September 11, 2026 – 42 Dealerships Rick Ford and Grateful Leadership TJ Sweet

00:04 INTRO 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion, Jim Beach.

00:20 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. We yet again have another incredible show for you. Another incredible duo of entrepreneurs who are just making a difference in the world. And I hope that you can spend some time learning from them. We spent some time finding these people and bringing you these great interviews so that you can learn. Every one of them is a unique piece in the mosaic that we have created with some 6000 interviews.

01:04 JIM BEACH: You want to know about blank, go to the index at our website, and you will find about that. It is a great site with a lot of resources. And we’re adding 2 just amazing stories today. First, we have Rick Ford. He owned 42, I think, is the number car dealerships. You don’t get really more impressive than that. He has built a new, has written a new book about it. The Growth Capital Playbook.

01:42 JIM BEACH: It is a fantastic story, and you’re going to really enjoy Rick and finding out how many cars he personally has. Then we have TJ Sweet with us. He has written a book on gratitude, and I am very grateful that he is with us. It is an incredible story about how important gratitude is in our lives. If you want to become happier, get more gratitude. Anyway, TJ is awesome, and he will be with us in just a 2nd as well. Great show.

02:25 JIM BEACH: Thanks for being with us.

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02:59 JIM BEACH: We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce my next guest and incredible entrepreneur. Please welcome Rick Ford to the show. In about 2014, He started a company in the automobile industry and grew it to 3.5 billion dollars in just 7 or 8 years under his leadership. It was sold, which was one of the largest automobile retail acquisitions at that time.

03:23 JIM BEACH: Since then, he’s been very active in venture investing, angel investing, and most importantly, has written a new book called The Growth Capital Playbook: How Smart Founders Find the Right Partner, Scale Fast, and Build What Lasts. Rick Ford, welcome to the show. How you doing, sir?

03:39 RICK FORD: Well, great. Thank you for having me, Jim. I appreciate it.

03:43 JIM BEACH: Congratulations on the book. Five-star rated on the Amazon place. Why’d you decide to write the book? What was your personal goal from writing this book, Rick?

03:52 RICK FORD: Well, you know, Jim, my philosophy is, I’ve had so many mentors who have helped me along the way, helped me to achieve what looks to be an overnight success, but many people never realized that I worked for several years to try to find the right capital partner before we had the story of RFJ. And so I felt like it was my duty. I talk about it in my book. One of my great mentors and dearest friends today always told me, ‘Rick,

04:20 RICK FORD: I don’t want anything back. I don’t want you to do anything for me. I just want you to give back to others and help others the way that I’ve helped you along the way. And so this is part of my way of trying to give back.

04:37 RICK FORD: And also at the same time, to try to give my children and, more importantly, my grandchildren, a better understanding of what I did and how I got to where we are today, because now they’re growing up and they see me as a grandfather and I’m semi-retired and successful and I have a lot more free time than I ever had when their parents were young.

04:58 RICK FORD: I want them to understand that it wasn’t always this way, that it was a whole lot of hard work and a lot of time, and I just wanted them to know the whole story rather than sit down and listen to their grandfather tell stories about the old days.

05:15 JIM BEACH: Excellent. I love that motivation and congratulations on getting it done. What are 2 or 3 of the lessons you want us to learn from the book or that you want to share with your grandchildren about business and life? What’s one of the things that comes to mind?

05:31 RICK FORD: Well, you know, the theme of the book is really about finding the right growth-capital partner, and the fact that outside capital is not a negative or a bad thing. There’s so much perception out there that private equity is a negative, or that they’re a bunch of sharks circling in the water and they’re just going to pick your bones clean, leave the company nothing but bones, and sell off the pieces. That couldn’t be any further from the truth.

05:58 RICK FORD: And so part of my motivation was to to kind of, you know, to open that window and let people really understand that private equity or growth capital, whether it be private equity, venture capital, you know, the family offices. There’s so many other forms of outside capital today. But to really kind of make that something where the average business owner can understand, it can be a really useful positive thing. in their business growth cycle.

06:25 RICK FORD: And so that was one of the things I wanted to do and really tried to accomplish with the book. But at the same time telling, you know, the story for entrepreneurs that you don’t have to start off and I talk about this in my book. You don’t have to start off with a platinum spoon in your mouth. Uh, and the reality is, in my particular scenario, I started out with a wooden spoon and it had a whole lot of splinters.

06:53 RICK FORD: And so I had to really, you know, that’s, and that’s really what I tell people all the time is, you know, how did, how did you start? I was I was the poorest kid in a poor town. And so I started with less than nothing and was just motivated to work hard, had a lot of people along the way that were willing to to teach me and to show me and to give me an opportunity.

07:18 RICK FORD: But ultimately, it was, it was up to me to say, am I going to put in the time, the effort. You know, the work that it takes to be successful, is I wanted others to be able to see that you can do that. And I used to do this when RFJ was growing and I was building RFJ.

07:36 JIM BEACH: What did it… Sorry to interrupt. What did that company actually sell? Manufacturer?

07:41 RICK FORD: So we were a new vehicle franchise dealer. We had 42 franchise dealerships spread around the country. So we had Ford, General Motors, all the GMs brands, you know, Chevrolet Cadillac, Buick, GMC. We had all the Stellantis brands: Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram. But we also had the imports, big, big Toyota. I was a huge partner with Toyota, loved Toyota, Toyota and Lexus both. We had Honda, we had Nissan. We had Hyundai, Kia.

08:07 RICK FORD: So we were literally, you know, almost all the brands, Maserati, you know, some other brands, et cetera. We focused on what I call the value and volume brands. We never really ventured into Mercedes or BMW or even the exotics, you know, Porsche and so on and so forth. We were really trying to be a dealer that focused on the working man. And we did so in a smaller what we call tier 2 markets.

