liked each other and they were rivals on the titanic scale. Even so, we used to spend a week with him in England every year. I'm interested in leadership and I'm a writer by trade. This is heaven listening to these two brilliant men talk. One of the things I remember from Don Tyson was he was saying, “I don't have time to have a bad time. I can't fit it in in my schedule.” I thought it was worth memorizing.
It’s also like, “I don't have time to have a bad conversation or a non-value-added conversation. I don't have time to fit it into my schedule.” Anybody that's had the blessing or the privilege of working alongside great leaders to understand how they drill it down, dial it in, and then drive it forward. That hyperfocus is one of the key traits of leadership because not everybody sees it. They're like, “What?” They can see the end before we do.
I remember when Frank got into advertising because he was famous for a number of things, but among them, he was the first person who ever advertised a commodity. We're talking about 1968. It was the received wisdom in the whole advertising world that you don't advertise a commodity because if you advertise chickens, you might be helping the whole industry. As far as you benefiting, it's money down the drain. Frank was certain that the received wisdom was wrong.
Here's a case of abandoning something for a bigger goal. He told me that he took off ten whole weeks for running his company. He moved to New York, spent ten weeks in total immersion, and self-taught course of learning about advertising. He joined the American Association of Manufacturers. I’m not sure of the name, but they had a huge library. He'd read every book that he could in advertising and then he'd read the magazines. He would call up the professors who had written the articles and pick their brains still further.
Since he was going against the received wisdom of the world, he visited every butcher shop in New York. He made a grid of the radio, television, newspaper stations, or offices and talked with the sales manager of every single one. In the end, he had hundreds of notes of what it takes to be a good advertiser. To pick the advertising agency and their records of this, he interviewed 66 advertising agencies before selecting the best.
His success meant total immersion, total abandonment of everything else going on in his life, and total extreme focus so that in the end, he knew more about advertising than any poultry person had ever known before. The result of it was Perdue Farms started. There were 5,000 growers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia of which he was one. At the time of his passing, he was in the top three poultry companies in the country and advertising had an awful lot to do with it. He had the vision, which I know is one of your father's big leadership. Can we segue into vision then?
Please, I would love to know that.
He had a vision that he wanted to have the best poultry products but if you're going to have the best, you have to improve the feed, genetics, and give them more space. There's so much that goes into producing a meteor better bird and that's expensive. His vision was that he felt that if he was going to have the best, he had to let the consumers know why this is better and why it's worth it. Why are you getting your money's worth to pay a premium? He figured out where he wanted to be. To get there, he had to communicate with the non-farm public about why this is a superior product.
He followed the logic. That means advertising. Another thing, he didn't want to be in the ads or whatsoever. He was at heart a shy man. He’d never been in a school play. He was arguing with everybody like the advertising agency about what the script would be and so forth. The conclusion that the advertising company came to was commodities aren't advertised and anybody else can copy whatever you say. The guy, Ed McCabe who was the copywriter said, “Mr. Perdue, there's one thing that your competitors can't copy. You look like a chicken. You squawk like a chicken. You relate closely to the product that nobody can copy. You have to be in it.”
Frank said, “I hate the idea of being on camera.” He spent months learning how to perform and how to be an actor. They say all you have to do is be yourself but it takes extraordinary practice and skill to let the real you shine through because otherwise, you're stilted and awkward. To be yourself takes more effort than you would expect. He became an utterly Olympic-level genius having the real Frank come through but that takes more effort than you think.
Thank you for sharing that. Some people think, “My vision is I go up to the mountaintop and it comes down.” You’ve got to work vision out. He knew what he needed to do. He got clarity on it, drilled down, and did the research. When he knew exactly what he wanted to do, he interviewed 66 advertising companies so he knew exactly what he was looking for to execute his vision. Those leaders out there, we've all made poor advertising decisions or marketing decisions where we haven't done our homework enough. The money is poof and nothing to show. I love that story.
He was head of the Fortune 500 company. He didn't delegate it. He realized, “This was important. If I get this right, the company is going to do well. If I get it wrong, it's money down the drain.”
For our leaders out there too, sometimes we're like, “Don't be doing that. You need to work on the business side of the business.” I love that you said that, Mitzi because that's one of the things after being back here many years, I'm coming to the thing. I need to research this. I need to do homework. This is not something I can delegate or outsource. I need to know how to let the consumer know why this leadership podcast and content is better than what else is out there. I'm glad you brought that up.
By the way, I'm totally in favor of delegating most things but this is something that the company rises or dies depending on whether you got it right or not.
How to be UP in Down Times: 40 Tips
In advertising and marketing, if you don't watch it, it's money coming off your bottom line that never comes back. It's how you grow. It's not a side thing that you have to have. I love that he was hands-on about that, intentional about where to put his investment, and what the message needed to be.
Can you imagine ten weeks of calling on every butcher and every sales manager? There was so much vision involved in that because he knew where he wanted to be and he knew the steps to get there.
Sometimes we get the vision and we're like, “Ready, set, go.” He did the preparation and he set the framework. Knowing where you want to go, you’ve still got to flesh out what's to come because otherwise, everybody's like, “I'm not in your head, leader. I don't know what you're talking about.” I love that he took the time, rolled up his sleeves, and did the work.
He’s certainly the smartest person I'll ever be near.
Mitzi, we talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Anything else that we haven't hit on that you would like to share with our readers on leadership that you would like to leave them with to unpack or chew on?