08:33 RICK FORD: Meaning that we were on the outside of the big major metroplex. So we weren’t in LA as an example or in Dallas proper or even Fort Worth proper. We were in the surrounding areas. And what we tried to do was give a compelling reason for a customer who lived in a major metro area to make that drive out to see us. So that might be 30 minutes an hour.

08:56 RICK FORD: Or in some cases, we owned one store which was the largest Chrysler-Dodge, the largest Stellantis dealer, 10 out of the 12 years I owned it. And they were in a very small town that was an hour away from the next closest town, which is Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. They were an hour away from Coeur d’Alene, which was only a population of 30 or 40,000 people. Our population, our little town was 2000.

09:21 RICK FORD: And we were selling about 10 to 12,000 new vehicles a year under that little town of 2000 people. So what we tried to do was give people a compelling reason to come see us in Kellogg. It was worth making that trip to come see us in one of our dealerships. Um, and I’d love to tell this story whenever I purchased a dealership in Idaho. Most people have heard of it, it’s called Dave Smith Motors.

09:47 RICK FORD: Largest Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealer in the world for many, many, many years. When we purchased that dealership, one of the things we would always do is go in and do a physical inventory. So we’d have to touch every car that we were buying. We actually would physically buy all the inventory from the deal. Well, at the time that we went in there to do that deal.

10:09 RICK FORD: They had over 4,000 new vehicles in stock and another four or five hundred used vehicles in inventory on the ground. And the funny part was they had a population. I’ll never forget this, driving into their little town, seeing the population sign, you know, like little towns have: ‘Welcome to…’ Welcome to and the name of the little town. And population 2138.

10:30 JIM BEACH: And they had quite so many cars on the lot right then?

10:35 RICK FORD: That’s right. We have more than 2 times the number of cars for every person that lived in that town, man, woman, and child. And the name of the town was Kellogg, Idaho, you ever want to go and look up the population. But that was the type of business that we were. We tried to make sure that we provided a compelling reason for customers to come to us and we provided them great value, whatever.

11:00 RICK FORD: And then it ultimately became, so we might earn their business with a great value when they bought a car from us. But the way we kept their business, was making sure we provided service during and after the sale. And that was how we really built our business. So we sold the business in December of 21, by the way, to answer your questions specifically.

11:23 JIM BEACH: Did you have a dealership, a Rick Ford named dealership in the Atlanta market?

11:27 RICK FORD: We did not. I never put my name on any of the dealerships.

11:32 JIM BEACH: Really?

11:32 RICK FORD: [Unclear phrase in audio/raw transcript.]

11:33 JIM BEACH: Maybe that’s one of those Mandela effect things, but I would have sworn that there was a Rick Ford dealership. Uh in Gwinnett north of Atlanta.

11:41 RICK FORD: There had been another gentleman asked me the same thing. I did an interview with a newspaper in Detroit. And obviously the Ford name is, you know, well populated in Detroit. And there was another Rick Ford in overdeership in Detroit. But neither of those were me.

11:58 JIM BEACH: Do you know what the Mandela effect is, Rick?

12:00 RICK FORD: I’ve heard that before, but I don’t know that I could speak to it.

12:06 JIM BEACH: It’s this idea that there’s an alternative timeline and that a whole bunch of people, millions of people, remember Froot Loops being spelled one way and a bunch of people remember it another way. And the biggest one is the cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom underwear. Is there a cornucopia in the fruit of the loom logo, Rick?

12:26 RICK FORD: Ooh, I remember the, I remember the logo, right? And the T-shirts. I do. Sure. I remember the fruit basket in there.

12:33 JIM BEACH: Okay, remember the commercial where they would talk to you? That didn’t happen, Rick. There was no fruit basket. That’s the Mandela effect. Things that millions of people remember that didn’t happen, and all of us remember it the same way. Here’s another one. Like, you remember Moonraker, the Jaws James Bond movie, Moonraker? Remember the character, the huge character, Jaws that had metal for his teeth?

12:55 RICK FORD: I do remember that, sure.

12:58 JIM BEACH: Do you remember that in the Moonraker movie? He found a little girlfriend, a tiny little girl, a little blonde girl, and he saved her life. Did she have braces or not? That’s another one of the Mandela effects. Half of America will swear to God she did. The other half of America swears that she didn’t.

13:17 RICK FORD: I’m pretty sure she did have braces, didn’t she?

13:20 JIM BEACH: She did not. She did not. This is so you and I are on the same alternate time zone. Anyway, Rick, I thought you had a deal or something. Go back to you, though. Here’s what I have a problem with, Rick. You found the right partners to raise your money, and I’d love to ask you, how do you do that? What’s the difference?

13:41 JIM BEACH: So many of us, me included, had such a bad experience with venture capital, whatever angel, however you private equity, whatever form you want to put it in, that that’s why the stereotype exist. You’re fighting the stereotype because there’s a stereotype because there’s enough of us that have had a bad experience that the stereotype exists. You see what I mean?

14:02 RICK FORD: I do, and the reality of it is, though, a lot of it is people hear stories, like the Mandela effect, of people that had a bad experience. If you really drill down into it, they’re very few out there that truly had bad experiences.

14:17 RICK FORD: It’s not nearly as prevalent as you might think when you consider the thousands of private equity and outside-capital deals that are done every single year, whether it be private equity, venture capital, family offices, and so forth. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of deals done every year that nobody ever hears about. Like most things, all we ever hear about is that one or 2 deals that go really, really bad.

14:42 JIM BEACH: How did you find, quote unquote, the right money? And it’s even in your book, you have the right word right in quotes, chapter 4. What is the right money? What does that mean?

14:53 RICK FORD: The reality is the right money is not the same thing for everybody. And I talked about this in the book. First and foremost. You have to identify what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

15:05 RICK FORD: And I often talk about it in my book, and I talk about it to everybody that ever comes to me about wanting to raise capital: you have to approach raising capital and bringing on a partner just like you would if you were going to take on a life partner. Because it truly becomes a marriage. It becomes something where you’re melded together and you have, there’s never going to be a day where everybody agrees on the exact same approach every single day.

15:34 RICK FORD: It just doesn’t happen. There’s always going to be things that you might agree or disagree on, the direction, agree or disagree on certain things, certain decisions, and learning to be able to work with that partner, and learning how to communicate with that partner. That was the number one thing that I found was communication. But learning how to communicate, learning how to work together.

15:55 RICK FORD: And the most important thing, when I talk about the right partner, is doing your diligence on the front end to make sure that you really get to know who that partner is, that what their objectives are, to make sure their objectives meet, your objectives, make sure their timelines meet your timelines. Those are the things that we never think about. I talk about it a lot in my book. Oftentimes whenever someone goes out and says, ‘I want to go raise capital.’

16:24 RICK FORD: I want to find a capital partner. All they think about is the size of the check that’s written. They don’t think about who’s behind that check. What will they do? What will they bring to the business other than money? My partners used to tell me all the time. Capital is the easy part. There is an abundance of capital. One part even told me one time, he said, Rick, you know, cash is fungible. Meaning that cash is interchangeable.

16:51 RICK FORD: That’s the easy part, finding capital is not hard, finding the right fit in the right partner. That’s the hard part. And that’s really what I’m talking about a lot in my book and being prepared. Are you really ready for an outside-capital partner? Why do you want to have an outside-capital partner? There’s a whole lot of things you have to do before you ever decide, okay, now I may go find a partner. before you go find a capital source.

17:18 RICK FORD: And that’s what I try to talk about in my book is understanding how to prepare yourself, how to ask yourself the right questions. Not only, what does that partner mean? What does that partner look like? What am I trying to accomplish? Is the timing right? Am I ready to present myself? There’s a 1000000 different things and I talk about them throughout my book. But, um, there’s a lot of ways, and most people never take the time to really think about it.

17:47 RICK FORD: They just think, ‘Oh, I’m ready for a partner,’ and maybe their business is not ready for a partner, but they think they are because they think it’s going to be a parachute to save them. And so, is outside capital going to be a parachute? If you’re looking for outside capital, as a parachute to save your business, it’s going to be very, very expensive and it’s probably not going to be a great experience.

18:12 RICK FORD: I would say you’re much better off going the other way: Preparing your business. Make sure you’re truly prepared and ready for the next step, and you’re bringing an outside capital for the right reasons. If you’re just looking for, you know, a parachute. I think it’s the wrong reason to look for outside cap.

18:31 JIM BEACH: Rick, so when you go into a new dealership and introduce the model that we’re going to be the dealership to people drive a long way to go to. And there was one of those in the Atlanta market, Jasper Jeeps, was famous in Atlanta. Everyone would drive up to Jasper to get their Jeeps because it was two or three thousand dollars cheaper or better. I don’t know. I never went there, never bought a Jeep. But you’re creating that kind of dealership.

18:59 JIM BEACH: People drive, you know, 100s of miles. How do you teach that into the salesman? What do you make the priority that they get incentivized to operate in a way that creates that?

19:10 RICK FORD: So the number one thing that we focused our sales staff on was customer service. We always looked at the long run versus the short term. What is that customer value over 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? And the reality is, the customer-acquisition portion, acquiring the customer, is the most expensive part.

19:28 RICK FORD: Once we sell that car, once that customer becomes a repeat customer of ours, if we’ve done our job, then our opportunity to continue to sell additional products and services is at a much, much lower cost. So that’s why we focused our sales department.

19:43 RICK FORD: We actually, oftentimes, by the time we would sell the vehicle to the first-time customer, pay our salespeople, pay our other marketing costs, our cost of floor plan, meaning the cost of carrying inventory, and then throw in overhead for buildings and all the such, We often lost money. And the majority of the time we lost money in the new-car department. But for us, the way we looked at it, the new-car department was the engine that drove the train.

20:10 RICK FORD: It was the absolute engine, right? It’s one of the front that’s just generating and starting that relationship. And then everything else that comes behind it is where we actually would be able to make money over the long term with that customer once we earned the right to be their dealer of choice. So it was a different methodology, a different thought process, and different from what most people think about when they think about a car dealer.

20:37 JIM BEACH: Right, you’re going to make the money on the maintenance, the new tires, the oil changes, and then when they decide to flip to a new, nicer updated model.

20:47 RICK FORD: Exactly right. And hopefully they send a friend, a family member. We had, you know, many of our stores, we literally had some space where we had 3rd generation buyers. We’d have our owners that had bought from us bringing their grandchildren to buy their first cars. That was the true measure of whether we had done our job and really developed a successful relationship for the long term.

21:10 JIM BEACH: What was the turnover of your sales staff? It seems to me, the dealerships that I know that are just close to me that the turnover is once every 6 months or so, maybe even lower than that. What kind of turnover were you looking for at your dealerships?

21:25 RICK FORD: It was something that we focused on. We had 4 pillars. I talked about this and we have 4 pillars of success that we focused on as a company. And one of those 4 main pillars was what we call employee satisfaction. Yes, I. And we focused a lot on how do we make sure that we take care of our customers and how do we take care of our employees so they will take care of our customers?