This has to do with Mark Victor Hansen. We wrote a book together, How to be UP in Down Times. He's one of the most inspirational people on the planet and he sold 500 million books. I've been a science and health writer for almost all my adult life. In the course of that time, I've interviewed some brilliant people who know an awful lot that's not generally known by the public. These are 40 tips that come from Mark and me and also the step-son. It's inexpensive. It's $4.58 on Amazon and it's a $20 book.
We began writing it at the beginning of February of 2020 because we knew that the kind of stress people was going to be up against during COVID-19 that we wanted to help. The price is low so people can afford it. An inside story about Mark Victor Hansen. I've been talking about Frank Perdue and Ernest Henderson but let's bring Mark into this. Mark taught me something that I found amazing. He told me in a phone call, “Mitzi, I know that you like to do Photoshop. I would like you to write across the top of the book, ‘More than one million copies sold.’” I said, “Mark, that sounds like false advertising.”
He said, “No, that's not the point. We're not going to put it on the cover of the real book. I want you to print out five copies of it and I want you to put one in your bathroom mirror, kitchen, stairwell, and office.” The idea is to visualize selling a million copies and he said, “A couple of things are going to happen. When you visualize it, it will occur to you ways to get there.” That's true. It's the Law of Attraction. Shortly after I printed these things out, I got an email from a woman who I don't know in Taiwan telling me that she had already ordered 200 books and wanted to explore what discount there would be for 1,000 because she thought it was what people needed during this time of stress and downtimes. Would she have written to me if I hadn’t put the sold one million copies thing?
You hit the nail on the head because people are like, “The Law of Attraction won.” It's that creative spark. It works the ways to get there. We still have to have the creative momentum. You're not going to sell a million books by wishing it so, but by putting it in your mind, it's already in there. You don't sell a million books. People do it. You just don't know how to get there, but by writing it down, that starts your mind in the back of your subconscious gone, “How are we going to do it?” I love how you said that.
It was an exciting thing to learn.
I'm an operations person. I don't write a lot of stuff down. I just do it. I have been more convinced in my years of research and doing the podcast that you got to write it down. The importance that I'm like, “I don't need to write it down. I know what I'm doing.” Putting that there, seeing it, that's your goal, dreaming it, and letting it start mulling over in your subconscious.
By the way, they can get five chapters free if they go to AuntMitzi.com.
Mitzi, we're going to have how they get ahold of you. We're going to have the book and all that stuff. What's the best way to connect with you?
Write to me at Mitzi@AuntMitzi.com. I spend a lot of time answering emails because I enjoy connecting. To me, one of the greatest pleasures in life is communicating.
That's why we're put on this planet. We're not meant to go in it alone, more so with COVID. Mitzi, I want to thank you for what you've shared and what you've taught me. I know our leaders are going to be excited and energized about this. For our leaders out there, if you liked it, please do us the honor of a review, share it, and hit the subscribe button. Reach out to Mitzi and reach out to Tremendous Leadership. I answer all the comments on the YouTube channel about what you heard or thought as a result of something you heard. We both hope that you were tremendously inspired and blessed as a result of this interview. Mitzi, thank you for joining us.
It's been a tremendous pleasure.
I hope that we are connected in the years to come because you have been quite the inspiration to me and I'm honored to have you part of our tremendous tribe.
I'm honored to be part of it especially since I admired your father so much.
It's beautiful now that the leadership mantle is on you and passing it off that I'm finally stepping up to the plate. I thank you for being there to guide the way for many. I’m looking forward to more of this.
Thank you.
To our tremendous readers, have a tremendous day, and remember, you're going to be the same person after five years from now except for two things including me and the books you read. We got a tremendous one for you to read. Thanks for reading, everybody. Take care.
Important Links:
Mark Victor Hansen – previous episode
YouTube channel - Tremendous Leadership
About Mitzi Perdue
Mitzi Perdue has a novel way of raising funds for fighting human trafficking. She enables wealthy donors to convert high-end jewelry or works of art into cash that they can donate to the anti-trafficking organization of their choice. She’s doing this through an auction where the auction house has agreed not to charge a commission!
The organization that is doing this is Win This Fight (WTF), And yes, we do know what these initials commonly refer to! (But you’ll remember this, right?)
WTF enables wealthy individuals to auction high-value property (jewelry, works of art, historical items, airplanes etc), and the proceeds from the sale goes to the anti-trafficking organization that the donor chooses. The auction will take place in January of 2021, and the New York auction house that is doing this has agreed to forego the seller’s commission.
If, to take a real example, a man has a million-dollar diamond and sapphire necklace, and wants to support his favorite anti-trafficking organization, he could turn it into cash by going through a jewelry broker. Typically, he’d have to pay a 40% commission. If he went to a regular auction house, he’d have to pay a 20% commission. The Win This Fight auction involves no seller’s commission and his charity would receive the full $1,000,000.
Mitzi is looking for volunteers for this effort. Come join the nearly 500 volunteers who are working on this now! Mitzi and the others at WTF will do everything they can to match your skills, strengths, passions, and time-availability to the work that’s needed.
If you join, you’ll meet inspiring and energizing people, you’re likely to be invited to exciting events, and most of all, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re part of a global effort to combat one of the worst scourges that affects humanity: human slavery.
As a nationally syndicated columnist, Mitzi has written more than 1600 articles, and as a nationally syndicated TV hostess and producer, she produced more than 400 half-hour shows. In 2018-2019, she had 85 articles published on business and family.