21:52 RICK FORD: And so we tracked our turnover percentage. Our turnover percentage as a company as a whole was less than 20%. As a whole company. Unfortunately, I would be honest with you. Our sales turnover was higher. Our sales turnover was closer to 50% a year. What’s a little bit misleading about your sales turnover is you had the bottom 10 to 20% of your staff turning over three or four times a year. The other 75% of your staff didn’t turn over for you.

22:20 RICK FORD: But that was the misleading part. And so sometimes it gives the appearance because that bottom percentage was turning over. It gives the appearance you’ve got a lot of turnover, but you really don’t.

22:31 JIM BEACH: That makes sense. Yeah, totally makes sense. I get it. And I would assume that your maintenance staff stays longer because their jobs are more stable and not commission-based, too, and sales are going up and down because we’re all going to need to get our oil changed and we’re all going to have dings and stuff, you know?

22:52 RICK FORD: Yeah, when you have warranty business, you know, things, unfortunately, these vehicles break down, so you’re going to need to have, you know, someone to can take care of the repair for you. More and more common these days. Somebody’s running into us somewhere along the way. We hit a curb, we hit whatever.

23:08 RICK FORD: So we had collision centers, we had service departments, we had parts departments. We sold parts to our customers in service, but also parts to customers who wanted to do their own repairs. And all of those different departments were very stable. The same thing in our accounting department. And our accounting offices, all very, very stable. We didn’t have much turnover all throughout the company. Uh, in all the main, you know, the main portions of the store.

23:35 RICK FORD: But, What happens is just like you mentioned the story locally by you in Atlanta. You see your local dealership, and the only customer-facing people you typically see are the ones that are on the showroom. We don’t oftentimes really get to know the people in the service drive are the people in the parts department or the other multiple departments throughout the dealership, because unless you need them.

24:00 RICK FORD: You might very well get to know your service advisor, if you’re fortunate enough to really, you know, go find a good service advisor and really develop a relationship. They don’t turn over. They don’t turn over. They don’t need to, because they’re golden. They have that relationship with the customer who’s going to bring them back time and time again.

24:21 JIM BEACH: Rick, we’re bad out of time. I only have time for one question. It’s the toughest question that I can think of. What do you personally drive every day? I bet it’s a pickup. I bet it’s a Ford F-150. How did I do?

24:35 RICK FORD: You’re very close. I’m not the normal person. I’ve got, uh, I’ve got a couple of different homes, you know, spread out around the US that have cars at every home. So I’ve got a half a dozen different cars I get to choose from. Uh, and you’re right, one of the vehicles I choose, if it’s just someone jump in on an everyday car. I have a Chevrolet Silverado pickup.

24:58 JIM BEACH: Okay. You don’t drive a Ford either, huh?

25:01 RICK FORD: I did for many, many, many years, but I switched to a Silverado recently and have been enjoying it.

25:07 JIM BEACH: And what’s your fancy car that you’re the proudest of? What’s the…

25:11 RICK FORD: The most special car I own was a gift from my wife whenever I sold RFJ. My wife knew that I would never in my lifetime spend the money to buy a car that would like what she did. And so she bought for me a Rolls-Royce Dawn, which is a convertible Rolls-Royce. So that’s my most special car that I’ll I’ll own until the day that I’m put in the ground. She gave it to me as a gift.

25:38 JIM BEACH: How many miles a year do you drive that car? Under a thousand? Oh, 100s?

25:43 RICK FORD: Oh, more like, yeah, 3 or 400 a year at the most.

25:46 JIM BEACH: Did you get the right color?

25:49 RICK FORD: And she did. She knows I’m, all my cars are the same color. I own, you know, like I said, between my wife and I, we own a dozen cars, and they’re all white. I don’t have a lot of imagination when it comes to the color of cars.

26:04 JIM BEACH: White is really easy for you to keep clean.

26:07 RICK FORD: It’s also easy and I live in Texas most of the year and it’s hot in the summertime. So you’re looking to do anything you can to make it not quite as hot.

26:17 JIM BEACH: Rick, how do we find out more about you? Get a copy of your book.

26:23 RICK FORD: Please go to RichardAFord.com. Or you’ll see the link about me as the author. You’ll see the link for the book. Obviously, Amazon you mentioned earlier. We have a number-one new bestseller on Amazon in multiple different categories in the business section. Business books. And so Amazon.com is easy. We sell both e-books, Kindles, as well as hardback copies, and I would love for people to read my book.

26:47 RICK FORD: If nothing else, just I’ve had a lot of people comment that it’s helped them think about what their next steps are for their business, and I’m happy that we’re able to help in any way we can for the entrepreneurs out there that are navigating the waters, as you say, of the turbulent waters are going on in today’s marketplace.

27:06 JIM BEACH: And published by Forbes Books. Adam Witty, right? Adam Witty, did you meet Adam there?

27:12 RICK FORD: I did, and you’re correct. They were our publisher. They were tremendous to work with. I couldn’t have found a better publisher and team at Forbes to work with.

27:22 JIM BEACH: Yeah, those Forbes guys, they’re out of South Carolina are fantastic. They’ve been on the show several times and they do a great job. So I always mention that when I see it. Rick, thank you so much for being on this show. And your publicist said that I was going to get a discount on a car and that I would have a special gift. That’s true, right? You were going to send me a white something or another.

27:48 RICK FORD: Have it even better. Now that I’m out of the car business because I had to, obviously, there was a not compete for an extended period of time. I sold my business. So I’m no longer in the apartment. So I’m no longer in the automotive business.

28:04 JIM BEACH: What?

28:04 RICK FORD: Now I own 10 different tractor dealerships and seven powersports stores, meaning side-by-sides like Kawasaki, Polaris, Can-Am. I’m happy to give you a deal on a tractor or a powersport. Side-by-sides.

28:15 JIM BEACH: That’s a sweet offer, Rick. I’ll think about that. All right. Thanks for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

28:23 RICK FORD: Thank you so much.

28:25 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back.

TRANSITION MONTAGE

28:27 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question.

28:28 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Well, I think it’s a great question.

28:31 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: It’s great.

28:32 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Great question.

28:32 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

28:35 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Okay, that’s a great question.

28:37 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Yeah, it’s a great question.

28:39 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Those are two great examples.

28:40 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Great, Jim.

28:41 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Um, Jim, I think that’s absolutely perfect.

28:44 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That is exactly it.

28:45 ANNOUNCER: School for Startups Radio.

28:47 JIM BEACH: We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur and now author, keynote speaker, and leadership expert. Please welcome TJ Sweet to the show. He is the founder and CEO of TJ Sweet Enterprises and works in the self-help space, helping coach leaders and working with organizations to explore what creates meaningful performance and great culture.

29:05 JIM BEACH: He has a podcast, which has had hundreds of interviews with top thought leaders, and also has just released a new book called Grateful Leadership: Finding Purpose, Building Resilience, and the Power of Appreciation. TJ, I appreciate you being here. Welcome. How you doing?

29:16 TJ SWEET: Hi, Jim, thank you for the opportunity to be here. I am excited to get into our conversation. I know these are always rich conversations talking about meaningful things, so I’m grateful to be here.

29:28 JIM BEACH: Well, I appreciate it. I am grateful and have gratitude for you. Is that the single most important thing to differentiate us from angry bastards to nice people who are happy with themselves? Is that distinction, gratitude?

29:41 TJ SWEET: I would say the single most important building block, the foundational building block of presence and awareness and peace and connection is gratitude.

29:49 JIM BEACH: Yes. Okay. Uh, isn’t that easy? I mean, can’t those people list 10 things that they’re grateful for?

29:55 TJ SWEET: Yeah, well, and I appreciate you bringing you mentioning that specifically because there are kind of different levels of gratitude that I’ll say. So there’s this things that I’m grateful for. And then there’s a deep sense of being grateful. And a deep sense of being grateful is not looking around the room, saying, I’m glad I have. It’s it’s more of a deeper sense of presence of how you got here, how those things mean something to you.

30:22 TJ SWEET: Typically, the people that mean a lot to you and how you see them and the opportunities you have, whether it’s to meet somebody like you, Jim, or to make a positive difference as a business owner in the people’s lives that you get to serve. It’s a deeper sense of appreciation more than just the idea of I’m glad I have a material thing in my life.

30:45 JIM BEACH: Yeah, I mean, by definition, the material thing is materialism, right? Grateful for anything that we have is. I don’t know, third, fourth, fifth tier, isn’t it?

30:54 TJ SWEET: I mean, Yeah, yeah, I mean, it can definitely, I mean, it starts with oftentimes recognizing who we are and where we are, but also who we get to do life with. And once you can move beyond the things, you start to see things differently. And so typically when I walk people through a gratitude exercise, I say, you know, list 3 things and they do it every day and they’re like, my life doesn’t feel any different.

31:21 TJ SWEET: And oftentimes it’s because we’re doing the gratitude practice so that we get something from it instead of who is the person every day that stops and recognizes more good things actually happening in our lives instead of the things that are against us. We start to recognize more of the things that are for us, of which then help us kind of treat the world, treat other people differently through that lens of gratitude in that in that deeper sense of self and peace.

31:50 JIM BEACH: So I try to pray every day. Yeah, before I go to bed and it’s not much, but I try to do it every day and I start off with, I’m gratitude for, here’s my gratitude for what happened today. Give me a grade on just that, TJ. Am I making progress?

32:07 TJ SWEET: Honestly, I would say A-plus on that.

32:09 JIM BEACH: Okay, sweet. Okay, cool. I’ll do that tonight.

32:12 TJ SWEET: A lot of times when people pray, it’s typically in asking for something. But if you start every prayer with thanking, like I do, I do the same thing, and that’s not why I gave you an A-plus, but that A-plus is a deeper sense of recognizing all that we’ve been given and being grateful for it and praying and saying thank you for it. It really allows you and opens you up to receive more because you start to recognize more in your life.

32:41 TJ SWEET: And so for me, I’m more praying now for God’s will. And I’m grateful for everything he’s doing in my life instead of praying for the things that I think I want. I’m more recognizing that he’s been listening to my prayers and giving me more of what I need.

32:57 JIM BEACH: Yes. Need versus want. Damn, man, who’s always right?

33:01 TJ SWEET: Thank goodness.

33:01 JIM BEACH: Thank goodness, right? There’s a Garth Brooks song about unanswered prayers. Did you hear that he’s a serial killer?

33:08 TJ SWEET: Garth Brooks? No, I did not. I have not heard that. I’ve not been paying that much.

33:13 JIM BEACH: But check this thing out. There’s a Netflix or a YouTube video about a guy who found that 300 missing murdered people correlate with Garth Brooks being in town. And so that’s enough evidence right there. I mean, it’s more evidence than you and I have about us.

33:30 TJ SWEET: That’s true, yes.

33:31 JIM BEACH: Thank goodness. [Unclear joking phrase in audio/raw transcript.]

33:35 TJ SWEET: Yes.

33:35 JIM BEACH: Right.

33:35 TJ SWEET: Yes.

33:35 JIM BEACH: So, isn’t this sort of in the obvious realm? How do we, this is something that mama taught all of us, right?

33:42 TJ SWEET: Yes, but it was then treated more like a should. And more of like a proper, at least the way I grew up, it was more of like I should be grateful for these things. But when you actually are deeply grateful for it. It, it feels different. It, the way you live your life instead of, I’m saying, yes, please.

34:03 TJ SWEET: It means like, or when you say yes and or please and thank you, or you just do some similar kind things for people in your life because that’s what we were taught to do. But there’s a lot of things in life. That make it sometimes complicated to be grateful for it because life isn’t always easy. It isn’t always going in the direction that we thought it was going to go.

34:27 TJ SWEET: No matter what we get to do, there’s always going to be some adversity, some loss. And I think that chips away at our idea of just be thankful, just be grateful because we carry so much heaviness. And then things happen. That we can’t explain that maybe change the trajectory of our lives.

34:45 TJ SWEET: And that’s, I think, what distracts us from being present is because we have this kind of sadness in this hardness that happens and we lose sight of it because we stop practicing it.

34:57 JIM BEACH: What is grateful leadership and how do I practice that?

34:59 TJ SWEET: Yeah, it’s a great question. So the nature of that is whenever I became a grateful person, again, beyond the movement of writing down 3 things I was grateful for, which I still do every single day, uh, once I became a grateful person, How did I lead my life? And then how did I then lead the team, because I was a healthcare administrator for 20 plus years?

35:24 TJ SWEET: How did I lead my team differently whenever I saw them as something and someone, multiple someones, that I was authentically grateful for in my life? And so whenever you start to recognize, you know, you know, as a business owner, just even as a person that you do have responsibilities in your life and you do in the professional environment, you do get to serve other people and you also are responsible for a team.

35:49 TJ SWEET: But once you understand, like, each person offers something unique. And I’m grateful, I was becoming grateful for each of them individually for who they were and how they helped other people, how they served our customers. That then became like the lens that I started to practice every single day with my leadership with them was, I’m grateful you’re here. I’m grateful for your effort. And then it’s also, I’m grateful how we get to serve together.

36:16 TJ SWEET: And then the team started to then recognize more of the positive contributions that each other were making instead of what we weren’t doing. They started to focus more on what they were. But then everybody started to lead. And look at the the team and how we got to work together through a grateful lens because when you’re grateful for something or someone, you show up for it differently and you consider it differently and then obviously you treat it differently.

36:44 JIM BEACH: All right. So how do I… With Sally become grateful. I’m actually thinking, I kind of really want to fire her.

36:51 TJ SWEET: Yeah, yeah. So that’s a fair question, right? Because this is the pushback I get a lot is I don’t, I’m not grateful for some of these people. They get the honesty with me, right? So it’s a matter of, uh, maybe it’s, I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve the team, and sometimes serving the team means holding everybody accountable, which means I’m grateful for the person who then gets to kind of be a good steward of the team.

37:18 TJ SWEET: And so maybe I need to talk to Sally about what is she here for? Is she here for the same purpose? Is she here for herself or is she hurting the team? Because then now I’m grateful for the pressure of having that tough conversation with Sally.

37:35 TJ SWEET: And really getting at Sally may not be the best fit for the team, but I have that privilege of being a good steward of the team, of which then I, uh, the way that I phrase it is for Sally is I get to maybe point her towards something she’s a little bit more passionate about if she’s not aligned with the team. So there is a duality when it comes to gratitude. It’s not just positivity.

38:00 TJ SWEET: It’s much more about presence and then embracing the responsibility you have as a leader.

38:06 JIM BEACH: All right, how do I build that culture into the rest of the team?

38:11 TJ SWEET: Yeah, so it’s daily practice. It’s something that we talk about being thankful for effort. It’s purpose driven. So whenever we start to recognize the power and the impact, that we have on the people we’re serving, it’s constantly reminding the team of that. And that’s how it becomes more of the culture. So whenever you recognize that you’ve made a difference in somebody’s life.

38:33 TJ SWEET: You kind of point back to say, you know what, I’m glad I got to be here with you to do that. And then we started meetings with what’s something great that happened today. What’s something that we’re grateful for? And then the number one thing I asked our team is how do you feel on Sunday night, not Friday afternoon? Because they were feeling stressed about work on Sunday night and didn’t want to come into work.

38:59 TJ SWEET: We actually spent more time sitting down and asking, what is the thing about work that is causing you stress? And then we started to recognize that it was just some things, some culture things and some, you know, they lost connection to the purpose and they lost connection to the team. And then they actually wanted to come back to work because it fulfilled them, fulfilled their deeper purpose, but it also allowed them to still show up at home.

39:27 TJ SWEET: So it has to become something. It’s not just a banner like Ted Lasso, where you put ‘Believe’ up there. It’s not, you don’t just put up a banner that says gratitude. It has to be something integrated into every meeting, every conversation, and it really is more about presence and being grateful for each other, no matter what the task is, but just being grateful that you get to do it together.

39:52 JIM BEACH: I don’t get Ted Lasso. I don’t like that actor. I don’t like him with the mustache. I think he looks like the epitome of cheesy car salesmen. And I just, I’ve never. I haven’t watched that show ever. Apparently everyone in the world thinks it’s great, but I don’t appreciate it and I find no gratitude for it. Though.

40:13 TJ SWEET: Yeah, well, you know what? That’s the thing. That the human experience, right? Not everybody’s for everyone. And uh, and that’s a fair point. And I think what he’s most known for, that character specifically is, Seeing even a difficult time, seeing it through a different lens, to like really kind of highlight, what could we learn from it? And what can we do about it instead of complaining about it?

40:37 TJ SWEET: I think that’s really more what he’s known for, which again is a deeper, different lesson. But yes, the character is quite the interesting one for sure and doesn’t it doesn’t appeal to everybody. And the mustache hasn’t been around much. In the last few years. So it’s a little bit unique.

40:54 JIM BEACH: Talk to me about purpose.

40:56 TJ SWEET: Hmm. Yeah, so the purpose, so I’ll talk about purpose, but I’ll see it through the lens of passion 1st. So what we’re passionate about is the thing that gives us energy. Purpose is the thing that allows us to serve others, to consider others and to make a difference in the lives of others. There’s kind of 2 different types of purpose.

41:17 TJ SWEET: That one I just said, where we get to make a difference in other people’s lives, no matter what it is, even if it’s having a conversation like this, to make a difference in one person’s life, that’s listening.

41:30 TJ SWEET: But there’s also this deeper sense of purpose in the way of intentionality, of every single thing that we do having purpose behind it, as in what we eat, why you pray before you go to bed, what you have for breakfast, what you listen to, like why people listen to this podcast, there’s probably a purpose. There’s probably a purpose. There’s probably a mission. They’re trying to grow themselves for a reason.

41:55 TJ SWEET: And so I really kind of pull back and talk about, let’s talk about what impact you have on other people, but also what a meaning, you know, because I think we’re disconnected oftentimes from the purpose and the meaning behind what we do and that leads to burnout, but adding more purpose into the, into the things that we do allows us to stay connected to ourselves.

42:18 TJ SWEET: And then obviously staying connected to the people that we get to serve, whether it’s in our personal life or in our professional life.

42:26 JIM BEACH: Does my four-person business need a purpose? We sell chitlins and gizzards, you know, the finest fried intestines in the South. We are so proud, TJ. Our gizzards will drip through 2 paper bags within 30 minutes, and that’s guaranteed. Okay? What is our purpose or do I need one? I don’t I’m not concerned about the whales or the global environment? You know, I can’t affect the whales. What’s my purpose?

42:51 TJ SWEET: Yeah, well, I tell you, if people, if people buy… If people buy your product. They are choosing it. And maybe it could be the most favorite thing that they have, the thing that they’ve driven a long distance for.

43:04 JIM BEACH: Your grandma gave it to them.

43:07 TJ SWEET: Yeah, well, maybe the grandma, right? So maybe that is the connection grandma has to the family. She wants to do that. And There’s always a little subtlety around like, what’s the whole point? What’s the point of it all? Like you said, even if it’s a 4 person business and this is, quote unquote, all we do.

43:26 TJ SWEET: There’s always a deeper meaning and something more significant, then we even realize, and maybe this is what grandma lives for, that maybe this is what grandma is known for in the family, because when grandma stops coming to get it, they’re all going to, the family’s going to be devastated and they’re going to look forward to it and wish for it. So you’re actually probably helping people make more memories than you realize in your 4 person company.

43:53 JIM BEACH: No, I’m pretty sure the whole purpose of this business is to keep the lights on.

43:59 TJ SWEET: Well, that’s the purpose.

44:00 JIM BEACH: Our purpose is to keep these 2 families fed. Two families got electricity and catfish on Saturday.

44:06 TJ SWEET: Well, I mean, that’s pretty significant. Two families being able to keep the lights on and to have a family and, you know, like you said, have the catfish on the weekends. That’s pretty powerful. I mean, I think one person’s pretty powerful. So two families is pretty significant.

44:23 JIM BEACH: Okay. Good. So how do I define that purpose? That’s getting back to it. It sounds awfully materialistic, though. That’s getting back to, sounds awfully materialistic, though. Yeah, I mean, I got in a fight with Simon Sinek over this.

44:38 TJ SWEET: Yeah, that’s okay.

44:38 JIM BEACH: I’m sorry, go ahead.

44:38 TJ SWEET: What did you say?

44:40 JIM BEACH: No, no, no, that’s okay.

44:42 TJ SWEET: I mean, it’s it’s it’s good to have a healthy discussion around these things is because if we’re going to make it meaningful, it has to be able to connect and relate. So I totally understand. So go ahead and tell me about your argument with Simon.

44:57 JIM BEACH: I just think that so many businesses are started to pay the bills. You know? And they’re lucky if they find passion in year 2 or 5 or 8 or something like that, that there are a lot of businesses that are not started because of passion just because people can pay the bills with it. And I argue that that’s passionate enough, that you don’t need to have a passion for your business. You have a passion for the process.

45:25 JIM BEACH: The fact that you don’t work for TJ or Jim, you know, you work for yourself and do whatever you want and commute downstairs to the living room instead of 18 miles to the office. You know, just all of that. You can be happy enough about that. And, uh, Simon said no. What do you think?

45:44 TJ SWEET: Yeah, I mean, I would say a little bit more than no. I mean, I think there is, if we keep peeling back layers, like, you know, if you kind of just look on the surface level, uh, having, because work, it’s hard. Uh, adversity happens. Uh, the things in the economy change. There’s a lot of things that are going to come along. They’re going to make that thing that you started to get something from it very, very difficult to keep doing.

46:12 TJ SWEET: However, whenever you really think, what does it matter if I do this? Now, even if it is keep the lights on, there’s something about connecting your business, to the lights. That is powerful. So if I want to keep the lights on, why does it matter if I keep the lights on? Well, I want to take care of my family. Great. So the purpose of the business is actually to care for your family. Which is still pretty noble in itself.

46:41 TJ SWEET: So it’s like, what is it? What is this business, whatever the thing is? What is it allowing you to build? Or keep the lights on? And then who does it allow you to serve? Because everybody’s serving somebody in some way, shape or form. But then also like, who are you becoming as a person? Because you know this, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a, well, no matter what role you have, we’re all becoming something. We’re all shaped by experiences.

47:08 TJ SWEET: But it’s also like, what am I, what is the most important thing to me? If it is the lights? Then it’s a matter of like the job, the career, the passion. The business is actually allowing you to provide for the people and the things that mean the most to you. So that’s why I’d say a little bit more than no, because the why you got started may not be the same reason why you keep doing it, even when it gets hard.

47:37 JIM BEACH: What is the 3-2-1 gratitude practice?

47:39 TJ SWEET: So the 3-2-1 gratitude practice is the nature of the first book that I wrote. It’s called Practice Gratitude, Find Joy. Thats where that came from. So the 3-2-1 gratitude practice is three things: writing down three things that you’re grateful for. Writing down 2 things that you appreciate about yourself. And then the one is an I am statement. So the 3 things that you’re grateful for. Again, it’s just a daily practice.

48:04 TJ SWEET: The one nudge I would tell people if you struggle with writing down 3 things as you just look around in a room, put them into categories. Maybe Mondays is about work. Tuesdays is about your family. Wednesdays is about your community. Thursdays is about your favorite sports team, whatever the thing is, think break your life into categories, and start to recognize more things that way. Two things you appreciate about yourself. We are typically the hardest critics of our own lives.

48:33 TJ SWEET: But here’s the magic of recognizing 2 things that you appreciate about yourself. It’s not about vanity. It’s not about ego. It’s more about, what do you actually appreciate about who you are, about what you’ve overcome, or just a skill that you have that makes a difference in other people’s lives or brings fun to other people’s lives? Because what happens at the end of this, 2 things you appreciate about yourself is you stop, one, you connect deeper to yourself.

49:02 TJ SWEET: But then two, you stop being threatened by other people’s good things about them and you stop judging yourself against other people, but then you also stop comparing, right? It kind of gets rid of that comparison between you and somebody else because you know yourself deeper. And then you start to appreciate more things about other people, which I think we all need a little bit more.

49:24 TJ SWEET: And then that last one is the I am statement, and that is just giving yourself a moment to actually feel how you feel instead of how you should feel, how you want to feel, but just giving yourself space to say, you know what, I am hopeful. I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m frustrated. I’m joyful. Whatever your thing is, but just giving yourself and honoring that, saying, I am and then whatever you’re feeling.

49:49 TJ SWEET: That’s really, really powerful for people because we don’t slow down enough to actually recognize how we’re feeling, then make a choice: is it how I want to feel, or am I just letting chance throughout the day dictate my feelings?

50:03 JIM BEACH: All right, how do I wake up happy?

50:06 TJ SWEET: I would say go to bed grateful. So the idea, I’ve kind of shifted my energy from happiness to peace. And I wake up every single day, and I, and I’m not just saying this to make it sound good, Jim, it’s a, I wake up before I even put my feet on the ground. I’m grateful for another day, but then I’m also thinking about the opportunities that I have that day. It’s very quick 1st thing in the morning.

50:33 TJ SWEET: And I see the sun as fast as possible. Or I spend the 1st 30 minutes not being on my phone, not being around technology, which is also something that I think is super been super powerful for people. Because oftentimes the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning, we get on our phone, which doesn’t add to our happiness. So maybe it’s removing some things that make you stress.

50:58 JIM BEACH: I can leave it by the toilet, though, isn’t it?

51:01 TJ SWEET: Maybe, sure, I guess, if that’s where you’re going to go pick it up.

51:06 JIM BEACH: But I think it’s really, I need to do a whole riff on that. It was just the funniest thing I have heard, that the average email response now is the exact same length as the average bathroom visit and it was just hysterical.

51:21 TJ SWEET: Yeah.

51:21 JIM BEACH: Anyway, I digress.

51:23 TJ SWEET: Yeah, well, honestly, though, I, you know, it’s very much a waking up with intention and having setting an intention on the day and I, you know, I, I go to I’m a very regimented person when it comes to. I go to bed with, uh, you know, like a reflection of the day, and then I think about like, what do I have for tomorrow? And then what can I do about it now? So I’m not stressing about it all night.

51:49 TJ SWEET: I try to very intentionally think about my day in the beginning and ending of it, but I do what you do. I pray, um, in gratitude for the day. And when I wake up in the morning, I’m just grateful I have another day to do whatever I get to do that day and to meet the people that I get to meet like you.

52:12 JIM BEACH: I got into an argument once, TJ, with a person about who was a better Christian. Someone who goes to church once a month or someone who prays every night and doesn’t tell anyone about it.

52:23 TJ SWEET: Hmm.

52:24 JIM BEACH: What was your answer?

52:25 TJ SWEET: I would say praying. You said ‘better Christian’?

52:28 JIM BEACH: Yes. Because yeah, that’s all about what it is, TJ. That’s how you measure yourself now.

52:33 TJ SWEET: That’s why I paused. I don’t really love the words ‘better Christian,’ but if I were going to say someone who’s practicing more of a Christian faith, I would say the person praying every day. Because the church, the faith in being a Christian is more about, in my personal opinion, right? This is not a flag-in-the-ground statement for everybody; it’s more, it’s my walk with God every day.

52:57 TJ SWEET: And my recogniz- my recognition of his impact in my life, not a building I go to so that other people see that I’m there. It’s more about my relationship with God than it is, everybody else seeing and hearing about my relationship.

53:12 JIM BEACH: TJ Sweet, how do we find out more? Follow you online, get a copy of the book, listen to the show, all that stuff, please.

53:20 TJ SWEET: Of course, yeah. So luckily, my name is relatively unique, and TJSweet.com is my website, and then @TheTJSweet on every social media platform you could imagine. Uh, you can find me there and uh, uh, you can email me there, reach me there, and I would be happy to connect with any of you.

53:38 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. TJ, thank you so much. Love the book, love your attitude, and I’m grateful that you were with us today. Thanks a lot.

53:46 TJ SWEET: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it. Grateful for you as well.

53:50 JIM BEACH: And I am incredibly grateful for all of you, listeners. Thank you so much for being with us. Have a great day. We will be back. Take care. Bye now.